In many of his songs, Ludwig van Beethoven strikes one as a mainstream composer engaged in the music business of his time. But Beethoven was Beethoven not only when writing symphonies. In his songs he managed to define an individual attitude toward the tradition of Protestant sung prayer, as represented by C.P.E. Bach’s Gellert settings, as well as produce a means of elegant entertainment, as represented by Giuseppe Carpani’s poem In questa tomba oscura. One example of Beethoven’s musically inventive and individual approach is found in the Abendlied of 1820, in which he compositionally comments on the philosophical impact of the confrontation between physics and the idealistic concept of the human soul. Franz Schubert found the results interesting enough to transcribe the song in his own hand.
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