Einstein and Beethoven

An interesting anecdote that recently came across my desk…

einstein.jpgAfter his colleagues updated, as a seventy-fifth birthday gift, the music system they had given him five years earlier, Einstein began repeatedly to play an RCA recording of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. It was an unusual choice for two reasons. He tended to regard Beethoven, who was not his favorite composer, as “too personal, almost naked.” Also, his religious instincts did not usually include these sorts of trappings. “I am a deeply religious nonbeliever,” he noted to a friend who had sent him birthday greetings. “This is a somewhat new kind of religion.”

- From Walter Isaacson’s Einstein: His Life and Universe (Simon and Schuster, 2007)

…tracks well with Beethoven’s comment on composing Missa Solemnis:

My chief aim was to awaken and permanently instill religious feelings not only into the singers but also into the listeners.

November 23, 2009 | Filed Under Quotes 

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