Beethoven's Sixth Symphony

Here are some sites with background on Beethoven and/ or this particular piece of music:
http://inkpot.com/classical/beethsyms.html
and
http://park.org/Guests/Beethoven/6.htm

and I even found a weird spoof site:
http://www.brumm.com/music/Beethoven.html

Now on to my impressions of this piece of music and why I enjoy it.

But first I must get my inner fangirl gushing out of the way.

Beethoven's music is frigging amazing! He was a genius! He has so MUCH passion!!!



As you can tell, the music of Beethoven just does it for me.

My all time favorite piece of music in any genre is his Ninth Symphony, but I am afraid to even try to discuss that, as I am sure that with my nonmusical background I could never even begin to do it justice.

After the Ninth, it is a tossup as to whether I prefer the Fifth, Sixth, or Seventh.

But since it is springtime, I chose to talk about the Sixth this month.

Here in Michigan we have looooooooooong cold snowy winters. It is a rare and special occasion when we get to see the sun in the winter months. We have a lot of cloud cover in this part of the world during the winter. We dream of the sun, of being able to be outside without twenty gazillion layers of clothing, of being able to eat out on our decks, sleep on top of the grass in the sunshine, picnic next to a brook, hear the birds singing.

They must have plenty of crappy winter weather in parts of Germany and Austria, too, because Beethoven captures the great Michigander dream of a perfect spring/summer day out in the country in his Sixth Symphony. It is the musical equivalent of a gorgeous Impressionist painting of a spring day filled with flowers and water.

So come along on this beautiful June day for a picnic in the country. Listen to the babbling brook. Listen to the birds flying around and singing. Maybe a band will play for us, and we can dance. Maybe a storm will pass through ,and we can snuggle up together with a bottle of fine wine and watch the lightning. And then after the storm passes, we can relax some more with some sweet white wine and crusty French bread and delicious gourmet cheese, and plenty of dark chocolate and fresh fruit, and give thanks for our safety and happiness on a beautiful afternoon.