Dear dear penni. As radiant as you may appear in your cocktail thong (and the rubies and diamonds do become you), I am eternally flummoxed by your stubborn cleaving to outmoded musicological charlatanry. Had you not paid six hundred and fifty thousand dollars for this supposedly original manuscript at Christie's (and please recall that I did caution you repeatedly against it), I would wager you would entertain a more objective approach to the issue of its authenticity.
Shall I give you yet another glaring example of the outright fraud perpetrated by Ernie?? I shall. In the choral movement of the piece, scored for full orchestra plus five tubas (which must immediately raise some doubts as Beethoven DESPISED tubas), the text is supposedly an ancient poem written in Aramaic and celebrating young lovers enjoying springtime and subsequently being sacrificed to the god Baal. Note the line in the tenor solo, "efpok seish mudd ri nebirsheg sad ebah CHI d'nu inre nib chi!!" which is generally translated by Aramaic scholars as "The pretty flowers are blooming, and I can hardly wait to be gutted on the altar!!" However, if you make a recording of this line, as I have, and play it backwards, in perfect Prussian Hochdeutsch you can hear without question or doubt, "I'm Ernie and I wrote this, you dumb s**theads!!"
It is a tribute to Ernie's diabolical wit that he actually had the audacity to place a little practical joke in the work that would remain undiscovered for several hundred years until the advent of modern recording media.
I do feel for you, dear penni, but my suggestion is that you approach Christie's for a full refund. |
