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Old June 11th, 2015 #1
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Post Jewsmedia: "Does Beethoven's music reveal his African roots?"



My initial response to the question, “Are Beethoven’s African origins revealed by his music?” that has been asked at the website Africa Is a Country, is a definitive “no”. It is based on questionable premises that lack real historical evidence, at least to the story of Beethoven and his music over the past couple hundred of years.

This is far from a new idea. Here, Nicholas T Rinehart outlines the century-long history of the “Black Beethoven” trope and analyses the cultural and racial politics that have made this such a potent idea. He suggests our attraction to the notion that Beethoven was black is a symptom of classical music’s tortured position on race and music: “This desperation, this need to paint Beethoven black against all historical likelihood is, I think, a profound signal that the time has finally come to make a single … and robust effort [to reshape] the classical canon.” Rinehart says we must reimagine the entire history of western art music.

Overturning that conventional wisdom is exactly the point, for the researchers and musicians behind Beethoven Was African, a website and album of new performances. And it’s exactly this narrative that the pianist ANY, a member of the collective, refutes in their interview with Africa is a Country.

ANY gives a spirited interpretation of the possibilities of Beethoven’s African heritage, and believes there are key questions about his background thanks to gaps in the records of his portraiture, biography and social life.

ANY also believes Beethoven was a master at manipulating his image. “We can say he shaped and transformed his public image in the manner of a [person such as] Michael Jackson, but two centuries before him. He had no plastic surgery at the time, however he had portraitists who lent themselves to this game of illusion, mainly because they were paid to do so.”

Beethoven Was African project wants to discover – or rediscover – the global roots of Beethoven

This thesis rests on the argument that Beethoven wanted to conceal his African origins. It is suggested that his father was Frederick II of Prussia and his mother one of the king’s kammermohr, African room servants. (This claim is based on an entry in the 19th-century Dictionnaire Historique des Musiciens and is part of a long-standing tradition of turning great men into princes by genetic default, thus proving the essential elevation of royal blood. It will surprise many since Frederick II’s homosexuality is well-known - it’s several degrees of bonkers-ness above the more long-standing theory from many purveyors of the Beethoven-was-black idea: as Rinehart says, which has it that his mother’s family traces its lineage back to Spanish-controlled Flanders; Beethoven’s blackness is thanks to from the close connection between the Spanish and the Moors.)

We do know that Beethoven had a close friendship with the black virtuoso violinist George Bridgetower, for whom he composed his most ambitious violin sonata, the Kreutzer (they pr

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read full article at source: http://www.theguardian.com/music/tom...oven-was-black
 
Old June 12th, 2015 #2
Sean Gruber
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Wasn't there a novel some time ago that satirized PC, titled "Beethoven Was Black"?

Beethoven Was African is dumb. These ahistorical mouth-breathers usually claim "evidence" like: "Beethoven was called the swarthy one." Many Germans of course are swarthy in comparison to the fair English and even other Germans. (Ben Franklin observed this in about 1750. Germans or "Palatines," he said, were "swarthy" in comparison to the ruddy-cheeked English like himself, but not "tawny," i.e., mud.) "Swarthy" does not show that Beethoven was black but it does show that these people have no clue about the time period and people that they're talking about.

The rest of their claims are even stupider (or "bonkers," as the story says), especially the howler that Frederick II is somehow Beethoven's father. Beethoven's whole custody battle for his nephew Karl was seriously disrupted by the revelation that he was faking royal descent (and not even from Frederick II) by adding that "van" to his name (Ludwig van Beethoven). This revelation knocked his case down to a lower, less favorable court, the one for common people, which humiliated Beethoven. The evidence was overwhelming that Beethoven didn't have royal blood, and trying to accept his real background (German peasant) was a psychological issue for him (the so-called "Family Myth" conflict in Beethoven studies). (The conflict is that he got a lot of his confidence from his notion that although his father was a second-rate horn player who became a drunkard and routinely beat him, somewhere back in his line there must have been a royal ancestor because otherwise where did his talent and taste come from? Like some Whites today who believe that they're descended from a Cherokee princess, Beethoven deluded himself into half-believing that he was secretly royalty. It's a sad part of his story. Also, George Bridgetower was not African but half-Polish, half-West Indian. Here's the whole story of his "close friendship" (LOL!!!) with Beethoven (and note that the sole source of the Bridgetower story is an elderly Bridgetower):
http://www.classicfm.com/composers/b...7wy0V623or5.97
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Last edited by Sean Gruber; June 18th, 2015 at 11:07 AM.
 
Old June 15th, 2015 #3
White Winger
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Same racist bullshit the niggs and jews have pushed for the last 40-50 years; that if any White music maker of the past made music that some racist militant niggers happen to like....why, he must have been part nigger( 'cuz everybody knows that 100% Whites have never made music as great and "soulful" as niggers! ) , and Whitey's been hiding that all this time!!!! Just like Whitey always do!!!!

Last edited by White Winger; June 18th, 2015 at 09:43 PM.
 
Old June 18th, 2015 #4
Sean Gruber
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Quote:
Originally Posted by White Winger View Post
Same racist bullshit the niggs and jews have pushed for the last 40-50 years; [...] everybody knows that 100% Whites never make music as great and "soulful" as niggers!
If they can't spin it to make the White musician look black, they say the White musician is a homosexual. They do it all the time in classical music. Some classical composers were homosexuals, sure,* but jews (and homos) say that all of them were. Years ago a label put out a line of CDs called "Gay Classics." Everybody from Beethoven to Chopin, Bach to Brahms, was misidentified as homosexual by these CDs. But no jew composer was. Mendelssohn, Offenbach, Johann Strauss Jr., Gershwin, etc. were the only classical composers who weren't queers, according to this record label. Jews shit on our achievers and heroes from every angle. What should be done with jews in response?

(The sick irony is that most jewish composers in the 20th century were queers. Copland, Barber, Bernstein, Rorem, etc. This chutzpah is typical of jews.)

*I'm thinking of Tchaikovsky and Saint-Saens.
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Last edited by Sean Gruber; June 18th, 2015 at 11:33 AM.
 
Old June 18th, 2015 #5
Theodore
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Default Does Khazar music reveal Jewish roots?

 
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