Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 August 25

= August 25 =

Beethoven String Quartet #14
String Quartet No. 14 (Beethoven) was apparently a favorite of J. Robert Oppenheimer. I guess it fits in with Oppenheimer's interest in Hindu mysticism and stuff like that. I've heard it before but am interested in giving it another listen. Are there any particularly notable recordings? Is contemporary performance practice different than it was 60 years ago? I ask that because the Budapest Quartet's 1961 recording is on youtube, so that might be an obvious choice. Hmm, it occurs to me also that the 1961 recording might be closer to what Oppenheimer would have listened to. Thanks. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:4043:7961:893C:EC1 (talk) 05:24, 25 August 2023 (UTC)


 * You probably can't go wrong with the Alban Berg Quartett: recording on YouTube. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 09:41, 25 August 2023 (UTC)


 * That following youtube short extract, AFAIK is neither dated nor credited but it has the merit to have been selected as typical - by someone who knows about that question. So with the corresponding sample from the 1961 recording here I'm not convinced that Oppenheimer would have sticked to all of what's in it. Back in the years without a Karajan for coordinating everything neither a leading tenor or soprano a recording session could become rather tricky- this means, at places, a little bit treacherous: you'd have to be ready buying the next other version. Here the Alban Berg Quartett part on the same, and that nice 2013 version is giving and idea to where most of all of the past work was heading to. To which I think yes, Rnd person is correct - in so far that listening is not watching --Askedonty (talk) 21:28, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks both. Karajan and Leonard Bernstein both made recordings of this work being performed by a full orchestra. I bought the Bernstein record without knowing better, and one of my musician friends was aghast that such a thing even existed (this was many years ago). I'll try the youtube recordings that the two of you have linked. I had no idea that recording a string quartet was particularly difficult, so that was interesting too. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:4043:7961:893C:EC1 (talk) 21:51, 25 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Apparently an arrangement for orchestra by Karl Müller-Berghaus has been around for well over a hundred years. So it doesn't seem that exotic. But of course I can see a purist balk at the idea of "messing with the master's work". And I think "aghast" is the perfect word for it. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 22:12, 25 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Beethoven's Grosse Fuge started out its life as the final movement from his previous string quartet. Even before that work was ever published, Beethoven wrote an arrangement of the Grosse Fuge for piano 4-hands, which may have helped him come to the decision to remove it from the quartet and write a different final movement.
 * Beethoven also arranged a movement from Mozart's Clarinet Quintet for solo piano; one of the preludes and fugues from Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, originally for solo keyboard, for string quartet; and various other things. So, really, we have his own imprimatur for reworking his music for different instruments. Mozart and Bach themselves were inveterate arrangers of others' music and publishing them as their own original compositions. So much for purity in music. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:47, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, rearranging music for alternate instrumentation is all well and good, but Bernstein's orchestra arrangement of quartet #14 almost turns it into a different piece of music. And this piece has a particular mystique around it whose "defiling" might have also gotten my friend upset.  It is also on youtube and I listened to parts of it and to the Alban Berg Quartett version last night. Bernstein's youtube version has a spoken introduction where Bernstein says it's his favorite of his recordings, and that he considers it to be something like a Tenth Symphony by Beethoven.  I'm sure your musical sophistication is much greater than mine so you might want to decide for yourself.  Listening to the quartet takes more concentration than I was able to muster last night, though I'll keep trying.  It might be easier with ear training that I don't have.  Now I also want to re-listen to some Bartok quartets, which I remember as having a similar sense of layering. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:4043:7961:893C:EC1 (talk) 23:17, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Once we start attributing "mystique" to pieces of music and abhorring their "defilement", all is lost, imo. I could say that "Mary Had a Little Lamb" has its own mystique as far as I'm concerned, and nobody could gainsay me. How an individual responds to a piece, how they're affected by it, how much they honour it - these are all personal; translating any of that into "that piece is " is a step too far. There is no science about what makes a piece of music "great" - or a movie, or a sports person, or a statesman, or a writer, or ... It's all subjective opinion. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:51, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Reminds me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr8tOa_En7A -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 15:13, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The OP is alluding to mystique (personality trait), which can be justified in the sense that soloists in a baroque quartet for example may be perceived as temporarily impersonating a spiritual or an abstract expression. That would be like "arguing" a point that purists coincidentally believe is a component of the charisma they are otherwise attributing to the composer. --Askedonty (talk) 16:27, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

By mystique, I mean this specific composition has a reputation of metaphysicality or transcendence around it, e.g. J. W. N. Sullivan's calling it "superhuman", the descriptions by Schubert and Wagner mentioned in the wiki article, etc. At least one whole book has been written about it. My own reaction is similar to some performers in Beethoven's era, who said "we can tell something is happening in there but we can't tell what it is". I'm still listening to it and can sort of make it through the first movement, which reminds me of the scenes in Star Wars where Luke tries to levitate objects with pure thought. The other movements just sound like music to me so far, i.e. enjoyable as such, but not really connected to anything. I haven't yet discerned a "plot" like the piano sonatas have. I have to call the piece "advanced" enough that I can't fully appreciate it. Regarding my friend's reaction, it might be that he just didn't like Bernstein's conducting in general, so didn't like the idea of Bernstein's style combining with this piece. And sure, there is no scientific definition of a great composer, but that doesn't stop people from mostly agreeing that Beethoven was one. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:E23B (talk) 18:59, 28 August 2023 (UTC)


 * What I can definitely see is someone taking issue with Bernstein claiming his arrangement is like a tenth Beethoven symphony. That's just a level of arrogance that is bound to prime people against the work. Statements like that are better left to others (and I'm sure Bernstein could have coaxed someone else to say it). -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 19:05, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The 10th symphony comparison was in Bernstein's spoken introduction in a youtube video (, start at 3m11s) that I found a few nights ago. It wasn't on the record that my friend saw.  And I think Bernstein was giving credit to Beethoven (for the scope of the composition) rather than to himself, but who knows.  2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:E23B (talk) 20:38, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Beethoven did in fact start on a 10th Symphony, the sketches of which have been "realised" by other hands (assuming AI has hands). --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:21, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Meanwhile, the idea of an AI reconstruction of the 10th symphony makes me cringe, especially since it was done in 2021. A 2023 version might be more interesting because of new AI developments (the stuff behind ChatGPT). Also: I think I was mistaken about Karajan doing an orchestra version further up. The youtube version is just Bernstein, but for some reason is in a youtube topic named Karajan. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:E23B (talk) 23:22, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Added again (accidentally erased this before saving earlier): I retrieved the passage I remembered about Oppenheimer. It's in Peter Michelmore's biography "The Swift Years: The Robert Oppenheimer Story". p. 54:


 * Nothing they did could be described as "Joe College." While others were crowding the football stadium, debating whether Joe Louis would knock out Jim Braddock (he did) and turning to the Chase and Sanborn radio hour to laugh at Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, the Oppenheimers [i.e. Oppie and his graduate students] were reading Arthur Ryder's translations and listening to Beethoven's Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Opus 131, on Morrison's homemade phonograph. Joe Weinberg claimed this quartet as the theme song of the group, which was rather illuminating because Opus 131 is perhaps the strangest and most mystical of all Beethoven's compositions.  Only on the fifth or sixth listening does the piece begin to lose its incoherence for most listeners.  Weinberg counted the quarter as the highest creation of the human mind.  When a little whisky had weakened his resistance one night and his eyes teared at the music, Oppenheimer brushed by quietly and said, "Yes, it's beautiful".

The above would have been in the late 1930's, making me wonder if they were 78 rpm records with just a few minutes per side. And on p. 255, after Oppenheimer died:


 * Six hundred attended the memorial services at Princeton and listened to the eulogies from Kennan, Bethe, and Smyth. The Julliard String Quartet performed the adagio and allegro movements of Beethoven's Quartet 14 in C-sharp Minor, after which Kitty and Frank received guests in the institute library.  Then Oppie's ashes were flown to the Virgin Islands and scattered in the smooth blue sea.

The last sentence (about Oppie's ashes) is in conflict with the probably more authoritative biography American Prometheus, which says that Kitty simply dropped the urn into the ocean rather than scattering the ashes. I've listened to the quartet again and am getting the hang of it more now. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:E23B (talk) 01:36, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

I found a 1927 recording by the Capet Quartet: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwKZF1fY_00  It has that old timey scratchy sound, but I like the performance. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:E23B (talk) 04:15, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

International post
From the point of view of a post office, how is international mail handled, when it's not practical to go straight from one country to another? If I send a letter to New Zealand, presumably Australia Post puts it in a carton with other items headed to New Zealand, ships the carton to New Zealand, and gives it to New Zealand Post to handle. However, barring a charter flight, there's no way to go directly from Australia to Paraguay. If I send a parcel there, does Australia Post have to pay some intermediate country (e.g. Chile?) to transfer it, or is it just given to the intermediate country, like mail destined for that country? Or is there some other process I'm not thinking of?

This is the simplest explanation I could think of, but it's maybe not right. Europe is farther than East Africa, but I have to pay more to send a letter to Tanzania than our mother country ($4.30 versus $3.90), presumably because we have more frequent communications there, so it costs Australia Post more to send things to Africa. But on the other hand, we have direct flights Sydney-Santiago, and yet it costs $4.30 to send to Chile, while a letter to Kiribati (with no direct flights that I can find, even to Tarawa) costs just $3.10. Nyttend (talk) 21:16, 25 August 2023 (UTC)


 * International mail is freight, so how mail gets sent to different countries is a subset of how cargo is shipped to different countries. I'm pretty sure the prices for mailing to different countries are set by each country's government.  However, see "terminal dues" under International Postal Union for fees which governments sometimes pay, and might wish to pass along to the mailing public... AnonMoos (talk) 11:45, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * You may like this rather excited video explaining the charging with a worked example. (Standard disclaimer - no connection - no guarantees.) -- Verbarson talkedits 16:04, 27 August 2023 (UTC)