Coursering不能自拔矣

So I'm in the first course I've ever taken on Coursera. Everything is new to me. It is my very good luck to be able to start with a relatively familiar material - Klaviersonaten von Beethoven - even though, sometimes I did need to have a look at the subtitles. And how well it is organized! I mean, the whole IT frame with so many material and such fluency, a simple but practical discussion forum, there are some details not precise in the lecture and the next day you already find the corrections on the front page (what is crucial to gain a VIRGO's trust ;-) Then thinking that all of this is just one of the thousand similar courses on-line, and all of them are for free!! The only thing you need is enthusiasm of learning, your dedication. And there are millions of courserians like you!

Once again I feel happily lost in this great digital era, with such a human spirit of sharing and such a good use of the technologies... You are waiting for the bus and you feel the vibration on your pad announcing with an initial link to explorer such a fascinating world like Beethoven's sonatas! What have you done to deserve it?!

Now talking on the course itself. The first lecture was, to me, a totally new perspective. (Important, it is ONLY TO ME; a mediocre student of conservatory might find it normal as he/she has been fed during all the time with a standard academic curriculum) - Of course, I have been studying these sonatas listening/watching/thinking, and practicing (or sight-reading) some of them at the piano - It is to say, as a performer, and thus appreciating or disliking others as performers, expecting analysis or interpretations by performers... From concrete objection on certain fingering or doubts on pedal, tempo, to general coherence of harmony, treat of polyphony, expression and the general spirit that a work is transformed with... This does NOT mean that I didn't pay attention to the composer's life background of each period, or that I didn't feel affection when I followed his physical traces in Bonn and Vienna - totally on the contrary! However, I never thought about, for example, for/under which atmosphere they were composed, of course the string quartets are for chamber performance, but the piano sonatas? I perhaps would be more prepared to accept, instead of this applied insight, knowledge on the fortepiano's evolution and its influences on the composition (and vice versa)... Again, the latter is from a performer's logic. So, astonished when I find the economic reasoning on Beethoven's freedom of composition. I knew more or less the career of Bach, of Haydn, Mozart, and so on... but never connected them in this way. When I thought about their "relations", naturally I thought about scores... e.g. quotations, similarities of Beethoven's first sonatas with that of Haydn, or some of Schubert with Beethoven or Haydn...

Another interesting thing found till now is the discussion section. Unlike in the university where you more or less know the presuppositions of your colleagues when you talk and discuss, here it is more like whatever open forum of any topic. However, in those forums you may not think about replying always, but here, as part of the course, you pay attention to others' questions as possible as you have time. For example, the other day I found this one:

Yes, the answer is easy to give, but why - I definitely found myself unable to make a comprehensible and fast explication. I cannot tell why the first theme ends here or there... I just, know it... Of course you can explain the theory of tonic-dominant, but it is already a sophisticated work (actually what the professor briefly did in the course) if the other has never heard of that... SI remember Einstein (or who else) said something like: If you cannot explain a phenomenon to your grandma, then probably you have not understood it thoroughly.

So, by now, I have received great motivations to keep trying with this self-and-co-study mode. It does not mean I will not listen again to Andras Schiff's lectures in the upcoming days or to drop Edwin Fischer's book, and, evidently I am still elaborating some notes on Elisabeth Leonskaja's class in July. Actually they are not conflicted at all with this happy, american-styled, "casual" but well prepared, functional and inspiring nutshell aimed to amateurs. Look at the assignment evaluation system:

It is exciting, perhaps the best way to study (perhaps only for who want to study)... And it even doesn't forget to "warn" to take into account that there are non-English speaking fellow students...

BRAVO, E-learning... With all my gratitude!