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about

Political in perhaps a different sense than "John Henry", "Beethoven in Soho" (1980) resulted from a conflict between two opposing ideas in music of the 1970s: information theory and minimalism. There was much excitement at the time about what information theory could help theorists understand about musical style. As leading writer on the topic Leonard B. Meyer put it, “music may be meaningful in the sense that within the context of a particular musical style one tone or group of tones indicates—leads the practiced listener to expect—that another tone or group of tones will be forthcoming at some more or less specified point in the musical continuum.”

At the same time, minimalist music was flouting the sequential conventions of musical meaning by creating gradually changing music which short-circuited the listener’s expectations through stasis and illogical change. In a class, Gena was given an exercise to go through Beethoven’s "Op. 31/3 Piano Sonata" and edit out repeated (i.e., redundant) phrases and sequences to see what was left. Several years later, he decided to make a similar attempt with the second (final) movement of Beethoven’s "Op. 54 Sonata" and turn it into a quasi-minimalist piece by delaying expectations through repetition. The title "Beethoven in Soho" came from Gena’s idea that, were the revolutionary Beethoven alive at the time, he would have been working in Soho, i.e., Manhattan’s “downtown” scene, rather than writing twelve-tone or neoromantic music in academia or in the neoromantic orchestral circles. Beethoven in Soho, then, is entirely made up of phrases from Beethoven’s sonata movement, their progression greatly slowed down through textural repetition and thus resistant to the expectations associated with the style.

credits

from Peter Gena: Beethoven in Soho and Other Works, released October 6, 2023
Joseph Kubera, piano 1; Anthony de Mare, piano 2; Gregory Chudzik, bass guitar

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Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc., which records under the label New World Records, was founded in 1975.

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