Things of Consequence

It's odd how many of the rightward-leaning and gun-focused blogs that I read are posting about the 4,000-year-old noodles. I also found it interesting, although I am still waiting to hear if they also found a fully intact and unopened packet of 4,000-year-old "beef" flavoring.

None of the blogs I read have yet mentioned this:

Heather Carbo, a matter-of-fact librarian at an evangelical seminary outside Philadelphia, was cleaning out an archival cabinet one hot afternoon in July. It was a dirty and routine job. But there, on the bottom shelf, she stumbled across what may be one of the most important musicological finds in years.

It was a working manuscript score for a piano version of Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge," a monument of classical music. And it was in the composer's own hand, according to Sotheby's auction house. The 80-page manuscript in mainly brown ink - a furious scattering of notes across the page, with many changes and cross-outs, some so deep that the paper is punctured - dates from the final months of Beethoven's life.

The score had effectively disappeared from view for 115 years, apparently never examined by scholars. It goes on display today, just for the afternoon, at the school, the Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa.

[...]

Any manuscript showing a composer's self-editing gives invaluable insight into his working methods, and this is a particularly rich example. Such second thoughts are particularly revealing in the case of Beethoven, who, never satisfied, honed his ideas brutally - unlike, say, Mozart, who was typically able to spill out a large score in nearly finished form.

What's more, this manuscript is among Beethoven's last, from the period when he was stone deaf. It not only depicts his thought processes at their most introspective and his working methods at their most intense, but also gives a sense of his concern for his legacy. The "Grosse Fuge," originally part of a string quartet, had been badly treated by a baffled public, and he was evidently eager to see it live on in a form in which music lovers could play it on their pianos at home.

Heavily edited, so furiously in parts that he ripped the paper. Bits of red sealing wax which he used as glue to paste in entire new sections. Eraser smears and everything.

From Wikipedia:

Beethoven was often in poor health, especially after his mid-20s, when he began to suffer from serious stomach pains. In 1826 his health took a drastic turn for the worse. His death in the following year was attributed to liver disease, but modern research on a lock of Beethoven's hair taken at the time of his death shows that lead poisoning could well have contributed to his ill-health and untimely death (the levels of lead were more than 100 times higher than levels found in most people today). The source of the lead poisoning may have been fish from the heavily polluted Danube River and lead compounds used to sweeten wines. It is unlikely that lead poisoning was the cause of his deafness, which several researchers think was caused by an autoimmune disorder such as systemic lupus erythematosus. The hair analysis did not detect mercury, which is consistent with the view that Beethoven did not have syphilis (syphilis was treated with mercury compounds at the time). The absence of drug metabolites suggests Beethoven avoided opiate painkillers.

Beethoven continued working on his music until the day he died.

Do you think the Almighty considers your puny instrument when He speaks to me?"
(Beethoven's answer to a violinist who complained that his part was written in a difficult key).