No Jazz Without Beethoven? | Part 6 of the film project A World Without Beethoven?

Cascading piano, and syncopation. What sounds like an American bar jazz piece from the 1920s is actually Beethoven's last piano sonata, Op. 111 - composed almost one hundred years before the birth of jazz in America. To find out what the jazz world makes of Ludwig van Beethoven, Sarah Willis - horn player with the Berlin Philharmonic - met with jazz musician Wynton Marsalis in New York. Marsalis is one of the world’s preeminent trumpet players. He has won nine GRAMMYs, and is artistic director of the House of Jazz in NYC’s Lincoln Center.
As Wynton Marsalis puts it, “The person in the 20th century who most resembles Beethoven is Louis Armstrong, because Louis Armstrong actually gave you a sense of what it meant to be modern; what it meant to be free. Beethoven’s relation to jazz is about his freedom in improvisation - of course we don’t have recordings of him, but every account of his playing is that he would go from really thunderous, bombastic, virtuosic playing to tender, beautiful, melodic…”
Wynton Marsalis, Sarah Willis and pianist Katie Mahan analyze two famous Beethoven pieces: The Piano Sonata No. 32, Op. 111 (1822), - its baselines and syncopation once caused Stravinsky to call it “a pre-echo of boogie-woogie” - and the String Quartet No. 16, Op. 135 (1826), in which Beethoven also experimented with rhythm. In the second movement, for example, he obscures the first beat of the bar - which would typically be the most important beat in European music. In doing so, Marsalis finds similarities between Beethoven’s composition and the ‘jukes’ of football and soccer, in which one player tricks another by suggesting a movement which they then don’t follow through with - “He is doing that with the rhythm.”
No Jazz Without Beethoven? is one of the focuses of the Deutsche Welle documentary film project A World Without Beethoven? In it, the question is posed of how the world might look if Beethoven and his work had never existed - a thought experiment as fascinating as it is provocative. The other focuses of the series are: No Concert Business Without Beethoven?, No Political Music Without Beethoven?, No Rock Riffs Without Beethoven?, No Movie Soundtracks Without Beethoven?, No Precise Tempo Without Beethoven?, and No Concept Albums Without Beethoven?.
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[@jewman4]

Wynton knows his craft. Kudos to him!

[@flutechannel]

Happy 250th Beethoven!

[@melaniefaithful426]

Wynton on Ludwig! INCREDIBLE!

[@neilf6782]

agree. you can clearly tell he considers beethoven beyond the constraints if any genre be it jazz, classical or otherwise. He's simply the GOAT, the titan.

[@mr-wx3lv]

Fascinating to see the relationship and the influence of Beethoven on all subsequent music styles.. thanks for the video...

[@Keithustus]

Seeing Wynton Marsalis rock out to Beethoven rhythms is amazing! You know he must have grown up listening to those, and to golden-era jazz recordings.

[@Ludwig55555]

When I was a little boy, Way back home in Bonn My mama told me, I was great. Then when I was a teenager, I knew that I had got something going, All my friends told me I was great. And now I'm a man, A woman took me by the hand, And you know what she told me...i was great.

[@SeanChay]

Similar motive of the string quartet also happen in his 1st symphony 3rd mov. How interesting

[@trainliker100]

Sarah Willis is a good example why we need cloning. We need one of her to make these KZbin videos, one to teach in a music department at some university, and one to perform. At least one of each for such things full time.

[@DWClassicalMusic]

Thanks for the good idea😄

[@paulwhite6995]

Wow Sarah, brilliant video. Have *loved* Beethoven since my teens. Now, 60 years later, beginning to have an amateurish conception of why he's so highly regarded.😀 P.S. Brendel is my hero B-performer, but I'm now open to other modern candidates!

[@ahmedminhal8924]

Loving this series!

[@emke5664]

Beethoven for ever!

[@es5815]

I love this channel thanks for the magnificent work!

[@shaneilellis9832]

Thank you 💕

[@danielbethke3213]

Vielen Dank, dass ihr diese interessante Sachen diskutieren habt!

[@michaelpidgeon4223]

And what about Duke Ellington and the IND A 8th Avenue Express? Could one play a string quartet say at the 59th Street-Columbus Circle Station?

[@sidliyeva3657]

Möhtəşəm!!! 🎹🎹🎹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 Azərbaycan Baku 🌹💞

[@dzuschin]

Wynton shows us the real connections between Jazz and Beethoven - far beyond the silly (and erroneous) idea that dotted rhythms=Jazz. He knows the late quartets deeply, having written his senior thesis comparing the quartets to T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets (which Eliot himself said were modeled on the Beethoven quartets). A towering mind and musician in Marsalis, no one like him.

[@Mo-MuttMusic]

Thanks for sharing. Excellent music and analysis. Shawn R., Mo-Mutt Music/Sacred & Secular

[@DWClassicalMusic]

We're glad to hear this! 😊

[@paoladeafcellist]

That is awesome .

[@DWClassicalMusic]

We're glad you enjoyed it. Make sure to follow us for the latest uploads 😊

[@helloitismetomato]

3:13 "for a long time, this sonata was considered unplayable because of its tempo" wait, the op.111 second movement was? Not the op.106? I didn't know that it also applied to his last sonata

[@idontzucc]

Amazing

[@jorgkorschinsky3223]

Brilliant!

[@SunriseFireberry]

What would jazz be without Debussy & Ravel?

[@jasonschwartzmanstein9661]

@@ChristovanRensburg Many jazz musicians were influenced by Debussy and Ravel. Debussy was not influenced by jazz but did a couple of ragtime pieces later in his career. Ravel was influenced by Jazz later in his career but for the vast majority of his career he was not influenced by jazz

[@lawrencetaylor4101]

Merci Luigi.

[@ecaepevolhturt]

Bach?

[@Allan-et5ig]

Good point. The MJQ found a lot of jazz in Bach. The secret sauce of Beethoven's 'Jazz' is Scotland but that's another discussion for another time. I thought Wynton Marsallis was a bit grudging; yeah the dotted sixteenth is 'related,' to say the least.

[@peev2]

Marsalis says it’s a dotted rhythm but he’s mistaken. It’s 32nd (not prolonged with a dot) with 64ths. Total syncopation.

[@bobverbruggen8853]

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@dagoelius]

Beethoven- the original prog rock keyboardist.

[@owm715]

👍✨

[@rastkojacimovic9727]

You should have called Danil Trifonov to show you how to play this sonata!

[@keithklassen5320]

Isn't it true that traditional Celtic music from the UK also uses 3 over 2, and these lilting triplet feels? The Scotch Snap, for example? Are these things also more recent borrowings from Africa, and not truly ancient? Or were they simply not allowed to influence the "important" music of the time?

[@malaquiasalfaro81]

How does Beethoven connect to Jazz or Rock?

[@nathan87]

Really sorry, but this is absolutely ridiculous. Dotted rhythms are a very simple element of music that any child could rediscover. It's the overall context in which elements are combined that is the creative step. Beethoven found a way to use dotted rhythms in his music, jazz musicians found different ways to use them in theirs. They are otherwise completely unconnected.