Claude translates an 1799 Beethoven review slamming his 'learned mass without song'
deanwball · x · 2026-11-11
A follow-up to Dean Ball's earlier post: he used Claude to translate the original Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung review of Beethoven's Op. 12 violin sonatas.
The translation reads: "Herr van Beethoven goes his own way. But what a bizarre, laborious way it is! Learned, learned, and ever more learned, and no nature, no song! Strictly speaking, there is nothing here but a learned mass without good method: a stubbornness one can take little interest in, a hunt for unusual modulations, a disdain for ordinary progressions, a piling of difficulty upon difficulty, until one loses all patience and pleasure."
The critique mirrors today's complaints about AI music almost verbatim.
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