英语听力:Beethoven 贝多芬 - 04(在线收听

 "Vienna at that time was a marvelous place for young musicians to go to. It has always been a city of pleasure or frivolity right back to the middle ages. The city was the most crowded city in Europe at the time. It had a population of probably around a quarter of a million, and that is about 25 times the size of Bonn. At the top society there would be endless balls, and then musical concerts, and then for the ordinary people in the streets there would be juggling acrobats, street music, puppeteers, but there was another side to it, as some one described it as a city of frivolity but despairing frivolity."

 
The rulers of Europe were terrified that the French Revolution would spread. In Vienna, the emperor tightened censorship and gave extra powers to the secret police, but instrumental music, the most abstract and least censorable of the arts, flourished.
 
“I think it was recognized from the beginning the extent to which Beethoven was within the whole influence of Mozart and, of course, Haydn, but I think it was also shocking from the beginning what he was doing to that and people really hated it, I mean there was… there is no question about the fact that from the beginning, Beethoven’s style of playing the piano and his style of composing were repellent.”
 
“Comments such as Beethoven’s music was hairbrained, ah, that, it was bizarre that it was really complex, that it jolted the listener out of transports. All of these comments came from musicians.”
 
“The openings of Op(Opus). 10 No.2. As a kind of Haydness quality I mean even that, is sort of more humorous than Haydn's, slightly more rough than Haydn would do but and you know that a little coarser than Haydn, but it still has the Haydn thing, but later in the piece--I mean all that, there was the basic keep going up, I mean that is the real Beethoven trick of, the middle years but he's already using when he was quite young and this sort of tremendous surge of energy that you get in there and this was something that people already complained about in Beethoven, this kind of violence that he was doing.”
  原文地址:http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/wenhuabolan/2008/339740.html