Beethoven brings hope to Lebanon protesters

Beethoven brings hope to Lebanon protesters

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norman lebrecht

October 27, 2019

Ode to Joy sung in Arabic on the streets of Beirut last night.

 

 

Comments

  • Esther Cavett says:

    Even Farage couldn’t turn his back to this spirited performance

  • LunchtimeOBoulez says:

    Something else for Mirage and Widdlefoam to turn their backs on.

  • Aaron Herschel says:

    We don’t need the Ode of Joy by a German composer, whose country killed 6 million Jews.
    Germans have no place amongst civilised nations, they simply don’t deserve it.

    • TheJayBee says:

      You are insane.

    • Edgar says:

      This is perhaps one of the saddest comments I have ever read anywhere. Even Bach will not escape your boundless fury.

    • Sue Sonata Form says:

      I can deeply understand your resentment, but Ludwig van Beethoven had nothing to do with it and neither did Bach or Brahms.

      • Aaron Herschel says:

        They were all involved.
        Bach was an ardent antisemite, Brahms was born into a Lutheran family and used bible texts from the NT ( one of the most antisemitic books in history ) and Beethoven’s music fared well amongst the Nazis, its unpleasant ‘Germanness’ is beyond any doubt.

        • John Borstlap says:

          Comment of breathtaking ignorance and bigot hatred, not far from the ignorance and hatred of the nazis. (Ironic, isn’t it?)

          There is no evidence that JS Bach was antisemite, in his passions he simply used the text as found in the bible. And that book is not antisemitic either.

          Brahms was explicitly opposed to the antisemitism that was on the rise in Vienna and he looked down upon it as something primitive and inhuman, as all of his friends, members of the enlightened bourgeoisie. This was related to a humanist classicism which was cultivated in those circles, against which Wagnerism was a protest, saturated with antisemitism.

          Nazi’s appropriated the music of Beethoven for their ends, entirely ignorant of the humanist symbolism it always carried, of which the 9th is a powerful example.

          When a criminal correctly explains that 2 + 2 = 4, that does not mean that arithmetics are suddenly morally unacceptable.

    • LunchtimeOBoulez says:

      You have no place among civilised people. None.

    • Ad Hominem Guilt by Association Fallacy. You may as well argue that vegetarians have no place among the civilised, since Hitler was one.

    • FrauGeigerin says:

      This goes for sure in the top 10 of nonsense comments on SD.

  • Kun says:

    Good story, real and sustainable political change? Not likely. Gravitate towards the spectacle and one might get myopic in the process.

  • John Borstlap says:

    Touching….. People all over the world want to live in a society where the rule of law protects individual freedoms, where different people can live in peace together, where there is security and efficiency and where human rights are protected in a democratic system – i.e. the European way of life. For that reason, Europe is a goal for so many fugitives. The 9th is a symbol of civilisation, and it would be nice if it were better understood in Europe itself.

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