I’m sure someone here will know this instantly, but I don’t have a clue. In a 1995 Q&A session in Rochester, Billy Joel played a snippet of a really haunting piece by Beethoven. It starts at 1:40. Help in ID’ing it, please? I’d love to hear the whole thing. Thanks! 
Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. Second movement.
Thank you! (See, I knew someone here would know it instantly…) 
Well, I recognized it. Had to check YouTube to make sure of the numbers.
It was used in “The King’s Speech” behind the speech and the reaction shots of the listeners to it.
Ooh, thanks, Voyager – I’ll check that out.
It’s a lovely piece of music. I like classical a lot, but don’t have a very broad knowledge of it, and haven’t heard much Beethoven beyond his best-known works. I could have been searching for ages before I stumbled across it. 
I love Beethoven, though I sometimes have trouble remembering to which work of his a piece belongs. I knew yours was from either the Fifth, Seventh, or Eighth Symphony, since those are the ones I listen to the most. It took me about five minutes to nail it down on YouTube. (It helps if you know tempo markings like Allegretto.)
Haendel ties with Beethoven for my favorite composer. I can listen to both of them for hours at a time.
I love Schubert, Bach, Haydn, Prokofiev…just somehow haven’t heard much Beethoven, beyond the obvious pieces. I’m glad I stumbled on that Billy Joel video – I get to expand my listening repertoire now!
It’s hard to go wrong with Beethoven. If you like him at all, most of what he wrote (including all of his symphonies, certainly) is worth a listen.
The last couple of years, I’ve gotten into Italian composers of the 17th and 18th centuries, especially Vivaldi. Everyone knows (or at least recognizes) “The Four Seasons,” but his concertos for lute, mandolin, and oboe are sublime! :o
Of all the composers I know, I find his biography to be the most fascinating. To be a musical prodigy like Mozart, who could dash off a concerto between his morning coffee and lunch, is one thing. But to spend hours laboring over a piece until it is absolutely mathematically perfect is quite another. And to be able to do it consistently when you’re deaf as a doornail and dying of lead poisoning … it just boggles the mind!
Is there a particular biography about Beethoven that you’d recommend, terentii?
It always blows my mind to remember that back then, there was of course no way to record a piece of music. You might hear a beloved symphony only a few times in your lifetime, if you were lucky – unless you were the 18th century equivalent of a groupie, and followed the musicians around on tour. Which I suppose must have happened.
What I know of Beethoven’s life has been picked up from a variety of sources over the years, so it’s hard for me to recommend a single work.
I see that George Marek’s Beethoven: Biography of a Genius gets very high marks on Amazon. There are a number of other biographies listed there as well. (I’ll have to check some out of the library when I get back to Canada.)
There is, of course, lots of information about Ludwig Van and his life and times on the Internet. I especially like sites that go into the music and musical instruments of the period in detail.
I think it was George III who kept an extensive list of Haendel’s music and insisted that certain pieces be played over and over again for his enjoyment.
I’m reminded of Peter O’Toole in The Lion in Winter: My God, I love being King! :o
Mozart, of course, could listen to a long piece and then go home and recreate it exactly. He did this once at the Vatican (IIRC) and drew the Church’s ire for performing a piece that was never meant to be made public.
BTW, a few months ago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra posted on YouTube a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The funds for the performance and for posting it on the internet were provided by the family of a person who died quite young.
Yes yes yes, and yes! I’ve been a drooling Vivaldi fan for eons! It was the “Sesame Street” production of the adagio from his Guitar (or Lute) concerto that did the trick.
If you like Vivaldi, try out Leopold Mozart (Wolfgang’s papa.) His “Peasant’s Wedding” and “Musical Sleigh-Ride” are delightful. (Both are much more obviously “programmatic” than Vivaldi, but jolly good fun.)
This, BTW, is the piece Mozart recreated exactly from memory when he was 14! :eek:
Note: Händel (or “Haendel” if you follow the convention of writing “ae” for “ä”) was the original, German spelling of his name. When he moved to England, he spelled it “Handel,” without the um laut. He also apparently spelled it “Hendel” when he was in Italy.