The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: Beethoven, not Mozart, is the world’s greatest composer

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

The Fifth Symphony, Ode to Joy, Don Giovanni, the Requiem. These top hits on the 18th century billboard charts are still beloved by millions of people around the world. They were composed by two musical giants of the 18th century, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig Van Beethoven, prolific artists whose vast repertoire continues to anchor orchestral performances and has become the fodder for everything from ringtones to baby brain development videos. Though contemporaries - Mozart was only 14 years older than Beethoven and lived just hundreds of kilometres away - the two composers couldn't have been more different in their personalities and their approaches to music making. Two centuries later can we finally say which composer made the greatest contribution to the western musical canon? Mozart aficionados say that the lively wunderkind from Salzburg took classical music to soaring new heights starting with his very first symphony at the age of eight. He imprinted his musical signature on every genre and almost every musical instrument, composing more than 650 masterworks before he died tragically young at the age of 35. Perhaps there is no more ringing endorsement of Mozart than the one given him by Beethoven, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky, who considered him unparalleled. Beethoven lovers acknowledge his extraordinary debt to Mozart, whom he idolized. But they argue that the intense and emotionally volatile composer from Bonn, Germany took the keys that Mozart handed him and used them to open musical doors that ended up revolutionizing music. His innovations with the symphonic form and string quartets demonstrated music's capacity to express the difficult and ugly - and proved that challenging the ear and not just pleasing it can lead to a cathartic experience for performers and their audience. Even when he was deaf Beethoven's innovations in musical form didn't stop flowing, laying the groundwork for the romantic movement and the music of the 20th century.  Arguing for the motion is Andrew Burashko, a concert pianist who made his debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at the age of 17. He is the founder of the Art of Time Ensemble, a chamber music collective that juxtaposes high art and popular culture. Arguing against the motion is Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, a contributing classical music critic for the New York Times and founder and artistic director of Beginner's Ear, a series of deep listening experiences that combine meditation and music. Sources: APM Music The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail]. To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/   Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Christina Campbell Editor: Kieran Lynch Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are options, and that's why we need to take this opportunity seriously. There's no way you can prevent global warming unless China is part of the solution. This is not normal male behavior. This is predatory behavior. We don't know how bad this bug is. We don't know what this bug does. All of that was thrown away in those eight minutes and 46 seconds, and that's the moment that I became an abolitionist. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Welcome to the Monk Debates. we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you,

the listener with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved, Beethoven, not Mozart, was the world's greatest composer. Oh, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffith. The two musical excerpts we just played were composed by two musical giants, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Prolific artists whose vast repertoire continues to anchor orchestral performances and has become fodder from everything from ringtones to baby brain development videos. Although contemporaries, Mozart was only 14 years older than Beethoven and lived just a few hundred kilometers away,

the two composers couldn't have been more different in their personalities and their approaches to music making. Two centuries later, can we finally say which composer has made the greatest contribution to the Western musical canon? Mozart aficionados say that this lively wonderkin from Salzburg took classical music to soaring new heights, starting with his very first symphony at the age of eight. He imprinted his musical signature on every genre and almost every musical instrument, composing more than 650 masterworks before he died tragically at the young age of 35. Perhaps there is no more ringing endorsement of Mozart. than the ones given to him by Beethoven, Wagner, and Chikovsky, who all considered him unparalleled.

Beethoven lovers argue that the intense and emotionally volatile composer from Bonn, Germany, took the keys that Mozart handed him and used them to open entirely new musical doors, revolutionizing music in the process. His innovations with the symphonic form and string quartets demonstrated music's capacity, to express the difficult and ugly that provoked and challenged the ear, not just pleased it. All of this leading to a cathartic experience for performers and their audiences. Even when he was deaf, Beethoven's innovations in the musical form didn't stop flowing, laying the groundwork for the romantic movement and much of the music of the 20th century.

On this installment of the monk debates, we challenged the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved Beethoven, not Mozart, is the world's greatest composer. Arguing for the motion is Andrew Barashko. Andrew is a concert pianist who made his debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at the young age of 17. He's the founder of the Art of Time Ensemble, a chamber music collective that juxtaposes high art and popular culture. Arguing against the motion is Corinna de Fonseca, Wulheim. Corinna is a contributing classical music critic for the New York Times

and the founder and artistic director of Beginners Year, a series of deep listening experiences that combine meditation and music. Andrew Carina, welcome to the Monk Debates. Thank you. Thank you. It's nice to be here. Doubly nice for us. This is a bit of an experiment.

I know for you, too, but also for us here at the Monk Debates. Instead of a debate about an idea, or a specific piece of policy, we're instead going to have a debate about music. And we're going to listen, more importantly, to music. And I think most important of all, we're going to benefit from your lifetime of engagement with the compositions of Beethoven and Mozart

to understand the importance of these two geniuses, to music, to how we think about being aware of their contributions to Western society, civilization. Our resolution today is a simple one. It's be it resolved. Beethoven, not Mozart, is the world's greatest composer. Andrew, you're arguing in favor of the motion. So let's put a couple minutes on the clock just to get your top line argument. What's the few key points you want to make to this audience as to why you feel Beethoven deserves that special praise as the greatest composer ever? Gladly. Before I say anything,

about Beethoven, I want to say that for me, Mozart represents one of the highest peaks in Western music. And some of my most profound moments as a musician have involved his music. I could also make a pretty good argument to suggest that maybe there wouldn't have been a Beethoven without Mozart. But having said all that, I really do believe that Beethoven was the most important and influential composer in Western music, the ultimate radical and iconoclast, who's creative arc is dazzling. He revolutionized every convention that he inherited, except maybe for opera. He elevated instrumental music to the level of the highest form of human expression, and he expanded the scope of what classical music could express, not only emotionally and

intellectually, but in scale, the size of his compositions, the number of ideas. The number of ideas is overflowing in those compositions. The only other artist whom I can compare just in terms of sheer abundance of invention is Shakespeare. And lastly, for me as a pianist, Beethoven looms particularly large as the first true pioneer and virtuoso of the instrument. The expressive demands of his staggering body of work

advanced the mechanical evolution, of the piano, and the school of pedagogy, which he established, predominates to this day. And I'm a descendant of that school. So I could go on and on and on, but I'll pause here. Thank you, Andrew. Well, an opportunity here, the other view. Our resolution today, be it resolved, Beethoven, not Mozart, is the world's greatest composer.

Karina, you're arguing against the motion. Let's hear your opening remarks. Yeah, thank you so much. And what a joy it is to get to argue for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a composer who has created really a cosmos that is intact and spacious and capable of holding all of humanity, every experience that we know, and that feels true to us as human beings, and reflected back to us in a way that makes us want to be better people.

In terms of sensuality, melodic beauty, formal elegance and harmonic richness, there is nothing like the music of Mozart. And I love how the resolution already shows how much anyone arguing for Beethoven is on the defensive, because as we know, Beethoven was deeply influenced by Mozart and not just influenced, but compared himself incessantly and very much worked and struggled throughout his life to step out of that shadow. So I feel a little bit at an advantage here because, of course, everybody loves and knows Mozart. Mozart is a part of people's lives in the way that Beethoven's music isn't in terms of every stage of life from children learning to love orchestral music through the Kleine and Nacht music to people processing the most profound grief through listening to Mozart's Requiem. And one of the arguments that I think is really important to bear in mind when we try to compare to composers who are undeniably wonderful and have left masterpieces, each of them, is that Mozart, in terms of sheer breadth and universality, just leaves everyone in the dust. There is not a genre that Mozart didn't touch and perfect during his very short lifetime.

He left masterpieces of opera, including the marriage of figure. and Don Giovanni. He left masterpieces in instrumental music, whether it's one of his piano concertos, which became models for Beethoven, to try and develop, whether it is writing for instruments that until then had never really been given a spotlight as lyrical superstars, like the clarinet, which becomes the focus of a transcendently beautiful clarinet concerto and a clarinet quintet. He wrote sacred music that it.

is jubilant and deeply reflective and songs and occasional music. And there is really nothing that Mozart didn't touch that he didn't bring to its highest fruition. I'm glad to hear that Andrew already touched on one of the biggest problems for anyone defending Beethoven, which is that he just couldn't write operas. He kept trying to, he wanted to. And we can probably get into this a little bit later in the debate. But if we're going to talk about who is the greatest composer, we have to keep in mind the one who has the breadth of ability of bringing every genre to its peak and to also express every emotion and every human and social level of experience

in a music that speaks to every human being on this planet. Thank you, Karina. Terrific opening statements from you both. I'm just so intrigued to see where this debate is going to go next. opportunity now for rebuttals. These would be another two minutes on the clock for each of you to react to each other's opening statements. So, Andrew, you're up first.

Well, it's undeniable that Beethoven stayed away from opera. And I think it was directly due to Mozart. He absolutely idolized Mozart, and he just didn't feel like he could ever top Mozart in that particular area. But there's nothing wrong with acknowledging your weak points and focusing on your strong points. again, we're engaged in sport here. We both acknowledge the greatness of the two people who were arguing for and against. But for the sake of sport, I will suggest that this universality that you're

talking about, which Beethoven also possesses in spades, could be seen as populism, populism of the classical style, which he never, ever stepped out of. Perhaps he, because he was responsible for establishing that style, but all the first of the first of the first of the first of, formality of the classical style, I think limited what that music could express. I remember an interview with Baron Boyne, where he talked about his London debut under Joseph Cripps playing a Mozart concerto, and Cripp said to him at one point, you're playing it too much like Beethoven. Beethoven strived for heaven. Mozart comes from heaven. I'm trying to make two points here at once. I think because things came so fully formed to Mozart,

they were so perfect in form and simplicity that he never tried to stretch beyond that. Everything was within the bounds of formality, of attention to form or the elegance of restraint, what have you, but nothing stepped outside of those boundaries. Well, I mean, I think that's an interesting point, and I'm glad you brought it up, Andrew, because that is one of the most common misperceptions have

about Mozart is that because his music exudes is such a sense of completeness and proportion that it speaks to a certain facility that can be mistaken for simplicity and therefore there's a lack of effort, there's a lack of heroic overcoming of difficulties and that there is almost the sort of conception of Mozart as the genius who sort of takes down notation from God

and what comes out is perfect. And we know that that's not entirely true. And Mozart, first of all, worked very hard especially towards the end of his life, there were pieces that he would set aside and allow to gestate and he would return to. And he thought very deeply about what he was doing, just as any composer it did.

In terms of him not being much of an innovator, that is also I have to take issue with. In opera, Mozart innovated every genre that he touched beginning from Idomeneo, which he wrote when he was still in his early 20s, where he integrates elements from French opera into Italian opera Seria. He has an extraordinary sequence of choruses and through composed recidatives,

which were completely outside of the sort of writing by numberous rulebook of opera seria. And he did this every time that he picked up an opera, up all the way to the end, when he wrote the magic flute, which was meant to be a popular sing-spiel, of simple melodies for the popular consumption, something that everybody can enjoy. And he throws into it, you know, Bachmutats,

and he throws into it that extraordinary aria that is like the definition of difficulty for the queen of the night, none of which has any place in the conventional sing-spiel of his time. And I know that musicologists can point to all kinds of innovations, including, I have a feeling we will probably have more time to talk about piano music and piano concertos. Well, there was a lot of noise gets made about Beethoven starting the fourth piano concerto with a soloist, not waiting for the introduction from the orchestra, sort of as a sign of his impatience and his sort of barging through doors of convention.

Well, Mozart, even in his only his number seven piano concerto, the piano is in there and nobody tells the piano what to say. and the statement is not made by the orchestra. So innovation is not entirely the domain of Beethoven, but if we are having a conversation about greatness, it is worth saying that at some point, we are getting into more philosophical questions of what we value more highly. Do we value somebody who innovates and disrupts,

or do we value somebody who perfects a language that is already in existence? And so I look forward to really getting into this discussion, Well, thank you, Karen, and thank you, Andrew, for those opening remarks and rebuttals. Just a reminder that this is the monk debate on Beethoven versus Mozart, our resolution today, be it resolved, Beethoven, not Mozart, is the world's greatest composer. Now we're going to have an opportunity, the pleasure, of hearing the music of Beethoven and Mozart. What we're going to do is ask for each of our debaters to help set up a short clip.

We're going to go through a series of clips, and then we'll discuss them. And I think this is a terrific way to really get a sense of your respective arguments, the nuances of this music that you want to bring to our attention. So, Andrew, I want you to just spend 30 seconds or so just quickly, because we'll have lots of opportunities to discuss it, to set up your first clip of Beethoven. Why did you choose this clip? What are we supposed to hear in this clip to understand your argument of why he's the greater composer? Well, the first example is an excerpt from the first movement of his infamous Kreutzer sonata, Opus 47, which is the ninth of his ten violin sonatas. And I chose it to illustrate two points, really.

One, as an example of this kind of raw passion which he introduced to classical music. And the other, as an example of a form that Mozart established and owned, that Beethoven revolutionized. Great. Let's have a listen to it now. So, Andrew, just give us a sense of what you're pulling out of those two different clips to my kind of layperson's ears, very different emotions, very different kind of sensations. Yeah, well, as I mentioned, this was the ninth of his ten violent sonatas, and it took him until he was laid into his 20s to even attempt a violent sonata because

he revered Mozart's violent sonatas so much. So all eight of the preceding ones, they're all daring in their own respective ways, but this one broke the ceiling by just breaking many, many conventions, primarily just the level of intensity in this piece, which grabbed the imagination of generations to come, including Tolstoy and Yanichek. So what you heard, basically, was a little segment from the beginning, which opens with this beautiful slow back and forth between the violin and the piano, which was a first in the form.

Every one of Mozart's sonatas and all of Beethoven's first eight, they opened with the violin and piano beginning in tandem. But then just, again, the scale, it's twice as long as any violin sonata that preceded it. The subtitle he gave it, which was kind of outrageous, was a piano sonata in the style of a concerto

with violin obligato, which was very subversive. And yeah, more than anything else, it's just one of the most thrilling pieces of music I know. It's treacherous for both instruments, and it just, he just goes for it in a way that Mozart never did, or anyone before him ever did. Thank you, Andrew. Well, now, Corinda, opportunity for you to set up a clip by Mozart. Give us a sense of why you chose this clip. What are we supposed to be listening for in the next minute? minute or so of music to understand Mozart's brilliance. Yeah, well, I mean, it wasn't easy picking one or even three short clips because there's

so much great music. And also, I could have had fun with any number of pieces that Beethoven then went on to comment on saying nobody will ever be able to write anything as good as that. But I thought that in the spirit of Mozart, who knew how to start a party and who was a phenomenal writer of overtures, that even though I wasn't going to pick an overture, I would pick something that would just give us a taste of what it is that people love about Mozart. This is the final movement of the Jupiter Symphony, which just sparkles and has a sort of happy, joyful, exuberant, fervent and ferment that just sparks a desire to engage with this music. It pulls you in. It pulls you in, it also has immediately a combination of a sort of forward-thrusting, optimistic energy,

and then a very sensual and sweet kind of exuberance that then builds up and then very quickly because Mozart doesn't make us wait for it. The way Beethoven does, very quickly rewards us with one of these endorphine showers that are just a combination of harmonic development. and sheer energy. And I don't know how anyone would say that Mozart wasn't going for it if we listen to this.

Wow, let's have a listen. Thank you, Corinna. You're listening to the Beethoven versus Mozart monk debate. Our resolution today, be it resolved, Beethoven, not Mozart, is the world's greatest composer. Well, let's go on to our second set of kind of dueling clips. Andrew, let's hear your second Beethoven clip. We're going to play the first clip.

You're going to speak. and then we'll hear the second clip. So let's have that first clip now of Beethoven. Okay, Andrew, so explain to us what we just heard, why you think it's indicative of Beethoven's brilliance, and then let's set up your second clip. Well, this was the opening of his fifth piano concerto, which was the last of his five.

It was completed in 1811. It was the only one of his concerti that he never performed because he was completely deaf by that point. And it's another example of him subverting a form that Mozart really created. Like our idea of what a concerto is was established by Mozart, which is essentially a vehicle for the soloist to show off his wares, to dazzle the audience with an orchestral accompaniment. So already in the previous concerto, which Corinna mentioned,

he subverted that notion. He integrated the piano and the orchestra into equal partners. In this, he goes a step farther and does away with the notion of a concluding cadenza, which traditionally always closed the first movement, sometimes the third, and that was the moment when the soloist had the opportunity to show off his improvisational prowess. So here he opens with a cadenza, which he completely writes out himself. He doesn't leave any room for improvisation anywhere in the concerto, and that becomes the norm after this.

You know, that's the end of the improvised cadenza. And the second little bit, which is from the opening of the second movement, was just to show that Beethoven could, he could touch the face of God as well as Mozart could when he chose. Let's hear Beethoven touching the face of God. Wow, thank you for that. This is what we're doing today. A different format for the monk debates.

We're listening to the music of Beethoven and Mozart. to world-renowned experts giving us their explanations as to why the composer that they think is the most important to music, how their music itself explains their brilliance as musicians, as people that can communicate to us, the essence of humanity and the human condition. So, Corinna, you're up next. Let's set up your next Mozart clip for us. Explain what we're about to hear. Thank you, Andrew. That was really beautiful and actually leads in very nicely to the selection that I wanted to present next.

I wanted to pull out something from an opera to represent Mozart's genius in writing for the human voice and also his genius as an opera composer in creating scenes and moods that are ultimately relevant with psychological insight. And I'm picking a trio from Cousy Fon Tute, an opera that on paper looks like a rather silly premise. Two young men who are dating two young women decide that they're going to test their fidelity, they're egged on by a cynic, by pretending to go after war and then coming back, disguised, and then try and seduce each other's girlfriend. And what seems like a pretty misogynistic premise then turns into something much more profound and deeply ambiguous as the so-speak false couples end up developing a much more genuine connection.

And as all these four young people develop a much more individual and true relationship to their own emotions, as well as to this other person in front of them, in disguise. But the trio that we're going to hear is the moment of the fake departure, which is a moment at which ostensibly the two women and the cynical string puller are bidding goodbye to the boat taking away their lovers and they're wishing for calm seas. So it is music that represents calm seas, but it is also music that represents a question. Where is this going to go? How is this going to work out? And Mozart creates a level of animated suspense that is absolutely transfixing So, Corinna, talk to us a little bit more about what we just heard and why you think it's just so exemplary of Mozart's excellence.

Yeah, there are two points I want to make. One is just the skill and it's completely invisible, the craft, which is something about Mozart that makes him easy to dismiss is because it sounds so natural. It sounds so, but of course, like you don't hear the effort or the ingenuity that goes into it. But he creates the scene, which is, it's a three minute in its totality, and just pulls us into a level of slowness by creating a single wave that is really made up of smaller waves that's made up of little ripples. So the strings have these 16th notes that are like the little wavelets on the surface. And then underneath there's some plucked notes that are every hot, like two per bar. and the harmonic rhythm, which is the speed at which the chord changes, is one a bar. But the voices are singing gestures that are two bars long.

So you have this almost kind of like this fractal structure that creates a single wave that just swells and ebbs. And it's a song about the sea, about calm seas. And it is. It behaves like a calm sea. So that is just one thing that, you know, is in some ways very modern, like that the idea of the structure, it is what it represents. But the other thing that just at the very end we were getting to was this unexpected harmonic modulation where what seemed like a perfectly placid, consonant kind of celebration of stillness was injected with this drop of doubt and with this. drop of dissonance. And that was on the word desir, and Nostri Desir, on our desires. And this is how Mozart uses dissonance. When he uses dissonance, it is in a very gentle way,

and it is in a way to introduce the idea of human knowledge and awareness. And the music knows that something is going to change these people forever. But they don't know it yet, but the music knows. And that is something that Mozart was a master at creating these liminal moments where you're on the cusp of a profound change of being. You find it in the Requiem. You find it in Don Giovanni. There is a moment where somebody is stabbed. And in the moment of dying, the music enters the state of suspended, just mystery where you're on the threshold to something greater. And it takes a great composer to create that and make himself completely invisible. It feels like he just pulled this out of like he turned on a tap and the music was there.

Hi, Monk podcast listeners. I wanted to let you know about our spring 2021 monk dialogue series on the fate and future of our democracy. These are in-depth online and interactive video conversations with some of the world's brightest thinkers. We'll feature over the next number of weeks, everyone from Jonathan Haidt, to Scott Galloway, to Douglas Murray, to Nazarene Malik, to Timothy Snyder, and Irshad Manji, all reflecting on how has COVID-19 reshaped our democracy. How are we dealing with the forces and stresses of this pandemic on our institutions and on our shared values? You can find out more about the Monk Dialogues on our website, wwwwmunkdebates.com forward slash dialogues. Now back to our program. We're going to go to our final set of two opposing clips,

Beethoven versus Mozart. That's the focus of our debate today, our resolution, be it resolved, Beethoven, not Mozart, is the world's greatest composer. Andrew, you're arguing for Beethoven's preeminence. we're going to play the first clip you've chosen, you'll speak after it, and then set up your second clip. Let's hear that music now.

I had to address Beethoven's late style. And instead of referring to his ninth symphony, showing the sheer naked will and brute force that he brought to music, I thought to go to the other extreme and to look at the late string quartets, that music to me is in effort. It's so deeply personal and subjective. Sometimes it's sublime, sometimes it's inscrutable and anachronistic.

Like it sounds like it's coming from centuries in the future. And especially in the quartets and the piano sonatas, it folds in the most organic and seemingly wayward fashion, as if there's no structure to it, even though there is a tightly knit structure underneath. So I wanted to give a little example of those two extremes of the sublime that we just heard, which comes from the first of his late quartets. All of them, by the way, were written in the last year of his life,

by which point he was completely isolated. And the next example is from the last movement of his quartet Opus 130, which he later reworked into a self-contained work called the Grosse Fuga, Opus 133, as an example of this anachronism, it boggles my mind. It's incomprehensible to me. And over 100 years after he wrote it, Stravinsky said that this piece is contemporary now, and it will forever remain contemporary. But if I may just add one last thing, it's a beautiful passage from Dr. Faustus by Thomas Mann,

where the hero's composition teacher is trying to describe Beethoven's late style. And he says, to paraphrase something like, Beethoven had risen out of the habitable regions of tradition into the spheres of the completely and utterly and nothing but personal and ego isolated in the absolute. Let's hear the Grosophuga. Well, we're now going to have the final clip. sample from Karina, who's been arguing in favor of Mozart's triumphalism over Beethoven.

So Karina, set up this clip for us, and after the clip, we'll go to closing statements to allow both of you to wrap up this debate for us. But first, Karina, give us a sense of why you've chosen this last piece. Well, I mean, there is so much still to be said about Mozart's genius and the breadth of his skill as a composer. It's funny. of course, you know, Andrew and I didn't know which music we would each choose. And I had expected, you know, something that we all associate with Beethoven's legacy, like the monumental works, the ninth and the fifth symphonies, for example, or the Eroica with its sort of slashing disruption of momentum.

One of the things that comes up a lot when we talk about Beethoven's greatness is his ability to build from relatively small cells. And we heard just now in this fugue that, you know, there was no melody at the heart of it. Like we're talking about musical material that is almost impoverished, and I think deliberately so, because it allows you to make a lot more with it. Like these things become literally components for the composer to construct ever larger edifices with, right? Andrew was talking about just the sheer scale of some of Beethoven's works. Like we have piano sonatas where like the slow movement takes like 20 minutes or something, you know, and symphonies that sprawl and string quartets that just go on and on and on.

And it's almost like this idea like, well, isn't that greater like the way an engineer who can build a bridge that spans, you know, I don't know, some enormous valley like is a better engineer than the one who, you know, builds a little bridge over the village stream, right? But there is also something, I think, that is lost in Beethoven's music, which is the trust and the melody itself to contain and reflect everything. And Mozart had melodic genius in spades. Like, he sometimes had as many as ten different tunes in a symphony or in a concerto. He sometimes throws out a tune that is gorgeous, and he uses it only once and he's done with it. Beethoven, if he has one, he works it. And so my final example is just a tiny little snippet of a melody that is the beginning

of a piano concerto number 23 in a major by Mozart, but that contains in its melancholy and in its thoughtfulness and introspection and its ineffable quality of sort of smiling through tears it contains everything. He will then go on and develop it within that movement. But all we need to hear is hear it once and be confronted with what it means to be human. Thank you, Karina, for sharing just a spectacular, beautiful piece of music with us. It's now time to go to closing statements.

Our resolution today has been, be it resolved, Beethoven, not Mozart, is the world's greatest composer. Karina, you're up first. What do you want to sum up for our listeners today? Yeah, and it ultimately comes down a little bit about who you are, what you want out of life, and what you want out of society also. What is the role of a composer? Beethoven becomes this paradigm that we're still living with for greatness.

And there is something quite problematic about the idea of greatness that we're discussing even, and it very much begins with Beethoven, who was quite involved in creating the myth of his own greatness, and whose greatness was always backed up by the heroic and the utopian, the overcoming of difficulties, the struggle, the validation of difficulties, which can be very cathartic to listen to, of somebody's inner turmoil and somebody's impasses in life. All of that, it's worth putting in music. but it also kind of creates this paradigm that I think we're still living with to a certain degree, that difficult is better, and that the immediately beautiful and likable is suspicious,

that it is a little bit inferior because it's popular. And there is something that I think Andrew actually brought up very early on. He said, well, Mozart is very lovely, but he's quite popular. Mozart wrote for everyone. He has a scene in Don Giovanni where there are three different bands playing at the same time, and they're all three playing different music representing different social levels, from the courtly to like the tavern and the street. He very much measured his success by whether everybody enjoyed it, the connoisseur who could recognize the sophistication of his use of harmony, but. the man on the street, so to speak, would go away whistling a tune and would go away feeling edified and excited and energized and feeling a little bit more alive. And I think that we're still living with the split that began with Beethoven that left us with this idea that art music is difficult and hard to write and also requires a little

bit of training to enjoy, like those late Beethoven fuchs that we heard in the String Quartet, whereas, you know, pop music is on a different level, and that split from the popular and the great is a shame, I think. And Mozart's music reminds us that it doesn't have to be that way. Mozart reminds us that there is space to contain all of human experience, in all of its nuances, the melancholic and the hopeful, and within. in it, there is a promise that just by engaging with this music, we can find ourselves reflected but with just a touch of the yearning for like that perfection, which is so unique to Mozart. So I would say if we must have this debate on these terms, let Beethoven have the greatness

as long as we can agree that Mozart has perfection. Thank you, Karina. Well, Andrew, we're going to give you the last word in this debate. Let's have your closing remarks. Thank you. Well, just in response to what Karina just said, if we're talking about perfection, which Mozart, like as I said, his music, everything feels perfect. And I think it speaks to the divine in us. But there's nothing perfect about the human condition, which Beethoven insisted on expressing to the fullest in his art.

and for what it's worth, there are boundless examples of this kind of perfection and simplicity in Beethoven's music. He was completely capable in going there. And you're absolutely right that, you know, whereas to Mozart things came complete. He was able to just write them all down after completing them in his head. Beethoven did develop things from a small idea, much like a novelist does. But that doesn't mean that they were all, you know, little unmilotic segments, as you suggested. Anyway, to me, the most dazzling thing about Beethoven is the breadth of his creative arc. That starts in the classicism of the 18th century and Ed's ends in outer space.

It took the world 100 years to catch up to where he'd left off. and his image, even 200 years after his death, is ubiquitous. Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael claimed him as one of their own during the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s. His influence is everywhere in the arts, from the writings of T.S. Eliot and Nadine Gordimer, to the movies of Stanley Kubrick and Stephen Spielberg, to the artworks of Gustav Klimt and Andy Warhol, to disco music, and the Beatles, by the way, whom I adore. And to me, they are the essence of simplicity and universality. And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I think classical music, as we know it today, as the only truly living history that we possess, it didn't exist before Beethoven. And the

symphony orchestra and the quartet, as we know them, came into being in order to keep his music alive. So, Just, I want to, you know, end by saying how much I revere and love Mozart. And I really believe that one of the things that pushed Beethoven to never repeat himself, to constantly try to paint the invisible, it was his desire to step out of Mozart's shadow, to outdo Mozart. So all of this is to say, I love Mozart, but there is a reason why Beethoven speaks so loudly to us 200 years after his death. Thank you, Andrew.

And thank you, Corinna. I just want to acknowledge the time, the consideration, all the preparation that you both did to make this really novel and after this time spent together. Such a worthwhile experiment. A debate on music with music, something truly special. So thank you on behalf of the Monk Debates community, Karina, Andrew, for all your time, your attention and your wisdom. today. Thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank

our participants, Corinna, and Andrew. Access to live music is one of the great losses we've all experienced during this pandemic. So to reconnect with Mozart and Beethoven through this debate was a true privilege indeed. We encourage you to support Andrew and Corinna and their musical initiatives that they've continued despite the pandemic. The Art of Time Ensemble, Andrew's project, is a chamber music collective that offers unforgettable digital music concerts the juxtaposed classical and popular music. You can register for these concerts at art of time ensemble.com. And for a whole different kind of listening, tune in to Corinna's program called The Beginners Year. It combines music with meditation in really new, exciting, and innovative ways. She's done this everywhere from

schools to corporations to even a prisoner or two. You can learn more. at beginners ear.com. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. The monk debates podcast is that special place for civil and substantive debate

on the big issues of the day. You can check out all of our debates, literally dozens upon dozens of them, on our website, www.munkdebates.com. Thank you for helping us bring back the art of public debate, one conversation at a time,

time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. The Monk Debates are produced by Antica Productions and supported by the Monk Foundation. Rudyard Griffiths and Christina Campbell are the producers. Api Rahaja is the associate producer. The Monk Debate podcast is mixed by Kieran Lynch. The president of Antica Productions is Stuart Cox. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating. Thank you again for listening.