Baptised On This Day

On this day in 1770, the newborn Ludwig van Beethoven was baptised. I imagine he bawled lustily.  Beethoven was the musical hero of my boyhood and adolescence. Right up until pop and rock claimed me – it was the golden age, after all, mid-sixties to mid-seventies – Beethoven was the god of my worship, with all other composers taking their places on the steps of his celestial throne. I immersed myself totally in his symphonies and piano sonatas, even playing what I could of the latter (which wasn't very much). When, some years later, I returned to the classical music fold, I began to have doubts about the great Ludwig Van B, especially the symphonies, while my explorations led me, rightly and inevitably, to another supreme musical deity, J.S. Bach, and to the endless beauties of Schubert. However, I returned to Beethoven, discovering the great string quartets, hearing the symphonies performed with a lighter touch and brisker tempi than in my youth, and of course going back to the piano sonatas. Now, if the whole of western music, bar the works of one composer, were to disappear overnight, I would save Bach, but the god of my worship is now a triune deity – Bach, Schubert, Beethoven (with Mozart knocking on the door). Happily my trinitarian tastes were gratified by the recent release of Vikingur Olafsson's Opus 109, a musical journey towards Beethoven's sonata of that number by way of Bach and Schubert. But I'll sign off with one of the Beethoven masterpieces that won me back to him – the breathtakingly beautiful Cavatina from his Opus 130 string quartet. Beethoven himself declared that 'never had his own music made such an impression on him', and that he had composed it 'truly in the tears of melancholy'. Here it is played by the Kodaly Quartet...