on CBS early show the producers were excited to be receiving a Beethoven in his late 30s with an orchestra of African-American musicians (all wearing football helmets)...... Beethoven had just composed the 5th and 6th symphonies of his famous 9 symphony collection (including the famous 9th symphony with its Ode to Joy - including operatic singing, an effect Beethoven never often went for)....
Beethoven was starting to go deaf and was losing his hearing and hence irritable and grumpy and not given to suffering fools from the 21st century easily.... the production staff at CBS' Early Show left a high pedestal of water that Beethoven could easily grip and dunk his head into to wake himself up....
he entered the playing space where the idea was to give instruction on how the 5th and 6th symphonies were meant to be developed..... his orchestra of 40+ musicians, all African-Americans wearing their football helmets and arranged in seated positions based on stringed-instruments - violins and deep cellos, etc to Beethoven's left, horns at the rear -- these would figure prominently, timpani drums and so forth to the right......
Beethoven stood before the orchestra and asked a question, but his attempted utterance was interrupted by CBS Early Show's Maggie offering a composer's stick to Beethoven...
"Silence!" boomed Beethoven, who could barely hear himself talk, "now," said he looking to the orchestra who sat at the ready with their instruments after their little period of tuning and sounding, "what did I tell you about the 5th symphony."
"You said in the 5th your arse goes down sir!" offered Randy the violinist.
"Right! the 5th is a bombastic, strident symphony, if we draw an analogy to animal life on the Savannah's in Africa, which is the symphony that depicts the hunt? the killing slash of the tiger spilling the lame young deer's guts open on the desert floor? which is the symphony that is not that, that is the pack grooming eachother after the hunt, the village enjoying the harvest?" Asked Beethoven.
One of the clever and gifted African-American women present removed her helmet after placing her Cello bow at her feet and said: "the 5th is the former sir, the 6th the latter."
"What?!!" barked Beethoven, "I cannot hear a f*cking word you're saying, I'm f*cking going deaf for f*ck's sake!"
Leticia-rello, yet another African-American with a delightfully different sounding name (like Condolleeza, etc) was taken aback and intimidated by the great musician and decided to stay quiet and put her helmet back on.
"Which of the two symphonies depicts the whirlwind, the punishing, uncaring, destructive force of Nature that tears and destroys all in its path, the tornado?"
"The 5th!" yelled loudly all present to Beethoven.
"Now show me how you play these blasting insinuations, in the climactic part of the 5th, da- da - da -- da!!!"
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