Copying Beethoven

Ed Harris creates a convincing Beethoven. ( Immortal Beloved committed crass nonsense identifying Beethoven's widowed sister-in-law as his beloved.. No historian of standing would try that.) Composers had copyists. The female copyist in Copying Beethoven is gentle and delightful fictionalizing. At the real premier of the 9th Symphony Beethoven had an assistant conductor who turned him around to see the ovation at the end. That passage was done perfectly in this film, it was deeply moving. Diane Kreuger does the alchemy of hero-worshiping empathy and self-asserting spunk beautifully. There she speaks for all of us who love the difficult man as well as his music. In May I visited Beethove's apartments in Vienna, the Pasqualatie house, and in Heilingenstadt. In several leading biographies, including Thayer and Maynard Solomon, I have never read that Beethoven smashed a young engineer's bridge model. His roughness could have been shown by his berating the engineer loudly, disturbing the meeting, and raising his cane threatening to smash the model, but not going that far. If he was trying to teach the engineer a lesson in self-criticism, that would have been enough. Any notion that Beethoven was jealously striking at Anna Holst's friend is ludicrous. Those moments in the film when Beethoven explains his music to Anna Holst allude to how Beethoven 's genius and soul conquer deafness to attain a higher level of consciousness and then communicate this to us through his music. One can hear him doing this in his pure, not program, music where he is out among the galaxies dealing with things that do not connect to earthly concerns, or talking and thinking fractally with God. The film's score was powerful, the performances first rate. Costumes, scenery, stying right on the mark. The film approaches Amadeus in quality. I sent a copy to my composer son.

I had never heard of this foreign produced film, but ordered same based on the story line, music, and acting. The two leads, Ed Harris and Diane Kruger are brilliant in the roles of Beethoven and his copyist, Anna, sent from a distant music school to copy the score of The Ninth Symphony several days prior to its premier. The story line is ficticious, but nonetheless captivating and believable. The interplay between the now deaf Beethoven and his composer wannabe Anna is an acting tour de force. The climax is the premier itself where Anna positioned herself within the orchestra and conducted from the score, her actions mimiced by Beethoven on the podium. To be blunt, it must been witnessed to be believed. I could go on, but the headline above says it all.

Those of us who care, know that the composer needed help such as what is suggested in this film, as his hearing declined. Whether or not this story is true is irrelevant, but may be a good guess. It is a fun movie. Worth watching.

Beethoven did use copyists for his symphonies, as did all other composers then. Today, you can compose a symphony on your computer and then have the software separate and print the individual parts. In 1824, when most of this movie takes place, each part had to be written out by hand after the overall score was finished. That part of this movie, then, is true. In fact, during Beethoven’s later years, he used two men, one of whom incidentally was named Holtz. In this movie they are combined and undergo a sex change into a young woman called Anna Holtz, played extremely well by Diane Kruger. So, does it work? Musically, the film is quite sophisticated, the Ninth fragments performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and the LSO Chorus (of which I was a member many years ago). The story? Well, the theme, which is the difficulty of devoting your life to music (for Anna but for Beethoven too), will resonate in the memories of those of us who chose other routes to earning a living and wonder whether the trade-offs were worth it. Beethoven knew, without any question, that his music would be played everywhere and forever, but at the same time he lived a lonely, financially precarious life, and died at the age of 57. He never married, though he wanted to, and had no children of his own. Worth it? Even Beethoven couldn’t know, for he never lived any alternative life. That’s the same situation I, who went on to law school, am in when it comes to music – I have no way of knowing what that life would have been. Would my symphonies be played by the LSO? Would I have three musicals running on Broadway and the London West End? Or would I, as my father warned, have had to buy a hand organ and a monkey? No way to know, and this film, as I say, brings all these thoughts to mind. Five stars, for sure.

The best thing going for this movie is Ed Harris' electrifying performance as Beethoven. He captures Beethoven's musical genius and his dark side, as a rude and crude man. Other reviewers have done an excellent job of describing the story. What I want to comment on is the masterful job done by the screenwriters and the performers of capturing the compositional genius of Beethoven. What I really liked about the movie: 1) The scenes of Beethoven composing his music The transformation of Beethoven's egomania to one of thanksgiving: Initially, Beethoven was mad at God for giving him a musical gift and then making him deaf. He would purposedly make statements about God that border on blasphemy. Those statements showed his frustration at God for allowing him to become deaf so he could no longer listen to his compositions but had to rely on a earpiece or on vibrations. Later on, as the film progresses, Beethoven discovers how God speaks to him through music and he makes his peace with God through composing a hymn of thanksgiving towards the end of his life. His dialogue to Anna about how he can sense the voice of God through music were very moving. The scenes of Beethoven composing are the most memorable scenes in this movie for me -- he clearly has the great gift of being able to piece together all the musical forms in his head. These scenes reminded me of "Amadeus" when Mozart was able to see how all the different parts of different instruments come together in his symphonic compositions. Through these scenes we get to see how God chose to deposit his musical gifts in a very common and ordinary man who is full of shortcomings and weaknesses. 2) Ed Harris does a great job of capturing the divergent natures of Beethoven -- on one hand he is a musical genius, but on the other hand, he is quite a brute of a man. On one hand, he could be gentle and tender, but on the other, he could suddenly become "The BEAST" -- be extremely cruel and harsh in his ridicule and mockery. While Beethoven is busy composing a new musical work, he could also be pouring water on his disheveled hair and drive his neighbors crazy with his utter disregard for their well-being as he ruins their dinner times. 3) The wonderful music in the film: Not only do we get to hear the wonderful movements of the 9th Symphony, but we get to hear excerpts of the String Quartet and other works. The movie could have done without "Fur Elise" (which is overplayed to death) -- we could have had more of some of his sonatas and chamber works. 4) The wonderful featurette "Orchestrating Beethoven" which offered great interviews of the director, script writers, and cast members. It was very insightful. The featurette and deleted scenes are great. What I didn't like about the movie: 1) The over-emphasis on the importance of Anna Holtz to Beethoven. Other reviewers have rightly criticized the movie as having too much of a feminist bent in this story of Beethoven. As the featurette in the Special Features explain, the story of Anna Holtz as the gifted female compositional student is a work of fiction -- Anna Holtz is an example of artistic license on the part of screenwriters; she is a composite of all the different assistants that helped Beethoven. For dramatic effect and for creating a strong female character, the screenwriters created Anna Holtz to be the one assistant that comes to the aid of Beethoven in both his personal life and his compositional & musical efforts. As Diane Kruger portrays her, Anna is attractive, intelligent, gifted, and perceptive. She is everything that Schlemmer (Beethoven's aging male assistant) is not. She is able to discern the thoughts and feelings of Beethoven -- she is the perfect assistant to help complete and "correct" Beethoven's compositions. At the climactic close, she is perfectly in sync with Beethoven as he conducts the 9th Symphony. She is able to conduct just as Beethoven does. In fact they become "one" in their conducting. Historical and musical purists may be infuriated at these scenes. 2) It is highly doubtful that Beethoven conducted the 9th symphony with the help of a female assistant giving him the rhythmic cues. Yet, this forms the climax of the movie. All this aside, I felt that the movie was very worthwhile to watch. It was a very moving and inspirational portrait of Beethoven. In fact, I think it is the best portrayal of Beethoven for a feature film. It is a much better film on Beethoven than "Immortal Beloved" (which I think was very chaotic and unorganized). If you're a classical music lover and a Beethoven fan, this movie is well-worth watching. I believe you'll be impressed by Harris' acting.

What can you say about anything regarding Beethoven? Only good things can be said

It is somewhat surprising that most reviewers have chosen to focus on the character played by Ed Harris, while even the movie title already tells us that this is primarily about the copyist. While Ed Harris does well in the relatively easy role of a creative and nasty man, Diane Kruger definitely shines with her rich, subtle expressions, and her understated feminine dominance in most situations. While she has not been fully recognized in her career achievements because she is not a Hollywood product, Kruger has consistently been an actress of great quality. She has shown enviable versatility in films as diverse as Inglorious Basterds, Unknown, A Perfect Plan and The Operative, among others. In this movie plot, she basically conducts the Ninth Symphony because of Beethoven’s deafness. The scenes showing portions of the symphony are an entire poem about the relationship between the two, especially at the moment when she closes her eyes while entranced by the power of the music, and Beethoven seems then lost and bewildered. Not so much in the commercial line of the Amadeus product, this movie requires the ability to appreciate and enjoy subtleties. A musician myself, I find the story compelling, especially for non-musicians, and the acting outstanding by the female character.

Somehow, I cannot get tired of this movie. Being a musician myself, I can understand the scenes where Beethoven is sharing the secrets of what music is, and the price musicians pay to bring it to life. When he told the Anna Holtz character that musicians must be conduits for the Voice of God, and "if we are not that, we are nothing", I almost wept; because it is true. Any musician that is reading this will bear witness to this. Beethoven was not without his faults. But his music was as powerful as life itself. And he continued to progress in his musical development until the day he died. The movie shows how he pushed the envelope with his Concerto Grosso; and nobody understood what he was doing. Until many years after he died. Now, it is how we hear music. The maestro's vision was supremely vindicated. Ed Harris' performance was marvelous. This, especially since he had Gary Oldman's equally fine portrayal of Beethoven to stand up to. He made the character his own without copying Oldman's method.