Episode 255: May 4 Quasi-Fantasie

The 'Moonlight Sonata' by van Beethoven was made famous by John Lennon, when he said that his song 'Because' was inspired by Yoko Ono playing this sonata backwards. While debunking this myth, I found that van Beethoven himself never referred to this composition as the 'Moonlight Sonata"; for him, it was a 'quasi-fantasie'. After van Beethoven's death, a music critic wrote an article in a newspaper in which the critic said that the sonata reminded him of moonlight, shining on a lake. The label has stuck ever since.However, listening to the sonata, I'm not reminded of moonlight on a lake at all; instead, it is as if I hear a bell tolling, and a procession of people slowly passing by. On their way to a funeral?I tried to mash the sonata with a church bell, and found that the big bell at the Waalsdorpervlakte matched the sonata (in Cminor) perfectly. A coincidence?The Waalsdorpervlakte is an open place in the dunes in the Netherlands, where more than 250 prisoners were executed by the Germans in World War II.It is one of the main locations where on 4 May "Remembrance of the Dead", a yearly commemoration of victims of World War II and other victims of war, is held by tolling the bell at 8 PM.