Did Beethoven invent Boogie-Woogie??

An exploration into one of the most bizarre sections of classical music I have ever heard...
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The main version used is Maria João Pires • Beethoven - Last Piano...

[@fazivles]

The best part about this excerpt is that you can see it being built from the first variation. All he does the entire time up until this part is just condense groups 2 and 1 into smaller and smaller beats, until it is an inevitability that we reach what we know as swing music!

[@Peter-x2exz]

4:37 András Schiff: “a boogie-voogi…I don’t like dee boogie-voogie”…and proceeds to play a BOOGIE-WOOGIE.

[@bordersofelmet]

I laughed out loud the first time I heard this piece. Luckily it wasn't during a recital :)

[@user-xm2lh5fu3p]

Bach art of fugue no2 has a similar rhythm, very interesting some of the stuff that seems wayyyy ahead of it's time.

[@matttondr9282]

Even though the “boogie woogie” segment is clearly just a logically derived evolution of earlier material, it is very funny to hear it within a classical piece.

[@lordzeshen]

Great video and channel for classical music! I'm enjoying every second, thank you for making these!

[@allancerf9038]

Enjoy Classical Music - Thanks for this! I think however, though all your points are correct, this is not the genesis of this piece. Beethoven corresponded over many years with various people in the UK supplying him with folks songs which they wanted him to arrange. Wars in that era REALLY slowed up the mail and work he started one year on relatively simple pieces, might not be completed for many years as Beethoven and his correspondents waited for the mail to resume between wars. Anyway... If you listen to some of these pieces Beethoven worked on - there were over 160 - many have that inherent swing. There are one or two from Scotland (sorry I don't recall their names at the moment) that had inherent Ragtime swing and were 'written' long before Beethoven heard them, and probably long before he was born. I don't think the main dude, the UK correspondent working with Beethoven, "George Thompson," gave the maestro too many strictures. So, it's not clear how much re-composing of melodic ideas or reharmonization Beethoven applied to some 160+ folk songs (some were not from the UK, most were). It was certainly within 'rules' of that era for classical composers to use folk elements and pull them into their compositions. None of this diminishes Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111: II in any way. Indeed it's incredible. So, I think the Scots and Welsh invented Ragtime, long before the mid 1890s. Possibly 200 years before. And I think Beethoven's singular genius 'synthesized' much of it this incredible piece. Great video, full stop.

[@adamjovine4924]

This has always been my favourite piece and I just loved learning more about it

[@juliannewman2ndchannelmusi475]

Please, please, who is the performer for the extracts you're using e.g. in 3:31 and following? It's probably the only time I've ever heard someone consistently executing the 2-to-1 ratio correctly, and it makes all the difference! Sorry, I should say: really excellent video! 🙂 Incidentally, even the slow graceful theme there's quite a surprising syncopation that anticipates the increasingly 'boogie-woogie' vibe in the subsequent variations, namely the tied D from the end of bar 7 into bar 8.

[@finosuilleabhain7781]

Kosei Uozumi.

[@enjoyclassicalmusic6006]

Hi It's Maria João Pires, I've put a link in the video description

[@juliannewman2ndchannelmusi475]

@@enjoyclassicalmusic6006 Thank you! Incidentally, I think the start time that you've put in the link isn't correct: I guess you meant 15꞉58, but you've put 5꞉38.

[@michaelgriseri]

This is my new favorite KZbin channel ! Man, this is some quality, instructive and fun content ! Congrats ! Beethoven was mad in a good way I guess

[@ThomasIrdor]

sameee

[@michaelcinelli8793]

The photoshops of Beethoven are true artistry

[@vinylarchaeologist]

looks like A.I. creations

[@elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633]

Beethoven is so much more complex than ragtime or boogie-woogie.

[@orionchip]

I love Beethoven!

[@Tolstoy111]

He wasn’t clinically deaf till the last ten years of his life or so.

[@NN-df7hl]

I can understand Andras Schiff's aversion to the "boogie woogie" comparison. It implies that music "evolved" from Beethoven to jazz and pop. That is nonsense. Like saying Michelangelo's artwork was just a stepping stone toward Dilbert cartoons. Or that Shakespeare was an early form of James Patterson. People nowadays just want everything simple and dumbed down and any argument to support their tastes is what they'll cling to.

[@elmerfudd979]

Gottschalk may have been the first American to write a Ragtime song. Listen to Pasquinade & La Gallina(1860's) ....

[@hoangkimviet8545]

So, Vivaldi invented rock?

[@countluke2334]

No, Vivaldi invented Pop. Selling the exact same piece of music over and over and over again.

[@hoangkimviet8545]

@@countluke2334 Hmm… I don’t think Vivaldi repeated himself.

[@mr.9931]

I definitely think Bach had a hand in shaping rock, his harpsichord solos definitely sound guitar-like, mainly due to the quick gritty scales.

[@Tolstoy111]

@@hoangkimviet8545 He was notorious for it. Stravinsky said he wrote the same concerto over and over again.

[@Moshmorenko]

@@Tolstoy111 Just because Stravinsky said it, doesn't make it true.

[@robbes7rh]

I believe it's thought that Scott Joplin developed his style of piano playing while in the employ of various brothel/entertainment establishments in New Orleans. It wouldn't surprise me if such establishments had in mind a successful business model extant in Old World centers of culture like Vienna and Paris. Might that have included music with lively dotted rhythms played incessantly as customers came and went at all hours of the day and night? And might Beethoven have sought relief for his sexual urges in such establishments? There is definitely a parallel between testosterone and libido, and some might include creativity and ambition as well. You don't set yourself on a course to become a composer of the ages with a wispy drive to succeed. I think it likely Beethoven did visit brothels often and that if there were music, it would likely have been played on the piano and would have been part of Beethoven's musical landscape from which he drew when composing.

[@kofiLjunggren]

Lol I love the Ai generated pictures

[@berkefeil5646]

Just call it an echo of boogie-woogie for God’s sake, Beethoven didn’t achieve musical enlightenment just for us to say that ‘he came pretty close to integrating boogie-woogie and did some other cool things too’

[@passje8007]

Scott Joplin listened well to Beethoven is more likely 😉

[@enjoyclassicalmusic6006]

He was classically trained so I'm sure he did. I will make a video on Joplin in a few months, he's a fascinating figure...

[@CarolynBatson-cn2ie]

Can’t let it go - white people did not invent everything - Blacks are also intelligent.

[@NBaa2123]

It was created by the African American folks in the south,Carnegie Hall

[@baruchben-david4196]

When I saw this headline, I just knew it as about this... The relevant sonata was not in any sense of the word the "finest." It's thumpy and boring. The second movement starts out about as boring as it gets, until we hit this variation...

[@Tolstoy111]

Huh? The Opus 111 is sublime. Every moment of it.

[@jrcolonial98]

“Boring” ?

[@ondrejkratochvil4589]

Well recently i've heard it live played by Mitsuko Ushida and it's definitely not boring - neither are 30 and 31 :)