Today’s Google Doodle is an animated puzzle celebrating Beethoven’s 245th birthday. Click on the screenshot below, and then on the arrow, to start the game. You’re required to assemble in order manuscript sheets containing the notation for some of Ludwig’s masterpieces. Only when you get them in order can you continue the game by going to the next piece of music:
Time Magazine explains the game and its origin:
Google’s Beethoven Doodle is more of a puzzle than it is a picture. Players are tasked with arranging Beethoven’s sheet music in the correct order after he mixes up the pieces on his way to conduct a concert. The game focuses on the composer’s most widely-received works, such as Moonlight Sonata and Ode to Joy. Each song becomes harder to piece back together as the game progresses.
While the game itself may be simple, coming up with the idea was anything but. Google’s team of doodlers had been brainstorming ways to capture Beethoven’s achievements in a Google Doodle for about two years. The problem, however, was the challenge of creating something interactive and unique to Beethoven’s life that hasn’t already been done in previous doodles.
“We went through a lot of different prototypes for what we wanted a Beethoven doodle to be,” says Jordan Thompson, an engineer on the Google Doodle team “But none of them really filled the role of what we wanted, which was to teach people about Beethoven and his music.”
The group stuck with this idea over others because of its subtle educational aspect. “You can actually see the music notes, so you can get the concept of written music,” says Thompson.
I’m sure our many music-loving readers will succeed. I failed miserably on the second attempt: I got the opening of the Fifth Symphony (easy), but then failed on Für Elise.
Being the Beethoven maniac that I am, I was able to figure this out pretty quickly. Too bad, though, that “Fur Elise” remains ensconced in the popular imagination. If I’m not mistaken, I think Beethoven grew to detest this annoying little work and wished he had never written it. Yeah, yeah, I suppose it’s pretty, but it hardly represents Beethoven at his greatest.
Also, it would have been nice if Google had been a bit more adventurous instead of choosing the most well-known works. The man wrote thirty-two piano sonatas, sixteen string quartets, and several piano trios, violin sonatas, and cello sonatas (in addition to the nine symphonies). Using some more “obscure” pieces in the game would have made it more challenging!
This is a real piece of bah-humbuggery, Mr. Lyons.
Do you mean my pointing it out or my noting that Beethoven grew to dislike his own piece?
Gee, they could have used a snippet from the Violin Concerto! Wow, what a great work that is. I have three recordings of it.
To honour Beethoven, one really should sort the music without sound.
As the late, great Terry Pratchett pointed out in his novel Soul Music:
“Deafness doesn’t prevent composers hearing the music. It prevents them hearing the distractions.”
Yes, an accomplished musician will have developed a vivid and accurate mind’s ear, but still, music is meant to be heard and one’s imagination is no substitute for actually hearing it.
When Beethoven conducted the premier of the 9th symphony, so the story goes, he had to be turned around at the conclusion by one of the musicians so he could see the ovation he was receiving. Beethoven himself was proudly depressed by the realization he was going deaf, as documented in the Heiligenstadt Testament. Pretty tragic stuff.
wtf
proudly = profoundly
😀 But perhaps the problem was a little too much sound…
…and from the other side of the pond.
I don’t see how that can be true. Für Elise wasn’t even published until 1867, a full 40 years after Beethoven’s death. It’s hard to imagine a work so popular that Beethoven grew to detest it could have remained unpublished for so long.
I think using well-known pieces makes more sense than trying to convey the greatness of more obscure pieces in only a few measures. Greatness is something that emerges out of longer-range relationships, larger-scale architecture. You can’t call those first eight notes of the 5th symphony great by themselves. It’s what he does with them over the course of the work.
That writ, here is something a little more off the beaten path (a little). I challenge anyone to listen to this and not melt.
Thank you. I always pay attention, and enjoy, your comments regarding music. I’ll save this link for later this evening.
“Beautiful” is too vulgar a word for that piece.
I am melted. But then again, Helene has melted me before.
Your link – (the 2nd movement of the Emperor) – would be my choise too. Particularly the first couple of minutes, it’s one of the most magical moments in music. And it’s so – spare, so deceptively simple – it sounds almost tentative, as if the pianist is searching for the next note. (But I’ll bet it’s hard to get the timing and the expression exactly right).
cr
For me Beethoven was the greatest composer who ever lived.
He didn’t have the massive output of Mozart, but he was such a perfectionist that he rejected many compositions that Mozart would have done something with (though Mozart was a musical genius also). As you point out there were many more pieces than his most popular but, even so, I’d give my three favourites as
1. Second movement of the seventh symphony (surely one of the simplest themes ever).
2. The violin concerto.
3. The Choral Fantasia
Ahem, Ahem, Ahem.
Fur Elise was a manuscript found after Beethoven’s death and first published 40 years thereafter.
It is thus improbable that Beethoven’s feelings about the piece were known.
Methinks this be ein Legende städtisch.
Thanks for that. Maybe I was thinking only of the Septet, published, I think, in 1800.
That “Fur Elise” had to be discovered long after Beethoven’s death might confirm Beethoven’s likely view of it: if he had been proud of the piece, it wouldn’t have remained unpublished (or lost, whatever the case may be). Keep in mind that Beethoven DID like writing short pieces. I’m speaking, of course, of the Bagatelles. “Fur Elise” is not worthy to live amidst those great little works.
I posted this in the Hili dialogue but I will repost it here for the non-Hili Beethoven fans -if there are any and if so you should be ashamed of yourself.
I am sure Hili is excited to be celebrating the 245th Anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s baptism. No exact record of his birth date exists. Great Google doodle in his honor today. An even better treat, the full Ninth Symphony by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Riccardo Muti. An official authorized version by the CSO with great video and audio.
You can view it here.
And now for something completely different the great Brigitte Engerer plays all the Beethoven Nocturnes here: http://bit.l/1Yngq0J
Oops! try this:http://bit.ly/1Yngq0J
Those are Chopin nocturnes. I’ve never heard of a nocturne by Beethoven.
Correct: no Nocturnes by Beethoven.
But aren’t Chopin’s Nocturnes incredible? I especially love the two Op 27 pieces. Wow. Nelson Freire’s recording of the Nocturnes (the second one, on Decca) is fantastic.
I am no expert, but Muti is one of my favorite conductors. Over the past 20 years or so it seems more often than not that when I come across a favorite recording of a piece it turns out to have been conducted by Muti.
When the CSO hired Muti at age 69, many, including me, were dumbfounded. We were wrong. This performance of Beethoven’s Ninth is remarkable. Arguably, the greatest piece of music ever composed performed by an orchestra which at its best is almost overwhelming under the direction of a genius.
Locally in Chicago, the CSO’s most popular recent recording was of Chelsea Dagger, the song by the Scottish band The Fratellis. It is the goal song used by the Chicago Blackhawks who have won three of the last six Stanley Cups. Muti conducts wearing a Blackhawks jersey.
In 1985, the CSO recorded the Chicago Bears fight song, Bear Down, Chicago Bears. Georg Solti wore a furry Bear hat when it was performed at Orchestra Hall. The usually staid CSO crowdwent nuts, on their feet clapping along.
A great orchestra still has to attract fans.
Goofed up the link to Bear Down.
Link
Thank you for the interesting comment.
Technically it’s not his birthday (which is not known with any certainty) but the date of his baptism 😉
Right, I think the theory is that the nameday usually was the next day after the birth. I can’t remember if his official birth record was lost or if it never existed.
I’m not sure what the guesstimate was, it’s been a while since I read “Lives of the Great Composers” or wherever I picked up that factoid.
We were in a similar situation with my grandfather’s birthday – he was born in a remote location in the Ontario bush in 1905 and it was his oldest sister who eventually had his birth registered, but nobody could remember the exact day in late June, so she just picked the 27th.
A bit of the old Ludwig Van in the morning.
I was wondering what reader would post referring to “A Clockwork Orange”.
In the novel, listening to Beethoven brings out a nicer side of Alex’s personality, but this trope is entirely discarded in the film in which he has all kinds of violent fantasies while so listening.
Good morning droogs.
I had the worst time to get the pieces playing in my browser, so had to go after the written music. Well, I made it … eventually.
Cute.
My favorite Beethoven joke.
When exhuming Beethoven’s coffin, they find him sitting on a bench erasing musical manuscripts. When asked what he was doing, he replied “I’m decomposing”.
“You can still hear Beethoven, but Beethoven cannot hear you.”
I am beginning to have something in common with Beethoven, and unfortunately, it isn’t talent.
Here are my choices for a more challenging quiz:
1. “Pathetique” Sonata (piano), second movement
2. Violin Concerto, first movement, beginning
3. Symphony No. 7, second movement, Allegretto
4. Grosse Fuge, Op. 133, for string quartet
Any Beethoven aficionado should be able to do those, if they read music at all.
Yes! I was thinking of the second movement of the Seventh as well. It may just be my favorite orchestral movement by anyone (but my favorite Beethoven symphony is the Sixth).
Right now, as I type these words (at work), I’m listening to the Clarinet Trio. The Septet is coming up next.
Beethoven wrote a clarinet trio? Is it an arrangement of a work originally written for something else? I’m not familiar with it.
Yes, Clarinet Trio, Op. 11. Very charming early work as is the Septet (another piece, by the way, along with “Fur Elise”, that Beethoven grew to detest because of its popularity). I’m listening to a recording of both pieces, available on a CD by The Nash Ensemble.
Oh OK, I do remember that now. Never listened to it, though.
Or, for the complete Beethoven nerd:
1. Christ on the Mount of Olives
2. Overture to the Consecration of the House
3. Variations on “Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu”
4. Rage over the Lost Penny
“Rage Over a Lost Penny” is a fun throwaway piece, certainly a better work than that damn “Fur Elise”. Sorry, I’m just siding with Beethoven, who wished he had never written that cloying piece. Did I just write “cloying”? Looks like I did.
Cloying is better than smarmy!
Yes!
PDQ’s version of Symphony #5.
Let’s try that with a link this time.
YT app is frozen on my phone. Is that the play-by-play?
yes, it sure is… a live version I hadn’t seen before. About 10 minutes long & pretty damned funny.
So many comments on how Google could have gotten it better, when it’s incredibly cool they honored Beethoven at all.
And as the Time magazine excerpt mentioned, it took them two years of work to come up with today’s doodle, hardly easy-peasy.
Kudos to Google and to Jerry for sharing the info on the Heethoven doodle.
Cheers,
Carl Kruse
I absolutely agree there.
It’s always easy to nitpick the details. But Beethoven experts were not the target audience.
And I too am delighted Beethoven featured in a doodle.
cr
… that was in reply to Carl Kruse, of course…