Beethoven just slightly off the beaten path

by Alonso del Arte

Community

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Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025 Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025 at 5:00:16am PST

no image description available — Image of Ludwig van Beethoven with the Easter Bunny generated by SDXL 1.0 in NightCafe using the Anime v2 preset, random seed number 1997689298, no clip guidance, sampling method K_DPMPP_2M. I had used this image before, closer to Easter.

Trump has already marred the 250th anniversary of the Army and he’s on track to mar the 250th anniversary of the nation even worse. But at least he can’t mar Beethoven’s 255th birthday. Ludwig van Beethoven was born on this day in 1770.

There’s so much great music by Beethoven that is just ignored. Like a lot of his compositions with opus numbers. Like, did you know he wrote a horn sonata? I’m sure I had seen the piece in the list of Beethoven’s compositions by opus numbers, but I just had never actually listened to this piece, Sonata in F major for horn and piano, Opus 17. I’m sure it gets played on the radio once in a blue moon.

This performance features instruments more like the ones Beethoven might have heard this piece played on: the natural horn in F instead of the modern cor à pistons (as the French call it), and the fortepiano instead of the modern pianoforte.

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Franz Liszt made piano reductions of all of Beethoven’s symphonies. Even with these transcriptions, everyone wants to play the Ninth Symphony. Just like the orchestral original, Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major is not played as often. For the most part, it works very well for piano solo, especially the mysterious opening

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Beethoven was strongly associated with the keys of C minor and E-flat major, but with both of those keys we can find music by Beethoven that is not very well known. Like his String Quartet in E-flat major, Opus 127, a favorite of mine since the first time I heard it.

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Practically everyone knows Beethoven’s Bagatelle in A minor, “Für Elise,” WoO 59. Somehow, the bagatelles with opus numbers are obscure. The six of Opus 126 are my favorites.

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