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Für Elise, circa 2000: Postmodern Readings of Beethoven in Popular Contexts

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 29; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03007760500142613

1740-1712

Mina Yang,

Diverse Musicological Studies

Abstract Although European classical music is often held up as the Other against which popular music is defined, some classical works become genuinely ‘popular’ in their use and reception. Beethoven's Für Elise is one such work, readily recognized and ubiquitous in popular culture. By considering its application in pop music, films, and daily life, this paper raises questions about musical meaning in the postmodern age, examining how the mutability of music's social significance reflects a value system undergoing constant negotiation and transformation. Notes 1. Two of the more outspoken and publicized figures complaining about the “dumbing down of culture” are CitationBloom and CitationMurray. 2. One can trace a similar process of cultural segmentation in Europe, although the distinctions are somewhat different in degree and in kind. See, for example, CitationBourdieu. 3. Beethoven wrote this piece for Therese Malfatti, to whom he had proposed marriage in 1810. See CitationThayer (502). 4. Emerging interest in postmodernism among music scholars is evidenced by the recent publication of books and articles on the subject, the most comprehensive of which are Lochhead and CitationAuner's compilation and CitationKramer, Classical Music . CitationAlper gives examples of postmodern music that exhibit hybrid sensibilities, but his article focuses primarily on production, with little consideration of reception or consumption. Scholars in other humanistic disciplines have been grappling with and addressing issues surrounding postmodernism for many decades. Many influential writers, including Hassan, Lyotard, Derrida, and Jameson, have been formulating various theories on this topic since the late 1960s and early 1970s. Among the most cogent accounts of the evolution of postmodernism as a locus of inquiry is CitationHarvey (39–65). 5. Even more than the meticulous historiography presented by these musicologists, pop phenomena, such as the Beethoven films (1992–2003) about a shaggy St Bernard, counter modern myths about the sanctity of classical music and challenge entrenched beliefs that situate the classical tradition outside and immune to the influence of sociopolitical forces. 6. For more on the uses of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in other films, see CitationWierzbicki. CitationStilwell (“I Just Put a Drone”) explores the use of this work in Clockwork Orange in some depth in her discussion of the soundtrack to Die Hard. CitationStilwell (“Hysterical Beethoven”) makes the provocative point that music scholars have tended to emphasize the masculine aspects of Beethoven's music—logic and order—while popular films have played upon the more feminine aspects—hysteria, exuberance, and violence. The feminine qualities associated with Für Elise are somewhat different from those discussed by CitationStilwell, having more to do with grace and innocence than with over‐emotionality. 7. The Bill & Ted/Chuck Berry approach to classical music is still the predominant mode of using classical music in popular culture. One might call this the Madison Avenue approach to classical music, where supposedly bombastic, fuddy‐duddy classical music is used as an ironic counterpoint to light, airy contemporary events. Some Madison Avenue examples include the use of “Vesti la Giubba” to signify the tragedy of a young man pelted with water balloons by his friends in a car commercial, the St Matthew Passion to connote the tragedy of picking the wrong cell‐phone plan, and Carmina Burana to suggest the refreshing taste of Guinness. 8. This is a fairly common trope in films. For another example of how Beethoven's music is used in a film to single out a socially marginalized character and express his inner life, see CitationBrown. 9. Michael Moore, in Bowling for Columbine (2002), deals head‐on with this contentious issue in his interview with Manson. See also CitationBurns. 10. Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman plays primarily Chopin in The Pianist. There is one notable exception: the German soldier who saves Szpilman's life plays Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata the first time they meet. On the other hand, the German soldier who plays Bach on the piano in Schindler's List does not display compassion or humanity. The controversy over the performance of Wagner in Israel erupted after CitationDaniel Barenboim led the Berlin State Opera in a concert there on 7 July 2001, in which he conducted a short extract from Tristan und Isolde as an encore. For a description of the circumstances surrounding the concert and a defense of CitationBarenboim's programming, see Barenboim and CitationSaid (175–84). 11. CitationChion defines anempathetic music as music that, in an especially violent or terrifying scene, exhibits “conspicuous indifference to the situation, by progressing in a steady, undaunted and ineluctable manner: the scene takes place against this very backdrop of ‘indifference’” (8). 12. CitationLowe uses the metaphor of a feedback loop to illustrate how Mozart's music moves between the levels of “cultural codes” and “cinematic codes,” in a continual process of signification and resignification. Although she is interested primarily in the deployment of Mozart's Requiem in film and on television, she makes other observations about classical music that are relevant to my arguments here. 13. Film critics have noted this on a meta‐level as well. The film raises more questions than it answers in its contemplation of teen violence and school shootings. The title, in fact, alludes to the allegorical elephant, which conveys completely varying data to each of the blind men who touches a different part of it, leaving them without any real understanding of the animal in its entirety. 14. CitationNas's sampling and deployment of classical music is far more effective and less reductive here than in his use of Carmina Burana to provide extra bombast to his duet with Puff Daddy in “Hate Me Now.” Still, unlike Chuck Berry and Bill & Ted, CitationNas's use of Carmina Burana does not depend on the modern high/low, classical/pop distinctions, but works as pure found musical texture indifferent to those typologies. 15. The classical music radio station in San Francisco, KDFC (102.1), recently aired a television commercial in which a young woman urges listeners to tune into this station by assuring them that music professors have nothing to do with its programming. 16. After the music video for the single was produced, Sting's manager approached Jaguar with a proposal to use some part of it in what he hoped would be a mutually beneficial ad campaign. Jaguar, planning on launching a campaign for its new S‐TYPE and X400, loved the video and saw the video's potential for broadening its customer base. See “In CitationRock Stars' Dreams.” 17. Providing these ring‐tones is turning into a big business opportunity. A recent Reuters article reported: “IDC Research estimates that ring‐tone sales were almost $17 million in 2002 and will jump to more than $400 million by 2005. Music insiders estimate music publishers will make $50 million to $70 million from licensing for ring tones in 2003” (quoted from “CitationWhoopie‐Cushion”). 18. An interesting illustration of this idea can be found in the karaoke phenomenon. Singers write their particularistic selves into performances of songs known to people all over the world. See Mitsui and CitationHosokawa.