Classical Listening

[Vonny]

Classical is more sophisticated, classier, intricate, and many-other-adjectives-I-can-think-of than metal. But fun? Sorry, can't agree with that one. As someone who's been to the symphony and metal concerts, metal is waaaayyyyyyyyyy more fun.

Okay, I watched that Mutatis. I can see all the riotous joy and divinity there , but the area where metal falls short to me is that it's just difficult to dance to!

At least I'm glad to know that you're not slated to end up blind as well as deaf - For a while I was envisioning a male Helen Keller scenario.


Thanks Luke, I'll check out those other suggestions you gave me!

[Lokasenna]

Why is it then, from the moment I stumbled upon classical music, that Beethoven songs and the voices in Fidelio rise high above the classical crowd?

My first and long-standing choral favourite was his Mass in C, Op. 86? That and Handel's Acis and Galatea.

Luke got there before I did, but I'll give my two cents anyway. I'm a very great lover of Beethoven, but it really is impossible think of him as a great user of voices. Fidelio, his only opera, isn't a bad piece by any means, but it pales in comparison to those of his contemporaries. He, famously, was never satisfied with it either.

Nor are Beethoven's vocal works enjoyed much by their performers - they all have a reputation, Fidelio included, for being overly taxing. I've been told that even Missa Solemnis is unperformable in its original form, needing significant modern editing to be actually match the upper limits of the human voice.

This is not to say that the works are bad - merely that other, lesser composers achieve more with the voice as an instrument than Beethoven does.

[Neely]

Classical is more sophisticated, classier, intricate, and many-other-adjectives-I-can-think-of than metal. But fun? Sorry, can't agree with that one. As someone who's been to the symphony and metal concerts, metal is waaaayyyyyyyyyy more fun.

Jesus. I only got the the second shot - the scene out of a mad zombie film and had to turn it off! (It's no way to start a Saturday morning.) It doesn't seem like fun to me!

[Lokasenna]

Classical is more sophisticated, classier, intricate, and many-other-adjectives-I-can-think-of than metal. But fun? Sorry, can't agree with that one. As someone who's been to the symphony and metal concerts, metal is waaaayyyyyyyyyy more fun.

Oh, just you wait till Beethoven's seventh...

[stlukesguild]

Jesus. I only got the the second shot - the scene out of a mad zombie film and had to turn it off! (It's no way to start a Saturday morning.) It doesn't seem like fun to me!

Yep... about as much fun as a Nuremberg rally.

[Vonny]

Jesus. I only got the the second shot - the scene out of a mad zombie film and had to turn it off! (It's no way to start a Saturday morning.) It doesn't seem like fun to me!

Yep... about as much fun as a Nuremberg rally.

That's a nightmare! I just didn't want to be the first to say it. But we'll let Mutatis be who he is and love him anyway, as long as he's into classical too. I just don't want to go to any of his parties!

[Emil Miller]

Jesus. I only got the the second shot - the scene out of a mad zombie film and had to turn it off! (It's no way to start a Saturday morning.) It doesn't seem like fun to me!

Yep... about as much fun as a Nuremberg rally.

Plus ça change...

The flag may be different but the message is the same.

I still think the Germans did it better.



http://youtu.be/vHZmxlhuQVM

[Emil Miller]

Just been checking around You Tube and came across this stupendous finale to the Mussorgsky/ Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition, which uses Ravel's orchestration but adds a choir to magical effect.

http://youtu.be/JwrqAipON2w

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Comparisons to Nazi Germany, eh? If only there was an emoticon that gave the middle finger. I posted that as a joke, though the energy at metal concerts, and positive vibe (and it is positive, no matter what you may think) is unequaled by anything else.

Still, making fun of something just because you don't understand it is completely ignorant--you'd think this forum would be free os such folly.

Just been checking around You Tube and came across this stupendous finale to the Mussorgsky/ Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition, which uses Ravel's orchestration but adds a choir to magical effect.

http://youtu.be/JwrqAipON2w

Now that is quite a unique performance. Never heard a choir with it. Do you know where one can get the whole suite (if they indeed record all of it)?

[Gladys]

Beethoven's lieder are good... but...

This doesn't even begin to look at the Bach... or much of the "golden age" of choral music: the middle ages through the Baroque period.

I love Beethoven... and absolutely thrill to the choral passages of the 9th... but I would never begin to think of Beethoven as a major composer of vocal music...

My praise of Beethoven vocal music was more in the context of the Classical Period, and with an appreciation of how little he wrote for voice. Certainly, such Baroque composers as Purcell, Bach, Pergolesi, Rameau wrote magnificently for voice. And for me, the Bach Cantatas have long reigned supreme.

Luke got there before I did, but I'll give my two cents anyway. I'm a very great lover of Beethoven, but it really is impossible think of him as a great user of voices. Fidelio, his only opera, isn't a bad piece by any means, but it pales in comparison to those of his contemporaries. He, famously, was never satisfied with it either.

Nor are Beethoven's vocal works enjoyed much by their performers - they all have a reputation, Fidelio included, for being overly taxing. I've been told that even Missa Solemnis is unperformable in its original form, needing significant modern editing to be actually match the upper limits of the human voice.

What Beethoven did write for voice is radically different from both predecessors and successors alike and, like Bach, he seems to use voice as an orchestral instrument - one capable of meeting extreme demands. I get the impression when listening to voice in Fidelio that each singer is asked to compliment, or compete with, the ferocious complexities of orchestral backing. Such raw symphonic complexities (best illustrated by his third attempt at an overture in the gargantuan Leonora No. 3) are rarely found in a more benign vocal music of Haydn, Mozart of Schubert. Is such ferocity bad?

Over the decades, nothing on radio more rivets my attention than Beethoven songs or excerpts from Fidelio. In vocal music as elsewhere, Beethoven's disdain of the dictum moderation in all things is the essence of his enduring appeal.

[Emil Miller]

Now that is quite a unique performance. Never heard a choir with it. Do you know where one can get the whole suite (if they indeed record all of it)?

Douglas Gamley was an Australian composer and arranger who worked with some of the greatest and also some of the not so great musicians during the thirty years he spent in England: mostly in films. His use of choir and organ in this piece is inspired and greatly enhances the power and ambience of the music. There is reference to his having rearranged the whole work but I haven't been able to trace a recording of it:

Mussorgsky "The Great Gate of Kiev" - Douglas Gamley's orchestration video
Douglas Gamley conducts his own orchestration of the finale from "Pictures at an Exhibition," with the New Symphony Orchestra, the Men's Chorus of the Ambrosian Singers, and the organ of Kingsway Hall, London. From the Readers Digest 10-LP set "Music for You," produced by Charles Gerhardt (published 1968).

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

...Mussorgsky "The Great Gate of Kiev" - Douglas Gamley's orchestration video
Douglas Gamley conducts his own orchestration of the finale from "Pictures at an Exhibition," with the New Symphony Orchestra, the Men's Chorus of the Ambrosian Singers, and the organ of Kingsway Hall, London. From the Readers Digest 10-LP set "Music for You," produced by Charles Gerhardt (published 1968).

Lately I have taken interest in Mussorgsky since we first touched on his music in the painting thread. Since then I can't seem to get enough of "The Old Castle".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ssfDQirqVk

I went ahead and purchased Valery Gergiev and the Wiener Philharmoniker performance of Pictures at an Exhibition

.

[Emil Miller]

Lately I have taken interest in Mussorgsky since we first touched on his music in the painting thread. Since then I can't seem to get enough of "The Old Castle".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ssfDQirqVk

I went ahead and purchased Valery Gergiev and the Wiener Philharmoniker performance of Pictures at an Exhibition

.

Yes, it's very atmospheric, as are all the musical 'pictures' in the original piano score. The amazing thing is that Ravel was able to capture their essence so brilliantly in his orchestration. I don't think even Mussorgsky would have done it better.

[cl154576]

Plus ça change...

The flag may be different but the message is the same.

I still think the Germans did it better.



http://youtu.be/vHZmxlhuQVM

Utterly hilarious ...

Just been checking around You Tube and came across this stupendous finale to the Mussorgsky/ Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition, which uses Ravel's orchestration but adds a choir to magical effect.

http://youtu.be/JwrqAipON2w

Thank you for posting the link; I have listened to the Pictures twice in live concert, but the addition of the choir was very powerful.

[cl154576]

I love this, after all the initial coughing (which is unfortunately in too many videos).