英语听力：Beethoven 贝多芬 - 16

 The first sketches¹ for the opening movement of the Ninth Symphony date from 1816. But the intensive work was done in this house in Baden 17 years later. Over 600 pages of sketches survive. Beethoven had asked whether the Philharmonic Society of London might be interested in commissioning a grand symphony and they offered him 50 pounds for two symphonies. The idea of setting Schiller's Ode to Joy to music dates back to Beethoven's time in Bonn. The sketchbook showed how he wrote out the words of the Ode to Joy and put it in the bars, but at first with no tune². He laboriously³ refined the famous melody and hinted that throughout the symphony. 

 

In the amidst of the first movement, we suddenly hear this, which is very similar to… and in the second movement, even in the right key, we have…And in the third movement, there is this...All alluding⁴ to finally… 

So there's a wonderful thread that leads you right through the symphony. It's totally subconscious⁵ in the sort of thing that later composers, Mahler, particularly in his Ninth Symphony used to stunning⁶ effect.

 

Beethoven had a very special relationship with singers and with choruses because he imagined them as a kind of ideal group of people who get together through the power of music. And in the last movement of the Ninth Symphony, this is very clear. It's as if he's saying that just by people singing together, something happens to them. They are changed through the power of music. This is Beethoven.

 

It was a great success at his first performance. Beethoven was on the stage conducting to the side of the real conductor. And at the end of it, he couldn't hear the applause of course. And they had to turn him round to face the audience to hear the applause. Wonderfully moving moment. And yet he was actually quite disappointed that this symphony didn't earn him as much money as he expected it to.

1 sketches   

n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概

参考例句：

• The artist is making sketches for his next painting. 画家正为他的下一幅作品画素描。
• You have to admit that these sketches are true to life. 你得承认这些素描很逼真。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

3 laboriously   

adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地

参考例句：

• She is tracing laboriously now. 她正在费力地写。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She is laboriously copying out an old manuscript. 她正在费劲地抄出一份旧的手稿。 来自辞典例句

4 alluding   

提及，暗指( allude的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He didn't mention your name but I was sure he was alluding to you. 他没提你的名字，但是我确信他是暗指你的。
• But in fact I was alluding to my physical deficiencies. 可我实在是为自己的容貌寒心。

5 subconscious   

n./adj.潜意识(的)，下意识(的)

参考例句：

• Nail biting is often a subconscious reaction to tension.咬指甲通常是紧张时的下意识反映。
• My answer seemed to come from the subconscious.我的回答似乎出自下意识。

6 stunning   

adj.极好的；使人晕倒的

参考例句：

• His plays are distinguished only by their stunning mediocrity.他的戏剧与众不同之处就是平凡得出奇。
• The finished effect was absolutely stunning.完工后的效果非常美。