Music, in words

It's always terribly hard to capture, in words, the essence of a musical work. To paraphrase Leonard Bernstein, "If the composer could say in words what he wanted to say, why would he use music at all?" Stirling Newberry, though, gives it a go with this essay about Beethoven's Symphony #7.

The Seventh is often cited as Beethoven's greatest work, and there's a hell of a lot of reason why. For me, my tastes tend to embrace the Ninth more -- not surprisingly, given my predilection for works of massive apocalyptic glory -- but the Seventh is, and always will be, utterly amazing. What always strikes me about the Seventh is its inevitability, the way every single note seems to naturally spring from the one immediately before it.