Is Beethoven’s Fur Elise the ultimate in pieces that people either love or hate? Personally, I think it’s overplayed because it’s a good work.

Oh, and the words are:
Why did Ludwig write this awful piece?
It wasn’t free, that is for sure.
The money, all in cash came from Elise,
Thus it was she, he wrote it fur.
(dimly remembered from some book of funny classical music lyrics when I was in music school)

So, anyway, here’s my favorite youtube of all the alternate versions of Fur Elise:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa837PCtXAQ&mode=related&search=

I think it's a very good piece but it is definitely overused/overplayed.

I, for one, never learned it. Sometimes I wish I had and sometimes I don't really mind that I did it. BUT, everyone I know that plays the piano has played the whole of Fur Elise...except me. =)

Nice topic!

I haven't learned it either.

I don't like hearing it because I've heard it so much. But it's a nice piece.

I think its is a good piece because it is not very difficult to play, but it should be used as a song for piano lessons. I like the song but I agree it is over played.

Its okay, but your right that its been played so much.
Haha, that videos rather funny

I haven't learned it, but I've sight read it at tempo(does that count as learning it???).

I think it's very good. Mostly because I don't listen to it very often.

I would never learn it but when played by a pro it's a nice piece

This funky version is pretty awesome, here is another funny video of them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uaAwQLuZuw

I learned it many years ago and still drag it out and play it occasionally. It's certainly overplayed but I think it's fun to play and I think I do it better and more polished every time.

A very pleasant piece to play.

I learned it cuz practically every1 in my small town knows it, so I figured i'd learn it, but yes! it is very overused!!

My very first post in this forum!

Pretty much everyone is saying that it is nice but overplayed. Me? I vaguely remember being able to remember the time when I liked it.

I also learned it many years ago. :rolleyes:
In my piano-wilderness years, (approx. 25yrs.), It was the only piece that I had fully memorised.
If a piano was handy i'd play it.

Now I sometimes play it as a little warm-up, as I can play it without thinking about it.

I like it a lot! Just the fact that we still hear it today means its a very beautiful piece.

I heard a while back that sales persons in piano stores hate it like the plague... it gets to them avery time a would-be pianist starts "di, di, di, di, diddy, dah" (fill in the tune!)
Actually, I sometimes play it for practice, even for fun, but would never play it "in public".
Cheers,
Roger

I think it's a wonderful song. I'm learning it right now and while I agree that it is one of the more popular tunes out there, I don't think that should negatively reflect on it.

Love it, at times I want to play it in different octaves to amuse myself...

hate it so much its not funny, everyone at my school no matter if they play piano or not cam play that song, it drives me insane! lol

Zac

Für Elise is a wonderful, moving, challenging, 'easy' piece of classical piano music which, as evidenced by some of the posts here, has become a victim of its own popularity. In common with many others, it was the first 'real' piece I learned and memorised as a child almost 50 years ago and I've recently revived it... bravo Beethoven!

Fur Elise is a nice song but it is definitely overplayed and overused... very nice song for someone taking lessons because it is 'easy' in a sense but you need to have a feel for the style to make it really sound good.

I agree. I also have never learned it and don't really plan on it.

When I learned it, I loved it. Now, I've heard it too many times. I can't listen to it and I can't even bring myself to play it.

I have to like it because it's Beethoven, but I would not worry if I never heard the piece again in my life.
I'm afraid it has come, along with other pieces, to represent "classical" music to the masses, maybe because of it's apparent (?) simplicity and perhaps the mere fact that it has a title. Would it be as popular I wonder if it were known as Bagatelle in A minor?
Just to go off on a slight tangent, there are 2 Mozart works which I find I can no longer listen to with any degree of pleasure; Piano Concerto 21, which now seems destined to be referred to until the end of time as "The Elvira Madigan " concerto and there are people out there who firmly believe that the title was given by the composer!!
Eine kleine etc. is the other work, thanks to the universal mis-translation of the title. "Kleine" means small and "nachtmusik" is the German word for serenade, therefore, "A Small Serenade". I'm afraid that "A little night music only serves to remind me of the pretentious Sondheim and his overblown "tunes".
Rant over!!!!!!!!

Ha ha, I was going to say hate, but that youtube video totally made me grin.

When played by a virtuoso it's beautiful, but being thumped out by every tom dick and harry it makes me wanna pull my hair out.

Love the vid though, that's tops!

Hate it. Never want to hear it again. Any TV show or movie that has a kid performing at a recital, it's almost always the piece they have the kid playing. Make it go away.

I am a digital piano salesperson, and I have to say Fur Elise is the most common piece played by customers in the store where I work. At first, I liked it, but now I am developing a nervous tic when I hear the opening strains of the thing! If anyone could play the whole thing, it would be less annoying. But most people play the first phrase OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again...well, you get the idea. I never knew how many ways you can play that melody wrong!!! pLEASE HELP ME!!

never learned it. i don't think i ever will. my teachers (past and recent) never assigned me the piece. i also think it's overplayed. but i have sight read it.

Love it, I think it's great! Some pieces just never get boring!

I agree with TheBritishPianist. It's gorgeous & melodic...

How can a classical piece be overplayed? Not like it plays on the radio or that you hear it being blasted by cars passing by.

It's overplayed because it's so good (but also very easy).

I see that that poem goes along with the piece. Read it whilst humming the tune in your head or listening to it.

Well I remember learning Fur Elise when I was 10, I have to say I did enjoy learning the piece, it is a brilliant simple piece sampling the genius of Beethoven, but as the years passed I began to dislike it and stopped playing it after hearing it from other people so many times. Now I cringe whenever I hear it being played hehe :p

Fur Elise WAS my favorite piece to play as a child. But having taught piano for over 20 years I've heard it murdered so many times by beginning students that I've grown to despise it. (Sorry Beethoven.)

what a tedious melody

I like it but my piano teacher has the same opinion as miss sharon.

It is a littlt bit too "rock" for me. I know a good one. It is more classical and romantic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ7y0f5gfzo

Absoballylutley love that song!!


Is my siggy too long?

I hate it because almost everyone loves to play it, and as a teacher I do get sick of hearing, when it is played badly—which is usually the case.

I love it because *if* I can teach someone to play it, that "someone" is usually very pleased.

I hate it because "everyone plays" it.

But I love the fact that now and then someone who is famous will take a chance and peform it, for instance Pogorelich:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQTTFUtMSvQ

I don't agree that it's easy either. It's easy to play it, but not play it well. Section B and C take considerable finesse. It's quite difficult to play, in public, because anyone who plays well is ready to laugh at you if you can't pull it off.

I have to agree with everyone saying how much I am starting to despise it, but it is just one of those pieces when I am having a rough time practicing something it just comes out of me all of a sudden I am doing the 2nd part of it trying to over exaggerate it on purpose.

I play it horribly wrong on purpose, sometimes I do it for the kids and do all kids of funky things with it that make them laugh since everyone knows how it goes it makes it comical.

However, because I know how much all the kids want to learn it, I grit my teeth and bear it...

I have learnt Fur Elise. It's a great piece, a little overplayed nonetheless.

I think that too much of a good thing isn't a good thing. Learned it in the early 50's and loved it but after all this time and listening to inexperienced players it has all the charm of a second week violin students mistakes.

Or, as the eminent contemporary philosopher John Mayer puts it, "twice as much ain't twice as good..."

I've never worked on the piece because it was just never assigned by any of my teachers. I love Beethoven, but Fur Elise is pretty far down the list of his works I would take up by choice.

Oddly, I have no feelings either way.
I can play it but I don't love it, I don't hate it. Is that weird?

Hey it's one of the few classical pieces I still sort of remember from before I started writing my own stuff and playing Top 40...

As classical goes it is one of the few pieces I can still stand and play once in a while... :p

~Trev

I've read through the piece, but never cared to learn it. I don't care for it, not only because it's overplayed, but just because I don't like it.

In fact, I don't particularly care for Beethoven

Is that sacrilege in these parts?

I'm 14.
I love playing Fur Elise. I have to disagree with those who claim it's easy. Sections B and C are difficult when played correctly.
Sometimes I hear other kids play Fur Elise, and they ruin the piece. They put no emotion into their playing. They play like robots. Playing without dynamics they sound like a monotone voice. When played right, I think it is ONE of the most beautiful pieces Beethoven wrote.

Must suck to be a piano sales person with all the lookie loos.

Yes, overplayed. But it is overplayed and over-assigned to beginning and intermediate piano students the way that Emily Dickinson's poems are regularly anthologized for children, and one completely misses the power of her lines. I've played it and my son is now learning it -- which, I admit, is trying. What I keep in the back of my head is hearing Ivo Pogorelich, about 25 years ago, opening a San Francisco recital with Fur Elise. In the hands of a great pianist, it almost sounded like a different piece. What I find absolutely unbearable are the simplified versions (or the simplified versions of the so-called Moonlight sonata -- even worse!). Still, if either brings the beginner to a love of Beethoven, I suppose that's all for the good.

I have a list of "DO NOT TEACH" pieces in my studio. One of them is Fur Elise. I refuse to teach it even when my students beg for it. A few others are: Mozart Alla Turca, and Bach Minuet in G major. Totally overplayed, hacked, and played in every "interpretation" possible.

BTW I like this piece, no matter how many times I've heard it.

So there!

It is overplayed BADLY. but if it played nicely it is a very nice piece.

I learned it because when you are nine that is the epic song to be able to play.....

dont love... dont hate....like on ocassion

i like it, enjoyed learning it

I like it when played correctly and doesnt sound like a robot on a casio

fur elise is beautiful.

The problem isnt with the piece is that most beginner music sounds like crap.

I wish beethovan had written an entire series of beginner pieces, how wonderful would that have been. You know, like those beautiful cello etudes by bach, the six suites for the unaccompanied cello.

The striking thing about fur elise is not that it is overplayed, but that great composers have absolutely fallen down in their duty to write simple but beautiful music.

Know this interpretation?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXPAAI3Q9wA

It seems that Chopin is the only composer exempt from anything even remotely critical on these forums.

It depends on who's playing it. I can't stand playing it myself though

Played sensitively, it is great (maybe not quite the way Beet would have done it himself).

I think it's a beautiful piece, when played correctly with changes in the dynamics. Parts of it are easy but there are a couple of areas that require a little bit of work. Listening to it over and over being played by students I would have to say would bother me quite a bit.

Five children. Two sisters. One piano. Two ears. All those notes repeating themselves and repeating themselves and repeating themselves and repeating themselves and repeating themselves and repeating themselves

I only like the 'hard' parts of this piece. the di de di di di di di da I can do without. It gets repeated in the piece too often and is annoying.

In fact I can do without all the things that people play who don't play the piano.

It's always either the very first section of fur elise (no left hand)

The intro to chopsticks.

Rolling their knuckles on the black keys; btw does any one know what this is called? Or if it even has a name.

Or they play either the bass section or the treble section of heart and soul.

I love it if played well with expression. If played at the same volume continuously with no expression put into it, then it can be very tedious. Unfortunately many pianist are taught to play it fairly early in their development and they don't play it with the required expression and nuance required to make it musical.

Love or Hate ?? I havent read all the posts but I cant imagine anyone who plays piano actually hating it! youd have to feel particulary strongly about it to hate it lol

plus despite how popular it is and how over played it is etc etc dont we all have a somewhat fond memory of the first time we heard it ? I wouldnt be surprised, given how ubiquitous it is, if it wasnt for most people their first introduction to not only the sound of a piano but indeed classical music in general.

for that reason alone I have to love it