Ludwig van Beethoven — Poetic Sonata of Freedom

By Élle Marques

The "Coletânea Internacional Ludwig van Beethoven - Sonata Poética da Liberdade" (Ludwig van Beethoven International Collection - Poetic Sonata of Freedom) is a Tribute to Beethoven in the celebrations of the 250th jubilee of his birth. The work was conceived, produced and organized by the Brazilian journalist and writer Élle Marques, who brought 90 guest authors together. It is a poetic composition that harmonizes around the Conductor's legacy. The authors reinterpret feelings such as "eternal love" and the value of creatures and nature. It is the first international collective poetic work in the world dedicated to the memory of the great German composer. The Poetic Sonata of Freedom was originally produced in Portuguese. English version: Hudson Ribeiro. Mundo Cultural World publishing house, 2021.

Contributors: Aldir Carvalho Filho, Silvio Fergon, Amauri Queiroz, Gui Kallifer, Khathleen Evelyn Müller, Ana Paula Cunha, Eduardo Souza, Fábio Roberto

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mundo Cultural World
• Release date: Sep 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9786500194593

Book preview

Copyright© 2021 by Élle Marques

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced.

Editorial Production Élle Marques

Cover Ana Paula Cunha

Creation Élle Marques (art over the portrait by Karl Jäger).

Final Arts Eduardo Souza and Fábio Roberto

Publishing and Finalization SF Editora

Collaborators Aldir Carvalho Filho, Silvio Fergon, Amauri Queiroz,

Gui Kalifer e Kathleen Evelyn Müller.

English Version Hudson Ribeiro

Cataloging-In-Publication Data (CIP)

Amanda Moura de Sousa CRB-7/5992

M357l     Marques, Élle.

Ludwig van Beethoven — Poetic Sonata of Freedom / organization and editorial production: Élle Marques; English version: Hudson Ribeiro. — São Francisco do Sul, SC: Ed. Mundo Cultural World, 2021.

256 p. ; 23 cm.

Original title: Ludwig van Beethoven — Sonata Poética de Liberdade

ISBN 978-65-00-19458-6

1. Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827. 2. Composers – Germany – Biography. 3. Poetry in Portuguese – Compilation. 4. Literature in Portuguese I.Title. II. Ribeiro, Hudson.

DDC 869.1

UDC 869.0

Systematic catalog:

                            1. Poetry in Portuguese 869.1

                            2. Poetry in Portuguese 869.0

Mundo Cultural World

CNPJ 41.219.906/0001-89

Fone [phone]

E-mail: [e-mail]

Address: Rua Felipe Musse, 100. Ubatuba

São Francisco do Sul, SC, Brasil. ZIP Code: 89240-000

Book Printed in Brazil.

To Ludwig van Beethoven

Celebrating the 250th

year of his birth (1770-2020)

In memoriam

Beethoven represented by the German painter Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820.

In the background, as a scenery, a clipping from the image of J.N.

Hoechle – Beethoven’s studio in Schwarzspanierhaus, 1827.

THANKS

To God, for inspiration and gifts … and for leading us in the achievement of this tribute.

To the writers, poets, composers, musicians and artists who joined us crowning this unforgettable universal Jubilee with their art.

To the teacher and poet Hudson Ribeiro for his dedication by translating this Collection into English. More than translating, we recognize his poetic sensibility to interpret the authors, in the process of transmitting the meanings and feelings that the texts are permeated with, making it possible for many other peoples and nations to reach them just in time for being involved and beethovenly embraced.

To the musician and philosopher, Dr. Aldir Carvalho Filho, who promptly responded to the invitation to enrich this work with the biographical chapter about the German composer.

To all those who encouraged and collaborated to accomplish, with unity and overcoming, the present work.

To those who, anywhere in the world, honor us with their attention by positively sharing the Collection Ludwig van Beethoven – Poetic Sonata of Freedom (Work available in Portuguese / English, printed and electronic version).

*UNFINISHED SYMPHONY…

Even if nostalgia tightens my chest

May sobriety be strong

Making everything seem improper, impossible or distant

Like swimming across the Ocean to reach the other side

I’ve been thinking about you…

I listen to the captivating sound of a piano

playing a melody either in low key or in Soprano

Beethoven’s romantic chords:

A perfect metaphor of what your absence means to me:

Empty score pages!

Prelude, Unfinished symphony…

Interrupted, challenged by the departure…

Your absence is like a fair without love apple

It’s trying your favorite food without feeling the taste

It’s emotion that crosses the lungs like icy air

It is the striking contrast of a tragic escape from loneliness

In the sense of origin

Variation of a long develop(involve)ment of eras…

A trajectory of darkness, illuminated by love!

The vibration I feel is intense

Elixir of exciting absinthe leaving me ecstatic

Hallucination by hearing your voice! Just the two of us…

Unexpectedly, the melody mutes

Like the work of a composer in agony

Or that because of such fantasy he had lost lucidity!

I even think that deafness has affected me

That silence of yours…

Continuously, I get inspired to compose thoughts

Coloring your feelings in new measures

Using the scent of your steps

The texture of your sweetening eyes

With my whispers calling your name…

So I vary the rhythm I give to your words…

My perception of your sensitivity is synesthetic

And it is spread in spiral lines of hope

And like the child, I separate what I want, what I like

What distracts and amuses me:

You are the melody of the best poetry!

I’ve been thinking about you…

Élle Marques

This is a book that will be read in many places around the world by people from different cultures and generations, promoting an effervescence of feelings capable of leading readers to reframe their deeper values, driving them to the rescue of challenging memories and the construction of new dreams. Art is a potentially transformative treasure.

The Collection Ludwig van Beethoven – Poetic Sonata da Freedom is a memorial work containing, paradigmatically to the musical conception, a symphony expressed in diversity of the most varied tones of poetic and artistic styles. Ninety authors – mostly Brazilian ones, besides those from overseas – answered the invitation to this work, inspired by the poem Sinfonia Inacabada (Unfinished Symphony), dedicated to maestro Beethoven. Originally part of the book Trama Lírica¹ (Liric Plot 1), it was ceded to be the firstling of this poetic orchard full of excellent fruits….

Celebrations for Ludwig are often exalted by millions of people in Germany and worldwide, involving musicians, artists and professionals from different areas. The current advertising brand for the festivities, BTHVN 2020, reproduces the way the composer often signed his scores, without the vowels. It is an artistic movement uniting people of different musical styles, from rock to country music. A diversity of manifestations that invigorate and celebrate the work of Beethoven, who is one of the most performed erudite musicians nowadays. His compositions inspire soundtracks in cinema, influencing behaviors and reflections. But there are still those who think these initiatives are a privilege restricted to classical musicians, composers and conductors, a cult in closed environments.

When Nike Wagner assumed the general direction of Beethovenfest, in Germany, in 2014, he stated that the honors have already been well reserved in the past, but they should start to have open perspectives, more participatory, with innovations. However, she leaves the coordination of the event after this last edition and claims to no longer share Beethoven’s idealism, referring to the slogan of the first stage of the party held in March 2020, inspired by the message of the poet Friedrich Schiller²: Be Embraced (it’s the message from one of the verses of the final chorus of the Ninth Symphony). Nevertheless, soberly, she recognizes the work as central to the history of the music. Nike Wagner’s great-great-grandfather was composer Franz Liszt, contemporary of the German composer. He was the one who contributed, even financially, to the inauguration of the monument in honor of the symphonist in the cathedral square of Bonn, Germany. He organized three days of festivities for its inauguration, thus promoting the first Beethoven festival, in August 1845. Ilona Schmiel, the predecessor to Nike Wagner in charge of these celebrations, had already commented on Liszt’s excellent relationship with the conductor, as very special³: They are sister souls.

Bonn’s most illustrious son continues to have, in his hometown, the highlight of the celebrations in his memory; although it was in Vienna, then capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that he found an environment of highly cosmopolitan effervescence to lead the era of musical classicism at its peak, leading it to pre-romanticism.

In this birthday jubilee of Beethoven many nations were astonished and even muted with the events arising from the global pandemic of the coronavirus, which also reflected in the celebrations. But it was in the example of overcoming adversity, legacy of the composer, that one of the most beautiful and memorable moments in the midst of the pandemic arose. The honors went beyond the barriers of confinement and pain, gained breath from life and filled the airs of the planet, in the middle of the quarantine: a call made by social networks was answered by musicians from different parts of the world, like Italy and Germany. Combined, they appeared on their balconies and windows, at 6 pm on March 23, a Sunday, joining the music with poetry; reciting the verses of Friedrich Schiller’s⁴ poem and resounding their instruments, flutes, cornets, clarinets, violins and double basses, all those to interpreted Ode to joy, followed by other compositions of the author. Clear manifest that the Ninth Symphony continues the message that best represents the ideals and feelings of many peoples, in many nations…

In Brazil, a cultural body has also joined the international projects in these celebrations. Important cultural institutions have been holding events since 2019, as concerts and recitals. In Belo Horizonte that year, the recital Beethoven – Fantasia do Imortal⁵, a plot that, like the German festival houses, unites theater, music and poetry, was premiered. It is a dramaturgy in which they used texts like the letters the conductor wrote for Bettina von Annim, a writer, composer and social activist with whom he exchanged correspondence for years, sharing, among other topics, about a lyrical universe, and Goethe’s poems that musicized⁶. But these events, like those planned in other countries, have also been suspended due to the restrictions on social interaction imposed by pandemic. Only more recently, and gradually, the Beethovenian repertoire returned to the most famous concert halls in the country, such as Sala Cecília Meireles and Sala São Paulo, which resumed their presentations. As elsewhere in the world, several tributes made the Brazilian way are being accompanied through the internet. More than in previous years, there are a series of concerts dedicated to Beethoven by Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, and other digital platforms.

There are some relevant previous tributes made to the German composer, by Brazilian intellectuals and poets, among which are: the Clube Beethoven⁷, created in 1882, in Rio de Janeiro – a cultural leisure center that had the illustrious writer Machado de Assis as a partner-librarian. And yet, the poem Beethoven, by the also immortal Carlos Drummond de Andrade; poem that came up again at the Cultura Campinas portal, due to the celebrations.

Its first lines start the text about musical programs prepared by the world to honor the genius of music⁸:

My dear Luís, what are you doing at this

Time of antimusic around the world?

Drummond’s question in the Beethoven poem is being answered with the sound of orchestras around the world that celebrate – with extensive programming until September 2021 – the work of the brilliant and revolutionary composer Ludwig van Beethoven. But in March 2020, Deutsche Welle columnist Astrid Prange de Oliveira wrote a Letter to Brazilians making an appeal to change the tone of the celebrations⁹, describing the scenario that had taken over Germany, after the coronavirus outbreak:

It seems the whole Germany has become a

cemetery and it is in silence before the grave.

Beethoven has given us much more than Ode to

Joy, he has showed us the power

of silence.

Yes, there must be a time of silence… But let us remember that Beethoven stated: the virtue of superior men is their creative power. He reacted to turbulence, illness, disappointment and death of people he loved, dedicating himself to delivering his art to the world: music! And he wrote about poetry! He defended the greatness of the gifts that each being carries within them and that were given by God to be given to men. Our immortal said that it takes dedication and the pursuit of excellence, with the best of our efforts. That we always need to learn! He broke paradigms by leading his own creation, against the established standards. He fought for his freedom and worth in the face of nobility, even without having been born with the social and beauty profile proposed by Greek thought, which would deny him being capable of so much genius and charisma, even more with the added physical limitations that he overcame in favor continuity of his art of musical composition, with which he returned to earn the respect and recognition of the society of its time. His determination and dedication to overcoming are tenaciously contributory to the charisma of his conduct as an immortal.

Bee magnanimously composed a joy for the Creator (currently the European Union’s Anthem). The God of whom he speaks in his great music and to whom he said he was able to hear the breath and tell it through his gift. He reflected that we should not bow to people as inferior, and that we are all the same, capable of growing, of overcoming ourselves, always! A physically weak man, who remained in the musical elite with compositions whose value he failed to assess by the applause he received, but by the conviction of his inspiration. As a prophet, he even went so far as to say that he could not die, although he had longed for it, without delivering his art to