Grosse Fugue (Beethoven's god given power of inevitability)

 The fugue is a form of music passed down through generations of geniuses and lunatics. The fugue is the hardest piece of music composition to have ever been born. Involving a short phrase that gets, essentially, stripped down so that we may scour its various intricacies and ends. This short phrase gets wrang out like a soaked rag, so that we may hear its endless possibilities. Stripped down and bare naked we observe its various forms through counterpoint and repetition. It gets shoved down our throats again and again until we can face the fact that we've essentially been listening to the same phrase, it's just been manipulated to sound differently.

       Bach perfected it but Beethoven revolutionized it. A song so harsh it made my ears bleed upon first hearing its erratic voices and borderline insane contrapuntal melodies. It's a piece of music that exists outside of time, always being there but never being able to exist until Beethoven uncovered its beauty. The spirit of Beethoven flows through its veins. A stubborn unshakeable bastard unwilling to die without establishing his timelessness and eternal impact on music. The same goes for this song. Stravinsky famously said it's "an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever". You would just have to listen to the 15 minutes of its absolute madness to really understand what he means by this. It starts off as a foreboding statement straight out of a madman's ramblings. If you ever take a look at the manuscript, you can see just how insane Beethoven was at the time of writing this. It's just chicken scratch on a page, he had no choice but to write this down, otherwise, it would fall back into the oblivion that it once came out of. Notes scribbled out, notes barely on the ledger line. I can't help but think of his room and how it looked. A dingy ghastly lit room filled with nothing but a piano, pages littered everywhere, and a piss pot below the piano. Back to the Grosse Fugue. The beginning feels soft-spoken and insecure almost like it's unsure of its place among the rest of us. Soon the instruments will gain traction and will snowball into an energetic game of telephone, as each instrument picks up this phrase and yells at you to LISTEN! These instruments argue and ramble amongst each other until somewhere in the middle the voice of rationality peaks its head in and shuts everyone else up. The viola (tbh I'm not really sure) speaks up to remind you why we're here in the first place. To glory in the beauty that's capable within music. Its flowing melodies make you yearn for the emerald green pastures and bright blue skies. A melody so beautiful it makes you want to cry, it makes you want to live, TO SEE THE WORLD FOR WHAT IT REALLY IS. Beautiful. Not only two minutes after the instruments join back in and we're back to the rollercoaster of volatility that this song once was. Except this time its voices are clearer and more level-headed. Beethoven has crossed the threshold from insanity into the world of confusion within beauty. More and more electricity builds within the song and we revert back to our primordial state of animalistic tendencies. Leading the way further and further into the darkness of his mind. You think to yourself, did Beethoven really want to say that this life is meaningless and without joy. Of course not, his 9th symphony was dedicated to JOY. What Beethoven yearns to say is that the human experience is universal and we should revel in its joy. Lest we go insane. The ending of Grosse Fugue will leave you starstruck and enamored with the life we reside in. The instruments rejoice in the beauty of life and they reassure you that we must keep pushing to reach the beautiful fruits that we all deserve. Though he died a sad lonely bastard. He always kept us in his hearts!