Classical Listening

[stlukesguild]

The classical music social group seems to have petered out... as have a good deal of the social groups... and I would prefer anyway to open this discussion to all group members and not merely to those members of this or that social group. Anyway... I'm hoping that this thread might provide a venue where we can discuss what we are are listening to in the realm of "classical" music... with the understanding that the term itself embraces music from the Middle Ages and earlier to the the present works of Osvaldo Golijov, Tan Dun, Arvo Part, Phillip Glass, etc...

So anyway... what are you listening to... what do you think of it... and why?:smash:

[atiguhya padma]

I have been listening to Lamentate by Arvo Part. I like his move into a more dramatic sound from his 80's and 90's work. He seems to have been quite affected by the work of Anish Kapoor and this I feel has been a positive influence on his direction.

I have recently been listening to Giya Kancheli, James Macmillan, Tarik O'Regan, Gabriel Jackson and Peteris Vasks. Mostly choral. The Confessions of Isobel Gowdie is a beautiful and passionate work of contemplation. Giya Kancheli's Little Imber and Amao Omi I find very moving too. Kancheli's eastern influence works well with the history of Little Imber.

[Babbalanja]

Ive been listening to a little of everything. I have a long drive to work, so I get to listen to a lot of music every day.

I'm a big fan of unreconstructed modernism, so I listen to massive quantities of Schoenberg and his ilk. I just listened to Schoenberg's neoclassical Serenade op.24 and Berg's Lyric Suite (by Kronos w/ Dawn Upshaw). Charles Wuorinen is another of my favorites: I recently listened to the mind-blowing Percussion Symphony and his busy Two Part Symphony. The TPS reminds me very much of like Roger Sessions, whose symphonies I love. So I listened to the brief, nocturnal Fifth of Sessions next.

I have a soft spot for the minimalists too. John Adams's style has developed plenty since his Nixon in China days, and his Naive and Sentimental Music is only slightly eccentric. Steve Reich is still committed to his oddball craft, and I recently heard Different Trains again for the first time in a while. I prefer Philip Glass's film music, and I've recently enjoyed his soundtracks for The Hours and Mishima.

I hadn't heard Louis Andriessen until recently, but I love the vast, weird, austere De Materie.

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

One of my current musical enthusiasms is Béla Bartók. Bartók was a Hungarian composer (1881-1945) and one of the greatest of the masters of Modernism. For whatever reason he has been one of those composers who I have long and unjustly ignored. For quite some time the only recording I have had of Bartók has been this magnificent endeavor produced by Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony back in the 1950s:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2769/4040820562_0b6b885b5c_o.jpg

Just over the past two weeks I have fleshed out my Bartók collection a great deal with the purchase of three classic recordings with Pierre Boulez:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3521/4040645354_4652cdb700_o.jpghttp://farm3.static.flickr.com/2634/4040820590_f3eecd4f09_o.jpghttp://farm3.static.flickr.com/2673/4040071701_df44287069_o.jpg

as well as a collection of his complete string quartets:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2466/4032441771_80a91ff6dd_o.jpg

The orchestral works with Boulez are absolutely stupendous! Boulez elected to record these works with the Chicago Symphony, that recorded many of the same works with Reiner. Of course they are justifiably known for their thrilling brass (where Cleveland was known for strings and winds, etc...) Including works written for the ballet and various orchestral forms the music included here are indispensable works of Moderism. These masterworks take the listener through the entire range of sound and emotions... from ominous brooding passages, to explosions of ecstatic rhythms and brass, to elements of a magical delicacy, or the most sensuous lyricism. Following these recordings I cannot understand why Bartok is not rated higher than he is. This music matches Stravinsky at his finest... and in many ways shares key elements: dynamic use of rhythms, unexpected orchestral configurations, textures, and colorings... and of course the borrowings from folk music sources. This is classical music at its most dynamic and thrilling. To borrow from the liner notes from the Rolling Stones' Let it Bleed, these recordings should be played loud!:smash:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fTdmkhAsE4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG48lCixJLA&feature=related

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The string quartets of Bartók offer another side of the composer... quite removed from the orchestral works. Along with the quartets of Shostakovitch they are perhaps the most important group of chamber music since Dvorak's quartets, the chamber music of Brahms, and Beethoven's ground-breaking quartets. The string quartets are naturally more introspective and less theatrical than the orchestral works. The very nature of the form demands as much. The string quartet has been famously described as a conversational musical form in which the instruments function as individuals within a dialog... as a group of of four sitting around the table talking... even arguing politics and religion. Like the orchestral works, the string quartets cover a broad array of musical expressions. There are elements that are reverent... suggestive of ecclesiastical music; there are passages that are stark and harrowing; there is humor and elements of folk music and dance, and there are explosions or emotional outbursts.

**************
I'm greatly looking forward to exploring more of Bartók's music, including his piano concertos, his works for solo piano, and his lone opera, Bluebeard's Castle.

[Babbalanja]

One of my current musical enthusiasms is Béla Bartók. Bartók was a Hungarian composer (1881-1945) and one of the greatest of the masters of Modernism.
Hear, hear. My Magyar missus disdains almost all of my most beloved music, but she tolerates that of her compatriot Bartók Béla without complaint.

I agree about the string quartets, easily the most fascinating cycle in the literature. I've always been enthralled by the Fourth, that series of multi-dimensional labyrinths that's as daring and cinematic as chamber music can conceivably be.

Whose recording of the SQs do you prefer? I like the sound of the Takacs Quartet's recording (it has a dramatic lushness), but after a lot of comparing, I have to say the Emersons play these works with amazing virtuosity and abandon.

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

I have recently been listening to Giya Kancheli, James Macmillan, Tarik O'Regan, Gabriel Jackson and Peteris Vasks. Mostly choral. The Confessions of Isobel Gowdie is a beautiful and passionate work of contemplation. Giya Kancheli's Little Imber and Amao Omi I find very moving too. Kancheli's eastern influence works well with the history of Little Imber.

Choral music may just be my single favorite classical genre, and I am familiar with the efforts of MacMillan, O'Regan, and Jackson... as well as Arvo Part. Vasks and Kancheli are both on my wish list... and it is somewhat surprising that I have yet to pick up anything by them considering my admiration of choral... especially contemporary choral music, as well as music from the "Baltic composers".

I'm a big fan of unreconstructed modernism, so I listen to massive quantities of Schoenberg and his ilk. I just listened to Schoenberg's neoclassical Serenade op.24 and Berg's Lyric Suite (by Kronos w/ Dawn Upshaw).

I've never been able to get into Schoenberg... although I have made attempts. I tend to lean toward the decadents (Richard Strauss, Korngold, Schmidt, Schreker, Zemlinsky, Szymanowski, etc...) as well as Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovitch, Messiaen, etc... Of later music I'm a bit all over the place... although I tend to follow the more tonal composers as opposed to the more hard-core late modernists such as Boulez, Cage, Stockhausen, etc... I'm quite fond of the Minimalists... but also the late post-Romantics (Copland, Hovhaness, Barber) and various post-Modernists... composers who embrace elements from a variety of sources and avoid what can become more and more esoteric among Modernist purists.

But then my tastes for "classical" music runs all over the genre from Gregorian chant, Spanish Sephardic music, and Renaissance opera through Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart... to Phillip Glass, Arvo Part, Osvaldo Golijov, and Daniel Catan.

Whose recording of the SQs do you prefer? I like the sound of the Takacs Quartet's recording (it has a dramatic lushness), but after a lot of comparing, I have to say the Emersons play these works with amazing virtuosity and abandon.

I'm only familiar with the Hungarian String Quartet version on Deutsche Grammohon. I have mixed feelings about the Emerson quartet in general... whom I found to be almost too polished on occasion and lacking feeling. Takacs sounds as if they would be a viable alternative considering what I have heard of them in the past. Still admittedly the string quartet and other string chamber music is far from being an area where I have much experience outside of the major works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. I'm just beginning to rectify this... although I doubt I'll ever be a connoisseur of the genre to the extent I am of opera, choral, and song.

[stlukesguild]

Currently I'm quite enjoying the new recordings of Beethoven's complete piano concertos performed by Murray Perahia and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Bernard Haitink:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3513/4041417454_0c5090a81a_o.jpg

Perahia has gained a deserved reputation for his masterful recordings of the keyboard works of J.S. Bach. Only recently he has turned once more to Beethoven. These recordings strike me as clearly informed by Perahia's experience with earlier composers. His touch is exquisite... limpid... crystal clear and shimmering. One cannot help but recognize the influence of Mozart upon Beethoven's first piano concerto (which our resident "musicologist" will undoubtedly inform us is due to the fact that Beethoven was not actually the composer but rather it was Gluck who was in reality Gesualdo:rolleyes:). I'm actually just finishing with the first concerto and moving to the second... but it will be no.s 4 and 5 that will be the real test, considering that I have recordings of these seminal works by Serkin, Gilels, Kempff, Fleischer, and a number of others from among the greatest pianists in recording history.

A lazy, quiet, and chilly Sunday morning... perfect for listening to that most poetic of composers, Franz Schubert. His piano sonatas were long underrated in comparison to Beethoven for the very reason that they lacked the complexity and virtuosic demands of Beethoven. But this completely misses the point. Schubert was never a piano virtuoso, and his sonatas surely owe much to the fact that it is song and poetry where he excelled. One can catch intimations of Schumann and even Schumann in these works... but ultimately they are exquisitely unique poetry for the keyboard. I can't imagine a more sensitive interpretation than that of Wilhelm Kempff:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2449/3951576883_696186ba20_o.jpg

[Babbalanja]

This fall morning in New England seemed appropriate for the second symphony of Walter Piston, that erudite, approachable Modernist.

http://www.classicalarchives.com/images/coverart/9/7/a/6/636943916124_300.jpg

[stlukesguild]

Beyond Copland and Gershwin... and contemporaries like Adams, Reich, and Glass I have only recently begun to explore modern and contemporary American composers: Hovhaness, Bolcom, Corigliano, Ned Rorem (songs), Barber, Hermann, Menotti, Bernstein, Schuman, Ives, etc... No Piston as of yet. Of course I lean far more toward the Europeans... and away from hard-core late Modernists/Conceptualists ala Boulez, Cage, or Stockhausen.

[atiguhya padma]

Regarding Schoenberg, I really only know Pelleas and Verklarte Nacht. The latter I consider magnificent, a thrilling piece to hear live, although I guess many Schoenberg fans of his later music would find that statement rather profane.

[Virgil]

The classical music social group seems to have petered out... as have a good deal of the social groups... and I would prefer anyway to open this discussion to all group members and not merely to those members of this or that social group.
I have to apologize St Lukes about the social group. I've really have given up on all my social groups. I just don't have the time.


Anyway... I'm hoping that this thread might provide a venue where we can discuss what we are are listening to in the realm of "classical" music... with the understanding that the term itself embraces music from the Middle Ages and earlier to the the present works of Osvaldo Golijov, Tan Dun, Arvo Part, Phillip Glass, etc...

So anyway... what are you listening to... what do you think of it... and why?:smash:
Oh, just before in the car on the radio they had a Brahms trio (Horn, violin, and piano) that was just awesome. He wrote it on his mother's passing and those three instruments happen to be the instruments he played as a child.

Actually I found it in a search: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_Trio_(Brahms)

And here is the first movement on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdoVtmGtXgA

You may be able to find all four movement in a youtube search.

[stlukesguild]

Regarding Schoenberg, I really only know Pelleas and Verklarte Nacht. The latter I consider magnificent, a thrilling piece to hear live, although I guess many Schoenberg fans of his later music would find that statement rather profane.

I don't know why that should be so. I, for example, am a huge fan of the paintings of Picasso. As much as I love Guernica and other masterworks of "high Modernism" there is no way I would suggest that the masterful paintings of the earlier Blue and Rose Period are not also of the greatest merit. I love Verklarte Nacht myself... and also the Gurrelieder in which Schoenberg embraces all of the elements of Mahler, Wagner, and Richard Strauss and late Romanticism in an absolutely grandiose and decadent work.

[Babbalanja]

Regarding Schoenberg, I really only know Pelleas and Verklarte Nacht. The latter I consider magnificent, a thrilling piece to hear live, although I guess many Schoenberg fans of his later music would find that statement rather profane.
Not at all. Both those early works are Schoenberg at his most Straussian, tone poems with an extra helping of fin-de-siecle anxiety. You might also like the ravishing Gurrelieder, a vast cantata for orchestra and vocalists from the same era.

Personally, I don't think many of Schoenberg's works are that forbidding. In his free-atonal stage, he composed the admittedly-harrowing Erwartung for soprano and orchestra. But works like Pierrot Lunaire were surreal and charismatic. His early twelve-tone works like the Wind Quintet and the Suite op. 29 were very neoclassical and restrained, if maybe a bit eccentric.

Schoenberg's string quartets are a good place to trace his development. His SQ#2 is one of the greatest works in that medium, and the SQ#3 is a dodecaphonic masterwork of great beauty and drama.

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

Right now I'm off on a tangent... driving everyone nuts with one of my collections of medieval Byzantine and Sephardic music:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3494/4044000721_017d78c863_o.jpg

Lots of strange rhythms, bizarre instruments, hypnotic modal music and chants. I love it!:D

[OrphanPip]

I never get tired of Debussy's Nocturnes, especially Nuages.

[stlukesguild]

Dawn Upshaw is certainly one of the best and most intelligent singers active today. On this last account she is perhaps only rivaled by Anne Sofie von Otter, Cecilia Bartoli, and a few others. Her silvery voice has caressed everything from Renaissance arias to the latest vocal works of Osvaldo Golijov.
I've recently finished playing her disc, White Moon.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2490/4057199046_425be59651_o.jpg

This is a fascinating collection of songs beautifully sung. Dawn Upshaw sings a selection of songs and arias based upon the theme of the moon including works by Peter Warlock, Handel, Monteverdi, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Joseph Swantner, John Dowland, Heitor Victor-Lobos, George Crumb, and Henry Purcell. A lovely disc.:nod:

[Fen]

I am listening to Purcell. I love how it is so crisp and clear yet it can be soft and moving too. Also the way his music moves about like in his Trumpet voluntary.

[Virgil]

I just love this rendition of a shaker hymn arranged for classical music and played by Yo Yo Ma and sung by Alison Krauss. Aaron Copeland made it famous by using the melody in Appalachian Spring. But Ma's and and Krauss' rendition is so exquisite!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBOYYlanm1k

[Maryd.]

Hey all, just thought I would share something odd about classical listening. When my daughter (heathcliff) was born, she had a severe case of, what we believed was colic. This went on for roughly 10 months. We tried every thing doctors... Prescribed medications... Old remedies everything. Then one day around the fourth month we got so sick of all the noise. (Did I also mention she had a great pair of lungs.:lol:) We decided to put a Pavrotti Cd on - in loud stereo. She screamed even louder until she got to this one song. Actually I think it was an Italian opera lullaby. I wasn't really sure, but we put the song on repeat for one hour and were just stunned at her silence.

Needless to say from that day onwards we would put the song on repeat at least one to two hours a day. It worked and she remained calm after that. Now she is quite the scholar, sometimes we say Pavrotti did that and sometimes we say two negatives made a possitive. :lol:

[Virgil]

Hey all, just thought I would share something odd about classical listening. When my daughter (heathcliff) was born, she had a severe case of, what we believed was colic. This went on for roughly 10 months. We tried every thing doctors... Prescribed medications... Old remedies everything. Then one day around the fourth month we got so sick of all the noise. (Did I also mention she had a great pair of lungs.:lol:) We decided to put a Pavrotti Cd on - in loud stereo. She screamed even louder until she got to this one song. Actually I think it was an Italian opera lullaby. I wasn't really sure, but we put the song on repeat for one hour and were just stunned at her silence.

Needless to say from that day onwards we would put the song on repeat at least one to two hours a day. It worked and she remained calm after that. Now she is quite the scholar, sometimes we say Pavrotti did that and sometimes we say two negatives made a possitive. :lol:
:) Great story Mary. I'll have to send Heathcliff my favorite Pavorotti youtube. :D

[Maryd.]

:) Great story Mary. I'll have to send Heathcliff my favorite Pavorotti youtube. :D

You do that Virg, I'm sure she will appreciate it...

[Virgil]

You do that Virg, I'm sure she will appreciate it...

I did and she liked it. :)

[atiguhya padma]

I am currently listening to David Lang, a composer I am unfamiliar with. I like his minimal-like sound. The piece I am listening to is Child. Does anyone here know his music?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Working to Rachmaninov's piano concerto 2 and 3, good music to type to, not too distracting. I have also been listening to Handel's water music and Mozart's piano concerto no. 23 this morning.

It was a blow to lose a lot of music when my old computer went a few weeks ago, I'll have to build it up again and this time make back-ups if I don't get them as CDs, lost a few good Bach recordings...:(

[stlukesguild]

Sorry to hear, Neely. Mine is currently in the last throws... albeit it'll have to wait. I must buy a car next pay check. I won't lose anything much, however, when I change over. I learned my lesson over a year ago when a power surge virtually fried my hard drive. I now have two exterior hard drives with a terra-bit (1000 Gigs) of memory).
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I'm currently listening to Carl Stamitz' clarinet concertos:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2730/4062223261_fd8aab8b15_o.jpg

I must admit that our resident "musicologist" with his goofy conspiracy theories on Mozart and Haydn does some good by drawing attention to the fact that Mozart and Haydn were not the sole composers of merit during their lifetime. The average classical music fan could easily name some dozen composers of genius of the late Romantic age (Brahms, Bruckner, Wagner, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Puccini, Mussorgsky, etc...). While Bach may be the towering figure of the Baroque it is also easy to name a half dozen or more composers of real merit that were his contemporaries (Vivaldi, Telemann, Handel, Scarlatti, Corelli, etc...). But one almost gets the notion that Mozart and Haydn had the whole of the "Classical" era to themselves. The reality is that there are any number of other talented composers of the age that have been far to long ignored: C.P.E. Bach, Joseph Haydn's brother, Michael Haydn, Carl Stamitz, Paul Wranitzky, Christian Cannabich, Franz Anton Hoffmeister, Franz Krommer, Josef Myslivecek, Louis Spohr, Joseph Martin Kraus, and more. This collection of clarinet concertos by Stamitz is quite lovely... even if it never quite attains the sublime level of Mozart's finest work.

[Gladys]

C.P.E. Bach, Joseph Haydn's brother, Michael Haydn, Carl Stamitz, Paul Wranitzky, Christian Cannabich, Franz Anton Hoffmeister, Franz Krommer, Josef Myslivecek, Louis Spohr, Joseph Martin Kraus, and more

Early Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn certainly dwarf the rest. I also enjoy Stamitz, and can add only J.C. Bach, Luigi Boccherini, Muzio Clementi, Domenico Cimarosa and Luigi Cherubini.

Purcell, Pergolesi and Heinrich Schütz are my current fascination.

[stlukesguild]

Currently I'm listening to Vladimír Godár's disc, Mater. Godár is a Slovak composer born in Bratislava. His music combines elements of Minimalism... especially those of the so-called "Holy Minimalists" such as Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki, John Rutter and John Tavener with elements of folk music, echoes of medieval modal music and chant, and even aspects of Middle Eastern music. There is a brooding, eastern European melancholy to the music... and yet it never slips into mere sentimentality. The music on this disc is all composed for solo female vocal, chorus, and string orchestra. The lead singer, Iva Bittová is neither a traditional classical/operatic singer or a pop singer, but rather something closer to a highly sophisticated folk singer. Godár has a deep connection with Slovak folk music, having transcribed a collection of Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs by Leoš Janáček. This music is touching, deeply moving, and at its best resonant with a real spirituality. A composer worth watching.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2435/4062052396_abaab2e834_o.jpg

[stlukesguild]

I've been padding out much of my classical music collection recently. I've been seeking to fill in certain gaps such as that of Russian composers and especially Russian opera, Modern and Contemporary composers, and less-well-known composers... the peers of the giant figures such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms, and Stravinsky. At the same time I've been fleshing out my collection of works on the greatest composers by seeking out a second or third version of favorite piece and definitive recordings of other works. This has led me to the purchase of a good number of box sets. I've recently purchased box sets on Haydn's piano sonatas (and symphonies), Beethoven's piano sonatas, Schubert's piano sonatas, and Schumann's works for solo piano. It just so happens that all of these piano box sets were recordings of the magnificent Wilhelm Kempff. Kempff was one of the most elegant and sensitive of pianists... and clearly one of the greatest of the 20th century. His approach was seen by some as highly reserved. Unlike pianists like Rubinstein and Glenn Gould (brilliant in their own way) he never imposed his own romantic or quirky visions upon the music he was interpreted. An artist like Gould is always present (for better or worse) in his interpretations. When Kempff plays Beethoven it is Beethoven we get. Kempff is virtually transparent... invisible. After having played Beethoven's great Hammerklavier sonata for Sibelius, the aged composer remarked, "You did not play like a pianist; you played like a human being."

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Currently I am listening to Wilhelm Kempff's recordings of Schumann's works for solo piano. Robert Schumann in many ways was the father of Romanticism and his own life was a Romantic tragedy. Schumann was enamored of literature to nearly the same extent as he was of music. As a student he devoured the works of Goethe, Schiller, Byron, the Greeks, Heinrich Heine, etc...

Robert Schumann (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) studied piano under the guidance of Friederich Wieck and soon developed a passion for the music of Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn and aspirations for a musical career. He rapidly developed as a talented pianist and was virtually assured a lucrative career as a concert pianist until he permanently injured his right hand. At this time he shifted his focus to composition.

Schumann developed the notion of merging the musical with the poetic or literary (as opposed to the purely abstract "absolute music"). With his work Papillons (Butterflies) Schumann sought to consciously set ideas and moods from a beloved novel in musical form. He also began writing critical essays in defense of his poetic music.

Following the death of his brother, Schumann made a first attempt at suicide. Recovering from this he established Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik ("New Journal in Music") in which he lambasted the popular taste for flashy technical displays from figures such as Paganini, Liszt, and Wagner whom Schumann perceived as inferior composers. Instead he campaigned to revive interest in major composers of the past, including Mozart, Beethoven and Weber. As a music critic one must even credit Schumann with having discovered Schubert's then unknown Symphony no. 9 while in Vienna

Schumann became engaged in 1934 to the wealthy 16 year-old Ernestine von Fricken but broke this engagement off due to growing attractions for Clara Wieck, the talented pianist and daughter of his former teacher. Clara's father forbid their relationship and rejected Schumann's entreaties to marriage leading to a long legal dispute that was only ended when Clara came of age and was able to marry without consent.

Schumann continued to compose music with literary poetic underpinnings. In his work, Carnaval, Schumann named sections for both Ernestine ("Estrella") and Clara ("Chiarina"). Eusebius and Florestan, the imaginary figures appearing so often in his critical writings, also appear, alongside brilliant imitations of Chopin and Paganini. In Carnaval, Schumann went further than in Papillons, by conceiving the story as well as the musical illustration.

Other important compositions include The Kinderszenen, a favorite of Schumann's piano works, is playful and childlike, and nicely captures the innocence of childhood. Träumerei is one of the most famous piano pieces ever written, and exists in myriad forms and transcriptions. The piece, like much of Schumann's work, appears simple, but has been defended as "complex" in its harmonic structure.

The Kreisleriana, considered one of Schumann's greatest works, also carried his fantasy and emotional range further. Johannes Kreisler, the fictional poet created by poet E. T. A. Hoffman who is limned as a "romantic brought into contact with reality", was appropriated by Schumann who utilized him as an imaginary mouthpiece for the sonic expression of emotional states, in music that is "fantastic and mad."

In 1940 Robert and Clara were married, consummating the great love story of the lovers kept apart by her parents. He continued write important music criticism and major works of music, including his 4 symphonies and his settings of the Liederkreis of Joseph von Eichendorff, the Frauenliebe und -leben of Chamisso (Op. 42), the Dichterliebe of Heine (Op. 48) and Myrthen, a collection of songs, including poems by Goethe, Rückert, Heine, Byron, Burns and Moore. He was afforded little recognition, however. On one occasion, accompanying his wife on a concert tour in Russia, Schumann was asked whether 'he too was a musician'.

By the mid-1850s Schumann began to exhibit signs of mental illness: He had returned to Düsseldorf and set himself to editing his complete works and making an anthology on the subject of music. He imagined that voices sounded in his ear and he heard angelic music. One night he suddenly left his bed, having dreamt or imagined that a ghost (purportedly the spirit of either Schubert or Mendelssohn) had dictated a "spirit theme" to him. Schumann's symptoms increased, the angelic visions sometimes being replaced by demonic visions. He warned Clara that he feared he might do her harm. On 27 February 1854, he attempted suicide by throwing himself from a bridge into the Rhine River. Rescued by boatmen and taken home, he asked to be taken to an asylum for the insane. He entered Dr. Franz Richarz' sanitarium in Endenich, a quarter of Bonn, and remained there until his death on 29 July 1856. Given his reported symptoms, one modern view is that his death was a result of syphilis, which he may have contracted during his student days, and which would have remained latent during most of his marriage. According to studies by the musicologist and literary scholar Eric Sams, Schumann's symptoms during his terminal illness and death appear consistent with those of mercury poisoning, mercury being a common treatment for syphilis and other conditions.

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

[estelwen]

Unlike pianists like Rubinstein and Glenn Gould (brilliant in their own way) he never imposed his own romantic or quirky visions upon the music he was interpreted. An artist like Gould is always present (for better or worse) in his interpretations.

Agreed! However, the force of Gould's personality is undeniable. I am currently listening to his recordings of the Goldberg Variations, both the early recording from 1955 and the later one from 1981. The contrast between the two is riveting. The first, bombastic and arrogant, the last humble and meditative but still fiery. Both are among my favorites.

[stlukesguild]

Don't get me wrong. I love Gould's recordings. I have almost everything he did by Bach. I agree about his Goldberg's. The first version was a revelation... but compared to the latter version recorded in the 1980s it is far more florid... almost decorative. The same might be said about Richter's recordings of the Well Tempered Clavier vs that of Angela Hewitt...for example. But this is why classical music fans/fanatics often end up with multiple recordings of the same favorite pieces of music. I think I currently have 4 or 5 versions of the Goldberg Variations and 4 of the Art of the Fugue including a recent favorite performed upon recorders.

[stlukesguild]

I am currently listening to David Lang, a composer I am unfamiliar with. I like his minimal-like sound. The piece I am listening to is Child. Does anyone here know his music?

I had to look him up. I've had his Little Match Girl Passion on my "wish list". THis is a vocal work drawing upon some of the format or structure of J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion. It is a choral retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's tale of the "little match girl" who dies in the cold selling matches. It won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2008 and seems quite promising. The music is clearly rooted in the language of Minimalism... although I must admit to taste for the so-called "holy minimalism" found in Eastern European composers such as Arvo Part, Henryck Gorecki, etc... over the American counterparts that often strike me as merely clever.

[Gladys]

Thanks, Stlukesguild, for your biography of the subtle Schumann, whom I have come to love.

As for Glenn Gould, while liking much of his Bach, I have a high tempo recording of Beethoven's Piano Sonata 30, Op 109, that I abhor.

[stlukesguild]

Currently listening to this disc...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2467/4043128320_64d520c1ee_o.jpg

... of the music of Carlo Gesualdo performed by the marvelous Hilliard Ensemble.

Carlo Gesualdo (March 8, 1566 – September 8, 1613) is a truly fascinating figure within the history of music. Gesualdo was part of an aristocratic family which had acquired the principality of Venosa in 1560. His uncle was Carlo Borromeo, later Saint Charles Borromeo. His mother, Girolama, was the niece of Pope Pius IV. Gesualdo showed little interest in anything other than music
and through his single-minded devotion he rapidly developed as a talented performer upon the lute, guitar, and harpsichord.

In 1586 Gesualdo married his first cousin, Donna Maria d'Avalos, the daughter of the Marquis of Pescara. Two years later she began to have a love affair with Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria. Donna Maria successfully kept the affair secret from her husband for almost two years, even though it was well-known elsewhere.

On October 16, 1590, at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples, when Gesualdo had allegedly gone away on a hunting trip, the two lovers took insufficient precaution at last (Gesualdo had arranged with his servants to have the locks of his palace copied in wood so that he could gain entrance if it were locked), and he returned to the palace, caught them in flagrante delicto and murdered them both in their conjugal bed. Gesualdo had help from his servants, who may have done most of the killing; however Gesualdo reportedly stabbed Maria repeatedly, shouting, "she's not dead yet!" The Duke of Andria suffered numerous deep sword wounds, as well as by a shot through the head and was dressed in a woman's clothing (specifically, Maria's night dress). His own clothing was later found piled up by the bedside, unbloodied. One suggested explanation for this is that Gesualdo first murdered his wife, and only after this turned his attentions to the Duke, forcing him to don his lover's clothing, most probably to humiliate him. (Wikipedia- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Gesualdo )

Gesualdo had their mutilated bodies left in front of the palace with a single sword running through the pair of lovers for all to see. As a nobleman he was immune to prosecution, but not to revenge, so he fled to his castle at Gesualdo where he would be safe from any of the relatives of either his wife or her lover.

Reports of the murders widely circulated... including versified versions by poets such as Tasso. Rumors also circulated suggesting that Gesualdo had also murdered his infant son (doubting his paternity) and his father-in-law. In spite of all the grisly details and fictitious details, nothing was done to apprehend the murderer.

Gesualdo spent several years in Ferrara, one of the leading centers of progressive musical activity in Italy, especially in the madrigal. It was home to Luzzasco Luzzaschi, one of the most forward-looking composers in the genre. And Gesualdo was continually surrounded by some of the most talented musicians in the whole of Italy.

After marrying for a second time, to Leonora d'Este, the niece of Duke Alfonso II, the composer returned to his estate at Gesualdo in the Kingdom of Naples where he established an environment much like that he enjoyed at Ferrara. At his own expense he hired resident virtuoso musicians and singers to perform his work. His estate became a center of music-making for Gesualdo alone and he rarely left his castle, taking delight in nothing but music.

His second wife eventually left him and her family petitioned for divorce, claiming abusive behavior. Gesualdo continued to focus solely upon his music, and eventually slipped into bouts of depression. Whether this depression was related to the guilt over his multiple murders is difficult to prove, but the evidence is suggestive. "The evidence that Gesualdo was tortured by guilt for the remainder of his life is considerable, and he may have given expression to it in his music. One of the most obvious characteristics of his music is the extravagant text setting of words representing extremes of emotion: "love", "pain", "death", "ecstasy", "agony" and other similar words occur frequently in his madrigal texts, most of which he probably wrote himself. While this type of word-painting is common among madrigalists of the late 16th century, it reached an extreme development in Gesualdo's music." (Wikipedia)

Gesualdo's music was known for its shocking chromatic juxtapositions that push the limits of tonality in a manner that would not be seen again until the 19th century with the works of composers such as Mahler, and not fully realized until the development of atonal music with Schoenberg. Gesualdo's musical output was largely focused upon secular and sacred madrigals, a vocal form employing multiple voices (initially unaccompanied) employed in a polyphonic manner. The form would eventually be absorbed into the cantata and finally replaced by the aria with the development of the opera.

Gesualdo's later madrigals were largely madrigali spirituali or madrigals based upon sacred texts. The particular music performed in this recording is a collection of madrigals built upon the text from the Passion and used for the Tenebrae (a Latin term for "darkness" or "shadows"), a service held before Good Friday and marking the death of Christ. This particular grouping was entitled Tenebrae Responsoria employed particularly sharp dissonance and shocking chromatic juxtapositions, especially in the parts highlighting text passages having to do with Christ's suffering, or the guilt of St. Peter in having betrayed Jesus... and echoing (perhaps) the composer's own deep-seated guilt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVW8GCnr9-I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZAs9LjJAHU

[OrphanPip]

I love madrigals my favorite is "Lamento della Ninfa" composed by Montiverdi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ZX5hFN-is

[stlukesguild]

I recebtly gave a second listen to Daniel Catán's opera, Rappaccini's Daughter... followed almost immediately by still another listening.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2790/4078772446_9a4913c252_o.jpg

I cannot recommend this opera enough. Catán is a contemporary Mexican composer currently living in the US. Rappaccini's Daughter was the first opera composed by a Mexican to be performed in the US and his next opera, Florencia en el Amazonas was the first original Spanish-language opera to be commissioned by a major US venue and the most successful original opera ever staged in the history of the Houston opera (which commissioned the work).

Rappaccini's Daughter is based upon the Mexican poet, Octavio Paz' dramatization of the original story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The tale has all the making of a classic opera: an impossible love, a jealous father, a tragic ending... and absolutely exquisite music. Catán has been called a Neo-Romatic and a Neo-Impressionist... and there are elements of both Romaticism and Impressionism in this work: melodies are rich, broad, and expansive, drifting along like spun gold... shimmering with sensual, exotic... even erotic tonal delight and rising to blissful crescendos. The scoring glows with a painterly use of orchestration. I that anyone with a bias against contemporary classical music would be more than enthralled... especially considering the grossly inexpensive price of the Naxos edition of the premier recording of the highlights from this work.

Looking for more info on Catán after having been admittedly seduced, I discovered that the composer has attained something of a reputation as the leading Latin-American operatic composer and has received the most glowing reviews from any number of esteemed music critics. Outside of Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2472/4078778130_269048b877_o.jpg

...(and perhaps not even that) I cannot think of a recent opera... or symphonic work of any genre... that has so immediately captivated me.

Catan's next opera, Florencia en el Amazonas was afforded a lavish production by the Huston Grand Opera including a much-more lavishly produced recording:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2617/4078017901_2631673d8c_o.jpg

Florencia continues Catan's exploration or embrace of the Latin-American tradition of "magic realism". The libretto was written byMarcela Fuentes-Berain, herself a literary collaborator with Gabriel Garcia- Marquez. She describes the libretto of Florencia as an homage to Garcia-Marquez.

The narrative of the opera is based upon a classic theme: the strange (river) voyage as a source of danger, wonder, and ultimately, self-discovery. The main character, Florencia, is an opera singer returning home after a long and successful career and seeking her long lost love, Cristobal, the butterfly catcher. Fellow travelers include Riolobo, a magical creature who takes multiple forms; Paulo and Alvaro, a married couple who need to learn once more how to love; Rosalbo, a journalist writing a book on Florencia and his nephew and apprentice, Arcadio... who both discover love.

The music of Florencia again builds upon late Romantic and Impressionist traditions ala Puccini with broad, lush, sweeping melodies punctuated by the dissonances of Stravinsky, Bartok, and other Modernist composers. Catan avoids the rigorous formalist intellectual "games" of composers such as Schoenberg and focuses instead upon music... sweet... bittersweet... and even dissonant... that appeals to and conveys the emotional core. Once again... while Catan's work may not tear previous conventions apart... it is incredibly beautiful and seductive and suggests that the modern artist/composer may still produce something that is more than accessible to the audience while still achieving something of real aesthetic merit.

[stlukesguild]

I'm currently listening to one of the most delightfully decadent recordings I have come across recently: Opium: Mélodies françaises...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2771/4078795666_c075469ac0_o.jpg

...a collection of French songs magically performed by the countertenor, Philippe Jaoussky. This disc presents performances of songs by Reynaldo Hahn, Jules Massenet, Gabriel Faure, Ernest Chausson, Camille Saint-Saëns, Cesar Franck, etc... the greatest composers of France of the fin de siecle. These songs represent a rare and heady bouquet... perfumed and laden with the silk and satin and velvet of the French salons. The lyrics are commonly drawn from the delicate poems of French symbolism: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarme, etc... while the music speaks of the sophisticated and artificial world of the French ballet... the theater... the opera... and of the sun-dappled world of Impressionism.

Jaroussky takes these songs to an even greater height of decadence with his high falsetto. Along with Andreas Scholl, Alfred Deller, and Rene Jacobs, Jaroussky is one of a recent number of highly talented countertenors who are taking their vocal range into an oeuvre previously reserved to sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, and tenors... or even baritones. The artificially high male voice almost immediately recalls the use of castrati and/or young male choir-boy vocalists in the operas and other vocal works of the baroque age. Jaroussky brings a sense of the extreme artifice of Rameau and French Baroque to the 19th century Parisian salons. While I would not be without the performances of such mezzos and sopranos as Cecilia Bartoli, Janet Baker, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Dawn Upshaw in the performance of these works, Jaroussky admittedly brings an added edge of decadence... artifice... and debaucheries to this delicate French bon-bons. I'll most certainly need to follow ths up with something unequivocally muscular/masculine... perhaps a Beethoven symphony or even some Rolling Stones.:lol:

Highly Recommended!:thumbs_up

[stlukesguild]

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2536/4081185031_0ea285956b_o.jpg

Currently I am listening to the works of Domenico Scarlatti. Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer born into a family of composers. His father was the famous Alessandro Scarlatti, a well-known composer of cantatas and operas. Domenico, who spent much of his career in Spain, put most of his genius into the production of 555 keyboard sonatas. Originally written for harpsichord they are equally splendid played upon piano, as in this recording by Mikhail Pletnev. Scarlatti's sonatas were famously described by the Italian poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio as comparable to the sound made when a necklace breaks and the glistening pearls rain down in a resounding hail bouncing and rolling about like precious bubbles or drops of watery beauty. This poetic description almost perfectly describes Scarlatti's sonatas for indeed they suggest shimmering and dancing gems... a light dancing rain of exquisite musical notes. Scarlatti was a peer of J.S. Bach... but his sonatas have none of the almost mathematical perfection and complexity and density of Bach. What they do have is a delicacy and fluidity that is quite different from the great German composer and a joy to hear.:nod:

[Gladys]

Scarlatti was a peer of J.S. Bach... but his sonatas have none of the almost mathematical perfection and complexity and density of Bach. What they do have is a delicacy and fluidity that is quite different from the great German composer and a joy to hear.

I seem to remember reading that the radical Scarlatti was a major influence on the great Beethoven.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Oh my god!!! I've just found out that I have access to the entire Naxos online music library via my university log in!!! :banana: 37,000+ classical CDs!!! I'm certainly a lucky fellow, but wish I would have found out five years ago...

Current listening to:

http://sheffield.naxosmusiclibrary.com.eresources.shef.ac .uk/sharedfiles/images/cds/A92132.gif

I can't recommend the Naxos site enough and if you can't get access via a university link it may well be worth looking into subscribing, there is a free trial period for anyone interested who can't get access. I don't know what to listen to next, this is crazy...:santasmil!!!!!!!

[Emil Miller]

There are many great performances of the Berlin Philharmonic on YouTube but this performance is simply the most astounding of them all. The ensemble playing defies belief. The video is truly outstanding with the cross-cutting between the players a tour de force in itself. Ravel's orchestration of the original piano score is pure genius; listen at 8.07 where the music starts to float in like waves from a distant horizon before being transformed into the massive chords of the glorious finale.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3rUbxbwGGg

[stlukesguild]

Lucky you on the Naxos access. Naxos has, from my understanding, the largest body of classical recordings of any record company. They are also a great budget label. The only downside to Naxos is that as a budget label there are little or no frills: limited liner notes, boring cover art, and no superstar performers and orchestras. This last aspect means that they are rarely the first (or second or third for that matter) choice for major symphonic works, operas, etc... On the other hand... they often are the only choice for new and relatively unknown composers. You should check out Naxos for Modern American composers such as David Diamond, John Corigliano, Ned Rorem, Roy Harris, Virgil Thopson, and even Leonard Bernstein (the recent recording of Bernstein's Mass with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has been garnering glorious reviews. Indeed... anything by Alsop, a Bernstein protege, is worth looking into. Naxos is also good for English composers such as Bax who have only recently been given attention by the big name orchestras. Among their best offerings I would count the East European Modernists such as Penderecki, Martinu, Takemitsu, and even Arvo Part. They also offer some of the only recordings of secondary composers such as Stamitz, Kromer, etc... Anything with the Oxford Camerata is also not to be missed... indeed the whole of their medieval collection is great. I think the peak of their collection, however, has to be the Complete String Quartets by Haydn performed by the fabulous Kodaly Quartet. Not only do these performances hold their own against the bigger names (the Emerson Quartet, the Takacs Quartet, the Fitzwilliam Quartet, etc...) but they set the standard. They are simply put, the best performances available of these works... and Haydn, it might be noted, was both the father of the symphony and the string quartet. I seriously have more recordings on Naxos than on any other label with the exceptions of Deutsche Grammophon and EMI (although Chandos... with their incredible high standards for performance and recording are rapidly becoming my new favorite).

[stlukesguild]

There are many great performances of the Berlin Philharmonic on YouTube but this performance is simply the most astounding of them all. The ensemble playing defies belief.

Is there any orchestra that can possibly compete with the Berlin Philharmonic? Especially under Karajan?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Thanks a lot Stlukes, I'll check those out for sure and have copied your post. I'm a lost chicken with all the choice at the moment - it certainly more than makes up for my computer misery! I've gone through about six or seven CDs already, though have come back to Bach's 6 Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord again and again, though I have not limited myself solely to Bach, but this performance for me (although I am far from an expert) is absolutely delightful:

http://sheffield.naxosmusiclibrary.com.eresources.shef.ac .uk/sharedfiles/images/cds/OC248.gif

I'm pleased you have praised the particular Haydn recording, I've been listening to a little Haydn recently so I put that one close to the top of my pile. Thank you.

[stlukesguild]

I've gone through about six or seven CDs already, though have come back to Bach's 6 Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord again and again...

I'm spoiled. I came to these through the playing of the brilliant Arthur Grumiaux... although I'll admit I prefer the Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin which must be heard performed by Nathan Milstein or Henryck Szeryng.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ7bLwfvGwY&feature=PlayList&p=2B70056933DCC9F8&index=0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPtGoo7X4c4&feature=related

[stlukesguild]

I'm currently listening to Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's absolutely thrilling performance of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto no. 4. One of those "desert island" discs... the only version of the Ravel you will ever need. Insanely, this recording is currently out of print in the EMI catalog... although it is still available as a download.:(

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2626/4087445859_e060167cfe_o.jpg

Damn! Ravel should have written more. More piano concertos... more music in general.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0epYgL0Baqk&feature=related

The Adagio from the Ravel is one of the most achingly beautiful.:bawling: There is a live version of Michelangeli playing this on YouTube but the sound is rather poor and too much audience coughing!:mad: compared to the studio recording. I quite like this version from the BBC Proms.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I seriously have more recordings on Naxos than on any other label with the exceptions of Deutsche Grammophon and EMI (although Chandos... with their incredible high standards for performance and recording are rapidly becoming my new favorite).

I seem to be able to get some Chandos too, they must be connected to Naxos in some way. Listening to Hummel piano sonatas(?) which are on Chandos.

[Emil Miller]

I'm currently listening to Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's absolutely thrilling performance of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto no. 4. One of those "desert island" discs... the only version of the Ravel you will ever need. Insanely, this recording is currently out of print in the EMI catalog... although it is still available as a download.:(

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2626/4087445859_e060167cfe_o.jpg

Damn! Ravel should have written more. More piano concertos... more music in general.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0epYgL0Baqk&feature=related

The Adagio from the Ravel is one of the most achingly beautiful.:bawling: There is a live version of Michelangeli playing this on YouTube but the sound is rather poor and too much audience coughing!:mad: compared to the studio recording. I quite like this version from the BBC Proms.

This recording has long been regarded as the finest peformance on disc of Ravel's concerto in G and I am amazed that it is no longer in the catalogue. I think it is one of the greatest 20th century concertos and marks Ravel as a very great composer. The second movement sounds deceptively simple but Ravel said people had no idea how much effort went into its composition. Michelangeli's rendering is liquid gold and the whole concerto is an intellectual tour de force of the kind that few but the French could pull off.
I was fortunate enough to see Michelangeli perform in London some years ago but not, I'm sorry to say, the Ravel. He was an eccentric who lived in a castle in Italy and made relatively few recordings, despite the large sums offered by recording companies, and his public appearences were rare outside of his own country. It is a great pity that he never recorded Ravel's concerto for the left hand which is also a stunning composition.

[stlukesguild]

Currently listening to Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied Cello.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2743/4094678770_7595efc1e4_o.jpg

One of the greatest achievements in the whole of music... and called by some THE single greatest work of music. I'll not goo that far... but I'll also not dispute it. I had the chance to hear Yo-Yo Ma perform the entire 6 suites some years back which was a truly memorable experience. Nevertheless, my favorite rendering of this work is that of Pierre Fournier (which I am currently listening to). Fournier brings a gravitas to the work that rivals that of Milos Starker while retaining an elegant fluidity worthy of Pablo Casals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmQwkvlwjTA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV8rOBZN_MI&feature=related

[mortalterror]

I don't really own a lot of cds, so I mostly listen to music in mp3 format or online. I do have a nice classical listening Pandora station I set up a while back and every now and then it plays something delightful and unexpected.

Rodeo, Selections From The Ballet: Hoe Down Aaron Copland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StJTl8Hcr68
Violin Concerto In D Minor : I. Allegro Con Fermezza Aram Khachaturian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZexcMRKVMkk
Suite For Jazz Orchestra No. 2: VI. Waltz 2 Dmitry Shostakovich
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYhZVqODYsI
A Midsummer Night's Dream Op. 61: A Dance of Clowns Felix Mendelssohn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InZXjYWaQAo
William Tell Overture Gioachino Rossini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkymTHSbWe0
The Planets, Op. 32, H. 125: Uranus, The Magician Gustav Holst
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeF2mMUiw9o
String Quintet In E, Op. 13 No. 5: Minuet Luigi Boccherini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKpP8XFYIHk
Pictures at an Exhibition for piano Modest Mussorgsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_98452AxFI
Lieutenant Kijé Sergey Prokofiev
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI36pKa4WR8
Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini Sergey Rachmaninov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Z-HCq5EeU
Enigma Variations, For Orchestra, Op. 36: Theme: Andante Sir Edward Elgar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wviJIQpZ_yY
Bolero Ravel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-4J5j74VPw

The rest of the programming is fairly obvious stuff like Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky.

[stlukesguild]

I have a good deal on MP3 format as well but I am repeatedly frustrated with the small "glitches" or gaps that occur (even in "lossless" formatting) in pieces in which one CD track runs into the next ... which is quite common in classical music. I'm also less than thrilled that music downloads cannot include cover art, liner notes and other text.

[stlukesguild]

I'm giving a second listen to a marvelous disc of songs related to the moon drawn from across the ages performed by the inimitable Dawn Upshaw:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2553/4106128699_baa473a865_o.jpg

I am particularly struck by the magnificent Handel aria, Gentle Morpheus...

(Sung here by the marvelous Emma Kirkby... Upshaw's version has a richer and more intimate sound):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C4kMgEZ4bM

This aria, from the opera, Alceste, should most certainly be more known.

[Silas Thorne]

A friend gave me this wonderful CD recently, 'Klazz Brothers and Cuba Percussion- Classic Meets Cuba' (Sony), which has a number of short classical pieces done with Cuban rhythms, including three short interpretations of Beethoven's Sonata No. 8 'Pathetique' and some Brahms and Bach thrown in. Not traditional, sure, but wonderful stuff. :)

[stlukesguild]

AcccKK!! After listening to but a few selections of this on Amazon.com I can't say I'm thrilled. Nauseated may be a better word.:sick: It reminds me too much of those slick "Hooked on Classics" discs from the late 80s/early 90s in which Beethoven and Mozart were subjected to a disco beat. On the other hand... there are a few such reinterpretations I do find of merit. The Jacques Loussier Trio's jazz interpretations of Baroque classics... especially Bach... are quite inspired...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2727/4107664547_b42814a918_o.jpg

The same can be said of the great jazz saxman, Lee Konitz' interpretations of French Impressionist music. Of course Konitz... with Warne Marsh and Lennie Tristano brought were early masters of exporting ideas from classical music into the world of jazz...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2565/4108429934_3e94f0e542_o.jpg

Then... of course... there is the great Miles Davis disc, Sketches of Spain...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2501/4107664639_7eb5a41d1f_o.jpg

Seriously... classical music has long fed off of jazz (to say nothing of folk music). One need only listen to Shostakovitch, Stravinsky, Poulenc, Kurt Weil, Gerschwin, Bernstein, etc... One of my favorite near contemporary works of music is William Bolcom's vast Songs of Innocence and of Experience , a setting of the poems by William Blake that employs a true eclectic range of styles from operatic to jazz to atonal modernism to lush Romanticism to reggae and bluegrass.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2751/4107694307_a5b332bae2_o.jpg

Of course the music of the contemporary composer, Osvaldo Golijov, is just as "polystylistic" in nature... merging elements of Latin-American, Spanish, Middle-Eastern, traditional Hebrew and modern Israeli music with Klezmer, elements of Western classical music, opera, gospel, Broadway, etc...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2479/4086863823_541f412457_o.jpg

As always, art will continue to evolve from a merger of traditions... a blurring of high and low... East and West...

[stlukesguild]

Currently listening to J.S. Bach... who is ever my favorite composer... and commonly held to be one of the immortal trinity of classical music (Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart) and quite possibly the greatest composer of all time. What is quite fascinating is the manner in which Bach and Beethoven (especially) differ. Beethoven's reputation owes much to his having been one of the greatest innovators in the history of music. Bach, on the other hand, is more of a summarizer. He takes forms and musical ideas and genre that already exist and virtually exhausts them... to the point that one can almost say nothing after Bach.

Above I spoke of listening to Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. This work is certainly one such example of Bach virtually exhausting a given genre. The suites are essentially structured upon dance movements common to suites and ballets. He then explores the possibilities of how these forms might be filtered through the range and limitations of the solo cello. The resulting work is such a towering achievement (a good many music aficionados have called it the single greatest work of music ever composed) that almost no major composer dared to ever again attempt a major work for solo cello. To this day there are but a few limited major works within the repertoire for solo cello.

Bach achieved the same with the Brandenburg Concertos which virtually exhaust the form of the concerti grossi. The passions, cantatas, the Mass in B-Minor make Bach the unrivaled master of choral music. He takes the fugue to heights unrivaled... to the point that almost any use of the form by later composers, such as Mozart's use in the Symphony no. 41, Beethoven's use in Symphony no. 3 and in the string quartet (the so-called "grosse fugue") are direct allusions and homages to their great predecessor.

Organ music is another genre in which Bach's reputation absolutely towers over every other composer. Certainly, Bach had his predecessors. Dietrich Buxtehude was Bach's idol and the young Johann Sebastian had even sought to become an apprentice to the master, but abandoned this goal as a result of Buxtehude's requirement that he marry his daughter. There have also been marvelous composers for the organ who followed in Bach's wake. Among these we might count Johann Brahms, Josef Rheinberger, Felix Mendelssohn, Max Reger, César Franck, Camille Saint-Saëns, Maurice Duruflé, Olivier Messiaen... and the Modernist organ works of Messiaen are certainly quite fascinating... but to this day organ music and J.S. Bach are almost synonymous.

Currently I am listening to this:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2490/4110859641_b67a525b04_o.jpg

Helmut Walcha is an absolutely fascinating figure in and of himself. The German musician was blinded by a smallpox vaccine at the age of 19. In spite of this disability, he was accepted to the Leipzig Conservatory and became an assistant at the Thomaskirche to Günther Ramin, who was professor of organ at the conservatory and cantor at St. Thomas'. In 1929, Walcha accepted a position in Frankfurt am Main at the Friedenskirche and remained in Frankfurt for the rest of his life. From 1933 to 1938 he taught at the Hoch Conservatory. In 1938 he was appointed professor of organ at the Musikhochschule in Frankfurt and organist of the Dreikönigskirche in 1946. Walcha specialized in the organ works of the Dutch and German Baroque composers... especially Bach. He needed to memorize the entire score of the works he performed as a result of his blindness. He incredibly did this with the entire organ works of Bach, which he recorded twice: once from 1947-52 and the second time from 1956-71.

This is the earlier of the two recordings, performed on the magnificent Arp Schnitger organ at Cappel before it was ruined by the introduction of steam heat in the 1950's. Walcha was an obsessive controller who used music to shape his world. He treats each piece as a treasure to be cherished and burnished. His performances avoid any of the excessive mannerisms of later organists. Each and every "voice" rings clearly. We are told that Bach would travel miles to hear great organists perform, and Helmut Walcha is just such an organist as those. Walcha said of Bach, "Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all."
Indeed!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ckUdiM7iMI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCvWkHv4tcw

[LitNetIsGreat]

Currently listening to J.S. Bach... who is ever my favorite composer

Me too on both counts.

Over the past week I have been abusing the Naxos site listening to many Bach recordings in particular - that's the thing with Bach his catalogue is just so big and varied that there is always something there to suit your particular mood or fancy. If you are in the mood for something epic the passions, masses and the choral stuff are just so overwhelming, whereas some of his chamber music, the solo violin performances are delightfully intimate, with a hell of a lot in between!

Of course this is true of many other composers but none that can live up to the quality of Bach, there is something about his music that just works...the words are in the music.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I would greatly recommend this:

BACH, J.S.: Violin Concertos, BWV 1041, 1042, 1052, 1056 (Zehetmair, Amsterdam Bach Soloists)

http://sheffield.naxosmusiclibrary.com.eresources.shef.ac .uk/sharedfiles/images/cds/others/0011142BC.gif

One of my favourite Bach pieces is the violin (or piano) concerto no in A minor no. 1041. I love Gould's version and have played that hundreds of times. I have listened to dozens of different versions and the one above also strikes me as a particularly good version. I would argue that the first movement is often too rushed, but this one seems to deliver more depth and sophistication, it's just slower and has more impact. I do love the Gould too much though, and have all but banned myself from listening to it!

Of course I am still a baby in terms of classical music, but I thought I would share my thoughts regardless...:smash:

[stlukesguild]

For the violin concertos I have one classic archival recording with the brilliant and very young Yehudi Menuhin and conductor George Enescu.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2564/4123675176_454e59cc4b_o.jpg

Recorded in 1934 the sound quality is certainly lacking the depth of more recent recordings and I wouldn't recommend it as a first choice for these works. Still, Menuhin is brilliant and it is a must-have for the classical collector (especially for the Bach aficionado). I also have a recording with the marvelous Andrew Manze and a very young (and also brilliant) Rachel Podger.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2508/4123675110_c17442060e_o.jpg

This recording I would recommend as a first choice without any reservations. Manze is a brilliant performer/conductor/director of HIP (Historically Informed Performances) productions of Baroque music, and both he and Podger are virtually unrivaled as violinists of this repertoire.

AS for the keyboard concertos... originally I found that I preferred these works to be performed on the historically accurate keyboard: the harpsichord. With time I have found that the harpsichord loses its attraction as an exotic instruments and inability to control more subtle nuances of volume and touch and the use of the sustaining pedal mas led me to far prefer Bach on the piano. Gould is a necessity for any lover of classical music and Bach... but he may not be my first choice. Angela Hewitt and Murray Perahia are surely the current masters of Bach on keyboard. With (or Sviatoslav Richter) I find that I am struck by the genius of Gould... or Richter. With Hewitt or Perahia I am struck by the genius of Bach. In other words... Hewitt and Perahia are more "transparent" and far less prone to mannerisms or unexpected interpretations. In a similar manner I would recommend Gidon Kremer's recordings of Bach's sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin... but not as the first choice. My absoulte favorite recordings for the Bach keyboard concertos are Perahia's which were a revelation...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2508/4123674926_a1ef022544_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2711/4122904777_2e9d3809ac_o.jpg

There is a sort of crystal clarity to the "voices" in Perahia's recordings... so that each and every note rings clear like shimmering pearls among the whole necklace. These recordings also broke away from interpretations in which Bach came across as something of an archaic and tenuous first steps toward the modern piano concerto. Perahia's recordings bring alive the magic and originality of these concertos and make it clear that Bach should be counted among the true fathers of the piano/keyboard concerto... along with C.P.E. Bach and Mozart.

Thanks for the reminder of these works. I haven't listened to them for quite some time. They are truly marvelous.

[stlukesguild]

Neely... and any other interested parties... I should suggest that as you become more serious about exploring the music of Bach you must come to the point where you will begin to discover his vocal/choral music. Bach is unquestionably the greatest composer of choral music and music written for the church. During Bach's period of employment at Leipzig (1723–50) his duties included instruction of the students of the Thomasschule in singing, composition of weekly music for use in services in the two main churches in Leipzig, St. Thomas's and St Nicholas's. His post also obliged him to teach Latin, but he was allowed to employ a deputy to do this instead. In an astonishing burst of creativity, he wrote up to five annual cantata cycles during his first six years in Leipzig (two of which have apparently been lost). Bach's entire output of cantatas is estimated to have been slightly over 300, some 200 of which have come down to us. These cantatas were often structured upon well-known Lutheran hymns Wachet auf! Ruft uns die Stimme and Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland.

Bachs cantatas amount to one of the greatest artistic achievements of Western civilization... and this does not even take into account the larger, grander, and more profound choral compositions such as the Saint John Passion, Saint Matthew Passion, the Christmas Oratorio, and the Mass in B-minor. Bach's cantatas contain some of his most beautiful music... some of the most beautiful music ever penned. The scale, orchestration, choice of vocalists, etc... changes from one work to the next so that the cantatas... in spite of the speed of their composition... present the greatest variety of mood, "color", "texture", etc... There are works that employ a full Baroque orchestra, choir, multiple vocal and instrumental soloists... and there are works that are among the most intimate in compositions, structure, and scale.

Currently, I am listening to Philippe Herreweghe's recording of Bach's cantatas for bass.http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2543/4123791844_0e1dce25b8_o.gif

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2628/4123780652_ece8e23bb8_o.jpg

These are certainly among Bach's most gorgeous works. Cantata BWV 56 Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen presents the most lovely orchestration. In one passage the vocalist and cello are woven together in the most splendid manner. In the aria which follows the vocalist sings against a bass pattern of the bassoon and the most lovely theme played by the oboe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbkQLLWN5bg

Cantata BWV 82 is one of the most magical of all Bach's creations. The first two arias (Ich habe genug and Schlummert ein) are absolutely exquisite... and deeply... profoundly moving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTdWM6uoOxE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRnA8VaFzD8&feature=related

AS I'm on something of a Bach kick right now... although he is never far from by stereo for long... I'll make something of an attempt to explore more of these cantatas over the coming days... weeks... as they are certainly ideal for this time of year.

[Petrarch's Love]

Ah ha! So this is where the music crowd has migrated. Bach! Hoorah!


Currently, I am listening to Philippe Herreweghe's recording of Bach's cantatas for bass.
These are certainly among Bach's most gorgeous works. Cantata BWV 56 Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen presents the most lovely orchestration. In one passage the vocalist and cello are woven together in the most splendid manner. In the aria which follows the vocalist sings against a bass pattern of the bassoon and the most lovely theme played by the oboe...

Hmm. I had missed the bass cantatas until now (though I've listened around in the cantatas generally speaking). I'll have to listen to the links you provide tomorrow morning. Of course, that may be putting yet more temptation to visit the i-tunes store in my way (they make it entirely too easy to purchase music online!) Always good to discover new Bach.

[Gladys]

Bach's cantatas amount to one of the greatest artistic achievements of Western civilization

No argument from me, having sat this morning in a Lutheran Church listening to Ach wie fluchtig, ach wie nichtig (Cantata BWV 26), the F Major Organ Prelude, and appropriate selections from the B Minor Mass.


http://www.ohta.org.au/images/SOUTHGATE5.jpg

I stumbled upon the Cantatas early in the 1980's and haven't looked back.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I feel like I am bathing in Bach here - it is fantastic! Thanks for the suggestions, I'll be sure to look those up as soon as possible. :)

[stlukesguild]

Two of Bach's most deservedly famous... and magnificent cantatas are BWV 140 and 147. Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140 may just be my absolute favorite of Bach's cantatas. The text for this particular cantata is based upon the Biblical allegory of the wise and foolish virgins who await the coming of their Lord. Like the erotic relationship of Shulamite and her Lord from the Song of Solomon, this too was explained away by Christian theologians as symbolic of the longing of the Church or the soul of the true believer for the coming of the Lord (Jesus). Artists, nevertheless, have long recognized the erotic content of this theme of longing and portrayed it as such, whether in San Juan de la Cruz' Dark Night of the Soul, Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa (or indeed, Theresa of Avila's original ecstatic vision) or Bach's Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme.

BWV 140 begins with a marvelous chorale, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme in which the vocal line of the stately chorus weaves through the noble, rhythmic processional music of the orchestra:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSgseffAn2U&feature=related

This is followed immediately by a recitative in which the singer announces excitedly, "The bridegroom comes... he comes!!!" The marvelous duet, Wenn kommst du mein Heil. In this piece the bride repeatedly asks with longing and anguish "When do you come, my Lord?":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REt_hEDE7Xo&feature=related

The pair of lovers sing their duet of love and longing against the most ardent, passionate, and yearning of music played by strings. At the conclusion the full chorus returns again for the chorale Zion hört die Wächter singen. This exquisite tune... well known within the Lutheran Church... results in one of Bach's most memorable and recognizable creations... a work heard repeatedly in orchestral and instrumental transcriptions. Again the chorus offers a staid counterpart to the rhythmic procession of the orchestral music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pmGFqH8iwk&NR=1

The chorale is followed by a brief recitative is which the Lord/Bridegroom invites his Bride to come and go with him for all eternity.

The cantata end with a joyful and jaunty duet in which the lovers sing "My Lord in mine," "And I am thine". The music is almost Mozartian. One can imagine it as having been sung by the lovers at the conclusion of The Magic Flute. The work is then concluded with the noble chorale, Gloria sei dir gesungen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imTIE5MeW_U&feature=related

****************

Cantata BWV 147 begins with an elaborately constructed vocal fugue framed by an almost Handelian orchestral fanfare:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wraO_FOpFJ4

This cantata presents a wealth of lovely arias including the exquisite Bereite dir, Jesu, noch itzo die Bahn in which the ecstatic soprano vocal melody is accompanied by a lyrically expressive solo violin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK_cp16Aph8

There is a lovely tenor aria, Hilf, Jesu, hilf which begins the second half of the cantata in which the soloist is accompanied by a continuo of orgna and strings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae9trX3jKX4

There is also a bass aria in which the vocalist declares "I will sing of Jesus' wonder..." to an accompaniment of trumpet, strings and oboe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKrsqh-H5YU

The variety of vocalists and instrumental accompaniment makes this one of Bach's most grandiose and diverse of creations with a rich cast of musical "colors" and "textures"

The most famous section of this cantata, however... one of Bach's most famous creations... indeed one of the most famous works in the whole of classical music is the great chorale, Wohl mir, daß ich Jesum habe, commonly known as Jesu, joy of man's desiring. This work, which makes two appearances (separate verses) is Bach's reworking and orchestration of the well-known Lutheran hymn by Martin Jahn. Bach's orchestration with strings and oboe is absolutely exquisite and clearly explains the continued popularity of the work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jFxeO63fj8&feature=related

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2641/4125346275_a8ce366708_o.jpg

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Finally got around to a first listening of this. I absolutely loved it.:nod: I say this especially because this production received some rather mixed reviews on Amazon. Of course one needs to consider that opera (for whatever reason) produces far more than its fair share of absolutely obsessive fanatics
who will relentlessly attack the most talented performers for the simple reason that they are not their own personal favorite. One can find endless postings on YouTube, for example, in which Renee Fleming, Anna Netrebko, Angela Gheorghiu, etc... are called "whores" and worse... by a poster who happens to be the fan of another diva. In this particular instance, Bellini's La Sonombula has been previously recorded by two of the biggest and most beloved (deservedly) divas: Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland. Add to this the fact that this recording challenges the previously far more "ornamented" versions of Bellini's work by presenting the work in a Historically Informed Style with period instruments, clarity rather that flourish, and a mezzo-soprano in the role once thought to have been reserved for true sopranos... in spite of what actually exists in the original score. Not taking anything away from Sutherland or Callas... both of whom I love... I still found this set to be absolutely splendid. The sound was crystal clear, the entire cast is rock solid, the production stunning... down to the beautiful packaging in a hard-cover book with color photographs, essays, the libretto, etc... And of course the music... well that goes without saying, doesn't it?
Bel Canto at its finest.:throb:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWwQA-TY_pQ

One of the most beautiful arias... in spite of the less-than-perfect sound of this YouTube recording. The actual disc sounds immaculate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31TdmlkfbTg

I'm currently listening to another absolutely exquisite collection of Bach's cantatas... again performed/conducted by the brilliant Philippe Herreweghe:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2802/4127173700_2c64a673ed_o.jpg

This disc contains three cantatas dealing with death. I am at present listening to the first of these, BWV 8. In spite of the potential heaviness of the theme of death, this particular cantata, entitled Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben? is surely one of the most exquisitely beautiful and playful! of Bach's works. The composition is also one the briefest of his cantatas... clocking in at somewhere around 17 minutes. The text deals with the individual asking questions about dying... when and how... and offers a sense of consolation and comfort with the notion that death is but the end of the outward physical being.

The opening chorale is absolutely exquisite. The chorus sings Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben? and speaks of death as a "marvellous dawn" while muted strings provide a rhythmic framework and two oboes weave an ever-changing pattern of melody suggestive of the ticking of the clock as our hours slip away. This achingly beautiful melody is punctured by a chiming piccolo or flute which sounds like the ringing (and not tolling) of joyful bells... or the happy chirping of birds (especially the cuckoo):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2LbfXsUh9E&feature=related

The work includes a is built around a pair of lovely arias. The second one, Doch weichet, ihr tollen, vergeblichen Sorgen was written for bass. The piece is absolutely exquisite with the deep bass voice contrasted to a joyful and bouncing tune played upon the flute. One can almost imagine the Pied Piper at play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhBSAVy-1Es&feature=related

[JBI]

The Bartoli Sannambula is good? How does it compare to other ones?

[stlukesguild]

Obviously her voice is deeper... less able to project the illusion of a young, flighty girl... but then again, Bellini's work is a pastoral piece and one questions whether the girlish voice is inherently more accurate than that of a darker, warmer voice of a woman of peasant stock. Research on the opera reveals that the first two really successful performers of the Amina role were mezzos and the original score was written comfortably within the mezzo range with later higher notes added. When the opera was revived at mid-century the role of Anima became associated exclusively with the soprano and accompanied with the most extraordinary embellishments of vocal display intended to convey the lead character's "madness". The interpretations of Callas, Sutherland and others owes much to the mid-20th century notion that Bellini's work should be seen as a Romantic work with almost hysteric "mad scenes", yet Bellini was far more of a classicist... not overly far from Beethoven, Gluck, Rossini, and Mozart. I wouldn't recommend Bartoli over Callas or Sutherland (or vis-versa) anymore than I would recommend the HIP (historically informed performances) of John Elliot Gardiner or Angela Hewitt over those of Karl Richter or Glenn Gould for Bach. Both offer their own insights into what the composer intended. It all comes down to personal taste. I personally cannot stand the HIP performances of Beethoven's piano concertos played on piano forte... but I love the same by Mozart. Add to that the fact that I pretty much adore anything Bartoli has done.

[JBI]

Ah, good to know, because I have the Callas and Sutherland recordings, and much of Bartoli's other work, just not this one - personally though I like her more in older operas myself, over her romantic work - I think she does Handel very well, for instance, but I don't particularly care for her Rossini. Then again, I am more or less bored with Rossini in general, so maybe that has something to do with it.

[Petrarch's Love]

A quick note to thank St. Luke's for his Bach links, which are helping to keep me sane during a late night writing session.


I feel like I am bathing in Bach here - it is fantastic!

My sentiments exactly, and we get free expert (elitist?;)) reviews. Ever thought of moonlighting as a classical music critic St. Luke's?

Also, I hadn't ever seen this portrait of Bach before, and I quite like it. I wonder why they don't use this more smiling semblance more often? I thought the only portrait we had of him was that rather somber, black attired one.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2641/4125346275_a8ce366708_o.jpg[/QUOTE]

And now I must get some sleep!

[bluevictim]

Two of my favorite Bach cantatas are BWV 4, "Christ lag in Todes Banden", and BWV 106, "Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit". Both of these were composed while Bach was in his early twenties, when he was organist and choirmaster at a church in Muhlhausen. They are both profound treatments of death and resurrection, and they never fail to move me from the opening sinfonias to the concluding choruses. Another of my favorite cantatas is BWV 61, "Nun komm, der Heiden Helland", from the time Bach was in Weimar, featuring the beautiful aria, "Offne dich, mein ganzes Herze". I'm sure I've worn out the word "favorite" by now, but another of my favorite arias is the fugal "Ich will nur dir zu Ehren leben" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ncp-YTNRog), in the Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248).

For recordings of Bach, I always recommend the American Bach Soloists (http://magnatune.com/artists/abs), especially since they've released their recordings on Magnatune (http://magnatune.com/) (which, by the way, has a nice selection of classical music for downloading under very friendly terms). "J.S. Bach -- Early Cantatas, vol. 1" (Chandos CHAN0715) is another recording of BWV 4 and BWV 106 that I really enjoyed.

Speaking of fugues, I feel compelled to mention my favorite piece of music of all time, Bach's Art of the Fugue. Of all the realizations I've heard so far, I like the one by the Juilliard String Quartet the best. They built a special instrument with a range between a viola and a cello just for the Art of the Fugue.

Everyone who, like me, loves Bach's counterpoint really should give Palestrina a try. Before Bach, Palestrina was the authority on contrapuntal music. The Tallis Scholars has recorded many of Palestrina's works on Gimell (http://www.gimell.com/). For anyone interested in getting their feet wet without listening to a whole mass, the "Gaude Barbara beata; Gaude quia meruisti" for five voices and "Sicut lilium inter spinas (1)" are a couple of nice motets to start with. There is a fine recording of the former by Chanticleer, and the Tallis Scholars has a fine recording of the latter on Gimell.

[stlukesguild]

Petrarch... yes, I chose this portrait of Bach intentionally, rather than the usual rather dour looking old man that is somewhat suggestive of the Quaker Oats man with constipation (he needs more fiber in his diet:D). Bach was not this ever serious Puritan. I have read several stories about his activities as a ladies man including one in which he was caught (doing who knows what) in the church organ loft with a young woman. Considering the number of children he sired we must surmise that he had more on his mind than simply God, the Church, Death, and Counterpoint.

Bluevictim... I concur with your choices of cantatas. They are all among my favorite works. My preferred versions are those conducted by John Elliott Gardiner and Philippe Herreweghe... but I certainly have other versions as well. Herreweghe's recordings were quite reasonably priced when I first began to seriously acquire these works... but they are now largely out of print or quite expensive. Still... they are nearly unrivaled. Gardiner may be his only real rival among contemporaries... and his recordings are in no way cheap... with the exception of a lovely box set on Archiv including the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, the Mass in B-minor, and the Christmas Oratorio.

I also concur on the Art of the Fugue which I own 4 different versions: one on organ by Glenn Gould, another orchestrated for baroque orchestra with Sir Neville Mariner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, another on string quartet by the Emerson Quartet... and the most recent played upon recorders by the Loeki Stardust Quartet (highly recommended!:thumbs_up):

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2731/4129606919_3eb0dc9ebf_o.jpg

Palestrina?......:thumbs_up
Look also into Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 as well as Guillaume Dufay's isorhythmic motets that utilize the most incredibly complex and limiting contrapuntal rules resulting in a music of almost modernist sound.

[bluevictim]

Bluevictim... I concur with your choices of cantatas. They are all among my favorite works. My preferred versions are those conducted by John Elliott Gardiner and Philippe HerrewegheI like Gardiner and Herreweghe, too; they have recorded Bach extensively and rarely disappoint.


I also concur on the Art of the Fugue which I own 4 different versions: one on organ by Glenn Gould, another orchestrated for baroque orchestra with Sir Neville Mariner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, another on string quartet by the Emerson Quartet... and the most recent played upon recorders by the Loeki Stardust QuartetYes, I've heard all of those versions, too (even the Loeki Stardust Quartet), and I never tire of hearing different versions of the Art of the Fugue. I especially like hearing the various completions that have been composed. If it were up to me, BWV1080 completions would be a thriving genre of musical composition. :)


Palestrina?......:thumbs_up
Look also into Monteverdi's Vespers or 1610 as well as Guillaume Dufay's isorhythmic motets that utilize the most incredibly complex and limiting contrapuntal rules resulting in a music of almost modernist sound.I never really got into Monteverdi. Maybe it's time I give him another chance. The Flemish composers, on the other hand, I've always loved. As you say, the complexity of their counterpoint is awe-inspiring (like Tallis' 40 voice Spem in alium). Their music is the epitome of modal composition.

[mortalterror]

Many music lovers were outraged at the manner in which Mozart was present in the film Amadeus. While the film certainly played fast and loose with the facts, there is much to support the image of Mozart as rather immature... especially with regard to social relationships. There are any number of letters written by him laden with lewd sexual comments and vulgarities of an almost juvenile manner... and yet he was also able to compose Le Nozze di Figaro.
That's actually one of the reasons I like him. His song Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leck_mir_den_Arsch_fein_recht_sch%C3%B6n_sauber) makes me laugh every time I read it. Another good one is from the lyrics of his Difficile lectu. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difficile_lectu_%28Mozart%29) He also makes use of the most wonderful scatological expressions, telling his father in one letter that he was so annoyed he could **** oranges! The man was colorful and seems like the kind of guy you'd like to have a drink with even if you didn't love his music. That sort of thing doesn't tarnish my opinion of an artist in the least. It's rather endearing actually.

[Petrarch's Love]

Petrarch... yes, I chose this portrait of Bach intentionally, rather than the usual rather dour looking old man that is somewhat suggestive of the Quaker Oats man with constipation (he needs more fiber in his diet). Bach was not this ever serious Puritan. I have read several stories about his activities as a ladies man including one in which he was caught (doing who knows what) in the church organ loft with a young woman. Considering the number of children he sired we must surmise that he had more on his mind than simply God, the Church, Death, and Counterpoint.

:lol: Hadn't heard the gossip about the organ loft before.


Originally Posted by stlukesguild View Post
Many music lovers were outraged at the manner in which Mozart was present in the film Amadeus. While the film certainly played fast and loose with the facts, there is much to support the image of Mozart as rather immature... especially with regard to social relationships. There are any number of letters written by him laden with lewd sexual comments and vulgarities of an almost juvenile manner... and yet he was also able to compose Le Nozze di Figaro.
That's actually one of the reasons I like him. His song Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber makes me laugh every time I read it. Another good one is from the lyrics of his Difficile lectu. He also makes use of the most wonderful scatological expressions, telling his father in one letter that he was so annoyed he could **** oranges! The man was colorful and seems like the kind of guy you'd like to have a drink with even if you didn't love his music. That sort of thing doesn't tarnish my opinion of an artist in the least. It's rather endearing actually.

I was just recently remembering a recording my grandfather sometimes played at Thanksgivings at his house, which had a recording of some of Mozart's music (one of the wind quartets?) and then a voice over reading an English translation of some of Mozart's very bawdy notes on the score. Definitely changed the way one experienced the music. ;)

I thought it was just fine to show the more "human" side to Mozart in Amadeus and certainly it's something that many people found surprising and attractive about that take on the biography. I didn't find it a wholly satisfying as a portrayal of Mozart, though because I just didn't feel that the actor playing the part felt a deep connection to music. I thought Hulce did a marvelous job with a very entertaining character and a good portrayal of one side of Mozart. The humorous, social scenes were very natural and engaging, but in the scenes when he was supposed to be immersed in the music or composing, it felt much more like someone making a big effort to act a role than a really convincing portrayal of a musician. The beautiful score and filming certainly covered this well, but I wonder if some of the objections that Mozart lovers have are less to the inclusion of the bawdy aspects of the man than the absence of a certain bond with the music that I personally just didn't feel was present in that performance in the way that I do feel a very real connection to the music with an actor like Jamie Foxx, both in Ray and in his more recent film, which I've just seen, The Soloist. If I were magically able to recast Amadeus I would probably put a young Hugh Laurie in the role as an actor who has a clear personal abiding love for and dedication to music and the comic/dramatic range to pull off roles ranging from Bertie Wooster to House.



I also concur on the Art of the Fugue which I own 4 different versions: one on organ by Glenn Gould, another orchestrated for baroque orchestra with Sir Neville Mariner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, another on string quartet by the Emerson Quartet... and the most recent played upon recorders by the Loeki Stardust Quartet (highly recommended!):

Haven't heard either the Loeki Stardust Quartet or the Emerson Quartet versions. I'll have to see about checking them out. I adore the Gould. I have a disc of him playing them first on the organ and then the piano, which is wonderful.


Yes, I've heard all of those versions, too (even the Loeki Stardust Quartet), and I never tire of hearing different versions of the Art of the Fugue. I especially like hearing the various completions that have been composed. If it were up to me, BWV1080 completions would be a thriving genre of musical composition.

blue--This was reminding me that I have you to thank for inspiring me to try the first contrapunctus of The Art of the Fugue on the piano, which I can now perform decently enough for my own enjoyment. Weren't you trying to pick out parts of it on the guitar? How did that go?


I never really got into Monteverdi. Maybe it's time I give him another chance.

Yes, do give Monteverdi another try. I think the key is to start with something like the 1610 Vespers or some of the arrangements for the psalms (By sheer coincidence I happen to have his arrangement of psalm 109 playing at the moment which is adding much richness to a rather dismal gray Chicago afternoon). Psalm 111 is probably his most famous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL0QDEDanwM&feature=player_embedded

Some of the madrigals are also wonderful. The operatic works can be lovely but, at least in their entirety, I think may be a slightly more acquired taste.

[Virgil]

Monteverdi is excellent. He's the first trruly great composer.

[stlukesguild]

Petrarch... thanks for this Monteverdi piece. It is indeed truly lovely and I'll need to check into it. My own Monteverdi collection is currently limited to the Vespers of 1610, the Mass for Four Voices, the Mass for Six voices 'In Illo Tempore', and L'Orfeo. The last work especially floored me. I recently purchased it in the highly-acclaimed recording by John Elliot Gardiner...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2666/4145000769_d3c97d4c33_o.jpg

...and I was completely blown away at how powerful the work was... and how strong it was from start to finish. The liner notes suggested that while it was one of the absolute first operas it is also one of the most perfect... and I could not agree more.

Here are a few outtakes from a production by Jordi Savall... one of the absolute masters of "early music":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wni1GVRlMtc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdHFxkd7s0s&feature=related

I especially love the merger of sophistication with a certain rawness and muscularity... something that you find equally in Beethoven... and Michelangelo.

Monteverdi is excellent. He's the first truly great composer.

As an incurable medievalist, I certainly wouldn't go that far. I wouldn't underestimate Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 17 September 1179):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irxG-GCV5Es

Josquin des Prez (c. 1450 to 1455 – August 27, 1521):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt3H2uGxFLI

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (between February 3 1525 and February 2 1526 – 2 February 1594)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y28ZRYF9Q-4

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

Thomas Tallis (c. 1505 – 23 November 1585):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5W67uBRZCo

Pérotin (fl. c. 1200):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxsfx2nyz9E

There are a good number more as well as any number of works by anonymous composers. Just as with the visual arts, the medieval composers often remained anonymous as a result of the fact that they did not truly take credited for being creators... they were merely craftsmen. If anyone was the creator it was God who spoke through them. Here for example is one of the oldest known tunes, La Folia, in two very different medieval version of variations which originated on the Iberian peninsula. The first version offers some interesting info about the piece on the YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUeLAF54m_U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4h6lmPGOKk

We actually have medieval music from Greece and the Byzantine Empire as well as Spain that shows the influx of Islamic, North African, and Hebrew influences. A lot of this music is strikingly rhythmic in a manner that we don't find in Western classical music until far later. :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OguZIDbt30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsi3k1QYQtg&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXiYBrrxA7w

Unfortunately, most music from before the middle of the Medieval era has been lost to us for the simple fact that there was no codified system of writing down and recording music until around the 10th or 11t century.

[Petrarch's Love]

Nice selection of early music, St. Luke's.


Here for example is one of the oldest known tunes, La Folia, in two very different medieval version of variations which originated on the Iberian peninsula. The first version offers some interesting info about the piece on the YouTube video:

I just recently picked up a recording by the Purcell Quartet called La Folia: Variations on a Theme

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e386/LeonardoD/41Z277R8BGL_SL500_AA240_.jpg

They record six different versions of the theme by different composers--Arcangelo Corelli, Marin Marais, Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi, CPE Bach, and Francesco Geminiani. I listened to it while traveling about the English countryside recently, and thought it was a lovely recording.

There's also this site: http://www.folia.tk/ which is attempting to list all known variations on the tune and provides other info.

Listening to some of these reminded me of one of my favorite early music tunes, Heinrich Isaac's lied "Innsbruck ich muss dich lassen" (Innsbruck I must leave you) This seemed like the best youtube offering (I have a recording by the Collegium Vocale Koln, that is a little slice of heaven, but the King's singers aren' bad ;)):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z3pg7Ocmx8

Luther later changed the lyrics to "O welt ich muss dich lassen" (O world I must leave you) which brings us back to Bach:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYlUj1Hx2BY


And one of Brahms' last works:

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

My favorite lyrics are Nun ruhen alle walder, by Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676, translated beautifully into English as "Now Rest Beneath Night's Shadow" in the Luthren hymnal. A recitation of the German poem:

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

And the hymnal translation:

http://www.ccel.org/a/anonymous/luth_hymnal/tlh554.htm

It's possible I'm slightly obsessed with this tune, but not as much as this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8f8cf8SL4s

[stlukesguild]

It's possible I'm slightly obsessed with this tune, but not as much as this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8f8cf8SL4s

:lol::sick::p:lol::rolleyes::eek::eek2::lol:

La Folia was one of the first classical works of which I became quite enamored. I had an LP (that surely dates me, eh?) of collected Spanish pieces for guitar. My absolute favorite was La Folia.

Here is a marvelous version of Vivaldi's variation performed by Apollo's Fire... a wonderful local (and now nationally and internationally acclaimed) chamber orchestra specializing in early music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb3TaFzxlfI

[bluevictim]

blue--This was reminding me that I have you to thank for inspiring me to try the first contrapunctus of The Art of the Fugue on the piano, which I can now perform decently enough for my own enjoyment. Weren't you trying to pick out parts of it on the guitar? How did that go?That's great that you play the first fugue now. I expect any day now you'll post a recording of your performance here ;). I made a little bit of progress on the guitar, but life got in the way, and I haven't looked at it for some time. Alas, I have put too many of these projects on hold -- the c minor fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier, some of the solo violin sonatas, two-part inventions, and so many other ambitions. Such is life, I guess. I have worked out the highest three voices of the organ chorale that is often attached to the end of Art of the Fugue (Wenn wir in hochsten Nothen sein) for guitar, and I used to be able to play it well enough for my own enjoyment. I hope someone (much better than me) plays that piece at my funeral.

But this is a thread about classical listening, so here (http://www.flagmusic.com/aof.php?r=main) is a link to a nice electronic realization of BWV1080.


Yes, do give Monteverdi another try. I think the key is to start with something like the 1610 Vespers or some of the arrangements for the psalms (By sheer coincidence I happen to have his arrangement of psalm 109 playing at the moment which is adding much richness to a rather dismal gray Chicago afternoon). Psalm 111 is probably his most famous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL0QDEDanwM&feature=player_embedded

Some of the madrigals are also wonderful. The operatic works can be lovely but, at least in their entirety, I think may be a slightly more acquired taste.Thanks for the Monteverdi suggestions. There was a time when I was more familiar with Monteverdi's works, especially L'Orfeo and some madrigals. For some reason it just didn't connect with me, so I haven't paid attention to Monteverdi for a long time; it probably had more to do with my obsession with Bach than anything about Monteverdi's music.

[Petrarch's Love]

It's possible I'm slightly obsessed with this tune, but not as much as this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8f8cf8SL4s

:lol::sick::p:lol::rolleyes::eek::eek2::lol:

Best smilie reaction in lit. net history. I'm not even going to attempt to denote my laughter upon viewing it with only a humble laughing green guy. I know, I couldn't believe that video when I stumbled across it.


La Folia was one of the first classical works of which I became quite enamored. I had an LP (that surely dates me, eh?) of collected Spanish pieces for guitar. My absolute favorite was La Folia.

Here is a marvelous version of Vivaldi's variation performed by Apollo's Fire... a wonderful local (and now nationally and internationally acclaimed) chamber orchestra specializing in early music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb3TaFzxlfI

That is a wonderful interpretation. They really nail the sweep of the ending. I think I may (just be a tiny margin) prefer my Purcell quartet version, though. They seem to wring more out of the quieter passages and maintain a really wonderful taut suspense throughout. The preference could also be attributable to the inferior youtube sound quality though.


That's great that you play the first fugue now. I expect any day now you'll post a recording of your performance here ;). I made a little bit of progress on the guitar, but life got in the way, and I haven't looked at it for some time. Alas, I have put too many of these projects on hold -- the c minor fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier, some of the solo violin sonatas, two-part inventions, and so many other ambitions. Such is life, I guess. I have worked out the highest three voices of the organ chorale that is often attached to the end of Art of the Fugue (Wenn wir in hochsten Nothen sein) for guitar, and I used to be able to play it well enough for my own enjoyment. I hope someone (much better than me) plays that piece at my funeral.

Yes, I know what you mean about having too many projects in the air. I'm afraid my own piano has been a bit neglected of late, and the cello is just going to have to be on hiatus until January. Speaking of which, if you've got the three highest voices on guitar, clearly I need to work up the low voice in cello so that we can meet up and play sometime, or create a crazy hybrid youtube video. Of course that might mean that my cello skills would have to catch up fairly considerably with my imagination. :p Not sure if my piano version of the contrapunctus is quite up to recording quality yet, but maybe one of these days when I'm less busy I'll post a fragment of my amateur attempts here...on the condition that we get to hear your guitar. :D


But this is a thread about classical listening, so here (http://www.flagmusic.com/aof.php?r=main) is a link to a nice electronic realization of BWV1080.

Thanks for the Monteverdi suggestions. There was a time when I was more familiar with Monteverdi's works, especially L'Orfeo and some madrigals. For some reason it just didn't connect with me, so I haven't paid attention to Monteverdi for a long time; it probably had more to do with my obsession with Bach than anything about Monteverdi's music.

Thanks for the Bach link. Yes, do see about checking out Monteverdi again. I think he may be the sort of composer that grows on one after having done a certain amount of listening/learning in the period.

[stlukesguild]

As opposed to suggestions that we are living in an era in which the musical achievements of those outside of a few major figures have been swept under the rug, what we actually find at present is a true Renaissance of exploration and discovery of the music of the past. When I first began to seriously explore classical music... not so many years ago... Schubert's lieder on disc were all but unknown outside of imports found in music stores in big cities or near college campuses specializing in classical music. Handel's operas were almost unknown in preference for his Water Music, Royal Fireworks Music, and oratorios. Gluck was little more than a name, and the historically informed performance (HIP) movement (performances of Bach, Mozart, etc... played upon period appropriate instruments and following the performance manners of the era) was highly controversial.

As a result of digital technology which brought about a revolution in recording music (making it a far less expensive proposition), marketing music (via outlets like Amazon.com), discussing and sharing music (via internet forums and sites such as YouTube) there has been an explosion of rediscovery of and demand for classical music. This has led to a great growth in the actual world of classical performance. Standing along side the great "romantic scale" symphonic orchestras we now find most major cities may boast of smaller chamber orchestras, orchestras and groups specializing in baroque, medieval, or Renaissance music, chamber music groups (quartets, quintets, etc...) choral societies, lyric operas, etc...

There are now dozens of magnificent recordings to be found of Gluck's operas, and Handel's operas now exist in a endless array. Vivaldi is undergoing a major re-evaluation as the result of the recording of a huge number of previously unknown and never recorded compositions (arias, masses, concertos, sonatas, and entire operas) discovered in manuscript form in a vast cache some few decades back. For me, Russian opera was one of my most pleasurable recent discoveries... but as a huge fan of "early music" (Bach and before) I am always on the look out for little known Baroque, Renaissance, and Medieval composers. Indeed, I am currently listening to a lovely disc... a Gramophone Award Winner... of the choral music of Tomás Luis de Victoria, a Spanish composer of the late Renaissance:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2561/4154637350_7b1e275cbd_o.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M76EaALkzs

I'd certainly be interested in any more obscure... or less-well-known composers who you have discovered and found to be of some real interest.

I'll jump right into offering up a first example of an interesting less-than-world-famous composer who I have found truly interesting:

One of the more fascinating composers that I came across in the past year was the contemporary American composer, William Bolcom. As an avowed William Blake fanatic my interest was piqued when I rst came across mention of Bolcom's settings of the entire Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. The high acclaim that this work was afforded in critical reviews led me purchase the work on disc. Bolcom recognized that it was quite likely that a work of this scale (3 CDs in length) by a contemporary composer would most certainly appear less than appealing to many would-be buyers. The cost of such a set upon a high-priced label would surely result in many burned copies. As a result, Bolcom had the work released on the budget Naxos label (which has long been supportive of contemporary composers) assuring the purchaser of the highest quality and the liner notes/text... all at a reasonable price.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2613/4154758158_4d691efcab_o.jpg

This work is worthy of every bit of its reputation and critical acclaim. It is undoubtedly Bolcom's masterpiece and one of the towering achievements of contemporary classical music. Building upon Blake's theory of "contraries", Bolcom constructs this work upon a vast array of contrasting musical styles ranging from traditional classical, dissonant and even atonal Modernism, jazz, and folk... to even blues, bluegrass, and reggae. In some instances the music builds upon and compliments Blake's text... while at other times it intentionally clashes in yet another level of "contrariness". One may question some of the choices... and at times one feels shocked and caught off guard... but ultimately the work as a whole is always interesting... always intriguing... always thought-provoking and thoroughly convincing... impressive... even profound. The quality of the recording... conducted by the great Leonard Slatkin... and including any number of less-than-famous but passionate and truly talented soloists... should be credited for a great deal of the success of this work.

This grand achievement (of which... unfortunately... there are no examples to be currently found on the web) led me to explore William Bolcom a little bit further. With a little search I discovered that Bolcom is one of the most prolific, critically acclaimed, and accessible of contemporary composers. He is no Stockhausen or Cage best left to the esoteric realm of academics. Indeed, he intentionally embraces polystylism or the use of multiple musical styles... and the blurring of these styles and the notions of the separation of "high" and "low" art. He has written rather lush and romantic and blatantly passionate violin works for Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg. He has performed his often humorous cabaret songs in numerous recitals accompanied by his talented wife and partner, Joan Morris. The brilliant and silvery-voiced Dawn Upshaw has performed and recorded his works.

One of his most famous pieces in the lovely "rag" entitled Graceful Ghost (which, if I am not mistaken) Petrarch's Love posted here some time back:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95H_iBjB64o

Another fascinating work is the suite in 5 movements (The Female Demon, Succuba, Will-O'-the-Wisp, Child-Stealer, The Night Dance) entitled Lilith. This work was based upon the legend of Adam's first wife... a female demon, dating from ancient times, and a child-stealing witch of worldwide folklore. This virtuoso show piece is among the most ambitious music ever written for alto saxophone and it has already become a near legendary challenge for performers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqqGWy-SN6M

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

Bolcom has quite an extensive website that gives far more information about him and his work and numerous links:

http://williambolcom.com/index.php?contentID=1010

[billl]

Simply because the next-to-latest entry in the thread was a relatively obscure Spanish piece, here's some 13th century Spanish court music that popped out of my memory banks.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31GGPKSHW7L._SL500_AA130_.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/Echoes-Spain-Alfonso-el-Sabio/dp/B000001O9Z/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1259811579&sr=1-6

I used to listen to it after particularly hectic deadline periods in a small warehouse (with an excellent stereo, it being a warehouse of musical CD's, etc.) Not a religious collection of songs [EDIT actually, they are religious songs, now that I check it out, have no idea how I had come to believe otherwise], but absolutely beautiful, including some poetry(?) read in a lovely female voice. The amazon samples give an "OK" impression of the CD, but they obviously can't capture the importance of pauses and quiet that frequently occur, nor the sometimes hypnotic quality of the full versions.

Um...
Now, I'll reluctantly post a video of extremely low quality, of a performance that I wouldn't want anyone to think of as representative of the recording mentioned above. Seriously, check the amazon link if interested, keeping in mind that the CD itself is of superb quality--a streaming sample could never register the clarity and intimacy of that disc, nor the beautiful flow of the selections as an "album". I only post this youtube vid in order to steer you away from even worse arrangements and performances that an admittedly more convenient youtube search would turn up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69aYOMWqpqs&feature=PlayList&p=8EAD4FEA14859EC9&index=1

Again, these people do a great job in my opinion, I mean no offense, but the Sonus CD is a completely different experience.

[stlukesguild]

billl... this particular disc is a recording of selections from the 13th-century Spanish collection of songs known as the Cantigas de Santa Maria (Songs of Holy Mary). Compiled (and in some instances, composed) by King Alfonso X. I have only recently been introduced to these works by an acquaintance and medieval music fanatic. This disc... and several others presenting selections from this body of compositions... are on my wish list. I hav long been a fan of early Spanish music... and you are right in that a good deal of it is not limited to music intended solely for the church or spiritual expression. I have several other discs that I would highly recommend that often build upon erotic/love poems, rowdy and ecstatic dances, and modal chants and droning dirge-like forms that draw inspiration from Middle-Eastern and ancient Hebrew traditions.

[billl]

well, recommend some when you can! BTW, I just edited my post to reflect the fact that I was apparently wrong about them not being religious--I remember from years back hearing about romantic purposes/stories being involved, but I am right now completely confused regarding this point since Wikipedia (on Alfonso X) says that the Cantigas are mostly about miracles performed by the Virgin Mary... It appears to be a combination.

[Petrarch's Love]

the choral music of Tomás Luis de Victoria, a Spanish composer of the late Renaissance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M76EaALkzs

I'd certainly be interested in any more obscure... or less-well-known composers who you have discovered and found to be of some real interest.

mmm...lovely stuff. I'll have to put that disc on my wishlist. Maybe I'll get some music money for Christmas. :santasmil :banana:

As for more obscure composers...

One of the more fascinating composers that I came across in the past year was the contemporary American composer, William Bolcom.

Darn, you've chosen the first one that sprang to mind. I find him an intriguing composer. I am no doubt the one that posted his "Graceful Ghost" awhile back. It's one of my favorite pieces of music. I first heard it played by a family friend, Tom Bopp, who's the piano player in the 19th century Wawona hotel in Yosemite National park, and his is still my favorite interpretation of the piece. Because of the personal associations it often makes me think of summer, moonlit verandas and the scent of pine.


Another fascinating work is the suite in 5 movements (The Female Demon, Succuba, Will-O'-the-Wisp, Child-Stealer, The Night Dance) entitled Lilith. This work was based upon the legend of Adam's first wife... a female demon, dating from ancient times, and a child-stealing witch of worldwide folklore. This virtuoso show piece is among the most ambitious music ever written for alto saxophone and it has already become a near legendary challenge for performers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqqGWy-SN6M

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

Makes me glad I'm not a saxophonist who even needs to contemplate attempting such feats. It's an interesting piece.


Simply because the next-to-latest entry in the thread was a relatively obscure Spanish piece, here's some 13th century Spanish court music that popped out of my memory banks.



http://www.amazon.com/Echoes-Spain-A...9811579&sr=1-6

I used to listen to it after particularly hectic deadline periods in a small warehouse (with an excellent stereo, it being a warehouse of musical CD's, etc.) Not a religious collection of songs [EDIT actually, they are religious songs, now that I check it out, have no idea how I had come to believe otherwise], but absolutely beautiful, including some poetry(?) read in a lovely female voice. The amazon samples give an "OK" impression of the CD, but they obviously can't capture the importance of pauses and quiet that frequently occur, nor the sometimes hypnotic quality of the full versions.

Um...
Now, I'll reluctantly post a video of extremely low quality, of a performance that I wouldn't want anyone to think of as representative of the recording mentioned above. Seriously, check the amazon link if interested, keeping in mind that the CD itself is of superb quality--a streaming sample could never register the clarity and intimacy of that disc, nor the beautiful flow of the selections as an "album". I only post this youtube vid in order to steer you away from even worse arrangements and performances that an admittedly more convenient youtube search would turn up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69aYO...859EC9&index=1

Again, these people do a great job in my opinion, I mean no offense, but the Sonus CD is a completely different experience.

Looks like another CD to add to the maybe buy with Christmas money list. Despite the bad video quality I can tell the piece you posted could be lovely on a nice recording.

I'll have to got think up some properly obscure composer to add to this discussion now.

[bluevictim]

Speaking of which, if you've got the three highest voices on guitar, clearly I need to work up the low voice in cello so that we can meet up and play sometime, or create a crazy hybrid youtube video.That would definitely be fun! Unfortunately, it will probably take me a while to relearn it, especially since I never got around to writing down my fingerings (some of it was quite tricky, if I remember correctly). Of course, I feel compelled to make it abundantly clear that I never performed it very well to begin with ("well enough for my own enjoyment" is a very low standard :) ).




Indeed, I am currently listening to a lovely disc... a Gramophone Award Winner... of the choral music of Tomás Luis de Victoria, a Spanish composer of the late Renaissance:
...
I'd certainly be interested in any more obscure... or less-well-known composers who you have discovered and found to be of some real interest.Don't miss Victoria's Requiem mass in 6 voices. It is extraordinarily moving. Speaking of Iberian Requiem masses, there are two very nice ones by the Portuguese Duarte Lobo (one in 6 voices, the other in 8 voices). Magalhaes is another Portuguese composer that I like who does not receive a ton of attention. The Missa Dilectus meus in five voices is a great example of Renaissance polyphony.

[Babbalanja]

On the way to work yesterday, I was listening to the iPod on shuffle and heard Barber's cello concerto. I've always leaned toward the innovative, dissonant side of 20th century composed music, but I have my favorites on the not-particularly-noisy side as well: Walter Piston, Vincent Persichetti, and Samuel Barber.

Barber's Summer Music wind quintet has always been one of my favorites. It's an evocative and tuneful composition that shows Barber's attention to detail.

Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBOjvIhm2Cs&feature=PlayList&p=C6D458E9B0F7A2F5&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=3) and Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VBrJHafsJw) of Barber's Summer Music for Wind Quintet.

Regards,

Istvan

[Petrarch's Love]

On the way to work yesterday, I was listening to the iPod on shuffle and heard Barber's cello concerto. I've always leaned toward the innovative, dissonant side of 20th century composed music, but I have my favorites on the not-particularly-noisy side as well: Walter Piston, Vincent Persichetti, and Samuel Barber.

Barber's Summer Music wind quintet has always been one of my favorites. It's an evocative and tuneful composition that shows Barber's attention to detail.

Part 1 and Part 2 of Barber's Summer Music for Wind Quintet.

Regards,

Istvan

Babbalanja--Thanks for sharing the Barber wind quintet. Very Debussy meets later 20th century. I like it. I don't actually know much by Barber except for his famous "Adagio for Strings," which I actually like best performed chorally:

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


Since we were talking about less well known music, I was thinking about obscure composers in my music library and realized that "anonymous" was the most obscure possible, and ancient "anonymous" more obscure still. Here's some of his work for Euripides' Orestes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eim-n4n0tX0

Obscure yes. Intense, yes. Loveable? Certainly not upbeat, but then if you've read much ancient Greek drama that can't be much of a surprise.

There, all the way from Barber to Euripides in one fell swoop. Can't say this thread doesn't have breadth. :D

[bluevictim]

Here's some of his work for Euripides' Orestes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eim-n4n0tX0

Obscure yes. Intense, yes. Loveable? Certainly not upbeat, but then if you've read much ancient Greek drama that can't be much of a surprise.That's wonderful! In case anyone is curious, this music is quite ancient indeed -- it survives on a papyrus from around 200 BC.

[stlukesguild]

Petrarch... The Barber Adagio/Agnus Dei is quite lovely... I have added it to my wish list. Undoubtedly this piece is one of the most beautiful and profoundly tragic pieces of music written in the 20th century... in any century. It is like a tragic question for which there is no possible answer... no possible words.

The ancient Greek piece is intriguing... albeit rather speculative as to orchestration, pacing, etc... I was surprised to learn that there are a few fragmentary pieces such as this in which the melody was "recorded" through an earlier means of musical notation. Wikipedia suggests that there is even some Mesopotamian music that has been recorded through a system in which notation denotes the various strings on the lyre. Unfortunately no system of recording more complex aspects of music beyond the central melody... no suggestion of instrumental accompaniment let alone any form of polyphony exists prior to the 10th and 11th centuries in Europe. Considering the sophistication of ancient Greek, Roman, Chinese, Indian, and Persian art and literature one must surmise that the loss is quite profound.

Currently, I'm back with Bach... listening to his Lute Suites performed on guitar by John Williams. These pieces are quite problematic on a number of levels. In the first instance, according to the musicologists, these works were scored in a manner that was quite impossible for performance upon any known 18th century lute. Several of the works, such as BWV 995, were initially scored (with slight variations) for another instrument (in this case, the work was originally part of the cello suites). It has been suggested that Bach may have had little experience with the limitations of the lute and simple composed the music in an abstract manner with little idea of how the work would actually be performed (not unlike The Art of the Fugue) or expecting that lute players would transcribe the works as necessary. There are, however, several purists who have made recordings upon the lute maintaining the original scoring.

Considering that my favorite performances of Bach's keyboard works are by Glenn Gould, Angela Hewitt, Murray Perahia, and the like... upon piano, I am clearly no purist (although I do quite like many HIP recordings and performances). Williams is an unquestionably masterful guitarist and these pieces are beautifully and fluidly played. It is a pleasure to hear the music of Bach played upon a different instrument that one is used to. It lends the work a unique "color" and draws attention to certain elements that might have been ignored otherwise:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPZlmSH7ISg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpnpsbmpx4I

[Babbalanja]

I've been listening to a lot of American serialist Wallingford Riegger recently. His work seems like just the sort of inventive, exciting music that people deny was ever composed using the twelve-tone method.

Wallingford Riegger: Concerto for Piano and Woodwind Quintet op. 53 (1953) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc1TlnMV9vs)

Wallingford Riegger: Symphony #4 (1960), first movement (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr4TlKYqfNg&feature=related)

Riegger was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee during McCarthy's anti-Communist witch hunt, but refused to testify. He died in New York City after suffering a fall in a bizarre dog-leash accident that sounds like something William Gaddis would have dreamed up.

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

He died in New York City after suffering a fall in a bizarre dog-leash accident that sounds like something William Gaddis would have dreamed up.

Or something out of a Jerry Lewis film? Yes... I found some of the Riegger pieces that I assume you posted over on Brightcecilia to be quite intriguing.

[Petrarch's Love]

Hi Babbalanja--Thanks for posting the Riegger. I don't know his work at all, so this is broadening my listening base. Very Jazz meets Debussy on a 12 tone scale. I like it...though I think, like some jazz I like as well, it's the sort of music I can only listen to in certain frames of mind.

I've been having a very happy musical weekend. Friday I went to the annual performance of Handel's Messiah at this lovely space with acoustics to match the vaulting:

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e386/LeonardoD/Inside_of_Rockefeller_Chapel_UofChi.jpg

I love many parts of the [I]Messiah but, for a number of reasons, "He Shall Feed His Flock" currently ranks as one of my favorites. Here's the traditional arrangement with both alto and soprano: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXsPK36jIWY

And this absolutely rich rendition of the alto part sung by Marion Anderson, which I just found on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZoqU_-J-UY

and naturally there's the big favorite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnHksDFHTQI

Then, last night, I attended one of the regular salons (in the 18th century sense) that a couple of Physicists host in conjunction with a group of artistic types in my university neighborhood and, among the ecclectic group of performances, was a wonderful experimental sort of flute piece (the name and composer of which I have lamentably forgotten)performed by a member of a group called "Eighth Blackbird" in almost utter darkness, and a really enjoyable performance of a fragment of Scoenberg's Pierrot Luniare. "Enjoyable" not usually being an adjective I use to describe that piece, it was either an unusually fine performance or I'm maturing in my musical tastes (or both). One of the music professors present also gave some helpful background about the way the Sprechstimme style was heavily influenced by cabaret performance (being a group of artists and academics, a debate about the proper lighting for the performance at hand ensued). Here's the excerpt I was enjoying last night:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aERSzX9W5Qo

[Babbalanja]

a really enjoyable performance of a fragment of Scoenberg's Pierrot Luniare. "Enjoyable" not usually being an adjective I use to describe that piece, it was either an unusually fine performance or I'm maturing in my musical tastes (or both). One of the music professors present also gave some helpful background about the way the Sprechstimme style was heavily influenced by cabaret performance (being a group of artists and academics, a debate about the proper lighting for the performance at hand ensued). Here's the excerpt I was enjoying last night:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aERSzX9W5Qo
I'm a Schoenberg fan, and I've always loved Pierrot. It does sound like acid cabaret. If you forget that this is big, bad, scary Schoenberg, it's a delightful, eccentric composition. Every time I hear Pierrot, I want to crawl into its weird cartoon world and stay there forever.

Mondestrunken (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV-GoWf2Yfw&feature=related)

[stlukesguild]

I have long been fascinated with German Expressionism... especially as it developed in the visual arts. While Picasso and Bracque must be credited with having developed the formal language of fragmentation (Cubism) that would become central to Modernism, it was the German Expressionists who recognized its expressive potential... merging it with the brilliant and even shocking colors of Fauvism and the distortions of space and the human form of the German Gothic tradition... to perfectly convey the twisted and shattered experience of the era between the two world wars. Babbalanja's analogy to a "weird cartoon" world is certainly apt for there is a great connection between German Expressionist art and cartoons which drew from the Expressionists' brilliant colors, spatial distortions, and graphic elelements.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2681/4164554542_7a68da5da5_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2540/4164554602_9fc9546b0d_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2776/4163795435_e25ed7589d_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2785/4164554922_d3622ba38c_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2764/4163795711_704fd48564_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2646/4164555106_5d79791cfb_o.jpg

And of course one can't forget the great German Expressionist films such as M, the Cabinet of Dr. Caligary, Nosferatu, etc... Incredibly, one can access the whole of these films (which predate the copyright cut-off) on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrg73BUxJLI

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

Many of the artists of this period embraced American jazz... and there is certainly something jazz-like to the work... and yet I have always felt that the music suited to such art would need to be more "acidic" as well. To my mind some of the best "Expressionist" music includes works by Kurt Weill:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTaO_j8fK_g&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7CU4yi-lJk

Ravel's La Valse... in which the elegant Viennese waltz has somehow gone all wrong:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmboDwY7Sas&feature=PlayList&p=45E1B72467A3263A&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGn5hZYis6s&feature=PlayList&p=45E1B72467A3263A&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=52

I would also think of Shostakovitch's brilliant opera, The Nose, excerpts of the marvelous new Gergiev recording of which can now be found on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFPqORaaX7I&feature=related

Certainly I can see, however, how Webern, Berg, and Schoenberg fit into this artistic movement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKZt6nPrKJQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOcEFn_052E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrjg3jzP2uI

I've always found their music, however, to be far more abstract... closer in nature to Abstract Expressionism than German Expressionism. Nevertheless... it is interesting to note that Glenn Gould... the great performer of Bach... would be also attracted to this music... which not unlike Bach... strikes me as decidedly cerebral. Indeed, Gould can be seen offering up his own thoughts on the "holy trinity" of the Second Viennese School.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhKWTVTl5Y4

I must say that I have put forth the effort to understand and appreciate it... but I think I'll still be sticking with the First Viennese School of Mahler, Zemlinsky, Richard Strauss, etc...:lol:

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Last night I spent a pleasant evening listening to my son (violin) and the rest of his high school orchestra perform at this years Christmas concert. A few of the selctions included:

"Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" - Mozart
"Yuletide Carols for Strings" - Arr. Williamson
"Fantasy on an English Carol" - Traditional/ arr. Story
"For Unto Us" - Handel/ Frost
"Sing We Now ofChristmas" - Traditional / arr. Monday

Fetaure piece:
"Pictures at an Exhibition" - Mussorgksy
included "Promenade", "The Gnome", "The Castle", "The Tulleries - Children Quarreling at Play", "Ballett ofthe Unhatched Chicks", "The Hut of Baba Yaga" and "The Great Gate of Kiev"

Finale:
"Shepards Dance" - Menotti / Conley

They performed very well and provided an uplifting start to the holiday season!

[stlukesguild]

While choral music... followed by the other aspects of vocal music (opera, chanson, lieder, etc...) is quite probably my favorite genre of classical music (all music begins with song!) I find myself listening to even more choral music at this time of year. Perhaps it has something to do with the holidays and childhood memories of Christmas carols and midnight masses and Lutheran hymns and Bach cantatas; perhaps it has to do with something of the enveloping feeling of this music that seems perfectly suited to these cold days when the sun goes down early and most of my waking hours are spent with the lights on and candles lit. Nevertheless, I have been recently padding out my collection of choral music (as if it needed any padding) with pieces ranging from the Middle Ages to the most recent. One disc I am particularly impressed with is entitled Lassus... by the Hilliard Ensemble. The Hilliard Ensemble have long been one of the best vocal/choral groups renowned for their performances of "earlly" music (medieval through the Baroque) as well as the latest efforts in the field (including Arvo Part, Stephen Hartke, James MacMillian, etc...). Among their more recent recordings are any number focusing upon the works of a single early composer. The magnificent recordings, Perotin...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2702/4179049727_f571bbe2bd_o.jpg

Gesualdo:Tenebrae...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2649/4179049739_bfb8827dd0_o.jpg

... both of which I have written about earlier. Today I received the latest Hilliard work, Lassus, a splendid recording of Orlando Lassus' Missa pro defunctis and Profetiae Sibyllarum.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2514/4179810866_041b5a50cc_o.jpg

Orlando Lassus (c.1532– 14 June 1594) was born in Mons in the province of Hainaut, in what is today Belgium.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2799/4179847358_db936e2445_o.jpg

The Franco-Flemish composer was a major developer (along with Palestrina, William Byrd, Josquin des Prez, etc...) of polyphony. Polyphony is music composed of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony). Early experiments with polyphony can be traced back to 12th century composers such as Léonin and Pérotin who developed the organum or plainchant melody with at least one added voice to enhance the harmony. By the 13th century the plainchant melody was becoming even more fragmented wit the addition of a third and even fourth voice. European polyphony especially expanded during the period of the Western Schism, or the split that occurred within the Roman Catholic Church dating from 1378 to 1417. Avignon, the seat of the anti-popes, was a vigorous center of secular music-making, much of which influenced sacred polyphony... almost as if they embraced the form that fractured the single homo-phonic melody just as they has fractured the Church. The Roman Church not only considered harmony and polyphony frivolous, impious, and lascivious, but an obstruction to the audibility of the words. Instruments, as well as certain modes, were actually forbidden in the church because of their association with secular music and pagan rites. Dissonant clashes of notes give a creepy feeling that was labeled as "evil", fueling their argument against polyphony as being the "devil’s music". Thus Lassus would have been seen as a purveyor of satanic music certain to undermine the morals of the pious but naive parishioners who would certainly have been susceptible to the seductions of such music... just as the youth of America succumbed to the temptations of Elvis and Rock n Roll during the 1950s. (As a side note, the church was just as suspicious at the time of the seductions of visual images... especially of those sexually attractive young saints and less-than-virginal Virgins... and many were calling for the enforcement of strict iconoclastic guidelines.)

And what doe the music of which we are speaking sound like? Here's a marvelous video of the Hilliard Ensemble in the appropriate setting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-75Cdbe2VD8&feature=related

Highly recommended to any Medieval Music admirer... or lover of choral music.:nod:

[LitNetIsGreat]

What a lovely piece, thanks for posting that. I have been listening to a bit of Gregorian chant recently, could I ask what your thoughts on Gregorian chant is and where do you see this in relation to choral music in general? I mean, does its simpler form necessarily reduce it in some ways to later, more complex examples of choral music, or do you see it as being as strong in its own right?

[stlukesguild]

I'm something of a sworn lover of early music and so Gregorian Chant is certainly among the music I love. The term Gregorian Chant refers to a form of plainchant or a monophonic (as opposed to polyphonic) liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services. Gregorian chant was organized, codified, and notated mainly in the Frankish lands of western and central Europe during the 11th to 13th centuries, with later additions and redactions, but the texts and many of the melodies have antecedents going back several centuries earlier. Although popular belief credited Pope Gregory the Great with having personally invented Gregorian chant, scholars now believe that the chant bearing his name arose from a later Carolingian synthesis of Roman and Gallican chant, and that at that time the attribution to Gregory I was a a means of investing the form with a sanctified pedigree to assure the use of a single musical vocabulary throughout the whole of liturgical music of the Holy Roman Empire.

The chants were structured upon one of eight modes or scales from which all the notes of the melody needed to be selected. The music never breaks outside of this mode... switches chords as it were... and so it has a droning, dirge or prayer-like sound that can be found in other modal music ranging from Middle-Eastern music to Minimalism to elements of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. The music also avoids any form of polyphony. There is a single melody (although sung by multiple voices) without a harmony. The intention of this was to make the text abundantly clear. Instrumental accompaniment was also strictly forbidden... due to its use in secular music and pagan rituals.

The rules of Gregorian or Plainchant undoubtedly act as limitations... but artists quite often achieve the greatest results under such limitations. One need only think of the rigid rules for the sonnet, Dante's terza rima, etc... The effect of the music can be very meditative... even hypnotic... not unlike, perhaps, the repetitive structures of Gothic architecture or certain art forms such as the mandala or the Japanese zen garden. Polyphony certainly brought about many new possibilities... just as the intentional use of dissonance and serial music have wrought in our time.

I don't think I could listen endlessly to Gregorian chant or Plainchant. Even among my collection of medieval music I have some works that are quite removed from the form including especially the music of Spain which quite often builds upon Middle Eastern and North African traditions and often employs some unexpected instrumental accompaniment... especially of drums and other rhythm instruments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq9Rykry6fw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i2hKX6eQ3g&feature=related

Nevertheless... there are times when I truly am in the mood for plainchant and Hildegard of Bingen would be among my first choices:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eFPJa95qQE

Of course already Hildegard is breaking from the strict rules of the Gregorian chant by employing an instrumental accompaniment.

Here, by way of contrast, is a true Gregorian Chant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRLIz897DzY

[LitNetIsGreat]

Thanks - yes I've found that I can work to chant pretty well, with a lot of other music I can often get distracted, but the chant appears, at the moment anyway, to have a very calming and settling effect upon me. I find it pretty hypnotic and like the fact that it is stripped of complexity - which is perhaps why I can write essays while under its influence. Sometimes I can work to other music, but I can find myself tuning into the music more than the thing it is I am supposed to be writing.

Other than that I have been listening to various Mozart piano concertos with great pleasure.

[stlukesguild]

If you found that you enjoy medieval chants you might wish to look into any number of contemporary composers such as Eric Whitacre, Morten Lauridsen, John Rutter, John Adams, John Tavener, James MacMillian, Arvo Part, and Henryck Gorecki. These composers all tend to fall under the rubric, "Minimalism"... sometimes "Holy Minimalists"... and they often draw upon far earlier musical traditions than the dominant modes of Post-Romanticism and Modernism.

Eric Whitacre:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ggQuU7ApjY

Morten Lauridsen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn5ken3RJBo&feature=related

John Rutter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMyiCip_oX0

John Adams (one of the greatest contemporary composers) uses Emily Dickinson's poetry in his iconic work of Minimalism, Harmonium. Here is an excerpt with brief commentary by Simon Rattle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51wgChtHoDI

More recent Adams' works include an elegy for the victims of the World Trade Center attacks (Transmigration of Souls) and an opera dealing with John Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb (Doctor Atomic).

John Tavener:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9NfFcZ7b10

James MacMillian:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcp16-8phJ0

Arvo Pärt... one of the greatest living composers (in my opinion). The gravitas of this eastern European composer (Estonian) is perfectly suited to the equally melancholic imagery of these images from the films of Tarkovsky:

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoWMMPuRX8U

Henryk Górecki (the only composer of those listed not still living):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKk-w_0SpSw

There are actually more than a few contemporary composers of real reputation whose works are truly accessible and avoid the extremes of certain aspects of Modernism (not that these are without merit).

[billl]

Do we need a "Maunfacture of Pope Gregory" thread?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Thanks Stlukes, I'll check those out when time permits.

[stlukesguild]

Do we need a "Maunfacture of Pope Gregory" thread?

:lol:

And surely Léonin, Pérotin, Orlande de Lassus, Guillaume de Machaut, Josquin des Prez, and others were all inventions of some conspiracy involving the rivals of the Roman Catholic Church set to undermine and fragment the "Holy Mother Church" through the introduction of the frivolous and satanic element of polyphony into the liturgical music. The conspiracy continues today with the support of the Illuminati, the Church of Latter Day Saints, the Scientologists, and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster with the dastardly goal of cornering the market upon the medieval music "industry" with the intention of blackmailing the international consortium of Renaissance re-enactment groups.:eek:

[Virgil]

That was a nice write up on Gregorian chants StLukes.

By the way I was at the NY Philharmonic premier of John Adams' "On the Transmigration of Souls"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6nrJ3ByzzE&feature=related

[mortalterror]

That Gregorian chant number StLukes posted reminded me of a modern number by Ennio Morricone sung by Il Divo: Nella Fantasia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uqw0eTXcos

[Babbalanja]

When December rolls around, we always play Beethoven's festive 7th symphony while trimming the tree. And we may be missing the irony in Mahler's 4th, but the sleigh-bells and soprano song seem very appropriate to old Yuletide.

The Michael Tilson Thomas recording of Mahler's 4th has been criticized for being overly subtle and fussy, but I hear a welcome wealth of melodic detail in this reading, particularly in the theme-packed first movement.

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

Now Mahler's 4th has yet to really grab me... so I guess I must give it another listen. The BBC Music magazine rates the Tilson-Thomas recording (and the entire cycle) quite highly... but in thinking of finally getting around to purchasing an entire cycle (I have individual recordings of everything) I'm looking at the acclaimed Bernstein and the Chailly. I'd also like to give a few of the Boulez recordings a listen.

[stlukesguild]

Over the holidays I've had plenty of time to listen to music sitting in the light of the Christmas tree and the glow of the candle-light. One new disc I've been listening to is Three Ragas by Ravi Shankar, recorded in the late 1950s.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4044/4209419111_20cd8e6810_o.jpg

Ravi Shankar was a phenomenal musician... one of the greatest sitar players within the classical Indian tradition. He became well known, for better or worse, through his association with the Beatles. Nevertheless, he was no pop version of exotica. Intriguingly, I found that the droning modal qualities of the Indian ragas are not as out of place with my other holiday listening as might be thought. There is something quite similar to the modal qualities of Medieval European music... Gregorian Chants, Leonin, Perotin, Gesualdo, etc...

This example of Shankar playing comes from much later in his career:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JjrWxun46M&feature=PlayList&p=9F0A9C91CE130F9D&index=3

On Christmas Day I listened to the old traditional masterwork for the holiday:
Handel's Messiah.

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Like Shankar, the Messiah has been hyped by popular culture to a point where many might doubt it's merit. Doubt no further. Handel stands not far beneath Bach in the pantheon of Baroque composers... indeed within the whole of Western classical music. The Messiah may just be his greatest achievement. Handel composed a vast array of operas and oratorios... to say nothing of his instrumental music. There are a number of truly masterful oratorios... which were virtually operas sans the drama/acting with an emphasis on choral passages. Saul, Solomon, Judas Maccabeus, and Joshua are all masterpieces in their right... but the Messiah is something special. The wealth of memorable arias and choruses is unrivaled:

"Comfort ye, my people"-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhy2SRHqpuQ&feature=PlayList&p=6844BF531800BA30&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=12

"O Thou that tellest good tidings to Zion"-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWXxfpuzFUc&feature=related

"All we like sheep have gone astray..."-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeAGb9KK1cs

"Lift up ye heads, o ye gates..."-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kzgVzg8nVk

"Hallelujah"-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uOabPZScQs

"I know that my redeemer liveth"-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sytc1OVVnE&feature=related

"The trumpet shall sound..."-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7555EtvhwKQ

And one could certainly discover any number of other "peaks" within this marvelous work. I had hoped to see the work in person this year... but other things intervened. Oh well...

Today I have been playing a disc that just arrived in the mail from Amazon: Anna Netrebko: Souvenirs:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2485/4218083068_0019a23f42_o.jpg

While there are undoubtedly several contemporary singers whom I prefer to Netrebko, she is undoubtedly one of the "hottest" rising stars of opera. I have been following her since first coming upon her marvelous Russian Album which is many ways spurred my recent interest in Russian opera. This latest collection focuses upon "lighter" and more intimate/personal music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soyAJE4U_BI

The disc collects any number of sensual and joyful arias from various late 19th century operettas... a number by composers who are in no way household names: Emmerich Kalman...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYf-u9MZZR8

Richard Heuberger, Geronimo Gimenez. There are also a number of songs, performed in orchestral version, by Grieg, Strauss, Reynaldo Hahn, and others. The music is perfectly suited to Netrebko's lyrical soprano and her marvelous ability to exude a theatrical sensuality. One of the songs included on the disc is Franz Lehar's Meine Lippen, Sie küssen so heiss (My lips, they kiss with such fire) which Netrebko performed is a joyous... almost cabaret manner... before the BBC Proms audience:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_kaOYC_Fww&feature=related

One of the highlights of the new disc is the Bacarolle from Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann performed in duet with Elina Garanca (with whom Netrebko performed the marvelous recent recording of Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u0M4CMq7uI

Highly recommended!:thumbs_up

It's in the mid-20s outside... snowing and blowing... and I'm sitting in my cozy little library...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2793/4222304103_b1779e354f_o.jpg

the tree is decorated to the hilt and all lit up... the candles are burning... and I'm sipping hot chocolate with whipped cream and nibbling on a few chocolate truffles dusted with coffee. And the music?... some sweet Viennese confections: decadent operetta arias, waltzes, and lieder. Perhaps its just that I've been so seduced by Anna Netrebko's recent disc (and who couldn't be seduced by Anna Netrebko:blush:) or perhaps its just childhood memories of The Sound of Music over the holidays... or the annual New Years' Day Concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic playing Strauss waltzes. Whatever the case may be I'm currently in a big Viennese mood.

Beside the Netrebko, I've been listening to the classic Elizabeth Schwarzkopf recording of operetta arias from the late 1950s:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2688/4220726175_527b9879db_o.jpg

and the operetta and folk song recordings of Rita Streich:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2789/4222304281_ea1d4667b4_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2582/4223067528_c3bed96704_o.jpg

Elizabeth Schwarzkopf was one of the greatest sopranos of the 20th century and was a rather fascinating figure. An beautiful icy blond... in the manner of Grace Kelly...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4058/4223067376_6ac456ba7b_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2744/4222304183_957e87d847_o.jpg

she was reputedly the favorite singer of Adolph Hitler... as well as of the great German conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Indeed, her cold perfectionism and silvery voice was perfectly suited to Karajan's own similar aesthetic temperament. She was also a favorite of Walter Legge... one of the greatest impresarios and opera producers (famous for numerous classic recordings from the 50s and 60s done for EMI)... so much so he later married her. Where Maria Callas almost certainly cut her career short by attempting to tackle roles that were beyond her range well after she capable, Schwarzkopf had the good sense to move to a repertoire more suited to her voice as she grew older: resulting in numerous marvelous recordings of lieder (by Schubert, Brahms, Wolf, Mahler, Strauss, and others) as well as classic recordings of lighter Viennese operettas. Her recordings of Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier (in the role of the Marschallin, Princess von Werdenberg) and Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus (in the role of Rosalinde)... both with Karajan conducting... remain the standards by which all others are measured. Her disc of operetta arias contains a slew of luscious bon-bons that are equally a joy to listen to. The tunes include compositions by Strauss and Lehar... but many of the works are by composers all but forgotten today, including Richard Heuberger, Carl Zeller, and Rudolf Sieczynesky. Among the real gems is Lehar's "Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAI12axZL5k

Johann Strauss II's "Nun's Chorus & Laura's Song":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VCsj7QYzyA

"In chambre separee" from Der Opernball by Richard Heuberger-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBj5AMiXEi4

Rita Streich was born in Germany and had her operatic debut during the WWII. Following the war she became a much sought-after singer for light coloratura-and-soubrette soprano roles. Her exquisitely light and delicate voice earned her the reputation as the "Viennese Nightengale" following her move to Vienna. Streich recorded several delicious recitals of operetta arias and folk songs. Among a few favorites I would count Johann Strauss II's "Frühlingsstimmen":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkFWL1rhx6k

Camille Saint-Saëns' "Le Rossignol et la rose":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfyxGzvDSpY&feature=related

the Yiddish Folksong, "Schlof Sche Mein Vogele"-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze9hOVAQ0c4&feature=related

and Friedrich von Flotow's "Last Rose of Summer" from his opera Martha. The tune should certainly be well-enough known with lyrics from the old Irish poet, Thomas Moore:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTHMZeU9QlA&feature=related

[Petrarch's Love]

Hi St. Luke's--Glad you're having such a cozy post holiday afternoon. Your library cum Christmas tree looks absolutely idyllic. (Of course I'm not suffering too much out here in the sunny 70 degree weather of California either.) Thanks for the links. The Chicago Lyric Opera will performing Lehar's Merry Widow when I get back in January and as I thought about the upcoming performance I had just been realizing that I have almost no light opera in my music collection and had been musing about what might be a good recording to start with, so yours is a timely post. The Schwarzkopf recording might be a good anthology to add into my vocal music mix. There are times when one distinctly feels like a few "bon-bons" as you say. :)

[stlukesguild]

Over the past week I have repeatedly been listening... with great enthusiasm I might add... to the music of a recent discovery (for me): Charles Koechlin. Koechlin was a French composer (November 27, 1867–December 31, 1950) whose music was quite individual... even eclectic... although he is commonly placed among the French Impressionists. It is with a certain degree of disbelief that I first listened to this composer... and then sought out more and more by him... especially when one considers my admiration for French music of the period: Ravel, Debussy, Fauré, Satie, Reynaldo Hahn, and many others have been familiar to me for quite some time. But I had never even heard of Koechlin... and this is all the more surprising when I began to look at his biography.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2787/4229794681_dddef85435_o.jpg

Koechlin studied at the Paris Conservatoire. His teachers included Massenet, with whom he studied composition, and his fellow students included a number who would soon rank among the leading figures of French Modernist music: George Enescu, Reynaldo Hahn, Henri Rabaud and Florent Schmitt. He continued his studies as a pupil of pupil of Gabriel Fauré, where his fellow-pupils now included Ravel and Jean Roger-Ducasse. Fauré was a major influence on Koechlin; in fact Koechlin wrote the first Fauré biography in 1927 and orchestrated the popular suite from Fauré's Pelléas et Melisande. Ravel spoke of Koechlin.

His musical education occurred during of great change and innovation in music. As Koechlin himself would recall, "There were... strange insights, lie windows opening into the mystery of sounds, or like glimpses into that great virgin forest: the Music of the Future." The whole generation including not only Stravinsky and the Viennese circle of Mahler and Schoenberg and Berg, but also the French Impressionists were most profoundly shaken by the experience of one composer: Richard Wagner... and nothing inspired them as much as his complex, unresolved dissonances and virtual polytonalities (or the use of more than one key simultaneously) of his brilliant opera, Tristan und Isolde. The French composer who seemingly grasped the potential of Wagner's innovations most profoundly was, as Koechlin notes, "a strange, mysterious, fellow composer whom Florent Schmidt... praised to the skies: Claude Debussy. To tell the truth, I knew almost nothing of him while I was a pupil... but this 'nothing' was quite a bit. Sometimes a single bar by a colleague of genius is enough to open the door to enchanted gardens, where we might gather other flowers than his."

Koechlin's music is quite varied in genre and style. There are elements of the lush shifting of keys to be found in the classic examples of Impressionism... especially of Debussy. At times there are elements of atonality and even serialism (inspired by Schoenberg and his followers)... but in general, Koechlin is too much of a classicist... deeply admiring of Faure and Chopin... to employ dissonant "noises" to too vulgar an extreme. Inspired by nature, the the Middle-East and Asia (some of his works sound almost Japanese), Hollywood, films, and even jazz, there are moments when Koechlin recalls an American composer such as Copland and other moments when he is as complex and abstract as Bach.

Koechlin composed symphonies and symphonic poems (the most famous forming part of a composition inspired by Kipling's Jungle Book) and a number of other symphonic compositions. He also composed works for chorus and a body of songs, which have only recently begun to be discovered and appreciated as among the finest examples of Modern French song. However, it seems his most admired works are to be found among his many compositions for solo instrument (piano, flute, clarinet, etc...) or small chamber groups.

His exquisite works for solo piano are worthy to stand alongside of those of Debussy and Ravel. The pieces are marvelously poetic and evocative:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofUKzA9Ttqk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG3BJoDDKjY&feature=related

The composer was also a master of works for clarinet, saxophone, and flute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBAfgBVLz_8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBOjlsTs6g4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovi2oUTMryc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akYuKpui59M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQgi87oZxDc&feature=related

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2771/4247260594_1072d51fe7_o.jpg

Today I got another disc of Koechlin's music bringing my over-all collection to 4 (whoo-hoo!:rolleyes:). I was fascinated with the brief history of the saxophone included. The instrument was invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s and by 1857 a class (taught by Sax himself) opened in the Paris Conservatoire. Unfortunately, the class closed in 1870 and the saxophone was left to fend for itself... showing up rarely in orchestral music and making its biggest impact upon jazz. Intriguingly... perhaps in part as a result of the sax classes... the saxophone enjoyed a degree of popularity with early French Modernists... and showed up again in response to the popularity of jazz... in the French Conservatiore in 1942.

The disc is an achingly lovely collection of Charles Koechlin's works for saxophone and piano. The music is quite beautiful... sensual... delicate... beautiful examples of French Impressionism that I would heartily recommend to anyone with a fondness for Ravel or Debussy.

[Emil Miller]

This piece probably doesn't belong on the Classical Listening thread as it is a hybrid. It is by a Scottish composer of mainly film music called Craig Armstrong whom I had never heard of until a few days ago. I have been able to find out quite a bit about him through Google but, apart fom this music being played by the London Sessions Orchestra, I cannot trace the name of the choir or the libretto of the piece. Does anyone know where I can find them?


http://www.last.fm/music/Craig+Armstrong/_/Escape+%28Full+version%29/+videos.

[Petrarch's Love]

Thanks for posting the Koechlin links, St. Luke's. I've been listening to them while doing some teaching prep and they're quite lovely. I had never heard of him before either and I wonder why. Interesting.

Brian--I couldn't get your link to work for some reason.

[Emil Miller]

Thanks for posting the Koechlin links, St. Luke's. I've been listening to them while doing some teaching prep and they're quite lovely. I had never heard of him before either and I wonder why. Interesting.

Brian--I couldn't get your link to work for some reason.


Sorry to hear that, how about this haunting piece from Philp Glass ?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkof3nPK--Y

[Petrarch's Love]

Sorry to hear that, how about this haunting piece from Philp Glass ?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkof3nPK--Y

That is a lovely piece. Is it from the film, The Hours? I only saw a very short part of the introduction to the film once (wasn't too impressed with that bit) but the score is very good. Glass has some pretty decent pieces.

[Emil Miller]

That is a lovely piece. Is it from the film, The Hours? I only saw a very short part of the introduction to the film once (wasn't too impressed with that bit) but the score is very good. Glass has some pretty decent pieces.

Yes it is from the film and though I haven't seen it the storyline seems very contrived to me, although I think there is a good case for making a film solely about Virginia Woolf. There is an extract from the film of The Hours on the video I have posted concerning her and it appears to be sensitively handled. I understand that Glass studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and I can hear the French influence in this music, although there is something eerily American about it also which I find a lttle disturbing.

[stlukesguild]

Thanks for posting the Koechlin links, St. Luke's. I've been listening to them while doing some teaching prep and they're quite lovely. I had never heard of him before either and I wonder why. Interesting.

Petrarch... I hadn't heard of him myself until just recently. I finally built two new shelves and got all my CDs shelved and organized. As a result I found myself more clearly able to recognize those areas where I felt my collection was lacking. While I have a good deal of late 19th/early 20th century French vocal music... chanson... I noticed that beyond Debussy, Ravel, and Faure there was scant little else in instrumental work. Thus I set about to rectify the situation with discs by Dutilleux, Florent Schmitt, Charles Tournemire, Ernest Fanelli, Henri Rabaud, D'Indy, and a number of other contemporaries of Debussy, Ravel, and Faure. Koechlin seems to have been the strongest... the most unique... and the most prolific of these composers. I quickly purchased 4 discs by the man including one collection of solo piano works entitled Les Heures Persanes, a second disc of other works for solo piano, one disc of works for piano and clarinet, and a final disc of works for piano and saxophone. I am currently lusting after his collection or suite for solo flute entitled Les Chants de Nectaire which some have compared to Bach's suites for solo cello as a great towering work of a hermetic genius. Even if the work does not live up to such hype, it is quite haunting... and reminiscent of japanese music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akYuKpui59M&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQgi87oZxDc&feature=related

[mortalterror]

This piece probably doesn't belong on the Classical Listening thread as it is a hybrid. It is by a Scottish composer of mainly film music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV0wPBYDQ6Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQH84rbM_94
Besides, Prokofiev scored Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky. Aaron Copland composed music for The Red Pony. Ralph Vaughan-Williams tried his hand at film scoring several times, notably on Scott of the Antarctic, which music became the basis of his seventh symphony.

Cinema can be very sophisticated. It's shaped and informed how I perceive the classics. When I hear Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings I think of Platoon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T7swpa13_c When I hear the Intermezzo from Cavaleria Rusticana I think of the opening scene of Raging Bull. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQhwi8kk-dE When I hear certain pieces by Bach, Vivaldi, or Boccherini I think Master and Commander. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZg02IqJyHM

[stlukesguild]

Prokofiev's film scores seem the most successful among major composers. In most other instances they seem but minor endeavors... diversions in search of a quick chunk of change. Korngold may have been the best among serious composers who made a career of writing film scores, but there are some other interesting composers as well. I quite like Eleni Karaindrou, a contemporary composer. She has written extensively for films:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WbdSWIhNtc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAz9Vc2lVVA&feature=related

Of course the linking between a piece of music and a film can be something of a negative... completely changing the intention of the piece. In past generations it was impossible to hear the Overture to Rossini's William Tell without thinking of the Lone Ranger. Now Also Sprach Zarathustra will forever be linked with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Penderecki's music with The Shining, and of course the Ride of the Walkure with Apocalypse Now!. The music certainly reinforces the film... but I don't know that the film necessarily strengthens the music... unless we consider that film may be one of the venues through which a larger audience has been introduced to orchestral music.

[mortalterror]

In most other instances they seem but minor endeavors... diversions in search of a quick chunk of change.
Kind of like The Magic Flute or Rasselas.

[Petrarch's Love]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV0wPBYDQ6Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQH84rbM_94
Besides, Prokofiev scored Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky. Aaron Copland composed music for The Red Pony. Ralph Vaughan-Williams tried his hand at film scoring several times, notably on Scott of the Antarctic, which music became the basis of his seventh symphony.

Cinema can be very sophisticated. It's shaped and informed how I perceive the classics. When I hear Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings I think of Platoon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T7swpa13_c When I hear the Intermezzo from Cavaleria Rusticana I think of the opening scene of Raging Bull. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQhwi8kk-dE When I hear certain pieces by Bach, Vivaldi, or Boccherini I think Master and Commander. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZg02IqJyHM

I agree that there has been some great music written for film and also great use of music in film.


Prokofiev's film scores seem the most successful among major composers. In most other instances they seem but minor endeavors... diversions in search of a quick chunk of change. Korngold may have been the best among serious composers who made a career of writing film scores, but there are some other interesting composers as well. I quite like Eleni Karaindrou, a contemporary composer. She has written extensively for films:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WbdSWIhNtc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAz9Vc2lVVA&feature=related

Of course the linking between a piece of music and a film can be something of a negative... completely changing the intention of the piece. In past generations it was impossible to hear the Overture to Rossini's William Tell without thinking of the Lone Ranger. Now Also Sprach Zarathustra will forever be linked with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Penderecki's music with The Shining, and of course the Ride of the Walkure with Apocalypse Now!. The music certainly reinforces the film... but I don't know that the film necessarily strengthens the music... unless we consider that film may be one of the venues through which a larger audience has been introduced to orchestral music.

Thanks for the links, St. Luke's. I've never heard of that composer or either of those two films. Are they worth watching?

Yes, there are certainly also those unfortunate uses of music in film and television that can come close to spoiling a piece of music in some instances. I think I recently mentioned on another thread here that because of a Giligan's Island episode I can't read one of Polonius' speeches in Hamlet without hearing the Toreador theme in my head, and I can't hear the Toreador theme without hearing Polonius in my head. Darn Gilligan's Island:mad: :lol:

As you say, music definitely does a great deal for film, whether the reverse is true or not is a good question. It can certainly change the sort of emotional association one has with a piece of music. Take, for example, John Williams' theme for Shindler's List. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMx2SKIRkw4) I think it's a beautiful score but, though it's obviously a plaintive, minor piece, I don't know that I would associate it with the same kind of rending emotion that I do having first heard it as the backdrop to that film. I can imagine that the same music played as the score for a sad but sappy love film might have led to people reacting very differently to the work.

On a lighter and different note, I just got back from an absolutely fantastic fantastic piano concert with Emmanuel Ax playing a heavenly and delightful all Chopin and Schumann program, so I'm in this sort of mood:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRWWP7H-9SQ

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

:banana:

[stlukesguild]

In most other instances they seem but minor endeavors... diversions in search of a quick chunk of change.

Kind of like The Magic Flute or Rasselas.

Don't get me wrong... nothing wrong with making art for money. Johnson himself suggested that "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." Blake may have disagreed... although even he strove to make money off his art. What I was suggesting is that most of the works which you were discussing come off as minor pieces... as nothing more than a grab for the quick buck... where Prokofiev's film scores, or Mozart's Magic Flute in no way come off as minor pieces. The film genre may inherently make it difficult for the composer... or at least certain types of film. With rapid shifts in scenes and mood it must be incredibly difficult to score a film: exactly 31 seconds of melancholy music followed by a burst of triumphal music for 13 seconds, followed by another 27 seconds of calm, quiet passages, etc... This is far more rigorously structured than an opera where the composer must work with a given libretto. The demands upon the film composer are incredible... but I question the results as a stand-alone work of music. I think that in most cases a collection of highlights... a suite... not unlike that drawn from the ballets of Tchaikovsky... offers the best taste of what film music has to offer... outside of the film itself.

[Emil Miller]

Besides, Prokofiev scored Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky. Aaron Copland composed music for The Red Pony. Ralph Vaughan-Williams tried his hand at film scoring several times, notably on Scott of the Antarctic, which music became the basis of his seventh symphony.

I agree that film music can be interesting in its own right but, as StLukes has pointed out, it is constrained within its cinematic context and does not often match up to music writen specifically as an audio experience. There are notable exceptions, and composers such as Prokofiev, Shostakovitch, Britten, Vaughan Williams, Walton etc. are obviously to be taken more seriously than John Williams for example who, as enjoyable as he is, composes essentially for the cinema. The use of great orchestral works as background music in films has led many a person to listen to the music detached from its cinematic format. I had never really bothered with Brahms until I saw Goodbye Again, a film version of Francoise Sagan's succes fou Aimez vous Brahms? After which, I got hold of any orchestral work by Brahms that I could lay my hands on. I haven't seen Master and Commander but it is interesting that the film appears to use a number of established works as background music including Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; one of the most beautiful and intensley English pieces of music ever written

[NikolaiI]

I've been listening to Mozart and Liszt a lot lately.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I’ve not been listening much, but when I have it has been Beethoven’s piano sonatas and various Mozart pieces – I can see myself listening to a lot of Beethoven over the coming weeks though.

I have also started to tune the TV into radio 3 which is often quite good for music and the arts - often they play the full works, not just selections which I like the idea of. At least I have found a use for the TV aside from the odd good film or DVD.

[stlukesguild]

I've been listening quite a bit to a number of absolutely gorgeous vocal collections. The first of these, in my opinion, is an absolute must-have disc... an expression of the triumph of love... even in the face of tragedy... and death:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2757/4265415988_57baf13943_o.jpg

This recording is is an absolutely heart-wrenching experience. The composer, Peter Lieberson (born 1945), studied music and composition with Milton Babbitt and Charles Wuorinen at Columbia. In spite of the strict and rigorous Modernism of his mentors, Lieberson's own music evolved in a far more accessible, lush, and sensuous manner. Lieberson had been enamored of the love poems of Pablo Neruda after having bought the bright pink volume of 100 Love Sonnets for his wife, the mezzo-soprano, Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson. While lying in bed, Lorraine would often read the sonnets to her husband in Spanish. The Neruda Songs were co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony, and the world premiere was given on May 20, 2005, by the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting and Hunt Lieberson as soloist. The Boston Symphony performed the work in November 2005 with James Levine, a great supporter of Lieberson's music, conducting.

Lieberson and his wife selected 5 of Neruda's 100 sonnets which he then set to an absolute lush and romantic orchestral arrangement. The music is at once modern and eminently accessible. There are elements of drama, passion, exoticism, Spanish rhythms, sensuality... and ultimately sadness and loss. Each poem and its musical setting reveals a unique and distinctive facet of love as the suite as a whole moves from the most openly rapturous to inevitable and inconsolable grief at separation.

Lieberson obviously composed these works as a great expression of his love for his wife, and one cannot help but draw parallels between the emotional arc of the compositions and Hunt Lieberson's long-running bout with cancer and her pending fate. My thoughts upon first hearing this disc went immediately to the devastating recording of Der Abschied, the final song from Mahler's Song of the Earth as recorded by Bruno Walter and Kathleen Ferrier, who like Hunt-Lieberson was fully aware that she had but a short time left and put forth such emotion into her singing as to be almost unbearable.

The cycle begins with an expression of unadorned joy that clearly registers in Lorraine's voice as she sings "If your eyes were not the color of the moon", conveying the unreakable bond between composer and performer. It is the fifth poem, "My love, if I die and you don't", which truly tugs most at the heart-strings the most deeply as she sings of the eternal fate of true love in spite of... and in the face of mortality. The most sublime moment comes when she repeats the word "amor" at the end with a dream-like, faraway tone. This is magnificent, transcendent work from a singer for the ages and a composer whose enduring love for his wife has inspired his most profound work. There are some critics who have suggested that Lieberson's Neruda Songs might just rival Strauss' Four Last Songs. As much as I love Strauss, I would not be quick to challenge the assertion. This is an absolutely stunning piece of music and an unquestionably moving performance.http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2691/4280754476_1d387de650_o.gifhttp://farm3.static.flickr.com/2691/4280754476_1d387de650_o.gifhttp://farm3.static.flickr.com/2691/4280754476_1d387de650_o.gif

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3n5Ao4Qk3Y&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgiMe1rMyFc&feature=related

[thetinkris]

Shostakovich is one of my favorites. Although it is a bit overwhelming at times, I find his intensity incredible and moving, even sexy. His music sounds like an existential crisis.

I'm absolutely infatuated with the Emerson String Quartet's recordings of Shostakovich's string quartets. Just bought the 5 CD set. Not only is the music gorgeous in the first place, but the recording quality is incredible and resonant. My personal favorites are the 8th and 3rd quartets.

One of my favorite movements: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khpm7RLFnGw

[stlukesguild]

I have the Fitzwilliam recordings of the same quartets myself and they are certainly marvelous... but I must admit that I'm not enough of a quartet fan to even think about a second version of the same works. Shostakovitch is indeed a powerful composer... one that I have been exploring more recently as I have... it must be admitted... never been a great fan of Russian music (give me the Germans followed by the French and the Italians!). I was especially blown away by his audacious opera, The Nose (based on Gogol's tale) and as one obessed with Bach I was especially enamored of his Preludes and Fugues... the composer's marvelous response to Bach's Well Tempered Clavier.

[stlukesguild]

I spite of the presence of our so-called "musicologist", I cannot allow today to go by without recognizing it as the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1/27/1756) although by the time I hit the "submit reply" button it will already be the 28th.:p I say I couldn't allow Mozart's birthday to pass unrecognized because it is somewhat obvious that his work has been been avoided here... (I'll admit to such myself) perhaps out of a desire to avoid encouraging more wacky conspiracy theories involving Free Masons, Illuminati, and the Flying Elvises.

Nevertheless, upon having it drawn to my attention that it was Mozart's birthday, I set about to choose some of his work as part of the evening listening. Undoubtedly Mozart's operas were among his finest achievements, and so I elected to listen to a favorite old recording of arias sung by the brilliant Elizabeth Schwarzkopf dating from the late 1940s and early 1950s:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4049/4310986126_d0583027e6_o.jpg

I wouldn't promote this as a first choice for anyone first coming to these arias as the date of the recordings truly shows in the sound quality... but Schwarzkopf is certainly one of the great singers of the century... and one whose work is worth experiencing however flawed the technology of the time may have been. Her youthful voice is so full of devotion to these works. The disc offers a nice array of arias stretching from earlier operas such as Idomeneo through the great late works. Sadly there are no selections from Cosi fan tutte. I am especially enthralled with Porgi, amor from The Mariage of Figaro:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iUSEvp1mNU

Of course Voi che sapete and Dove sono i bei momenti (from the same opera) are not far behind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMAlbDeph7M

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

Beyond the operas, and various isolated masterpieces (such as the clarinet quintet, the clarinet concerto, the Requiem and the Mass in D) it is the piano concertos (not the symphonies) that I have long thought of as providing the greatest body of Mozart's work (and the strongest argument for his stature). I thus sat about listening to some of the great later piano concertos this evening, as well. Alfred Brendel is probably my favorite performer for these works (although I have the highly-acclaimed Murray Perahia recording of the complete piano concertos on my "wish list"). Tonight, however, it was a Russian (!!?) Vladimir Ashkenazy that I was listening to:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/4311036850_39f900043e_o.jpg

The Piano Concerto no. 20 has long been one of my absolute favorite pieces of music... by anyone... and the slow middle movement... the famous Romance must be one of the most exquisite few minutes of music ever laid out. Here is a particularly nice recording... and video... with the great pianist Friederich Gulda:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lPrap4xsyg

But then we have the great Andante from the Piano Concert 21... the so-called "Elvira Madigan" concerto... so named as a result of its use in a Swedish film of the same name. Here is the great Alfred Brendel's performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45drOlTTTA8

Indeed, these concertos are just laden with some of the strongest and most memorable music in the whole realm of "classical music"... especially the slower movements. Enjoy!:thumbs_up

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes, I just love Mozart, he was probably the one who first really pulled me into classical music along with Chopin and Liszt, magical stuff. I think it would be hard to find someone (apart from...) who doesn't appreciate it though.

[stlukesguild]

French Mélodies Part 1

In our repeated debates as to which nation or culture has produced the greatest body of literature (or any sub-genre such as poetry or novels) our attempts to come to any sort of consensus have ultimately been thwarted by our limitations of language and the realization that we must almost certainly rely upon translations... some of which are unreliable... some of which are lacking in aesthetic merits... and some of which are non-existent. Music... however... would seem to be a different beast altogether. There is almost no way to dispute the fact that the Germans/Austrians literally own music. No other culture (at least in the West) even comes near. We could eliminate the three immortals of music (Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart) and we should still be presented with an entire slew of the most highly regarded composers: Wagner... Brahms... Handel... Haydn... Schubert... Schumann... Mahler, Richard Strauss...etc...

Over the past year I have been greatly broadening my collection of classical music... especially within areas and genres that I felt may just have possibly been underrepresented. As such, I have made a concerted effort to explore British and American composers, Modern and Contemporary composers, Russian opera, and Medieval music. At present I am experiencing something of a love affair with French music, and as a long-time lover of vocal music I have been especially seduced by the French Mélodie.

The Mélodie generally refers to French art songs of the mid 19th century to the present, and is something of an equivalent to the German Lied. Like the German Lied, the Mélodie was commonly composed for voice and solo piano, allowing for intimate performance in private homes and salons. As with later examples of the German Lied (one thinks immediately of Mahler and Richard Strauss) there are instances in which these Mélodies were composed with various other accompaniments: flute, violin, harp, small chamber ensembles, or with entire orchestral settings.

Just as the German Lied flourished during a period in which German lyrical poetry was also blossoming (Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Heine, Hölderlin, etc...) so the French composers of song also greatly benefited by the wealth of beautiful, lyrical poetry being written in French in the late 19th and early 20th century. Composers could not help but be inspired by the poetry of Baudelaire, Gautier, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Sully Prudhomme, Pierre Louÿs, and others. Indeed, the delicious merger of exquisite music and resplendent poetry cannot help but tantalize the lover of literature and song. "Where are some examples of song lyrics that stand alone as poetry?" another thread asks. Here. Here! Here is poetry in word and song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNs8H60vQTM

S'il est vrai, Chloris, que tu m'aimes,
Mais j'entends, que tu m'aimes bien,
Je ne crois point que les rois mêmes
Aient un bonheur pareil au mien.
Que la mort serait importune
De venir changer ma fortune
A la félicité des cieux!
Tout ce qu'on dit de l'ambroisie
Ne touche point ma fantaisie
Au prix des grâces de tes yeux.

Théophile de Viau (1590-1626)

French Mélodies have been embraced by a broad range of the finest singers active today. One of the most unique must surely be Philippe Jaroussky. One of the most delightfully decadent recordings I have come across recently is his Opium: Mélodies françaises...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4040/4317580945_b5289a250c_o.jpg

This disc presents performances of songs by Reynaldo Hahn, Jules Massenet, Gabriel Faure, Ernest Chausson, Camille Saint-Saëns, Cesar Franck, etc... the greatest composers of France of the fin de siecle. These songs represent a rare and heady bouquet... perfumed and laden with the silk and satin and velvet of the French salons. The lyrics are commonly drawn from the delicate poems of French symbolism: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarme, etc... while the music speaks of the sophisticated and artificial world of the French ballet... the theater... the opera... and of the sun-dappled world of Impressionism.

Jaroussky takes these songs to an even greater height of decadence with his high falsetto. Along with Andreas Scholl, Alfred Deller, and Rene Jacobs, Jaroussky is one of a recent number of highly talented countertenors who are taking their vocal range into an oeuvre previously reserved to sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, and tenors... or even baritones. The artificially high male voice almost immediately recalls the use of castrati and/or young male choir-boy vocalists in the operas and other vocal works of the baroque age (from which period the poem in the above song comes). Jaroussky brings a sense of the extreme artifice of Rameau, Lully, Couperin, and French Baroque to the 19th century Parisian salons. While I would not be without the performances of such mezzos and sopranos as Cecilia Bartoli, Janet Baker, Sandrine Piau, Veronique Gens, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Dawn Upshaw in the performance of these works, Jaroussky admittedly brings an added edge of decadence... artifice... and debaucheries to this delicate French bon-bons.

Another gorgeous song from this disc is Jules Massenet's Elégie. Massenet has himself been long underrated among music critics... in spite of the fact that he is one of the most exquisite masters of melody, and has been credited by many with the revival of the French language in song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9X3H6mZcDY

Rêve d'un bonheur effacé,
Mon coeur lassé t'appelle en vain dans la nuit
Tendres serments échangés,
Soirs enivrés, vous reposez dans l'oubli...
C'est la fin des beaux jours, ô souvenir de nos brèves amours !
La nuit descend lentement sur nos coeurs
L'automne effeuille les fleurs,
La paix du soir vient adoucir nos douleurs
Tout nous trahit, tout nous fuit sans retour
Tout nous trahit sans retour ........

Pierre Louÿs (1870 - 1925)

[stlukesguild]

French Mélodies Part 2: Gérard Souzay

My preference has long been for female singers... at least when dealing with the repertoire of the French Mélodies. The music and the poems both have such a degree of sensuality that they seem to call out for the female voice. Obviously with Philippe Jaroussky I have made an exception... then again, his artful and artificial countertenor is almost a perversely decadent exception.

Recently, however, I discovered Gérard Souzay. This great baritone was once touted as the French answer to the German Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. For anyone who loves classical vocalists and especially German lieder, Fischer-Dieskau is the inimitable pinnacle of song. As such, I took the comparisons with a large grain of salt. A single disc, however, changed my opinion:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2800/4313116322_afe2d2bbdf_o.jpg

Where Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was often contracted out to Deutsche Grammophon and EMI... two of the finest classical recording labels with the greatest sound engineers... Souzay, unfortunately, does not seem to have developed such a relationship with a major label. This particular disc of Mélodies by Claude Debussy is his sole recording for DG... but what a marvelous disc it is. The collection includes songs that set poems of Verlaine, Charles d'Orleans, Baudelaire, and even original poems by Debussy himself. Souzay's voice is absolutely marvelous... never gruff... but always polished... warm... enveloping... and expressive.

Unfortunately, there are no examples of Souzay's performances from this disc available on YouTube. On the other hand, there are any number of marvelous performances available on-line:

Chanson triste by Henri Duparc:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mms29cqINQI&feature=related

Gabriel Fauré's classic song, Après un rêve:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRrdWhKuwQ4&feature=related

Duparc's Phidyle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DQdHTwCjo8

and Fauré's magical setting of Paul Verlaine's most famous poem, Clair de lune:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGf0w0zghFI&feature=related

[stlukesguild]

French Mélodies Part 3

I was looking over my CD shelves today and found myself somewhat (OK... not really) surprised that I own far more music by Russian composers than I do by French composers... in spite of my expressed preference (and in spite of the fact that my collection of the greatest Russian composer, Tchaikovsky, is woefully malnourished). What I have come to recognize is that there is a huge gaping void in French music and that void is the symphony. There are few (if any) French composers who are truly masterful symphonic composers. Even the British do a better job at this. But perhaps that brings us back to the French Mélodies for certainly it seems (with the exception of opera... at which the French excel to a certain extent) that the strength in French music lies with the miniature... the cameo... the lyrical musical poem: chamber works, works for solo piano, shimmering concertos for flute and harp (instruments all but ignored in other musical traditions), and of course the mélodies... chanson.

While I have long loved French music, I have never been overly impressed with French performers, orchestras, of conductors... with a few exceptions:
Pierre Boulez, André Cluytens, René Jacobs (who's actually Belgian) and Charles Dutoit (who's actually Swiss). The English, Germans, Americans, and Russians have seemed to lead the field in classical musical performance. Nevertheless, reacting to several stellar reviews in Gramophone and other classical music periodicals I recently decided to check out two French singers: Sandrine Piau...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2793/4356817395_953138a057_o.jpg

and Véronique Gens...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4037/4356817575_0a110321cc_o.jpg

Both women are brilliant sopranos. Neither currently may lay claim to the sort of star status of a singer like Anna Netrebko or Renee Fleming... but from the example of their recent recordings both are every bit worthy of, and quite likely well on their way to such recognition.

Sandrine Piau trained as a harpist and studied voice at the Collège Lamartine and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique du Paris. She is best known for her performances in Baroque opera, having worked with many of the leading European conductors of the Baroque revival, including William Christie, Marc Minkowski, Philippe Herreweghe, Christophe Rousset, and René Jacobs. She collaborated with Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir to record the complete vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Piau's recording of Handel arias...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4008/4356817823_4241eb9157_o.jpg

was greeted with glowing praise by all the major music critics and periodicals.

It is her recording of Debussy mélodies, recorded for Naïve records with Jos van Immerseel on piano that I am concerned with here...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4054/4356817781_c7d317a2f6_o.jpg

as well as her disc, évocation, which includes further performances of Debussy, as well as Ernest Chausson, Charles Koechlin, Richard Strauss, Alexander Zemlinsky, and Arnold Schoenberg...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4035/4356817453_5a32608511_o.jpg

Among the marvelous works and performances to be found on these two discs I especially admire Debussy's Les papillons in which the poem of Théophile Gautier is interwoven with shimmering and glittering piano trills which suggest the fluttering of the wings of the butterfly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX19eeE_AVI&feature=related

Another exquisite song by Debussy (from évocation ) is the wistful L'âme évaporée... taken from Debussy's last song cycle, Deux Romances... his farewell to the genre:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PqmQ3KIb4s

Both of these discs are exquisite and I cannot recommend them highly enough. I have been playing them repeatedly since they first arrived... in spite of having some 1200 other discs to chose from.

Having made such claims for Sandrine Piau, I should note that if anything the collection, Nuit d'étoiles (Mélodies française)...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4027/4357565466_5edecdace3_o.jpg

performed by Véronique Gens, is even more delicious! Gens studied at the Conservatoire de Paris and won first prize of the school. Her debut in 1986 was with William Christie and his Les Arts Florissants, and like Piau, she has spent much of her career recording and performing Baroque music, collaborating with conductors such as the already mentioned Christie, Marc Minkowski, René Jacobs, Christophe Rousset, Philippe Herreweghe, and Jean-Claude Malgoire. While she began as a Baroque specialist, she has become in demand for roles in Mozart operas, and an interpreter of songs by Berlioz, Debussy, Fauré as well as Joseph Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne.

Nuit d'étoiles (Mélodies française) contains performances of mélodies by Gabriel Faure, Debussy, and Poulenc. For me the most telling moment of this disc comes during shift from Fauré to Debussy. Gens rounds out her selection of Fauré's songs with Clair de lune and Les berceaux. Les berceaux is a marvelous setting of the poem by Sully Prudhomme... (unfortunately YouTube doesn't have a recording of Gens performance, but they do have a version by the inimitable, Janet Baker):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxdIr0gu9rQ

These final two songs are among the greatest ever written by Fauré, and both stand along with the strongest works in the entire genre of "art song"... including the lieder of Schubert. They also offer a perfect contrast to Debussy's sensuous setting of Pierre Louÿs erotic Chansons de Bilitis. From the very opening notes of the piano we are aware that this music is something new... more languorous... Impressionistic (once again I am unable to find a recording by Gens of this piece, but I can certainly recommend Victoria de los Angeles' version in order to give one a taste):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biNql1cHh7c

For an even greater sense of the contrast between the earlier Fauré and Debussy Gens offers both composer's interpretations of Clair de lune:

Fauré's version is lilting... wistful... but as brilliant as it is (and it is unquestionably that)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mjy3Fw5GJY

it is almost nearer in style to the lieder of Schubert and Schumann than it is to the Impressionism of Debussy...

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

Once again... I cannot recommend either singer highly enough.

[Drkshadow03]

Can someone explain the appeal of opera to me? I keep listening to it. Every once in awhile I'll hear something I like, but most of the time it just sounds like a bunch of high-pitched women and low-bellowing men singing relatively the same song over and over again in a language I can't understand.

I feel like I'm missing something important to the appreciation of opera.

[Emil Miller]

Of course France doesn't compare with the symphonic heritage of Germany, Austria or Russia but listening to Berlioz's Symphony fantastique, Cesar Franck's Symphony in D minor, or the youthful Bizet's symphony in C we must consider that perhaps the symphonic form's structure is not entirly condusive to the more flexible requirements of the latin temperament. However, as an antidote to the idea that the French are symphonically inferior, here is the finale to one of the greatest symphonies ever composed. It simply blows the listener away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCKiZRWyv20

[stlukesguild]

Drkshadow03... to an extent all art forms involve a language or vocabulary that must be learned. The average man-on-the street who rarely reads would undoubtedly have just as negative a perception of our passion for reading... of poetry, certainly... almost assuredly of Shakespeare, and unquestionably of James Joyce. To appreciate opera involves putting forth the effort needed to understand operatic form, classical vocals, etc... The voice in classical music is employed as a solo instrument... vocal lines are just as virtuosic and complex as one might expect of the violin in a violin concert. For this reason it sounds far different from popular music in which the voice is tied to a simple song structure. Of course there are classical song forms that are closer to the simple song structure... such as is used in many chorus works (ie. Handel's Hallelujah). Beyond thinking of the voice in classical music... and certainly in opera... as a solo instrument, you need to recognize that opera is a merger of theater, song, and symphonic music. The combination creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The best way for anyone serious about first coming to appreciate opera to do so is to attend an actual opera performance in real life. The more accessible (not to say less complex or profound) operas would include those of Mozart (especially Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and The Magic Flute), Rossini's Barber of Seville, Puccini's Madame Butterfly and La Boheme, Verdi's Aida and La Traviata, and Bizet's Carmen. All of them are laden with beautiful, singable melodies. Wagner should almost certainly be avoided until you first have a grasp on traditional opera as he represents a huge rift and innovation upon this tradition leading to Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, Claude Debussy, and the whole of the thornier Modernist approaches to opera.

[Drkshadow03]

Drkshadow03... to an extent all art forms involve a language or vocabulary that must be learned. The average man-on-the street who rarely reads would undoubtedly have just as negative a perception of our passion for reading... of poetry, certainly... almost assuredly of Shakespeare, and unquestionably of James Joyce. To appreciate opera involves putting forth the effort needed to understand operatic form, classical vocals, etc... The voice in classical music is employed as a solo instrument... vocal lines are just as virtuosic and complex as one might expect of the violin in a violin concert. For this reason it sounds far different from popular music in which the voice is tied to a simple song structure. Of course there are classical song forms that are closer to the simple song structure... such as is used in many chorus works (ie. Handel's Hallelujah). Beyond thinking of the voice in classical music... and certainly in opera... as a solo instrument, you need to recognize that opera is a merger of theater, song, and symphonic music. The combination creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The best way for anyone serious about first coming to appreciate opera to do so is to attend an actual opera performance in real life. The more accessible (not to say less complex or profound) operas would include those of Mozart (especially Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and The Magic Flute), Rossini's Barber of Seville, Puccini's Madame Butterfly and La Boheme, Verdi's Aida and La Traviata, and Bizet's Carmen. All of them are laden with beautiful, singable melodies. Wagner should almost certainly be avoided until you first have a grasp on traditional opera as he represents a huge rift and innovation upon this tradition leading to Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, Claude Debussy, and the whole of the thornier Modernist approaches to opera.

Hmm, I've been listening to a lot of Wagner lately. So I wonder if that might be the problem. Thanks for the reply.

[stlukesguild]

Wagner completely reinvented the opera. The traditional opera alternates between arias (solos) or duets/trios, etc... which are essentially song-like in form, choruses, and recitatives and/or spoken dialog. One might think of the format as not far removed from the classic musical. The woman/love interest sings a song of longing and loss, then there's a bit of dialog between the woman and her maid, the man (her love interest) enters and sings a joyful song about his impending marriage, all his friends join in for a rousing chorus, he leaves and she, heart-broken, speaks a few lines and then heads into a tragic love aria... etc... The orchestra reinforces the drama, but in the traditional opera it is the voice which drives the drama... in song, recitative, and spoken word. With Wagner the drama is driven by the orchestra in tangent with the voice. The music never stops... there is no break into dialog followed by a song. The entire opera is structured in a symphonic pattern employing the repetition and variation of motifs. Wagner's operas are the most magnificent constructions. There are many who have argued that the "Ring Cycle" may just be the greatest work of art the West has ever produced. He is generally ranked within the top 10 composers of all time... quite often just behind the "3 Immortals": Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. His impact upon music... and upon art in general cannot be overstated. His fans are quite often fanatics... willing to pay hundreds of dollars to sit though 4 very long nights of performances of his Ring at Bayreuth... the great theater and temple built specifically for the staging of his work. In spite of all of this, he is not someone easy to jump into... especially for those new to opera. A greater appreciation of his achievements is almost certainly dependent upon having developed a good understanding and appreciation of earlier operatic form.

[mortalterror]

Drkshadow, for a man who enjoys musicals as much as you, opera should be a no brainer. After all, Rent is just an Americanized La Boheme. Unlike StLukesGuild I've never been a big fan of Wagner. Try Verdi instead. In fact, try any of these:
Handel's Hallelujah Chorus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnHksDFHTQI
Mozart's Queen of the Night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ODfuMMyss
Rossini's William Tell Overture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkymTHSbWe0
Schubert's Ave Maria
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bosouX_d8Y
Verdi's La Donna e Mobile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A3zetSuYRg
Flotow's Martha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoFAxX9OQa4
Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V92OBNsQgxU
Wagner's Tannhauser Overture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDwiYOCnuao
Offenbach's Barcarolle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7czptgEvvU
Delibe's Flower Duet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qx2lMaMsl8
Bizet's Habanera
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIQQakZPU3Y
Puccini's O Mio Babbino Caro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxy4qrnKwVo
Leoncavallo's Vesti La Giubba
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8WOKsdHuc4
Mascagni's Intermezzo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CVyf13B1vE

[Drkshadow03]

After all, Rent is just an Americanized La Boheme.

I freaking hate Rent! I loathe that show! Matt and Trey said it best (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yC7HwPh6Es&feature=related)!

[LitNetIsGreat]

When you think about it, opera really should be one of the highest forms of art, if not the highest form of them all (maybe it really is?). It would seem to have everything on the surface, being a combination of music, song, dialogue, stagecraft, drama, costume - as penned by many of the greats, though I don't think for one minute that it is an easy form to immediately appreciate.

I seem to waver in and out of favour with opera. I would very much consider myself a beginner of it and tend to stick to the readily suggested "beginners" operas such as the Mozart's and the Puccini’s. I think that DVD performances are a good and inexpensive way to try to get into this area of theatre performance too and are worth checking out.

A large part of me however, for some reason I can’t quite fathom, thinks that I’ll never really be able to fully emerge myself in this particular form (like dance). Though I do hope that I am wrong here and begin to develop a taste for the opera because I feel it has so much potential that I would be missing out on something, if I couldn’t properly take to it.

[Drkshadow03]

I think that DVD performances are a good and inexpensive way to try to get into this area of theatre performance too and are worth checking out.


That's a good idea too.


In fact, try any of these:
Handel's Hallelujah Chorus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnHksDFHTQI
Mozart's Queen of the Night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ODfuMMyss
Rossini's William Tell Overture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkymTHSbWe0
Schubert's Ave Maria
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bosouX_d8Y
Verdi's La Donna e Mobile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A3zetSuYRg
Flotow's Martha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoFAxX9OQa4
Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V92OBNsQgxU
Wagner's Tannhauser Overture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDwiYOCnuao
Offenbach's Barcarolle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7czptgEvvU
Delibe's Flower Duet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qx2lMaMsl8
Bizet's Habanera
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIQQakZPU3Y
Puccini's O Mio Babbino Caro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxy4qrnKwVo
Leoncavallo's Vesti La Giubba
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8WOKsdHuc4
Mascagni's Intermezzo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CVyf13B1vE

Once I listened through most of these pieces, I realized I knew most of them already and like them. I think my problem isn't appreciating individual songs within operas, but individual operas as complete works.

[stlukesguild]

Neely... for all my love of opera... and vocal music in general... I am but an amateur aficionado. True opera fanatics are a breed unlike any other. The most nasty arguments I've seen here at Lit Net concerning this or that writer... no matter how bad (Ayn rand, Dan Brown, Bukowski...?) are but civil disagreements in comparison. Opera fanatics become absolutely vicious attacking this singer... often incredibly talented singers... because they personally prefer a different singer. Poor Anna Netrebko, Renee Fleming, and even Magdalena Kozena (all talented singers) get regularly bashed on opera discussion sites (as well as on Youtube) a called sluts, whores, and far worse... simply for having the audacity of not being Maria Callas or whomever the particular fanatics Diva of choice is. I have seen raging arguments about singers from the Paris Opera circa 1910 or La Scala from the 1890s... in spite of the fact that there are no recordings upon which anyone might base an opinion. The same cattiness applies to composers: this fanatic is a Wagnerian, and so he or she must mock Verdi or Puccini (although Strauss may be given the benefit of the doubt for having the good sense to have been a Wagner acolyte). Personally, I'm appreciative of all the singers and composers of real merit. Certainly I my personal favorites... but because I like Wagner does not mean that I dislike Verdi. On the less dark side of opera fanaticism one must credit the fanatics with an unmatched knowledge of opera history, the texts, the proper diction of a given text, and an unfailing support of their idols.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes that certainly seems obsessively wild and far from being the civilized connotation that gets attached to the lover of opera! There seems to be a general sneering towards Puccini too, even from Noddy guides to opera, like the one I read this morning, the author of which not only attacked him for his sentimentality, but for the fact that they were popular and thus keeping other operas from off of the stage!

I must say though, I am attracted to the Italian ideal that sees opera not as something possibly stigmatised by the “high” or “elite” label, (not that anybody cares about gossip) but as something which is simply part of daily life, enjoyed by the many. I think that for Italians, art is something that is just the lifeblood of the country - that the fantastic and beautiful are just part of their everyday lives - really, what fabulous people they must be! Of course I’m sure that’s a generalisation, in many respects, but I would just rather believe that regardless...and maybe therefore I should never visit Italy, apart from in my head?

Anyway, personally I intend to keep digging into opera a little at a time.

[Babbalanja]

I've been listening to a lot of 20th and 21st century music recently. There's such a wealth of amazing music in so many different styles.

Piano Concerto #1 - Charles Wuorinen
Symphonies - Igor Stravinsky
Synaphae - Iannis Xenakis
New England Triptych - Walter Piston
Symphony #9 - William Schuman
Pli Selon Pli - Pierre Boulez
Transfigured Wind - Roger Reynolds
Pierrot Lunaire - Arnold Schoenberg
Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra - Ellen Taafe Zwilich
Time and Again - Tristan Murail
Septet - Ben Johnston
Dialogues - Elliott Carter
Violin Concerto - Unsuk Chin
Sons of Noah - Stephen Hartke
Requiem - Hans Werner Henze

I think it's unfair that people are still so biased against contemporary music that diverges too radically from the Romantic tradition. It's particularly disheartening to hear knowledgeable music fans smugly dismiss works for being too dissonant. I can't stand hearing people mock creative composers for their own unwillingness to meet them on their own terms.

My wife is an arts maven who loves Modernism in literature, art, and movies. But for some reason, musical Modernism irritates her immensely. We've gotten to the point where we joke about each other's tastes, but it still baffles me that she has such an aversion to music that doesn't toe the Romantic party line.

I think that movies bear a lot of the blame. Soundtrack composers have used Romantic-style music to convey sentiments like joy and grief, and atonal music only to convey confusion or anxiety. This has really reinforced people's negative opinion of non-tonal music. It's no wonder my wife calls it "mad slasher music."

I don't expect anyone to listen to exclusively avant-garde music. But the lack of appreciation for the great non-tonal music of the twentieth century is nothing to be proud of.

Regards,

Istvan

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Last night my son and I enjoyed an evening with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO)performing Benjamin Britten's "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 15" featuring Simone Lamsma on violin followed by the feature performance;
Dmitri Shostakovitch, Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 - "Leningrad".

A coworker had given me a voucher for two tickets to any performance by the DSO this season. My son plays violin and he is currently in a Russian phase of life. (Don't ask, all I can say is he is consumed by everything Russian.) Givn that, we evaluated the performances for this year and settled on this one due to the emphasis on violin and the ties to Russia via Shotakovich and "Leningrad".

Samone Lamsma was amazing in the "Britten, playing with great emotion and passion.
"Leningrad" was magnificent in four movements described in Shotakovitch's words thus:

"The first movement tells how our pleasant and peaceful life was disrupted by the ominous force of war. I did not intend to describe the war in a naturalistic manner (the drone of aircraft, the rumble of tanks, artillery salvos, etc.) I wrote so called battle music. I was trying to present the spirit and essence of those harsh events. The exposition of the first movement tells of happy life led by the people...such as the Leningrad volunteer fighters before the war...the entire city...the entire country.
The second movement is a lyrical Scherzo recalling times and events tha were happy. It is tinged with melancholy.
The third movement, a pathetic Adagio expressing ecstatic love of life and the beuties of nature, passes uninterrupted into the fourth which, like the rest, is a fundemental movement of the symphony.
The first movement begins as astruggle, the fourth expresses approaching victory."

The symphony is conducted by Jaap van Zweden.

Here is a link to the performance program notes for further reading:

http://www.dallassymphony.com/attachments/Bk20_2.18.pdf

Next week (February 25th), we will be back at the DSO to see a one night performance by Itzhak Perlman:

http://www.dallassymphony.com/Ticket/ProductionDetail.aspx?perf=16001&selected=760


Gilliatt

[mortalterror]

My wife is an arts maven who loves Modernism in literature, art, and movies. But for some reason, musical Modernism irritates her immensely. We've gotten to the point where we joke about each other's tastes, but it still baffles me that she has such an aversion to music that doesn't toe the Romantic party line.
I tried listening to the first couple of your selections and oh my god it was torture! I do not understand this movement in the arts where something should be repellent before it's considered any good. This is what modern music means to me

Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV0wPBYDQ6Y
and Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzf0rvQa4Mc

That stuff gets you pumped, gets you movin', makes you feel good. As far as the rest of the 20th century art movement goes, it's not all Mondrian squares, Duchamp's fountains, or Georgia O'Keeffe's silly vagina flowers. There's some good stuff still being made like

Leonetto Cappiello: Umbrella Dance
Franz Marc: Fate of the Animals
Edward Hopper: Nighthawks
Kawase Hasui: Shiba-Zozoji Temple
Max Ernst: Robing of the Bride
Rene Magritte: The Son of Man
M.C. Escher: Relativity
Tamara de Lempicka: Portrait of Mrs. M
Salvador Dali:The Hallucinogenic Toreador
John Biggers: Nubia, Origins of Business and Commerce
Frank Frazetta: A Fighting Man From Mars
Werner Tübke: Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany
Dai Dudu, Li Tiezi, and Zhang An: Discussing the Divine Comedy With Dante

It's like modernism isn't just weirdos like Joyce. It's cool guys like Hemingway and Fitzgerald too.

[Babbalanja]

I tried listening to the first couple of your selections and oh my god it was torture! I do not understand this movement in the arts where something should be repellent before it's considered any good. It seems that not only don't you understand it, but you blame the music for your inability to understand it. Maybe not all music is there to make you "feel good" in the first place.

Like I said before, to each his own. I'd personally feel silly criticizing Telemann or Gregorian chant for the fact that I don't enjoy them. However, when the subject is modern music, people feel well within their rights to revile composers for making music that's different, without taking more than a minute to engage with the work.

Regards,

Istvan

[mortalterror]

I'd personally feel silly criticizing Telemann or Gregorian chant for the fact that I don't enjoy them.
I've listened to plenty of Telemann, and I don't like him. I think I thumbed up one of his songs once on my pandora station and I've never heard the end of it. As far as Gregorian chant goes, some of it I kinda' like but I've never found a song that really clicked with me the way that say, almost anything by Tchaikovsky does.

My point is that I don't think the weirdest and most extreme examples should be the representatives of a movement. Lots of people that are turned off by Stravinsky, would probably like Prokofiev. When I see these modern art assemblages created using garbage and human feces, or splattered at random on a canvas, I think "Really, this is the best the age can produce?" 'Cause I know there are people out there with real talent who aren't getting the attention they deserve, since the only serious art is this new wave avante garde, over everybodys head type stuff. There have got to be great composers working in the traditional styles who are never seeing the light of day because of these freaks, these hacks, these worse than senseless things!

Besides, who says I'd like that type of music better if I understood it more. I think I have a pretty good read on the Goth scene without wanting to raid my mother's make up drawer and ritually cut myself, 'cause I'm all deep and full of ennui. Sometimes the more layers you peel from an onion the less impressive the onion becomes, and you're like "Damn, I knew this was an onion before I started peeling."

[Babbalanja]

There have got to be great composers working in the traditional styles who are never seeing the light of day because of these freaks, these hacks, these worse than senseless things!The exact opposite is true. Those composers who decide to create in an accessible, familiar, old-fashioned style are generally the ones whose whose work is played.

The only composers who can afford to be uncompromising are people who've fought in the trenches for decades and are established pioneers: for instance, Elliott Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Harrison Birtwistle. And even their new works still garner criticism from people who resent even the smallest encroachment upon the musical museum that the concert hall has become. Praise is usually reserved for the interesting-but-unchallenging music of Osvaldo Golijov and Joan Tower.

You can't blame composers like Henryk Gorecki or Ellen Taafe Zwilich for creating in a much more listener-friendly idiom than they used to. If even mainstream modernists like John Corigliano, John Harbison, and Augusta Read Thomas are lumped in with the avant-garde by audiences who haven't kept up with the musical styles of the past half-century, what chance do composers like Unsuk Chin or Kaira Saariajo have for widespread acceptance?


Besides, who says I'd like that type of music better if I understood it more. I never said you would. But if you make no effort to understand it, and declare that you can't see the point of making the effort, it's pretty predictable that you won't like it.

And that's not the music's fault.

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

Istvan... I take something of a middle ground here. As mortal suggests I'm not certain that increased experience and understanding of a given work or style of art leads to an increased appreciation. It may lead to the exact opposite. My understanding of what Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst have meant to art have led me to a degree of hatred for all they represent that goes well beyond my initial disinterest. 100 years after the fact it appears that Anton Webern was wrong about the future in which even the postman would be whistling atonal tunes. All art is a language and the audience needs to develop an understanding of the vocabulary before they may glean any "meaning" or appreciation from the work. The question becomes whether the pleasure derived from the work is worth the effort. Many artistic innovations left the initial audience somewhat perplexed... but in most cases the new artistic languages were quickly absorbed... by academia, by later generations of artists, and by later generations of art lovers. This is not true of a good portion of the most extreme aspects of Modernism. The museums are filled with audiences for the latest show of Impressionism, Picasso, and Matisse... but one will not need to fight the long lines to get into the show of Duchamp or Piero Manzoni. Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, whether we care to admit it or not, demands so much of the reader and offers a degree of pleasure that does not seem commensurate with the difficulty so that the book is virtually irrelevant outside of academia. The same seems true of a good portion of Modern and Contemporary music.

Personally, I like a good portion of Modern music... even a good portion of that music that is more "difficult": Takemitsu, Messiaen, Tristan Murail, David Lang, Phillip Glass, Julian Anderson, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Henze, Peter Lieberson. I recently purchased John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, and George Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children and I will admit to be intrigued by both. Still there is a great deal that leaves me baffled and a great deal that strikes me as little more than experimentation for the sake of experimentation... difficulty for the sake of difficulty... or as a result of the misguided idea that difficulty is inherently more profound: if the peons don't get it, it must be deep. I also find that there is a certain presumption of superiority among the adherents of the extremes of Modernist experimentation. It is often presumed that the most experimental or Avant-garde is that which is the most important and that which will last. But who decides what is Avant-garde? When the experimentations of atonalism, dissonance, etc... are taught and promoted in academia, is it not quite possible that they are just as "academic" as any other musical language? There are those who dismiss Puccini, Rachmaninov, Copland... even Philip Glass (he uses tonality, after all), Arvo Part, etc... Of course Bach and Brahms were both accused of being too conservative.

[Babbalanja]

SLG,

You're way ahead of most others in your degree of appreciation of modern music. There are few composers I admire more than Messiaen, Crumb, or Henze.

Once again, I never said that increased exposure to new music would necessarily make everyone a fan. What I did say was that a lack of exposure is certain to foster nothing but misunderstanding of new music.

However, I'll stick my neck out and say that I think new music would be a lot better understood if it were programmed more by orchestras. The Rite of Spring, for instance, is a radical work which still has the power to annoy conservative listeners. Not everyone loves it, but it's part of the standard repertoire. There's nothing mysterious about this, and it's got nothing to do with its musical character or artistic aims. Because it's frequently performed (thanks, Disney), it's familiar enough to audiences to make a dent in the popular consciousness. This, in turn, serves to motivate future performances.

I'm not even convinced that audiences resist new music merely because they can't understand its language. I don't honestly think that audiences understand the complex music of Beethoven, they're just familiar with certain parts of his works and are used to playing it as background music for whatever they happen to be doing. For people who claim that new music could be played wrong and no one would notice, I'd love to play a Beethoven work with a few bars missing or different and see if they notice.

I'm amused to hear that people object to the "presumption of superiority" that characterizes arrogant Modernists. This represents the same double standard I mentioned above. Listeners are not going to get much out of new music without hearing a little about the compositional methods, and that might seem overly cerebral to casual listeners. But how much are they getting out of Mozart or Schubert's painstakingly crafted works if they know nothing about sonata form, for example? I'm not a composer or music theorist myself, but I at least realize I have to know the basics about this music or I'm just using it as ear candy.

Once again, this isn't necessarily about avant-garde music. Serial techniques and dissonance have been around for the better part of a century, and in and of themselves don't make a work boldly experimental. New music isn't supposed to sound like Romantic music any more than Romantic music was supposed to sound like Medieval music. The bottom line is that there's a highly emotional quality to music appreciation, and new music just isn't as cozy and familiar to most listeners as Romantic music.

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

However, I'll stick my neck out and say that I think new music would be a lot better understood if it were programmed more by orchestras. The Rite of Spring, for instance, is a radical work which still has the power to annoy conservative listeners. Not everyone loves it, but it's part of the standard repertoire. There's nothing mysterious about this, and it's got nothing to do with its musical character or artistic aims. Because it's frequently performed (thanks, Disney), it's familiar enough to audiences to make a dent in the popular consciousness. This, in turn, serves to motivate future performances.

That is fair enough. I'll admit to having first been exposed to opera through Looney Tunes cartoons and the Little Rascals. I suspect that a great portion of the problem may be the dominance of popular music through the mass-media. Stravinsky, Bartok, Shostakovitch, etc... all benefited from exposure on TV, radio, film, etc... Little of late Modernism and Contemporary music has had this advantage (although I can think of exceptions such as Kubrick's use of Penderecki, Glass' and Tan Dun's film scores). I also suspect that the situation may be an evolution of an ever larger gap between the audience and the composers: the audience fails to support the given artist and so he or she in turn pays less and less attention to the needs or wants of the audience. The composers become increasingly irrelevant to the larger audience just as they become increasingly irrelevant to the composer. How does one stop this downward spiral? I often thought that this was a great part of the dilemma which Hermann Hesse presented in his novel The Glass Bead Game.

I'm not even convinced that audiences resist new music merely because they can't understand its language. I don't honestly think that audiences understand the complex music of Beethoven, they're just familiar with certain parts of his works and are used to playing it as background music for whatever they happen to be doing. For people who claim that new music could be played wrong and no one would notice, I'd love to play a Beethoven work with a few bars missing or different and see if they notice.

Of course the audience I am referring to is not that of the disinterested masses, but rather those who are passionate about classical (or "serious"?) music. Certainly there are those who would be quite happy with those discs of excerpts: Mozart's and Tchaikovsky's "greatest hits" that contain all the famous bits that they are familiar with. Still there are a good number of those who are quite knowledgeable of classical music who have little interest in most contemporary classical. There are others, such as myself, who have invested a good deal of time and effort into the exploration of contemporary classical and who admit that there are certain styles and composers who simply do not resonate just as there are certain artists and art styles that I have little or no use for.

I'm amused to hear that people object to the "presumption of superiority" that characterizes arrogant Modernists. This represents the same double standard I mentioned above. Listeners are not going to get much out of new music without hearing a little about the compositional methods, and that might seem overly cerebral to casual listeners.

I understand... and I agree that there are those who make judgments of contemporary art, music, literature, etc... without having made a serious attempt to explore it. I agree that there are incidents in contemporary art that strike me as worthy of the overused analogy with the "Emperor's New Clothes"... but quite often this analogy is presented by those who have made little or no attempt to understand, let alone appreciate, what they would denigrate. Where the "presumption of superiority" irritates me is when academics or tied-in-the-wool Modernists would dismiss the opinions of anyone who does not embrace their musical idols or artists/composers who dare to work within an accessible (hence outdated) style. It is quite possible to be well acquainted with and knowledgeable of Modern art and dislike Duchamp, DeKooning, and Warhol, just as it is quite possible to be knowledgeable of contemporary classical music and not be all that fond of Ligetti or Stockhausen. (By the way... I actually quite like Ligetti's Mechanical Music... elements of Bach and contrapuntal structure... but found the 100 Metronomes piece so retarded as to virtually ruin the disc)

But how much are they getting out of Mozart or Schubert's painstakingly crafted works if they know nothing about sonata form, for example? I'm not a composer or music theorist myself, but I at least realize I have to know the basics about this music or I'm just using it as ear candy.

Again, I agree... but doesn't this come to the issue of whether the artist can make the appreciation of the art seem worthy of the effort? That which intrigues or piques the interest of the audience surely has a far better chance of being further explored than that which seemingly assaults the senses. I have long been intrigued with medieval music... even plainchant... but admittedly it was little more than "ear candy"... something which established a given relaxing and seductive mood. But this eventually led me to a further exploration of the forms and history and individual composers. I was struck with the manner in which composers such as Pérotin and Léonin made the first forays into polyphony the results were rejected as being as Godless and Satanic as Elvis and Little Richard.

Once again, this isn't necessarily about avant-garde music. Serial techniques and dissonance have been around for the better part of a century, and in and of themselves don't make a work boldly experimental. New music isn't supposed to sound like Romantic music any more than Romantic music was supposed to sound like Medieval music.

Again I agree. Atonalism, serialism, Musique concrète, and even electronic music has been around long enough to now be just as academic as Romanticism or Impressionism. The problem is that we cannot know what the new music which most resonates and lasts will or should sound like. Certainly it shouldn't sound like Romanticism... but it may employ Romanticist elements just as Neo-classicism (in art and music) employed classical forms and some camps of minimalism employ elements of modal music derived from Medieval or even non-Western sources. As for a work being "boldly experimental" one never knows where such experimentation lies. Bach is surely one of the most boldly experimental and original composers who ever lived... in spite of the fact that his music clearly adheres to the Baroque traditions he inherited.

Right now, by the way, I'm listening to Hindemith's Kammermusik no. 2. He is someone I have been making a concerted effort as of late to explore in greater detail.

[Babbalanja]

I agree that there are incidents in contemporary art that strike me as worthy of the overused analogy with the "Emperor's New Clothes"... but quite often this analogy is presented by those who have made little or no attempt to understand, let alone appreciate, what they would denigrate. Where the "presumption of superiority" irritates me is when academics or tied-in-the-wool Modernists would dismiss the opinions of anyone who does not embrace their musical idols or artists/composers who dare to work within an accessible (hence outdated) style. It is quite possible to be well acquainted with and knowledgeable of Modern art and dislike Duchamp, DeKooning, and Warhol, just as it is quite possible to be knowledgeable of contemporary classical music and not be all that fond of Ligetti or Stockhausen. (By the way... I actually quite like Ligetti's Mechanical Music... elements of Bach and contrapuntal structure... but found the 100 Metronomes piece so retarded as to virtually ruin the disc)I'm glad someone else thinks the "Emperor's New Clothes" metaphor is overused. It demonstrates another facet of the double-standard that works against new music. It seems there's no amount of suspicion that's unwarranted when it comes to contemporary music: people seem quite content to be wary of the motives of unfamiliar composers, as if it's the worst thing in the world to find value in a work that the composer isn't wholly committed to. It never occurs to such listeners that the catalog of prolific composers such as Mozart and Haydn may be full of hackwork that sounds just fine to our ears.

And the performance art stunts of Cage and Ligeti (which comprise only a small subset of their works) seem to be all that music fans care to know about their output. Instead of giving them credit for a creative sense of humor or for making comments on the nature of performance, listeners revile them for not being serious enough in their craft.

Then there's the accusation of elitism that conservative listeners launch against composers of new music. Such listeners delight in rewriting history so that most of the 20th century becomes a Dark Age where noisy, avant-garde music was forced on hapless audiences by a totalitarian establishment. Conventional composers, according to this mythology, were harassed at universities and driven underground because of the stranglehold that serialism had over every aspect of musical performance, production, and broadcast. This comical fantasy allows conservatives to feel virtuous in cheering for the underdogs, even though their favored composers share the same Romantic musical values that have dominated serious music for centuries.

The passivity of the modern listener has to be identified as as a major problem in this matter. Thanks to modern recording, there's no limit to the amount of times a listener can hear a work. The prospect of gaining familiarity with new music has never been easier. However, instead of taking advantage of the possibilities of new technology in expanding their horizons, listeners have decided to use it merely to collect and compare countless different versions of the same warhorses. Though they'll claim that they're open to new music, most music fans adopt listening habits that ensure that they're exposed to and responsive to very little.

Regards,

Istvan

[Petrarch's Love]

Ah, a little musical debate cropping up around the classical thread, eh?

Babalanja--I do sympathize with your point that it's important to keep music vital and innovative. Personally speaking, I can't say that I connect easily to more atonal music as a genre, but am open to listening to new music, and have been rewarded with finding some pieces and composers I really enjoy and/or find interesting as a result of giving things a try even when it doesn't sound like the kind of thing I would like. At the same time, I wonder about this:


However, I'll stick my neck out and say that I think new music would be a lot better understood if it were programmed more by orchestras. The Rite of Spring, for instance, is a radical work which still has the power to annoy conservative listeners. Not everyone loves it, but it's part of the standard repertoire. There's nothing mysterious about this, and it's got nothing to do with its musical character or artistic aims. Because it's frequently performed (thanks, Disney), it's familiar enough to audiences to make a dent in the popular consciousness. This, in turn, serves to motivate future performances.

I think it's unfair to point the finger at orchestras in this case, and not even the right analysis of why and how a piece can become "mainstream." Orchestras cannot actually spend huge amounts of their time putting on experimental pieces because they will go under. They need to put on programs that will sell tickets so that they can maintain their hall, pay their musicians, and keep in business. I know that I myself, while I enjoy hearing some unfamiliar music on a program, am much more likely to spend the money out of a modest budget and spend the time schlepping downtown for a concert made up mostly of pieces I know already or a style I am sure that I will enjoy than I am likely to take a gamble on a program made up entirely of new untested pieces that are probably atonal or experimental. I have had more unpleasant listening experiences with the latter than otherwise, and so I am not likely to invest time and money in trying more of the same. The majority of people interested in classical music (who are in turn a minority of the listening population at large) seem to feel the same way about taking a gamble when going out to the symphony, and I don't really see what the pay off is (either in terms of the tangible money intake or the intangible reward of an enthusiastic group of listeners to perform for) for an orchestra in putting on programs that are unlikely to draw the core music fans, let alone a portion of the more general audience. While I agree that it's a good idea for orchestras to be open to playing newer works, I do think that it's only reasonable for an orchestra to not put something on until there's a decent indication that there will be an audience for a work and that it's something a certain percentage of people will be receptive to.

The good news in this day and age is that the concert hall is not the only way people can hear music. Music has the chance to get into people's heads via film, TV, youtube, this thread, etc. You even suggest this in your comment above. Part of the reason that The Rite of Spring was able to become quite widely accepted was not because it was played more in orchestra halls, but because of the exposure it got in Disney's Fantasia and elsewhere. The orchestras began playing it because it had become popular and was something people were interested in coming to a symphony hall to hear, not the other way around. As I said above, I am unlikely to buy tickets to hear a purely experimental music programme, but I will certainly listen outside my comfort zone on Pandora or when watching a film, or when a friend plays a recording for me. That's the way music of almost any kind makes the transition to being something that will sell tickets. One can certainly see the effect of film as an influential place to draw listeners in the way one strand of modern orchestral music, that of movie soundtracks such as those by John Williams and others, has in recent years been increasingly performed in symphony halls and draws wildly successful crowds of listeners.


This brings us to your complaints about the "passivity of the modern listener" and the burden he or she should bear. Again, while I certainly understand what you mean when you say that some music will take more time and thought, even effort, to appreciate than others, I don't know that I agree with your basic assumption that it is fundamentally the fault of the listener for being too "passive." (I also don't know that the modern listener is, on average, significantly more or less passive than the listener of the past. There are certainly more potential listeners for any kind of music in the age of recordings than there ever were before.)


I'm amused to hear that people object to the "presumption of superiority" that characterizes arrogant Modernists. This represents the same double standard I mentioned above. Listeners are not going to get much out of new music without hearing a little about the compositional methods, and that might seem overly cerebral to casual listeners. But how much are they getting out of Mozart or Schubert's painstakingly crafted works if they know nothing about sonata form, for example? I'm not a composer or music theorist myself, but I at least realize I have to know the basics about this music or I'm just using it as ear candy."

First of all, I don't agree with this. Mozart and Schubert can absolutely be appreciated without any knowledge of the sonata form. That is one of the reasons that they are composers who not only continue to be performed but to draw in people from outside the classical aficionado circles. It is one of the great things about music as an art form that it can speak to a person's emotions directly without any need for intellectual explanation. Absolutely knowing something about music will enhance a person's experience of it, and will help them to have a deeper, richer listening experience, but outside knowledge is not necessary to having a fulfilling listening experience. To refer to listening without knowledge as treating music as "ear candy" is to diminish the value of the fact that a person can have a very powerful and meaningful experience with music even when the intellectual side of the brain is turned off. Indeed, this is probably the part of the musical experience that all of us (knowledgeable and ignorant alike) treasure most. I think it's a great mistake as someone who appreciates classical music of any kind to say that a person cannot appreciate certain music without basic knowledge.

This is what turns a large number of people off the idea of so much as trying a classical music concert. I cannot count the number of times I've brought a friend to a classical concert and had that person say that they've never been to something like this because they don't know enough about music, that they wouldn't ever have come at all if they weren't with someone like myself who knows about this stuff. When I'm with someone like this my policy is to say almost nothing about the intellectual side of the music, the form, etc. before we've heard some of the music. I always reply to this kind of comment that this music is not about knowing something, and that anyone can appreciate "classical" music, but that you do need to listen carefully and really give it your full attention. I let the person I'm with listen and feel what's going on in the music, and usually that person comes out at the interval with some kind of opinion and often a number of questions. That's the point, after they've got their feet wet, when it's helpful to start teaching someone about something like the sonata form and giving them a vocabulary to express things about what they've experienced. Yes, it's true that classical music is going to take more thought and attention to get into than the typical pop song that a more general audience is used to, so I agree that there may be more effort of some kind necessary on the listener's part, but I think attentive listening is a different thing than having to have specialized knowledge, and I think that's a distinction that it would be helpful for people to make when speaking to people who aren't classical music buffs and who may see this talk about needing to know certain things in order to appreciate music as, not only a barrier to ever being able to get into this stuff, but also a sign that the stuff will not speak to them on a non-intellectual or abstact level and thus may not be worth the effort of getting into.


The bottom line is that there's a highly emotional quality to music appreciation, and new music just isn't as cozy and familiar to most listeners as Romantic music.

I think this is a good point...though perhaps not in quite the way you mean. Yes, familiarity may play a part in this. It takes some time for people to adjust to new things. I'm not sure, however, that this is solely where you can lay the blame for more modern music not being as popular as, say, romantic music. There's also an issue with the way much of more modern music is aiming to make people feel. Many 20th/21st century pieces are trying to be disturbing, unsettling, generally set the listener off kilter, and though I think there are some brilliant pieces written in this kind of mode, I don't know that you can entirely blame people if they don't want to regularly submit themselves to being unsettled and shaken up by the music they're listening to. Frankly, I think it's this emotional component rather than anything to do with an intellectual challenge on the part of modern music that makes it less accessible to people. Speaking for myself, I do appreciate certain modern pieces, but I know I have to be in the right mood and frame of mind to experience them in a way that I don't have to when listening to other types of music. Last year my university had a four day series of concerts making up a Messiaen festival, and I attended nearly all of it. Having some inkling of what I was going into with all Messiaen all the time, I went into it in a spirit of intellectual interest and emotional openness as a listener, and that worked fairly well, but parts were still rough going. Some of the pieces were really wonderful and fascinating, but some of his work can become rather oppressive in its eerie and strained strangeness. On the final day of the concert series I already had a headache, I had been struggling with a bad case of writer's block most of the day, and the end of time was more or less the last feeling I wanted to embody. I've never felt that kind of reluctance coming into Mozart after a bad day, which I think speaks to one of the reasons that Mozart is more universally popular than Messiaen. I'm not a person who shies away from being intellectually challenged, but I do shy away from having uncomfortable emotional experiences when I'm just not up for them.

If I'm in the right mood I can find a lot to appreciate in Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children, or Shoenberg's Pierrot Luniere, or one of Shostakovich's string quartets, but if I'm not in just the right mental or emotional state those works will make a bad mood worse, may even induce an emotional funk where none was before, and can simply drive me crazy. On the other hand, regardless of what my frame of mind is, if I turn on most pieces by Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Vivaldi, and many others, I know that I not only won't be dragged down by the experience, but have many times been lifted up and healed by such listening. I think it only stands to reason that people are going to more frequently seek out an experience that they know is going to be helpful and enjoyable than they are going to force themselves to undergo something that may be intentionally either forcing them to confront something painful or simply be unnerving on a more general level. No, not all modern classical music has this sort of disconcerting effect, but it is a huge characteristic of much of the genre, and I think it's this unnerving emotional quality rather than an intellectual knowledge issue that needs to be addressed regarding modern music.

It could indeed be a way into defending this sort of music as well as a way of understanding what turns people off about it. Clearly genres like heavy metal and punk rock have a huge mass appeal because they tap into angry, dissonant, negative emotions. Part of the catharsis and confrontation with the messier side of life that people get out of that kind of more popular music could also be a way into explaining to people some of the things one can get out of dissonance in classical compositions. Or, similarly, such "uncomfortable" music might be explained by an analogy to "uncomfortable" or unsettling themes in films or books, or other kinds of art. People get that you're not going to come out of Schindler's List or some of Bergman's darker films with an up feeling, but that it is still worthwhile to confront what is expressed in such films, and atonality and dissonance are sometimes used in very analogous ways to help us confront and deal with life's less pleasant or less "harmonious" aspects. Or, you might compare the sort of wry, sometimes dark, sometimes simply offbeat sense of humor in certain modern musical compositions to the writing style of someone like Vonnegut. These sorts of comparisons may be more helpful for conveying the sort of purpose this music serves than simply saying that a person simply can't understand it without being more intellectual/academic in his or her musical approach.

[Babbalanja]

PL,

Thanks for the response. I really don't consider this a debate, just knowledgeable fans trading opinions.

Once again, I have a reply from a listener who is more open-minded than average! I envy you going to the Messiaen concert, and I commend you for being able to go outside your safety zone and enjoy it.

I think the analysis you made about the economics of symphony orchestras and modern music is an oft-told tale that doesn't jibe with the reality of the concert hall. Just look at what Esa Pekka Salonen did in his nearly two decades conducting the LA Phil: he programmed a lot of contemporary music (much of which had been commissioned by the orchestra) and his tenure was wildly successful. James Levine has done much the same here at the BSO. Am I saying that orchestras would do fine without the standard repertoire? No. But the notion that reliance on contemporary music is commercial suicide isn't borne out by the facts.

Sticking with the old warhorses is a compromise that bears a lot of blame for the state of symphonies today. In the long run, that tactic merely reinforces the impression that classical music is about the dead guys. As the aging audience that prefers their old favorites dies off, no new fans are taking their place. If the concert hall is to survive, it has to remain relevant and not merely become a musical museum.

I really disagree with this statement:

Mozart and Schubert can absolutely be appreciated without any knowledge of the sonata form. That is one of the reasons that they are composers who not only continue to be performed but to draw in people from outside the classical aficionado circles.
This is like saying that someone who hasn't developed a palate for fine wine can appreciate a rare Chateau Latour. He can drink it, and may even enjoy it (though chances are he's not going to), but the notion of appreciation doesn't enter into it. In the same way, just being in the room while Mozart is playing doesn't constitute appreciation.

Give Mozart and Schubert some credit for the depth of their genius: their music shouldn't be reduced to ear candy. If a listener doesn't even understand basics like sonata form, this brilliant, painstakingly crafted art is just pleasant melodies, nothing more. The same can be said of modern music: if you don't make the effort to engage this music, to understand its aims, and to condition your expectations of it, it will just be (as you said) an unpleasant listening experience and nothing more.

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

Babbalanja- I'm glad someone else thinks the "Emperor's New Clothes" metaphor is overused.

Overused... or misused. Before one goes about declaring that the emperor has no clothes... that contemporary art or music is a hoax... it might do well to make a concerted effort toward understanding it. Seriously, Chinese opera does nothing for me... and there are other art forms that leave me equally baffled or uninterested. Still I would avoid making a rush judgment about whether the aesthetic of Chinese opera or the Japanese tea ceremony were a joke without having made some attempt toward understanding it.

Babbalanja- It demonstrates another facet of the double-standard that works against new music. It seems there's no amount of suspicion that's unwarranted when it comes to contemporary music: people seem quite content to be wary of the motives of unfamiliar composers, as if it's the worst thing in the world to find value in a work that the composer isn't wholly committed to. It never occurs to such listeners that the catalog of prolific composers such as Mozart and Haydn may be full of hackwork that sounds just fine to our ears.

Yes... there may be "hackwork"... by the standards of Mozart's and Haydn's finer works... but these obviously are only truly recognized with experience... just as I assume that I could recognize the "hackwork" by Raphael, Rubens, or Modigliani far easier than someone with less experience in looking at art. But one cannot fully blame the audience. Art is a two-way communication. If the audience is expected to be willing to put forth a degree of effort, the artist also needs to consider the wants, needs, and expectations of the audience. We have the Romantic/Modernist notion where the artist needs not give the least concern to the audience as long as he or she follows his or her vision. "Self Expression" is the rallying call... but somehow I don't imagine that Michelangelo or Rubens or Haydn or Bach could have got away with churning out an art which left the audience baffled... or annoyed.

Babbalanja- And the performance art stunts of Cage and Ligeti (which comprise only a small subset of their works) seem to be all that music fans care to know about their output. Instead of giving them credit for a creative sense of humor or for making comments on the nature of performance, listeners revile them for not being serious enough in their craft.

I'll grant you this... admittedly not having explored Cage or Ligeti to the extent I have explored Mozart or Bach. Yes... there are sub-par works by the masters... even musical jokes... such as Mozart's pornographic lieder. On the other hand, the problem may owe much to the critics and historians who have made so much out of those jokes. Cage's 4:33 has become virtually the single piece which is always talked about... just as Duchamp's Fountain (the urinal)... is championed by the critics as some grand challenge to the notion of what art is, when in reality the work was never intended to be seen as an actual work of art, but rather as a prop in a comic performance piece.

Babbalanja- Then there's the accusation of elitism that conservative listeners launch against composers of new music. Such listeners delight in rewriting history so that most of the 20th century becomes a Dark Age where noisy, avant-garde music was forced on hapless audiences by a totalitarian establishment. Conventional composers, according to this mythology, were harassed at universities and driven underground because of the stranglehold that serialism had over every aspect of musical performance, production, and broadcast.

This accusation may be an exaggeration... but it certainly is rooted in a degree of fact. The avant garde always evolves into the academy... and quite often abuses its power... as a form of taking revenge for those years when they were the underdogs. One can easily document the ascension of Modernism to academia in American art schools. Drawing departments were dismantled. Even the tools of life drawing were destroyed: vast collections of plaster busts were ordered smashed. (The Pittsburgh Museum of Art houses one of the surviving collections of such casts of Greek and Roman sculpture and even entire facades of Gothic cathedrals. The collection is akin to walking through a 3-D art history book.) Figurative painters were muscled out of their positions. Students were pressured to conform to the teacher's vision. Joseph Albers at Yale was notorious, and his mistreatment of students who did not share his vision on art included students of a conservative bent to the most experimental (Robert Rauschenberg, for example). Such a prejudice against anything that did not fit in with the teacher's own vision of what art should be, remained even during the time when I earned my degree at one of the leading art schools in the nation. Obviously, the more experimental aspects of Modernism never supplanted the Romanticist drive in other aspects of the culture: in film scores, in the concert halls, or in the public tastes. Such a dominance by tied-in-the-wool Modernists is no longer a reality. We now live in an era when there is no clear notion of where the cutting edge is... (although now there is something of a rise in academia of faculty who were part of Pop and Post-Pop which was something of an antithesis of late Modernism). As a result we have Minimalists, Neo-Romantics, Late Modernists, Polystylists, Neo-Impressionists, etc... and none seems to have a clear hold on academia or the music press/critics.

Petrarch's Love- I think it's unfair to point the finger at orchestras in this case... Orchestras cannot actually spend huge amounts of their time putting on experimental pieces because they will go under. They need to put on programs that will sell tickets so that they can maintain their hall, pay their musicians, and keep in business.

This is where a degree of hypocrisy enters into the equation. One the one hand we have the artists who demand the right of "self expression"... the freedom to create whatever they wish without the least concern for the demands of the audience and patrons. One the other hand we have the same artists blaming this audience and these patrons when they refuse to financially support their experimentation. We live within a free market system. We cannot expect that the audience... the larger public... should be expected to financially support something that does not resonate with them... something that quite often makes no attempt to engage the audience. Of course the least suggestion that an artist should make an attempt to engage the audience... to consider their wants or needs... is dismissed under the Romantic/Modernist thinking as pandering... "selling out"... as if Shakespeare was a sell out... or Mozart was a sell out. I don't believe the gap between the audience and the Modernist artists can be solely blamed upon either party... but the reality is that I doubt that this gap is going to be closed by the disinterested audience. It needs to be the artists who make an attempt to engage the audience... to draw them in.

PL-The good news in this day and age is that the concert hall is not the only way people can hear music. Music has the chance to get into people's heads via film, TV, youtube, this thread, etc.

True... and we might do well to remember that while John Cage does not have the audience Mozart now has, neither of them have the audience share of Lady Gaga. Classical music has an admittedly limited, but still sizable audience, and if we measure the sales of CDs I might even suggest that John Cage and Ligeti and certainly Philip Glass may just have a larger audience than Mozart or Bach ever enjoyed during their lifetime.

Babbalanja- Listeners are not going to get much out of new music without hearing a little about the compositional methods, and that might seem overly cerebral to casual listeners. But how much are they getting out of Mozart or Schubert's painstakingly crafted works if they know nothing about sonata form, for example? I'm not a composer or music theorist myself, but I at least realize I have to know the basics about this music or I'm just using it as ear candy."

PL- First of all, I don't agree with this. Mozart and Schubert can absolutely be appreciated without any knowledge of the sonata form. That is one of the reasons that they are composers who not only continue to be performed but to draw in people from outside the classical aficionado circles. It is one of the great things about music as an art form that it can speak to a person's emotions directly without any need for intellectual explanation. Absolutely knowing something about music will enhance a person's experience of it, and will help them to have a deeper, richer listening experience, but outside knowledge is not necessary to having a fulfilling listening experience.

Yes... I agree. This is the "hook" or the "engagement"... "seduction"... of which I spoke. With nearly every work of art that I am enamored of there was something that engaged me from the start. I clearly remember first attending a Paul Klee exhibition just out of my teens. I had virtually no interest in Modernism and absolutely no use for abstraction... but something in Klee's work piqued my interest: perhaps it was the playfulness... the color... or the various elements that might attract a bibliophile such as myself. Whatever it was, I ended in purchasing the catalog for the exhibition (I still have it... two copies, actually) and kept looking at the work... eventually reading up on the artist... and then eventually looking at more and more related artists.

One does not need to know the history of the development of European painting to appreciate this:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4070/4380824428_65f32ed842_o.jpg

Standing before this huge canvas one can simply feel the joy and movement of the dance, the childlike abandon of the drawing, the sheer sensuality of the color. Later one can explore the history of this painting and where Matisse fit in within the tradition of French and European painting: his echoes of Cezanne's bathers, of Renaissance paintings of the dance, of the influence of Persian and Islamic art filtered through Ingres and Delacroix.

This is what turns a large number of people off the idea of so much as trying a classical music concert. I cannot count the number of times I've brought a friend to a classical concert and had that person say that they've never been to something like this because they don't know enough about music, that they wouldn't ever have come at all if they weren't with someone like myself who knows about this stuff.

I agree. It should not be presumed that great art is difficult or inaccessible and that it can only be appreciated by those "in the know." I'm not suggesting that great art cannot or should not be difficult or challenging... but I am questioning the notion that only that which is difficult or challenging can be great art... and that the audience can only appreciate such with the appropriate degree of experience. There is such a bias even now. There are those who would dismiss Puccini, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, or even Mozart because they are too accessible... too popular... and as such they cannot be as good as they sound. I love Wagner and Mussorgsky and Stravinsky and Arvo Part... but I do not assume that they are more profound than Mozart. Mortal Terror has a quote he is fond of using of the two great Modernist writers, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway:

Faulkner: "[Hemingway] has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."
Hemingway: "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"

As much as I love Faulkner, I must agree with Hemingway... depth of meaning and emotional content does not demand labyrinthine complexities that challenge the audience.

Clearly genres like heavy metal and punk rock have a huge mass appeal because they tap into angry, dissonant, negative emotions. Part of the catharsis and confrontation with the messier side of life that people get out of that kind of more popular music could also be a way into explaining to people some of the things one can get out of dissonance in classical compositions. Or, similarly, such "uncomfortable" music might be explained by an analogy to "uncomfortable" or unsettling themes in films or books, or other kinds of art. People get that you're not going to come out of Schindler's List or some of Bergman's darker films with an up feeling, but that it is still worthwhile to confront what is expressed in such films, and atonality and dissonance are sometimes used in very analogous ways to help us confront and deal with life's less pleasant or less "harmonious" aspects.

Yes. the analogy with Schindler's List, in particular, is one that I have thought of myself. I have little doubt that Spielberg's masterpiece is one of the greatest films I have ever seen. The acting is superlative. The cinematography is stunning. Everything about the film is enthralling... but it is also such an emotionally draining film that I have not watched it many times. Casablanca, Some Like it Hot, Psycho, The Shining, are also all brilliant films... but I can watch them again and again. If I am taking the wife out for an evening of artistic entertainment I'm probably going to avoid Schindler's List, Schoenberg, or the Francis Bacon exhibition (which by the way... I did make the mistake of taking her to without much success, I might add. Screaming Popes and Sado-Masochistic Homoerotic icons just didn't resonate with her for some reason.) :ack2::frown2::lol:

[mortalterror]

Once again, I have a reply from a listener who is more open-minded than average!
I ruined a perfectly fine evening listening to Shoenberg, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Cage, Xenakis, Ligeti, Penderecki, and Part, but since I'd rather hear Monteverdi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxBT1pfVAKQ) or Schubert (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91EJwsIVOqU) I'm some sort of small minded cretin? I guess open minded people are just the one's that agree with you. And what's all this talk about warhorses and museums? I like museums. Would it really be such a tragedy if the whole world happened to look like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/47257044@N03/sets/72157623244816627/show/ ?

I don't appreciate the implication that I'm somehow backward or mired in the past. I'm totally open to change and the new if I think it's an improvement. High speed internet, iphones, and solar power: sign me up. I'm convinced. But I haven't heard one thing on this board to make me believe that these space age bums are better than Beethoven. I haven't heard anything to make me suspect they are superior to Elgar, Puccini, Mahler, Debussy, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Rachmaninoff, Holst, Ravel, Prokofiev, Orff, Copland, Barber, Morricone, or Williams. I don't trust the way these new historians frame the narrative. When it comes to write the history of 20th century film it's going to be all Stan Brakhage and no Stanley Kubrick, and the Beatle's best tune wasn't Hey Jude, it's Revolution 9.

[Drkshadow03]

Would it really be such a tragedy if the whole world happened to look like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/47257044@N03/sets/72157623244816627/show/ ?


You want the whole world to look like a bunch of Hindu statues having sex, while Jesus looks on?! :smilewinkgrin:

[mortalterror]

You want the whole world to look like a bunch of Hindu statues having sex, while Jesus looks on?! :smilewinkgrin:
Yes, yes I do.

[Babbalanja]

I've been listening recently to a lot of 20th century composers who fell into the black hole between the radicals and the Romantics.

The Second Symphony (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXGFWoV12C0) (1959) of Henri Dutilleux is an update of the decadent French music of Debussy and Ravel, from a composer who embraced Modernism.

George Perle was a Jersey boy who pioneered "twelve-tone tonality," as demonstrated in his String Quartet #5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzjzY3s3fXo&feature=related) (1960). Sonata form for the space age!

Carlos Chávez was a Mexican modernist who was associated with Copland in the Thirties. I really love his vibrant chamber music, but this performance of his Sinfonía India (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5F7mFdcjPE) by Dudamel and the Berlin PO is phenomenal.

Regards,

Istvan

SLG,

I don't know what to make of the suspicion you seem to harbor against artists and composers:


One the one hand we have the artists who demand the right of "self expression"... the freedom to create whatever they wish without the least concern for the demands of the audience and patrons. One the other hand we have the same artists blaming this audience and these patrons when they refuse to financially support their experimentation.

Does this grotesque caricature really address the issue of why contemporary classical music is underappreciated? Am I wrong in thinking that creating an imaginary villian like this is a convenient way for certain listeners to evade responsibility for their own conservatism?

I wonder what it is about artistic self-expression that inspires such contempt in you. Shouldn't that be the artist's aim in the first place? It seems to me that artists who actively gauge the "wants, needs, and expectations of the audience" usually come up with derivative music. If that's what they want to compose, great. But I'd rather they create the way they want, and see if I can meet them on their own terms.

Regards,

Istvan

[Helga]

the only classical music I listen to is from Star wars but I do love it

[stlukesguild]

I ruined a perfectly fine evening listening to Shoenberg, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Cage, Xenakis, Ligeti, Penderecki, and Part, but since I'd rather hear Monteverdi or Schubert I'm some sort of small minded cretin? I guess open minded people are just the one's that agree with you. And what's all this talk about warhorses and museums? I like museums. Would it really be such a tragedy if the whole world happened to look like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/4725704...44816627/show/ ?

Great slide-show... but there are some rather abstract works there, Mortal, that would have been largely dismissed as crude or primitive until the advent of Modernism opened up the possibilities:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4069/4383702800_6d5cee5b00_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4039/4383702866_4782e7969a_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4055/4383703078_37d56a0603_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4056/4382943939_364a26e34f_o.jpg

Surely such works, which I agree are quite marvelous, are no more or less "abstract" than these Modernist works:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2742/4349757817_4d32b11cc7_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/4310117997_b11ddb90fc_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4036/4307300131_5e31ddb4b9_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2793/4307778657_1634071efd_o.jpg

The name of the site, however, is something of a misnomer because I do find something there that certainly "sucks":

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4064/4383703106_d62cac560c_o.jpg

Frank Frazetta is an artistic equivalent of Anne Rice, Dan Brown, or J.K. Rowling... with the sole exception that the man can certainly render, where Rowling and Brown certainly struggle to produce a well crafted paragraph.

[mortalterror]

Frank Frazetta is an artistic equivalent of Anne Rice, Dan Brown, or J.K. Rowling... with the sole exception that the man can certainly render, where Rowling and Brown certainly struggle to produce a well crafted paragraph.
I debated with myself for a while about putting him in, but then I came to the conclusion that you really can't go wrong with swords and titties and anyone that says different is gay.

Surely such works, which I agree are quite marvelous, are no more or less "abstract" than these Modernist works:
I don't think it's the abstraction which throws me. As far as I can tell, when I judge a work of art my eye looks for color, light, form, perspective, composition, and content. Unfortunately, in modern art I don't see a lot of good lighting. I don't like the colors. The human form is generally distorted in some unpleasant way. The picture looks flat and two dimensional. The content will be uninteresting, and the image will rest in the cradle of the frame like a loose sack of oranges.

[stlukesguild]

SLG, I don't know what to make of the suspicion you seem to harbor against artists and composers:

Quote:
One the one hand we have the artists who demand the right of "self expression"... the freedom to create whatever they wish without the least concern for the demands of the audience and patrons. One the other hand we have the same artists blaming this audience and these patrons when they refuse to financially support their experimentation.

Does this grotesque caricature really address the issue of why contemporary classical music is underappreciated? Am I wrong in thinking that creating an imaginary villain like this is a convenient way for certain listeners to evade responsibility for their own conservatism?

I wonder what it is about artistic self-expression that inspires such contempt in you. Shouldn't that be the artist's aim in the first place? It seems to me that artists who actively gauge the "wants, needs, and expectations of the audience" usually come up with derivative music. If that's what they want to compose, great. But I'd rather they create the way they want, and see if I can meet them on their own terms.

Contemporary art in general is still a work in progress. What will or will not be embraced by future generations as the definitive work of our time is something we can only guess at. There are camps of highly educated individuals... experts in the field even... with opinions that differ greatly. There are a great many late Modern and Contemporary artists who I find to be little more than an elaborate hoax... a hoax that can only have been perpetuated in an era when there are no clear standards of what is of is not "good" art. This is, perhaps, the cost of opening up art to nearly unlimited possibilities. I say this as an artist who may work in a manner that on the surface is very much rooted in older traditions... but I also say this as an artist who embraces many of the most advance approaches to art. The suspicion I have is that it it quite possible that some of the most extreme experiments in music will have little or no lasting value... and that some of that which the champions of the avant garde dismiss as derivative or conservative may just have more lasting value that they give credit for.

As Petrarch's Love has suggested there are times when one is up for the more extreme forms of Modernist music... when one is prepared to be challenged... assaulted... to have one's expectations challenged... to be disturbed. There are also times when I am prepared to watch a film like Schindler's List knowing full well how harrowing and disturbing it is. And there are other times when I am not up for it... when I find that too much is demanded of me for too little in return as far an aesthetic pleasure is concerned.

Sean Scully, one of the leading contemporary abstract painters (he just recently was given a one-man retrospective at the Met) wrote a brief essay upon art and the notion of beauty from which I've culled the key points:

Things have come apart visually. If something looks good, then it is said that maybe it is not good. It is not good because it looks good...

The famous English journalist Bernard Levin said Stockhausen is not as bad as it sounds. It is beautiful... in a world where art should be visually assaulting... The attack on painting is part of this. Exhibitions of sticks, photographs, and rough TV videos are thought automatically to be "morally" superior because they are not good to look at; therefore, they are better than they look... and they are adored by curators who would like to promote such art sociologically conscious because it deals with issues such as race, poverty, housing, etc...

In order to look for any kind of audience at all, this kind of art has to squeeze itself into the world of the visual arts, the world which is occupied largely by painting. For this quasi-visual, pseudo-political space to be opened up, something has to be wrong with painting. Hence the problem of visual excellence versus the issue of quality. It's not as good as it looks, or it's not good because it looks good- or if it looks good it must be decorative and therefore not good.

This is the most transparently dishonest argument of all, one always put forward by a gang of (mostly European) curators (Arthur C. Danto for example) who want to be considered intellectuals, but who couldn't go two rounds in the ring with a real philosopher...

A truce between the pseudo-intellectual position of concept-based art and its promoters and the authentic, round, emotional achievement of painting cannot... be found any longer. The problem is that when the visual territory of painting is ceded to the point where it passes the test of being considered intellectually acceptable by the sophists, it is reduced to a gray square. There all the guts, beauty, poetry, personality, and last but not least, color are taken out of it. And by color I mean its courage to be bigger, more generous than mere idea, where the idea and feeling become an embodiment.

Those who would have us believe, for example, that Marcel Duchamp is the equal of Matisse would also ask us to believe that one is better than it looks and one is worse... Matisse and a lot of other painters are as good as they look. They look that good because they are that good. And this has nothing whatsoever to do with decoration but has everything to do with the roundness of the visual experience...

Stockhausen has a place in history. And so therefore Bernard Levin is right when he says it's not as bad as it sounds. But neither is Mozart.

-excerpted from The Argument, Sean Scully

You ask the question about my perceived attack on "self-expression"... the sacred cow of Modernism. What, I might ask, is "self-expression?" On one level I don't buy the notion that any work of art can be truly "self expressive" for no work of art can ever encompass all of the aspects of an individual human being. At the same time, no work can help but be "self-expressive" in the sense that it reveals something of the individual who created it. An artist can be limited by the most confining restrictions dictated by the patrons and still achieve an art that is original and "self-expressive". Renaissance painters were directed by theologians as to appropriate iconography, symbolism, color, etc... In the 19th and 20th century we have seen magnificent achievements by illustrators or by artists working on commercial commissions. Within literature we come again to the exemplary example of Shakespeare's plays... written with an audience clearly in mind.

I am not suggesting that all art should pander to an audience... or even the largest possible audience. Nor am I suggesting that as artists we should not be grateful for the greater degree of autonomy we are afforded today. On the other hand, we should recognize that this comes at a price. The painter Rubens worked directly for wealthy patrons. They stipulated the subject matter, scale, what they wished to have conveyed... at times even the colors. In Holland, the Dutch moved away from this system toward the modern commercial concept of art. An artist produced what he or she wished... or what he or she thought would sell... (and one suspects it was a combination of the two)... and then the dealers marketed the art to the wealthy collectors. While the artists were now free to paint as they saw fit, it was rapidly made clear that if they wished to eat well they needed to find a means of meeting the demands of the market.

Art, it would seem, has always involved a balancing act between the demands of the market and the desires of the artist. Modernism has long been mythologized as a great rebellion against the desires of bourgeois taste... but is it really so? Were all the artists drawn to abstraction or atonalism at the same point in history because of some internal urge... because this language was imagined by all as best suited to expressing the time... or might it be possible that they were responding to the dictates of the market and of academia... that they were aware of who buttered their bread?

Certain camps of contemporary music and contemporary art have painted themselves (figuratively) into an ever shrinking corner. Again, I am not suggesting that it is the sole fault of the artists... but neither can we fully blame the audience. Such strikes me as the lame complaint of any artist whose work is not successful: "It's the audience. They are too ignorant. My work is far too advanced for their simple-minded ways of thinking." Again, I do not think we can continue to count on a disinterested audience to support art which the find meaningless or distasteful through taxes, grants, etc... Neither can we count on them attempting to narrow the gap between the artist and audience. I certainly agree that education may play an essential role... but I also am simply suggesting that artists may need to seriously consider the wants and needs of the audience (and not the mass audience as a whole... but the audience of passionate art/music/literature lovers... and recognize that considering the wants and needs of the audience in no way leads immediately to derivative or mediocre art.

I debated with myself for a while about putting him in, but then I came to the conclusion that you really can't go wrong with swords and titties and anyone that says different is gay.

Swords and titties are fine, but Frazetta just paints them in a cliche-ridden manner worthy of a horny teenager drawing in the back of his biology notebook. Rubens made a hell of a career out of swords and titties... and Picasso painted more than his share... at least of the latter... although they are admittedly often painted in the wrong place... or portrayed beyond the usual expected pair.:ihih::biggrinjester::blush5:

[Petrarch's Love]

PL, Thanks for the response. I really don't consider this a debate, just knowledgeable fans trading opinions.

Sounds good...though we may sometimes differ in our opinions. :smilewinkgrin:


Once again, I have a reply from a listener who is more open-minded than average! I envy you going to the Messiaen concert, and I commend you for being able to go outside your safety zone and enjoy it.

It is one of the advantages of being in a university setting that they can often fund more experimental or less known concerts...and get an audience of intellectuals who will attend!

I'm going to focus on this issue, which I think is at the heart of what you are disagreeing with in both St. Luke's comments and my own:


I really disagree with this statement:


Mozart and Schubert can absolutely be appreciated without any knowledge of the sonata form. That is one of the reasons that they are composers who not only continue to be performed but to draw in people from outside the classical aficionado circles.

This is like saying that someone who hasn't developed a palate for fine wine can appreciate a rare Chateau Latour. He can drink it, and may even enjoy it (though chances are he's not going to), but the notion of appreciation doesn't enter into it. In the same way, just being in the room while Mozart is playing doesn't constitute appreciation.

Give Mozart and Schubert some credit for the depth of their genius: their music shouldn't be reduced to ear candy. If a listener doesn't even understand basics like sonata form, this brilliant, painstakingly crafted art is just pleasant melodies, nothing more. The same can be said of modern music: if you don't make the effort to engage this music, to understand its aims, and to condition your expectations of it, it will just be (as you said) an unpleasant listening experience and nothing more.


Well, I don't really see why a person can't appreciate fine wine without a oenophilic vocabulary and perfect french pronunciation either. :confused: But to get back to music:

You appear to be taking the stance that there is either knowledgeable appreciation or there is a thoughtless, casual sort of listening. What I, and I believe St. Luke's, are assuming is that these are not the only two modes in which music can be heard, understood and appreciated. I do agree with you on two counts. One is that I agree that a person probably will not get into the sort of music we are discussing by being an extremely casual listener. If a person is listening to Mozart with the same sort of minimal investment that he or she listens to Lady Gaga playing in the background at the local coffee shop, then it is unlikely that this person will be really getting much of what Mozart has to offer out of the experience. I don't think there's actually anything wrong with listening to Mozart as background music that evokes a generally pleasant mood, but I concur that this won't really lead to a deeper appreciation.

I also agree with you that one way that a person can develop a keener appreciation of the kind of music that does have a greater artistic depth than Lady Gaga (the latter reaching a different sort of bathetic depth) is through expanding his or her formal knowledge of the history, theory, structure etc. of that music. As a college instructor I am certainly among the first to recognize the very positive way that introducing people to and helping them to understand the more intellectual and formal aspects of art can help usher them into a more meaningful understanding of and engagement with any art form, be it poetry, the visual arts, music etc. Certainly the sort of approach you suggest in helping people develop an understanding and respect for the sort of craft that went into, say, a Schubert sonata is one way of helping people to appreciate and get something substantial out of their experience of this music.

However, this is only one way that a person may arrive at such a substantial appreciation of music, and where I continue to disagree with you is in the claim that formal knowledge and understanding are necessary to appreciate complex music. Again, I’m not saying knowledge doesn’t enhance a person’s listening experience or that it can’t be a way into developing appreciation. I'm also not saying that it may not take some time and attentive listening to get into certain kinds of music. What I’m saying is that formal knowledge is not the only way into deepening one’s understanding of music. It is entirely possible to listen attentively, openly, seriously and intelligently to a musical work and to respond to it on a significantly more nuanced level than the casual listener in the coffee shop without having any prior understanding of its formal qualities, its historical context, or particular musical terms. The interpretation of such a listener may not be as thorough as that of a more knowledgeable listener, but it can still be an interpretation of good quality and characterized by true appreciation.

Indeed, I think the argument that it is in some way disrespecting the composer to be ignorant of the formal craft he put into his work indicates a logic that appears to be putting the cart before the horse. The craft and formal elements of a work are the tools of the artist that enable him or her to express something to the person listening. There are plenty of composers who have used and do use the sonata form as a tool, some of them with excellent technical skill. The reason we keep listening to Schubert and Mozart is partly because they were remarkably good at employing the sonata form, but also because of what it is that they managed to express using the techniques of that form. Such composers manage to reach people and speak to them in a way that other, albeit technically proficient, composers cannot. The form is the answer to the question of howthey did it and how we can go about understanding it better, but the answer to why they did it and why we still listen to this music usually has less to do with this sort of formal analysis. Certainly some artists use form more self-consciously and referentially than others, and so some formal knowledge can help a person understand a certain statement that artist is trying to make etc., but ultimately the thing that we are getting out of listening to a piece of music is not usually that Mozart was really smart, but that Mozart has given us a certain kind of experience. It is that experience that makes us appreciate and be curious about how Mozart was smart, not usually the other way around. I think this speaks, not only to the question of how people experience music, but to your disagreement with St. Luke’s about the degree to which an artist needs to try to connect with his audience. I think we can all agree that an artist who slavishly caters to popular preconceptions of what art should be to the exclusion of his/her own expression, is less likely to produce really interesting new work. However, neither can an artist base the worth of his work solely on the basis that he has used an innovative technique in crafting it. He or she must also bear the burden of not just reaching a listener with formal educational understanding of how that craft is innovative, but conveying some experience of value and worth to a listener who may not be formally knowledgeable but has taken the time to really listen in a thoughtful manner. The most successful great art is often capable of operating on a number of different levels at the same time, being something that people can relate to readily on an instinctive, an emotional and an intellectual manner. It delivers something that brings people in and gives them something rich enough to make them want to stay.

But again, in terms of the ability to appreciate music, not only have I often had very rich conversations about music with people who have little or no formal knowledge about it, but I personally have appreciated music many, many times on a purely non intellectual level. I can’t help but imagine that almost anyone who is very fond of music has connected to it in this way, which is profoundly appreciative without being in the least analytical or dependent on formal knowledge. This is undoubtedly the way I first came to appreciate music from a very young age. I found myself getting lost in it and caught up in the experience of it. I noticed things about it that I enjoyed, that intrigued and moved me, that puzzled and challenged me, without knowing what the terms for them were, or even exactly how those elements were working. The formal knowledge absolutely came afterward for me.

This conversation also made me think of the time in my life when I was possibly the most profoundly appreciative (in more senses than one) of music. When I was 18 I went through a period of several months when I was unable to walk, periodically unable to see, and generally confined to bed without the ability to read, but one of the things I was able to do was to listen to music (and to remember the poetry I had memorized—always memorize your favorite poems. They come in handy in near death situations and long lines at the supermarket! :nod:). In such circumstances the intellectual/analytical part of me was pretty much turned off, but my appreciation and understanding of the music—some of it works and even composers that I had never heard before—was both deep and appreciative. Indeed, I think my understanding of some of the music I listened to in that time, without any thought at all as to its structure or an intellectual level analysis of its parts, was far more profound and taught me much more about what was going on in the music than some of the listening I’ve done when I’ve had in-depth intellectual knowledge of a piece or genre but been less attentive to it in other ways.

What I am saying is simply that it is possible to listen attentively without listening learnedly. Formal learning can aid the attentive listener, but lack of it does not preclude a person from being able to access a work. I will also suggest that from a purely pragmatic stance as an apologist, a defense based on saying that the other person is lazy and not learned enough is more likely to turn people off the music you think they should pay more attention to than a defense based on explaining why this music resonates with you and what you think we can all get out of it.




Yes. the analogy with Schindler's List, in particular, is one that I have thought of myself. I have little doubt that Spielberg's masterpiece is one of the greatest films I have ever seen. The acting is superlative. The cinematography is stunning. Everything about the film is enthralling... but it is also such an emotionally draining film that I have not watched it many times. Casablanca, Some Like it Hot, Psycho, The Shining, are also all brilliant films... but I can watch them again and again. If I am taking the wife out for an evening of artistic entertainment I'm probably going to avoid Schindler's List, Schoenberg, or the Francis Bacon exhibition (which by the way... I did make the mistake of taking her to without much success, I might add. Screaming Popes and Sado-Masochistic Homoerotic icons just didn't resonate with her for some reason.) :ack2::frown2::lol:

Nothing says romantic date with the spouse like a Francis Bacon exhibition.
:smilielol5::ack2: I personally began almost literally running away from a hall with several prominently displayed Francis Bacon pieces not so long ago in a London museum. There's only so much I can take. I had to peek in a few more times, though, to confirm that the same man had, indeed spent a full two hours (and possibly more) starring intently at the works. :eek: To each his own. Yes, I think it's important to keep in mind that there may be a different sort of purpose or type of reward that comes from different kinds of art.


I ruined a perfectly fine evening listening to Shoenberg, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Cage, Xenakis, Ligeti, Penderecki, and Part, but since I'd rather hear Monteverdi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxBT1pfVAKQ) or Schubert (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91EJwsIVOqU) I'm some sort of small minded cretin? I guess open minded people are just the one's that agree with you. And what's all this talk about warhorses and museums? I like museums. Would it really be such a tragedy if the whole world happened to look like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/47257044@N03/sets/72157623244816627/show/ ?

I don't appreciate the implication that I'm somehow backward or mired in the past. I'm totally open to change and the new if I think it's an improvement. High speed internet, iphones, and solar power: sign me up. I'm convinced. But I haven't heard one thing on this board to make me believe that these space age bums are better than Beethoven. I haven't heard anything to make me suspect they are superior to Elgar, Puccini, Mahler, Debussy, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Rachmaninoff, Holst, Ravel, Prokofiev, Orff, Copland, Barber, Morricone, or Williams. I don't trust the way these new historians frame the narrative. When it comes to write the history of 20th century film it's going to be all Stan Brakhage and no Stanley Kubrick, and the Beatle's best tune wasn't Hey Jude, it's Revolution 9.

Thanks for that Monteverdi link, Mortal. Not only did I enjoy listening, but I have now determined that if I'm unable to land a tenure track professorship next year, I can still use my doctoral robes to pursue a backup career as person who makes impressive entrance and directs early music performers.

Meanwhile, maybe the whole group can unite in a sing along of "Hey Jude."



I've been listening recently to a lot of 20th century composers who fell into the black hole between the radicals and the Romantics.

The Second Symphony (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXGFWoV12C0) (1959) of Henri Dutilleux is an update of the decadent French music of Debussy and Ravel, from a composer who embraced Modernism.

George Perle was a Jersey boy who pioneered "twelve-tone tonality," as demonstrated in his String Quartet #5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzjzY3s3fXo&feature=related) (1960). Sonata form for the space age!

Carlos Chávez was a Mexican modernist who was associated with Copland in the Thirties. I really love his vibrant chamber music, but this performance of his Sinfonía India (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5F7mFdcjPE) by Dudamel and the Berlin PO is phenomenal.

Regards,

Istvan

No more time for listening this evening, but I'll give these a try tomorrow.

[Babbalanja]

Roger Sessions (1896-1985) was the greatest symphonist of the 20th century. He redefined the form for the new age, producing nine symphonies full of vitality, optimism, and musical complexity. He won the Pulitzer for the Concerto for Orchestra, his last major work.

Sessions: Concerto for Orchestra, pt. 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0tMil6kpNA)

Sessions: Concerto for Orchestra, pt. 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Wk-ckWXIg&feature=related)

Regards,

Istvan


As Petrarch's Love has suggested there are times when one is up for the more extreme forms of Modernist music... when one is prepared to be challenged... assaulted... to have one's expectations challenged... to be disturbed. There are also times when I am prepared to watch a film like Schindler's List knowing full well how harrowing and disturbing it is. And there are other times when I am not up for it... when I find that too much is demanded of me for too little in return as far an aesthetic pleasure is concerned. It may interest you to know that I'm often in the mood to listen to Bach's cello suites or Schubert's piano trios. The music of Mozart and Beethoven is an inexhaustible source of fascination for me. Not every note that comes out of my iPod has to be harrowing atonal noise.

But then again, most 20th century composed music isn't so forbidding anyway. I guess it's because I've listened to so much of it, but I get a lot of different moods out of contemporary music. I've said plenty of times that Schoenberg gets a bad rap: I hear a lot of personality, even charisma in his works. Even notorious noisemakers like Carter, Ligeti, and Xenakis have many facets to their music. I hear playfulness and sorrow in their works as often as I hear anxiety or anger.

Once again, I'm not sure what to make of your fulminations against the composers who supposedly have no regard for the audience. Your experience in the visual arts is useful by way of analogy, but I think the comparison to musical modernism is tentative at best. I still say that history has been rewritten to make it seem like the big bad academicians are to blame for the conservatism of the listening audience.

You seem to have political reasons for getting annoyed by arrogant composers not seeing the realities of the market. In fact, I'm more likely to agree that composers have been writing bad music than that they are ignoring economic expediency by being too experimental. But dismissing so many composers' music as "meaningless and distasteful" isn't an honest assessment of their artistic aims, it's just prejudice.

In most art forms, I've seen a retreat from real innovation during my lifetime. And in serious music, even the composers who are working in accessible forms are lumped in with the avant-garde. What does this indicate except that audiences haven't kept up with developments over the past few decades? Why are the artists to blame if the marketers can't get the point across that post-1950 composed music isn't all abstruse and scary?

Regards,

Istvan

Laura,


You appear to be taking the stance that there is either knowledgeable appreciation or there is a thoughtless, casual sort of listening. What I, and I believe St. Luke's, are assuming is that these are not the only two modes in which music can be heard, understood and appreciated. In that case I agree with you two. No one needs a degree in music to appreciate a work. I myself am not a composer or music theorist. I've never studied the score of a work. I have a certain amount of knowledge about music, but nothing that a first-semester music student wouldn't be expected to know.


It is entirely possible to listen attentively, openly, seriously and intelligently to a musical work and to respond to it on a significantly more nuanced level than the casual listener in the coffee shop without having any prior understanding of its formal qualities, its historical context, or particular musical terms. The interpretation of such a listener may not be as thorough as that of a more knowledgeable listener, but it can still be an interpretation of good quality and characterized by true appreciation. I still strongly disagree with this.

The fact of the matter is that you have to have some prior knowledge or you're not truly appreciating the music for what it is. This could be as basic as knowing the instruments of the orchestra; knowing what sonata form is; knowing what a theme-and-variations structure means. I'm sorry if having to undergo even this minimal amount of education scares people away from listening to classical music, but that's what's necessary. You know this, too, but for some reason you can't admit that true appreciation comes at a price.

It's the difference between standing in a pool and actually swimming. With just a minimum of training, kids learn to swim. If they don't make that effort, they can't swim.


I personally have appreciated music many, many times on a purely non intellectual level. I can’t help but imagine that almost anyone who is very fond of music has connected to it in this way, which is profoundly appreciative without being in the least analytical or dependent on formal knowledge. Again, you're overstating the case: a "purely non-intellectual level"? Please. I don't listen to music on a very intellectual level either. I'm thrilled and fascinated by music the same way you are. But it's just weird to assert that music appreciation is as passive as you make it out to be.

Regards,

Istvan

[Petrarch's Love]

I still strongly disagree with this.

The fact of the matter is that you have to have some prior knowledge or you're not truly appreciating the music for what it is. This could be as basic as knowing the instruments of the orchestra; knowing what sonata form is; knowing what a theme-and-variations structure means. I'm sorry if having to undergo even this minimal amount of education scares people away from listening to classical music, but that's what's necessary. You know this, too, but for some reason you can't admit that true appreciation comes at a price.

It's the difference between standing in a pool and actually swimming. With just a minimum of training, kids learn to swim. If they don't make that effort, they can't swim.


I think the problem I'm having with this is probably not what you are suggesting would be helpful for people to learn, which is innocuous enough, but the way you are asserting it as the duty of the listener. Obviously I have no problem with saying that it's a good idea for people who want to know more about classical music to know something about the instruments of the orchestra and some basic musical forms. I do think this is a good idea an probably something people will eventually come to if they want to really explore classical music in depth. On the other hand, telling people that they must have specific formal/factual knowledge in order to appreciate something simply turns them off nine times out of ten, and you’re not talking about people who are already coming in with some interest in how you go about deepening and appreciation of music, you’re talking about people who are resistant to the idea of investing time in something because they don’t see what the pay-off is. Most people get that there’s at least one very basic reason that swimming lessons are useful, so that you don’t drown when you fall off a boat. There isn’t the same sort of obvious use for getting into a certain genre of music, so to get people interested the explanation of how cannot go without the explanation of why.

I was thinking about it, and my attitude toward this may partly stem from my own teaching experience. One of the things I learned early on, at least in the college classroom (which is the only level I've taught), is that you can certainly demand effort out of students, but you cannot demand factual knowledge, even basic factual knowledge until you've given them a reasonable foundation to work with and warmed them to your subject some. In other words, I can certainly tell my Shakespeare students that I expect them to work in this class, that it's their responsibility to do the reading, write their weekly responses, be attentive to the lines we go over in class, keep an open and active mind and generally come in with their thinking caps on. These kinds of demands will usually promote better class participation and better learning. What I cannot do is make a forthright demand that they know formal elements about the play we’re reading before we’ve gotten into a discussion about it. For example in class discussion I might make a demand like having a student try to find a particular place in the text that they are trying to make a rather fumbling point about, or to point to something we can all see, like what kind of word is being used frequently in a speech, what's being repeated, whether people are talking alone or to each other etc., or I might ask students to start by talking about what they think of the psychology of a certain character. This will move discussion forward. If I throw out a question about any kind of fact based knowledge, even something some of them may in fact already be familiar with, like iambic pentameter, or if I start off a class session with the premise that they must know certain basic structural elements of drama or poetry in order to even get started, then I'm going to get a dead discussion (even in cases when it is true that they need formal material like a gloss of the material). Rather than draw attention to these things as a challenge, I just give them the formal terminology and factual information so that we can them move on to using them as tools for delving into the more important questions of analysis and critique that I do expect them to work very seriously toward.

This is true for two reasons. One is that factual knowledge makes people nervous. They're afraid of being challenged on that ground in even seemingly innocuous ways because it presents the possibility of being wrong and looking stupid. The outright suggestion that someone doesn't know/should know a certain thing makes them shut down because they are on some level afraid of losing face because of it. The other reason is that it really is unfair and unproductive to ask someone to know something that really does not involve any work beyond being told and remembering it. If I have some basic knowledge that another person doesn't, it really makes very little sense for me to tell that person that he or she should learn this stuff rather than simply giving them the knowledge and taking care of that issue right away. So in the classroom it works best to just give them the formal knowledge about history, form, critical terminology etc. but make them work at the really interesting part, which is the process of questioning and analyzing and generally delving into what we're reading. There really is very little connection between acquiring knowledge of the terms and basic facts and a person's ability to analyze a piece of art. Some students can memorize terms, vocabulary etc. very quickly and easily but aren't sufficiently attentive to their reading to see the best way to apply these terms to understanding the sort of ideas and emotions being conveyed. Other students come in with a pretty good instinctive sense of the way Shakespeare's language is moving, the general effect of having a soliloquy in a scene etc., but may not necessarily know that what they are noticing is called a soliloquy or that they are drawn in by the language of certain passages because of a particular way the meter is being handled. There are, of course, a lot of people somewhere in the middle for whom the term and the understanding of what lies behind it come at the same time when they are introduced in class. Learning the terms for these things absolutely helps deepen a student's understanding, and absolutely, if you are teaching someone something, why not simply teach them the accepted formal vocabulary along with the concept it describes. However, the formal knowledge is not the place to put a lot of pressure in terms of where the challenge lies in learning about any kind of art.

What is true in the classroom (where people are, in fact, already there because they want to learn) I have found even more true talking to people more generally. Indeed, what I've found in terms of the response to my own field is that people frequently become nervous when I tell them I teach college level English because they have some terrible sense that I am going to quiz them on grammar and rhetoric, or that they're stupider than I am because they don't know certain terms. The formal, factual terminology is just an enormous hot button issue for many people, when it shouldn't really be that big a deal. So when talking to people who don't know much about poetry, or who even are resistant and say they don't like it or they don't get it, I am even less likely to tell them they need formal knowledge in order to get into this stuff. Yes, it is going to help to understand some basic formal elements (and this is even more true with a writer like Shakespeare, which does involve learning an older vocabulary, certain major historical references etc., which one really doesn’t have to have in order to listen to Mozart), but that is not really the important thing about Shakespeare and not the place I am going to start talking to someone about Renaissance poetry.

I absolutely know that in most cases it is going to be a waste of my time and that of the person I’m talking to if I start off by saying something like “You need to understand what a soliloquy is in order to appreciate Hamlet” which is pretty much the equivalent of you saying a person needs to know what a sonata form is in order to appreciate Schubert. That not only sounds like work, it sounds like I’m placing myself in the position of someone who has some sort of superior knowledge the other person doesn’t have access to and (most importantly!) it does not convey to the person what it is that I get out of spending time with Hamlet. It is not the burden of the person who just never happens to have learned what a soliloquy is to go figure it out on the gamble that once he’s learned enough he will like Hamlet. It is my burden as the person who does have this knowledge to both give that person the very basic fact of what a soliloquy is along with the reason that this is something that could be useful knowledge for that person. So I might start off by saying that one of the things that has drawn people to Hamlet as a play for centuries, and that I still find fascinating, is the way Shakespeare is exploring the conversations that we have with ourselves, the big questions we all wrestle with when no one else is around. I might say that one of the amazing and intriguing things about the play is the way Shakespeare frequently gives Hamlet these set speeches, called soliloquies, where he’s talking to himself alone on stage and so he is essentially opening up the private interior thoughts of another person for us as the audience and laying them out there for us to hear and to think about (that dramatic move, in and of itself, really is such an amazing thing that it continues to floor me every time I pause to think about it…but I enthuse/digress). The point is, that knowing what the form, the soliloquy is may be helpful to the person I’m talking to, and it is probably a term I will bring up, but it’s not the thing to make a big issue about and it is not something the person needs to know in order to read the "To Be or Not to Be speech." There is work required for understanding Hamlet, but the big work is not in knowing what a soliloquy is. The big work is in spending the time wrestling with the language and the ideas. Similarly, I don’t think knowing a cello from a viola or the basic movements of a sonata form is the big work required for understanding complex music, so it’s not the most important thing to put pressure on in trying to defend a certain kind of music. If anything music, not being a verbal art form, does not require any previous training in order to be listened to attentively in the way that one may need to acquire a certain vocabulary to understand what Hamlet is talking about.


Again, you're overstating the case: a "purely non-intellectual level"? Please. I don't listen to music on a very intellectual level either. I'm thrilled and fascinated by music the same way you are. But it's just weird to assert that music appreciation is as passive as you make it out to be.

Perhaps this is simply an issue with the way we are each employing the term “intellectual.” I don’t see a correlation at all between non-intellectual listening and passive listening. I’m not talking about passive listening. I’m talking about an active and engaged listening experience that does not involve thinking about formal intellectual issues. Perhaps when I refer to “intellectual” I mean something more like analysis, or a conscious awareness of the formal aspects of a piece versus an experience in which a person is aware, possibly in a very nuanced sense, of the way the music is moving, the effect of the different parts etc., but not actually consciously thinking about it. I suppose when I think of what I mean by times that I’ve experienced music at a "purely non-intellectual level," I mean times when it really is an experience as opposed to something I am listening to but also thinking about at the same time. I have often had experiences with music when I find that I am no longer thinking in words at all, when my sense of a detached, intellectual self is completely lost and I am engaged directly with the music itself without any intermediary. Yes, I may be able to describe later the sort of things that I have absorbed in that wordless experience, either in terms of formal terms and ideas I am familiar with, or by seeking out and learning what it is that people call something I’ve noticed about the music, but the experience itself, for me at least, is sometimes really, truly, not dependent at all upon knowing anything about the piece.

The way I got into some of those Messiaen pieces I heard last year had nothing to do with any formal knowledge about Messiaen so much as feeling out what it is that he was conveying in those works and just experiencing, for example, the sense of things returning again and again, connected but somehow vaguely disjointed, almost random, but in the way that nature is random, with some sort of intangible logic behind it all. When listening I wasn’t even expressing this to myself that articulately, but that was something like what I would have said (possibly did say) to someone at the interval in trying to describe the effect the works had on me. It wasn’t until after I had sensed this quality to certain pieces that I read the program notes and discovered his interest in ornithology and bird call or that I struck up a conversation with a musicologist who (tried) to explain the modes of limited transition that account for some of that very distinctive type of variation and repetition that marks Messiaen’s musical voice differently than another. Certainly I could just as easily have come in armed with these facts and noted the same things about the music, may have put my finger on what was going on in it much more quickly in fact, but the formal knowledge wasn’t the reason I came to appreciate some of those works. That had more to do with opening my mind to entertain the musical language of the sounds as it spoke to me directly than opening my mind to the formal techniques being employed. Perhaps what you are saying is that if a person is noting these kinds of things, even on a purely non-verbal level, that is still an “intellectual” engagement with the piece, while I am thinking of that direct engagement with the music as a “non-intellectual” engagement as opposed to the conscious intellectual attempt to describe the experience that comes afterward? I wouldn’t apply the term intellectual to an experience in which I am actively engaged with what the music is doing, aware of various shifts, and connections between the various parts, but it is only registered on the non-verbal level of simply being aware that, say, something is shifting unexpectedly at a certain point of the music, or even on a physical level such that, for example, I am aware that the pattern of my own breathing has altered in response to the music. Perhaps you would say that such observations still have some sort of intellectual quality to them, though, in that they can then be used to form a more intellectual analysis or are, in fact, the things that intellectual terms are seeking to describe?

The only analogy I can really think of to what I mean by this non-intellectual experience of music is that of experiencing a space, whether natural or architectural. I see you're in the US, so I'll pick the rotunda of the Capitol building as an impressive architectural space. Some people who work in the Capitol Building will walk through it without really thinking about where they are at all and without any real appreciation of the space. Others may be visitors who go in there on their own and are certainly impressed and aware that there is something very grand about this space. This visitor experiences the sound of the reverberating voices against the dome, walks through the size of it, is aware of the curves of it. Such a visitor certainly has an appreciation for how the experience of the Capitol building is different, more engaging and set apart from his or her own cubical filled office, but I don't think most people would characterize that as an "intellectual" experience. Then you have a third group of visitors to the space who come on the guided tour, or who may have taken a course on architectural history in college. These people will probably appreciate the inside of the Capitol Dome in the same way the other visitors did, but they can expand their experience on an intellectual level by learning things about the Classical and Palladian architectural, the geometric ratios of the building's various parts, the way the whispering gallery works etc. I see informed musical listening as analogous to the guided tour. No, it's not essential to having a very moving and appreciative experience of our nation's Capitol Building, but it can certainly help to enhance and deepen that experience, and perhaps may also help to lead someone into a greater interest in exploring other architecture as well. Similarly I think a person can enter the "space" of a sonata and "walk" through it in an attentive and appreciative way without needing the guided tour of formal knowledge and awareness of the sonata form, but that it can certainly add to the experience to have such a formal awareness.

[Babbalanja]

I hit the motherlode of bleep-bloop today at the lovely 110-year-old library in Wayland, Massachusetts! My wife is going to need an Advil drip.

Stimmung - Karlheinz Stockhausen
This vocal work is just hypnotic: a sextet of voices singing hymns to either the deities of world religions or the key of B-flat, depending on your slant.

Wilson's Ivory-bill - Lee Hyla
John Zorn's Tzadik Records released this CD of Massachusetts native Lee Hyla's chamber music. I've always respected Hyla's eccentric work.

Flashbacks - Mario Davidovsky
Piano Trio and Schwartzes Madrigal - Mauricio Kagel
Chamber music from two expert Argentine Modernists.

Matthias Pintscher
This Teldec disc has Christoph Eschenbach conducting Hamburg ensembles in three orchestral works of the upstart German composer.

The Garden of Cosmic Speculation - Michael Gandolfi
This Massachusetts composer's symphonic ode to an oddball Scottish gardener is actually sort of cheesy. But hey, I like the subject matter.

Symphony #3 - John Harbison
This CD also has Harbison's Flute Concerto. He's long been one of the premier composers in the USA, and this contains some of his Nineties work.

Modern Woodwind Quintets - Barber/Carter/Cage/Schuller
I've always loved Barber's wistful Summer Music, but I'm interested to hear the selections from the other Modernist masters.

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

The fact of the matter is that you have to have some prior knowledge or you're not truly appreciating the music for what it is. This could be as basic as knowing the instruments of the orchestra; knowing what sonata form is; knowing what a theme-and-variations structure means. I'm sorry if having to undergo even this minimal amount of education scares people away from listening to classical music, but that's what's necessary. You know this, too, but for some reason you can't admit that true appreciation comes at a price.

One of our chief areas of disagreement seems to be centered upon the idea that one can only appreciate a work of art (a work of music specifically) after having gained a degree of formal knowledge of the structures of the music, the artist's intentions, and the innovations he or she brought to these formal traditions. Again, I must disagree. I read poetry for years without ever having formally studied the poetic structures (beyond sonnet form... and perhaps haiku and limerick). I would need a guidebook to discern Dactylic hexameter from Dactylic tetrameter or to know what the hell an Antistrophe or an Amphibrach is... although I do know what an Epithalamium is. By the same token, I feel that one need not be knowledgeable of iconography, the history of painting, or visual compositional structure to appreciate this...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2735/4386677618_246cfdd6ce_o.jpg
(Raphael)

this...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4042/4386677646_2971e61dcd_o.jpg
(Ingres)

this...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4002/4386677710_279416a6c9_o.jpg
(Bonnard)

or even this...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4070/4380824428_65f32ed842_o.jpg
(Matisse)

but this...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/4386677760_7794dc9d48_o.jpg
(Jack Tworkov)

this...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4005/4386677928_87dc8a2d16_o.jpg
(Pollack)

this...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4060/4386677946_40ffe5984b_o.jpg
(Sean Scully)

and certainly this...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4061/4385914365_b2af547915_o.jpg
(Jane Edden)

... all begin to leave the viewer without a background in the history of art, art theory, art criticism, etc... baffled. On on hand we must admit that the artistic vocabulary of the older art works has been absorbed into the larger visual culture. They are a common language, if you will. Even the formal distortions of Picasso and Matisse have been absorbed to a certain degree into commercial illustration, cartoons and comics, etc... This is not true of certain examples of more recent art. But one might also point out that this is not true of all examples of more recent art... or all examples of the strongest contemporary art. Artists like Andrew Wyeth...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2720/4385949553_2c09e05ca8_o.jpg

Chuck Close...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2760/4386713016_b1d0c860d0_o.jpg

Lucian Freud...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4058/4385949503_dc772df24b_o.jpg

Will Cotton...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2745/4386713088_22ac6eae9d_o.jpg

Richard Diebenkorn...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2666/4385958665_6b579ca0b5_o.jpg

Al Held...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4030/4385949579_5a08e574c4_o.jpg

and even Francis Bacon...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4009/4386722188_ca9d367ab7_o.jpg

all rank among the leading figures of Post-War painting... in spite of the fact that they clearly utilize elements of older traditions... and as a result they are among the most accessible of later artists... certainly in comparison to various aspects of abstraction and conceptual art installations. I would suggest that beyond the use of elements of traditional forms... of an understood or recognizable language... what these works also have going for them is a clear content beyond the purely formal. They are recognizably works of art about people, human emotions and experiences... and not merely (or primarily) works of art about art... works of art about formalist innovations. It is hard for the average viewer to recognize the above paintings by Albers or Pollack as being about anything except painting. As a result these works rely deeply upon the viewer's knowledge of the formal and theoretical history of painting... and as a result are quite forbidding or inaccessible to the viewer lacking such.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not making a value judgment here. I quite like Pollack (and Rothko, and Guston) and Sean Scully is one of the strongest living painters, by my standards... but I clearly recognize why such art is not more popular and I'm not about to kid myself by suggesting that it's all the fault of a lazy or ignorant audience. I think the same holds true of certain examples of contemporary music. While I'm quite intrigued personally by John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano I find the work intrigues me mostly on an intellectual level... that in a certain way it is an academic exercise that doesn't grab me on other levels.

You seem to have political reasons for getting annoyed by arrogant composers not seeing the realities of the market.

I'm not suggesting that an artist makes pandering to the largest possible audience a goal. We'll leave that to Thomas Kinkade, Dan Brown, and Lady Gaga. I believe that virtually anything an artist creates will have its audience. Let's face it, if we consider the sales of CDs on Amazon and other such sites, even a composer such as John Cage and Stockhausen probably reaches an audience far larger than J.S. Bach ever knew in his lifetime. On the other hand, we need to recognize that if as an artist I elect to aim my art solely at that audience with a deep knowledge of the history and development of art and of contemporary art theory, form, and criticism, I cannot bemoan the fact that the larger audience doesn't appreciate my works or blame them for their laziness or ignorance. I can't believe that James Joyce thought that Finnegan's Wake was going to reach the masses or that Webern ever truly imagined that serialism or atonal music would be whistled by the postman. If the artist does wish to reach a larger audience we either need to invest greatly in artistic education (although this still leaves us with the problem that even within those knowledgeable of contemporary art, there are huge discrepancies of opinion)... or the artist needs to consider the wants and needs of the audience.

In most art forms, I've seen a retreat from real innovation during my lifetime. And in serious music, even the composers who are working in accessible forms are lumped in with the avant-garde. What does this indicate except that audiences haven't kept up with developments over the past few decades?

Here is perhaps our largest disagreement. You suggest that you have witnessed a retreat from real innovation and a ("shocking"?) lumping of "less innovative" artists/composers in with the avant garde. What you fail to recognize is that there is no clear definition of who or what represents the avant garde. The example or what some may assume to be the most experimental art works I show above... examples of Abstract Expressionism (Pollack), Minimalism (Scully), and Conceptual Art (Edden) are all styles that have been embraced and taught by academia for years. The Chuck Close (Photo-realism/Process Painting) and the Will Cotton (Post-Modernist irony) may be the most avant garde by some standards... just as the embrace of older (even medieval traditions) may be more avant garde among composers than is a continual rehash of Modernism. I would also again suggest that the extremes of innovation are not the sole measure of artistic merit. Schoenberg, in many ways, wrought a far more drastic rethinking of the tradition of music than J.S. Bach ever did... indeed, it is quite arguable that Bach's son, C.P.E.... one of the leading figures of the development away from the Baroque and toward classical form... may have wrought more innovation than old J.S. And yet in spite of the fact that Bach stayed clearly within the tradition he was born into, I have no doubt as to who was the greatest composer... and it ain't C.P.E. or Arnie.:smilewinkgrin:

By the way... I've been listening to some bits and pieces of Stockhausen's Stimmung, and indeed it piques my interest. Of course I am a great follower of vocal and choral music... including some rather Modern and Post-Modern examples. I've also been listening to a bit of John Harbison lately... although right now I'm listening to Elina Garanca's Bel Canto... a lovely collection of beautiful arias:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2740/4386811278_6e7d7fb98d_o.jpg

[mortalterror]

Stlukes, let me just start by saying that that is my favorite Ingres painting. As for the Klee you posted yesterday, when I look at his work I always think, "Hmm, I got a rug looks like that." Patterns make a fine background, but they shouldn't be content. Then again, that Wyeth is very skillfully done, but he needs more than an empty house with clothes in it. Not all subjects are equal and they can make the difference between a decent painting and a great painting. You know that Caravaggio is my favorite artist, but his paintings of fruit do nothing for me. And while the Held painting isn't hard on the eyes, it belongs more in a geometry textbook, than hanging in a gallery. Doodle a figure in there and at least you're contemplating man's relationship to something.

If there are two contemporary artists who are at least on the right track, they would probably be Nerdrum and Giger. However, their work is so unwholesome that I really can't get behind what they do. I still wouldn't match them against:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4056/4387103768_989abff35b_m.jpg
Death of Talos
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2742/4386341047_5c7cbfb6aa_m.jpg
King Tut Bust
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4011/4386337137_43fc66d21b.jpg
Paulo Uccello's Deluge
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/4353496020_043cf9e377_m.jpg
King Tut relief on back of throne
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2681/4353495926_c95e4e6aea_m.jpg
Persepolis Bulls
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4038/4352698235_92ea23e039.jpg
Five Hundred Luohan by Daohong
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4024/4352697601_dccf4e3f2f_m.jpg
Terracotta Army
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2779/4387156148_364b07f942.jpg
Ludovisi Sarcophagus
EDIT: One artist whom I do enjoy, though he died recently, is Hans Feibusch. He did some really nice murals. Andrew Conklin does stuff I don't actually hate. Freud I'd class with Nerdrum in the "Fine effort but ewe!" category. Cotton and Close need to realize there is a difference between wit and beauty. And Wyeth's colors are dull.

[Babbalanja]

I think the problem I'm having with this is probably not what you are suggesting would be helpful for people to learn, which is innocuous enough, but the way you are asserting it as the duty of the listener...factual knowledge makes people nervous. They're afraid of being challenged on that ground in even seemingly innocuous ways because it presents the possibility of being wrong and looking stupid. I'm sorry if it seems horribly cruel to suggest that people need some minimum amount of background in music before they can appreciate serious music. It just happens to be true. You're selling music short by claiming that there's no intellectual component to the experience.

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect people to read scholarly books before they listen to a note of Beethoven. By all means, they should listen to a CD or a concert of Beethoven's works and see if they are interested in taking the next step in learning to appreciate them.


One of our chief areas of disagreement seems to be centered upon the idea that one can only appreciate a work of art (a work of music specifically) after having gained a degree of formal knowledge of the structures of the music, the artist's intentions, and the innovations he or she brought to these formal traditions. Again, I must disagree. I read poetry for years without ever having formally studied the poetic structures (beyond sonnet form... and perhaps haiku and limerick). I would need a guidebook to discern Dactylic hexameter from Dactylic tetrameter or to know what the hell an Antistrophe or an Amphibrach is... although I do know what an Epithalamium is. By the same token, I feel that one need not be knowledgeable of iconography, the history of painting, or visual compositional structure to appreciate this...Your own analogies hurt your case. When you started reading poetry, you didn't merely experience the verses in some pre-rational way. You had already learned to read. That's all I'm saying about music appreciation: you have to learn to listen, otherwise it's just pretty sounds.

I mentioned before that you're expecting your visual art analogies to do work for which they're not equipped (the visual experience and the listening experience have a lot of relevant differences), but since you continue to do so, I'll answer on those terms.

I agree that that wonderful Matisse is very easy to appreciate on a non-intellectual level. My wife likes to say that great paintings should strive for beauty, and that's a fine example. But people without the background in aesthetics and art history necessary for true appreciation would say the exact same thing about Thomas Kinkade. Even in the history of art, there are kitchmeisters whose work would no doubt please a viewer without discernment. This is my point: the intellectual facet to appreciation is important.


What you fail to recognize is that there is no clear definition of who or what represents the avant garde.I don't mean that we can predict which composers' work will endure for centuries. All I mean is that for the vast majority of listeners to serious music, everything that isn't old-fashioned and diatonic gets lumped together and demonized as avant-garde. Schoenberg may as well be Lachenmann for all most people know. A mainstream composer like John Corigliano (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVBkCV6gAQY) isn't widely known for his substantial music, but for his soundtrack work. But according to you, the blame lies with the composers for not striving hard enough to be accessible and marketable!

It seems obvious to me that any challenge is too demanding for modern audiences. I'm not expecting listeners to take courses in composition. However, I don't think it's too much to ask that they make a minimum of effort to understand what's been happening in serious music for the past hundred years before dismissing it all as horrible, scary noise.

Regards,

Istvan

[LitNetIsGreat]

However, this is only one way that a person may arrive at such a substantial appreciation of music, and where I continue to disagree with you is in the claim that formal knowledge and understanding are necessary to appreciate complex music. Again, I’m not saying knowledge doesn’t enhance a person’s listening experience or that it can’t be a way into developing appreciation. I'm also not saying that it may not take some time and attentive listening to get into certain kinds of music. What I’m saying is that formal knowledge is not the only way into deepening one’s understanding of music.

I would certainly agree with Petrarch here about not necessarily having to understand the full workings of classical music to be able to like and appreciate it on some level, though that a further understanding of form and method would probably no doubt enhance the listening of it is some way as it would for almost anything, art, books, sculpture, fishing...


This conversation also made me think of the time in my life when I was possibly the most profoundly appreciative (in more senses than one) of music. When I was 18 I went through a period of several months when I was unable to walk, periodically unable to see, and generally confined to bed without the ability to read, but one of the things I was able to do was to listen to music (and to remember the poetry I had memorized—always memorize your favorite poems. They come in handy in near death situations and long lines at the supermarket! ).

Blooming heck! That must have more than a little scary – though I certainly agree about memorising poems for those near death experiences and supermarkets, though often they can amount to the same thing.



Meanwhile, maybe the whole group can unite in a sing along of "Hey Jude."

As long as this is not going to collide with my plans to write a melodramatic stage adaptation of Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, where I’m going to intersperse several refrains from “Hey Jude” and build-up to a full crescendo of the whole song as Jude walks off stage head held down in misery. I thought of the idea while watching Ibsen last week, for some reason - the whole thing just came to me in a flash! This could be the beginning of a beautiful new career...:cool:


The fact of the matter is that you have to have some prior knowledge or you're not truly appreciating the music for what it is. This could be as basic as knowing the instruments of the orchestra; knowing what sonata form is; knowing what a theme-and-variations structure means. I'm sorry if having to undergo even this minimal amount of education scares people away from listening to classical music, but that's what's necessary. You know this, too, but for some reason you can't admit that true appreciation comes at a price.

But I don’t know (at least I don’t think I do) what a theme and variation structure is, does that mean that I don’t feel a profound sense of calm and beauty when I listen to Bach?

Sure, as I said earlier investing time in learning about anything is going to perhaps further you appreciation of it, but it isn’t any different from music to anything else, in fact music one of the beauties of music is that it can speak to you directly with absolutely no formal training at all – really it is a little absurd position to take placing "formal training" with "listening" together in such a way – as long as you are lucky enough not to have been born deaf then music is open for you, for all. Even with literature you have to be able to read first, music is instantaneous.


It's the difference between standing in a pool and actually swimming. With just a minimum of training, kids learn to swim. If they don't make that effort, they can't swim.

Don’t think that I am defending my ignorance of the formal aspects of music, I am not, but neither does it mean that I am going to drown if I attempt to listen to Bach or Mozart. As ever I will always seek to learn more of what interests me, but there is only so much that you can do and if my personal educational has taught me anything at all, it is how little I actually do know, and how much there really is out there to try to comprehend.


That's all I'm saying about music appreciation: you have to learn to listen, otherwise it's just pretty sounds.

"Just pretty sounds" is rather an understatement here don't you think?

[Babbalanja]

Don’t think that I am defending my ignorance of the formal aspects of music, I am not, but neither does it mean that I am going to drown if I attempt to listen to Bach or Mozart. You know that's not what I meant. Anyone can stand waist-deep in a pool and enjoy the water. But if you haven't learned how, you can't swim.

It's a matter of degree, no doubt about it. If your level of music appreciation is just enjoying the 'profound feeling' that the tones produce in you while you listen, then you're just standing in the water. Someone with a little knowledge of the structure and context of the work is doing a dog paddle. And someone who studies scores and has a keen understanding of composition is like Michael Phelps.


"Just pretty sounds" is rather an understatement here don't you think?Well, a profound sense of calm and beauty isn't that much more substantial an understanding of staggeringly complex music like Bach's. Don't sell his genius short.

Regards,

Istvan

[mortalterror]

You know that's not what I meant. Anyone can stand waist-deep in a pool and enjoy the water. But if you haven't learned how, you can't swim.

It's a matter of degree, no doubt about it. If your level of music appreciation is just enjoying the 'profound feeling' that the tones produce in you while you listen, then you're just standing in the water. Someone with a little knowledge of the structure and context of the work is doing a dog paddle. And someone who studies scores and has a keen understanding of composition is like Michael Phelps.

At the risk of being the kid who peed in the pool... I don't get your analogy.

[Petrarch's Love]

I'm sorry if it seems horribly cruel to suggest that people need some minimum amount of background in music before they can appreciate serious music. It just happens to be true. You're selling music short by claiming that there's no intellectual component to the experience.

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect people to read scholarly books before they listen to a note of Beethoven. By all means, they should listen to a CD or a concert of Beethoven's works and see if they are interested in taking the next step in learning to appreciate them.

I am not saying that there cannot be an intellectual component to music, I am saying that formal, intellectual knowledge is not necessary in order to appreciate the complexity of music. Again, I wonder if we are employing the term "intellectual" in a different way, with you aligning it with any sort of active engagement that helps us to take note of the various features of a piece of music, and me aligning it with more rational secondary analysis? (See the second half of my extensive response above).

As I've tried to say before, I am also not saying that you are being "horribly cruel" in making the suggestion that people need some musical background. I am saying that: 1) I don't think this is a successful approach to getting people into music (or any other art form for that matter) because it leads to misunderstanding and turns them off (They think you're saying they are mindless cretins etc.) I am not saying this is solely a problem with you. It's something I've learned the hard way from my own experience as an apologist for the arts.
2) It's always better to provide people with formal knowledge you have and they don't than to draw attention to the fact that you have formal knowledge that they don't and then tell them it's their duty to go forth and obtain it.


You know that's not what I meant. Anyone can stand waist-deep in a pool and enjoy the water. But if you haven't learned how, you can't swim.

It's a matter of degree, no doubt about it. If your level of music appreciation is just enjoying the 'profound feeling' that the tones produce in you while you listen, then you're just standing in the water. Someone with a little knowledge of the structure and context of the work is doing a dog paddle. And someone who studies scores and has a keen understanding of composition is like Michael Phelps.

Well, a profound sense of calm and beauty isn't that much more substantial an understanding of staggeringly complex music like Bach's. Don't sell his genius short.

Regards,

Istvan

Perhaps a problem we're having is that you see a hierarchy to "intellectual" versus "non-intellectual" experiences of music, whereas I see them as simply different experiences of music. Would Bach feel that he was being sold short because a person had received a "profound sense of calm and beauty" form listening to his music? Or might he think that this was a rewarding payoff for all that hard work, even if the listener didn't appreciate the scaffolding by which he ascended to those heights? I think most artists would be very satisfied to think their art had the power to move people in the way Bach does, even if it meant someone hadn't noted the counterpoint. This is not to say that a composer wouldn't also be happy to have someone appreciate his or her work for its formal qualities, but that I don't know that not being analytical of genius is selling it short.

Yes, there are absolutely things you can get out of a more educated experience with music that you won't get without that formal knowledge, but there are also things that you can get out of a non intellectually inflected listening experience that the most extensive formal training could not give. I don't get privileging one over the other in the way you seem to be doing. I could just as easily characterize the formal training as the "wading in" stage before you reach the heights by adding the emotional component, but I actually don't think the metaphor is an apt one. I think we're talking about different means of appreciating music, both of which can be rewarding in their own ways, both independent of the other or blended together as part of the listening experience. I think there is a great deal of value to both modes of listening, and I absolutely would encourage any listener to explore both the emotional/intuitive and the more formal intellectual means of engaging with music.

[LitNetIsGreat]

You know that's not what I meant. Anyone can stand waist-deep in a pool and enjoy the water. But if you haven't learned how, you can't swim.

It's a matter of degree, no doubt about it. If your level of music appreciation is just enjoying the 'profound feeling' that the tones produce in you while you listen, then you're just standing in the water. Someone with a little knowledge of the structure and context of the work is doing a dog paddle. And someone who studies scores and has a keen understanding of composition is like Michael Phelps.

That seems a very callous and scientific way to view music. Certainly if a work of art is going to give me a 'profound feeling' a sense of beauty, then I will take that with both hands and be very thankful for the experience.

I don't disagree with your argument that developing knowledge of form and structure or whatever else, is going to further your understanding of it, as with anything in life, but I can't fathom how you seem to reject the instantaneous effect that genius can have on an individual. Genius needs no explanation.



Well, a profound sense of calm and beauty isn't that much more substantial an understanding of staggeringly complex music like Bach's. Don't sell his genius short.

Well that's perhaps due to my lack of any formal classical training - I know not what I hear...

[Petrarch's Love]

Stlukes, let me just start by saying that that is my favorite Ingres painting. As for the Klee you posted yesterday, when I look at his work I always think, "Hmm, I got a rug looks like that." Patterns make a fine background, but they shouldn't be content. Then again, that Wyeth is very skillfully done, but he needs more than an empty house with clothes in it. Not all subjects are equal and they can make the difference between a decent painting and a great painting. You know that Caravaggio is my favorite artist, but his paintings of fruit do nothing for me. And while the Held painting isn't hard on the eyes, it belongs more in a geometry textbook, than hanging in a gallery. Doodle a figure in there and at least you're contemplating man's relationship to something.

So if there isn't a human figure it just doesn't get to you, eh Mortal? I personally had just been thinking what a profound statement about people the Wyeth St. Luke's posted was making. Something about the way he's painted the empty clothes, the empty house, instantly spoke to me about the people who were absent. It's something Wyeth does incredibly well, creating paintings in which what is not there is almost more present than what is. Anyway, I felt a real psychological tension conveying a very profound statement about man's relationship to something in that image, so I found your response interesting. Can't non-human objects still make a comment about the human experience? Not really a disagreement, just some thinking in response to your opinion.


Blooming heck! That must have more than a little scary –

Not on my top ten list of life's great moments.


though I certainly agree about memorising poems for those near death experiences and supermarkets, though often they can amount to the same thing.


You die a little every time
You're standing in the check-out line? :P


As long as this is not going to collide with my plans to write a melodramatic stage adaptation of Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, where I’m going to intersperse several refrains from “Hey Jude” and build-up to a full crescendo of the whole song as Jude walks off stage head held down in misery. I thought of the idea while watching Ibsen last week, for some reason - the whole thing just came to me in a flash! This could be the beginning of a beautiful new career...:cool:

I like it. Broadway, make way for Neely!



"Just pretty sounds" is rather an understatement here don't you think?

Yes.

[Babbalanja]

I don't know how many more ways I can express my ideas if people aren't going to pay attention anyway. If it pleases you to characterize me as a "callous," emotionally stunted killjoy, have a ball.

I stand by what I've said here. I don't consider reading a few paragraphs in a concert program or CD liner notes so unthinkably grueling that it scares the majority of prospective listeners away. I have too much respect for the genius of JS Bach to reduce his staggeringly complex music to aural wallpaper. And I'm not so narcissistic as to think that modern composers have to pander to my urge for instant, effortless gratification or I'll refuse to listen to them.

Here are some wise words from Charles Wuorinen, one of the greatest composers alive today:

In any medium – music, literature, poetry, theatre, dance, the visual arts – entertainment is that which we can receive and enjoy passively, without effort, without our putting anything into the experience. Art is that which requires some initial effort from the receiver, after which the experience received may indeed be entertaining, but also transcending as well. Art is like nuclear fusion: you have to put something into it to get it started, but you get more out of it in the end than what you put in. Entertainment is its own reward, and generally doesn’t last.

Regards,

Istvan

[mortalterror]

So if there isn't a human figure it just doesn't get to you, eh Mortal? I personally had just been thinking what a profound statement about people the Wyeth St. Luke's posted was making. Something about the way he's painted the empty clothes, the empty house, instantly spoke to me about the people who were absent. It's something Wyeth does incredibly well, creating paintings in which what is not there is almost more present than what is. Anyway, I felt a real psychological tension conveying a very profound statement about man's relationship to something in that image, so I found your response interesting. Can't non-human objects still make a comment about the human experience? Not really a disagreement, just some thinking in response to your opinion.
So you were wondering where the people were too? They're running around somewhere without any clothes on. Why couldn't he paint that?

I get it. It's a big spooky house, and there's a lot of shadowy empty space to underscore that feeling of solitude. I just don't find it as profound as all that. Maybe if there were some clues about why the people are absent or where they went. Are they dead? Are they coming back? Why should I even care? There just isn't enough information in that painting to make a hypothesis or hang a concern on. Seriously though, I like sepia tone as much as the next guy; but if color is a feast for the eyes, a person could starve on a diet of Wyeths.

Do I need figures in my paintings in order to like them? With a few notable exceptions: architecture, sunsets, fractals, and three of the pictures in my slideshow, yes. I'm not a guy who collects a lot of pictures of flowers, rocks, and telephone poles. I don't own a lot of photos of cats. When it comes down to it, the only really interesting subject is man. But even portrayed the wrong way that can be dull as well.

I think the Chinese tradition of portraiture stinks. The backgrounds are blank, with the figure seated rigidly in the center, arms at their sides, staring straight ahead. There's not an ounce of character or novelty to them. These interchangeable rag dolls might as well be propped up with a stick, Weekend at Bernie's fashion.

Not just any figure will do, either. There's a hierarchy, and as with most things in life, it starts with good looking famous people on the top.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2796/4387372539_dd84b88b50_m.jpg
Normal people have to be remarkable or dynamic in some way
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2728/4387372559_ee6c7aa2b7_m.jpg
Or the motherload, there's an important historical story behind the picture and the characters are grappling with a universal predicament
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/4388134106_070daf2abe_m.jpg

I give Van Gogh and Magritte a pass just because they do so much other stuff I love. A work of art's got to have a lot of positives to make up for a major negative like that.


I don't know how many more ways I can express my ideas if people aren't going to pay attention anyway. If it pleases you to characterize me as a "callous," emotionally stunted killjoy, have a ball.
So... are there like sharks in the water?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Those Andrew Wyeth paintings reminds of the mood captured of Edward Hopper:

http://gallopingnelly.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/gas-station.jpg

In mood if not in use of colour or tone. And one without a lonely man:

http://rippleeffects.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/edward-hopper-rooms_by_the_sea1.jpg

Though just as lonely and obscuring the viewer from life's joys.

Also like Lincoln Seligman, who I've only heard of because I've got this one on my wall at home:

http://images.easyart.com/i/prints/rw/lg/1/0/Lincoln-Seligman-Beach-house-interior-108351.jpg

Again, I'm not going to labour the point, but the mood of loneliness, even despair comes across easily enough in these paintings, (though the last one is much lighter) it's immediately obvious - like the music - it requires little formal qualifications to really feel what the artist is saying.

[Babbalanja]

Funny you should mention Hopper, these videos have his most famous painting as their image:

William Schuman: Symphony #7 (1960): 1. Largo assai (first part) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWJGCgPxVWI&feature=related)

William Schuman: Symphony #7 (1960): 1. Largo assai (second part) , 2. Vigoroso (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDOL_t_mfNg&feature=related)

William Schuman: Symphony #7 (1960): 3. Cantabile intensamente (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZzCKx23oRo&feature=related)

William Schuman: Symphony #7 (1960): 4. Scherzando brioso (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pl-jsrj1rM&feature=related)

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

Stlukes, let me just start by saying that that is my favorite Ingres painting.

It is a stunner... and even far greater in person (it's in the Frick Collection in New York).

As for the Klee you posted yesterday, when I look at his work I always think, "Hmm, I got a rug looks like that." Patterns make a fine background, but they shouldn't be content.

So you can appreciate the purely abstract art of music... and even architecture... but painting must be a picture of something? Why?

Then again, that Wyeth is very skillfully done, but he needs more than an empty house with clothes in it. Not all subjects are equal and they can make the difference between a decent painting and a great painting. You know that Caravaggio is my favorite artist, but his paintings of fruit do nothing for me.

Do I need figures in my paintings in order to like them? With a few notable exceptions: architecture, sunsets, fractals, and three of the pictures in my slideshow, yes. I'm not a guy who collects a lot of pictures of flowers, rocks, and telephone poles. I don't own a lot of photos of cats. When it comes down to it, the only really interesting subject is man. But even portrayed the wrong way that can be dull as well.

I think the Chinese tradition of portraiture stinks. The backgrounds are blank, with the figure seated rigidly in the center, arms at their sides, staring straight ahead. There's not an ounce of character or novelty to them. These interchangeable rag dolls might as well be propped up with a stick, Weekend at Bernie's fashion.

Not just any figure will do, either. There's a hierarchy, and as with most things in life, it starts with good looking famous people on the top.

My God! Mortal! You're a 19th century academician!!:smilielol5: Your concept of the heirarchy of artistic subject matter was dominant in the early 19th century and was the very thing against which the great landscape painters, J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, Casper David Friedrich as well as the Impressionists... and later painters such as Cezanne and the Modernists rebelled.

And while the Held painting isn't hard on the eyes, it belongs more in a geometry textbook, than hanging in a gallery. Doodle a figure in there and at least you're contemplating man's relationship to something.

:crazy:

If there are two contemporary artists who are at least on the right track, they would probably be Nerdrum and Giger.

Nerdrum is interesting... very good... but I agree that he is not worthy of comparison with the greatest of the past masters. Giger is better than Frazetta, but still little more than an illustrator.

Freud I'd class with Nerdrum in the "Fine effort but ewe!" category.

Of course he has been described as "the Ingres of Existentialism." The image he paints of humanity is never flattering. I agree that the work inspires a duality of responses: an absolute sense of awe and admiration at the power of his imagery and the absolute splendor of his handling of paint... and a repulsion at what he reveals about humanity.

Cotton and Close need to realize there is a difference between wit and beauty.

Seriously, I see very little "wit" in Close. He is coolly analytical. Cotton's subject matter is certainly light and witty... but his splendid and equally light and fluid handling of paint perfectly suits the subject. Essentially, he is a Neo-Rococo painter: all powder puffs and candy canes.

And Wyeth's colors are dull.

Not "dull"... rather muted. But then again, so are Rembrandt's. The criticism is meaningless as Wyeth never aspire to be a colorist. To criticize his lack of color is rather like criticizing Hemingway for his lack of a rich, sensuous vocabulary.

Seriously though, I like sepia tone as much as the next guy; but if color is a feast for the eyes, a person could starve on a diet of Wyeths.

It is intriguing that you speak of the lack of color, considering that brilliant color has long been connected in the minds of some critics with light-weight art. I'm also intrigued that you criticize Wyeth's color... and yet admit that Caravaggio is your favorite painter... an artist who rarely used little more color than Wyeth. Most of his paintings are limited to earth-tones, white, and red.

There are many other fascinating painters within the figurative/narrative tradition that you would seemingly follow. You might wish to check out:

William Beckman...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4042/4388835404_c934c3dbf7_o.jpg

Beckman is a phenomenal painter. His absolute stunning details and sensuous surfaces make him a worthy heir of Ingres.

David M. Lenz...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2741/4388835472_c23d6a3d53_o.jpg

Ian Faulkner...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4049/4388071931_df859d3c45_o.jpg

Stephen Assael...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4068/4388835520_1bf989192d_o.jpg

F.Scott Hess...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4008/4388071975_d97865b978_o.jpg

Margaret Bowland...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2725/4388835654_a4104169f6_o.jpg

David Bowers...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4026/4388072087_bc11d88caa_o.jpg

I agree that that wonderful Matisse is very easy to appreciate on a non-intellectual level. My wife likes to say that great paintings should strive for beauty, and that's a fine example. But people without the background in aesthetics and art history necessary for true appreciation would say the exact same thing about Thomas Kinkade. Even in the history of art, there are kitchmeisters whose work would no doubt please a viewer without discernment. This is my point: the intellectual facet to appreciation is important.

Oh, I agree. Those without much of an eye or experience of art my fall for the commercial or sentimental schlock (rather like Mortal's Frank Frazetta?:smilewinkgrin:) along with Raphael and Ingres because they are seduced by the surface "eye candy"... the pretty colors and attractive subject matter and the artist's apparent technical facility. But then again... is this not part of what draws them in initially so that they may wish to invest further effort in learning about or exploring the art so that at some point they may have a deeper understanding. Very few people with little knowledge of art are going to be seduced by Pollack or Tworkov or Duchamp and wish to learn more... to delve deeper. Very few people with a limited understanding of classical music are going to listen to Schoenberg or Ligeti or Philip Glass and be drawn in. Of course, beyond the question of accessibility there is the question of "beauty". Bach, Mozart, and Schubert are in no way less complex than Schoenberg or Ligeti... but they have the added advantage of having complex unabashedly gorgeous. One needs to really stretch the meaning of the term "beautiful" to count Ligeti and Pendercki or Kline and Pollack as "beautiful". There's is a beauty that is most certainly an acquired taste.

In any medium – music, literature, poetry, theatre, dance, the visual arts – entertainment is that which we can receive and enjoy passively, without effort, without our putting anything into the experience. Art is that which requires some initial effort from the receiver, after which the experience received may indeed be entertaining, but also transcending as well. Art is like nuclear fusion: you have to put something into it to get it started, but you get more out of it in the end than what you put in. Entertainment is its own reward, and generally doesn’t last.

I largely agree... but then again that which we define as mere entertainment or in the visual arts, "decoration", is part of what seduces the audience and draws them in from the start so that they are willing to invest the effort to delve deeper. This is true of Mozart, Raphael, Bach, Shakespeare, etc...

I would also note that the key phrase of this quote is that which I highlighted and that is where the dispute as to which individual artists are worth the effort begins. For all of us there are works of art which we deem as not being worth the effort. Chinese opera is not something I wish to explore. What I have heard of it and read of it leads me to believe that I will need to invest far more than I am willing to before I gain any real aesthetic pleasure from it. Finnegan's Wake... which I have read in part several times... leaves me frustrated and seriously doubting if it is worth the effort. For a great many... even a great many who are enamored of and rather knowledgeable of classical music, certain aspects of Modernist and Contemporary classical music leave them doubting whether their time might not be better invested elsewhere. It may ultimately come down to the fact that the appreciation of contemporary art... which often demands we suspend our expectations and be willing to accept something that goes against what we have long thought of as "beautiful"... is something far different from the appreciation of the "classics"... in art, music, or literature.

Funny you should mention Hopper...

Funny YOU should mention Hopper. Hopper, after all, was dismissed by a great many of the most influential critics of the time as provincial, conservative, and most certainly ignorant of the innovations in contemporary art and far from being part of the avant garde.:smilewinkgrin:

[Babbalanja]

Funny YOU should mention Hopper. Hopper, after all, was dismissed by a great many of the most influential critics of the time as provincial, conservative, and most certainly ignorant of the innovations in contemporary art and far from being part of the avant garde.:smilewinkgrin:Well, so was William Schuman. And now he's dismissed as being cerebral and academic. You know, not "accessible" enough.

Regards,

Istvan

[mortalterror]

So you can appreciate the purely abstract art of music... and even architecture... but painting must be a picture of something? Why?
I don't know that I'd characterize music as purely abstract. A lot of music has words and narratives. After all, the most beautiful instrument is doubtless the human voice, which is one reason why I like Doo Wop and A Cappella so much.

I suppose I make distinctions in my art. Architecture serves different functions and operates by different aesthetic rules than painting. With the exception of fortune cookies, communion, and Bazooka Joe, food is rarely didactic. Applying the same rules to the culinary arts as I do to literature just doesn't make sense to me.

My God! Mortal! You're a 19th century academician!!:smilielol5: Your concept of the heirarchy of artistic subject matter was dominant in the early 19th century and was the very thing against which the great landscape painters, J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, Casper David Friedrich as well as the Impressionists... and later painters such as Cezanne and the Modernists rebelled.
I guess, to you, a world filled with Bouguereau, Cabanel, and Gerome wouldn't be worth living in.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4031/4334567910_727f9db4c0_m.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2722/4389719474_53b69ecf20_m.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4032/4333825011_d8c7c3bf06_m.jpg
Besides, I think if you look at Friedrich's best work, he'll usually have figures contemplating the landscapes. I don't see him as too far outside of the stylistic zeitgeist of the time. He's just working Edmund Burke's concept of the sublime with it's large, imposing, vague shapes, instead of the beautiful with it's balance, proportion, and clear lines.

Seriously, I see very little "wit" in Close. He is coolly analytical. Cotton's subject matter is certainly light and witty... but his splendid and equally light and fluid handling of paint perfectly suits the subject. Essentially, he is a Neo-Rococo painter: all powder puffs and candy canes.
To me, they look like the visual arts equivalent of M. Night Shyamalan. They are clever instead of profound. They are working from cliche's but giving them a fairly obvious twist that anyone could think of. They are like Anatole France who liked to take a common phrase and then change it just enough to make it novel. That's why I call them clever.

It is intriguing that you speak of the lack of color, considering that brilliant color has long been connected in the minds of some critics with light-weight art.
Yeah, that Michelangelo was a real light-weight.

I'm also intrigued that you criticize Wyeth's color... and yet admit that Caravaggio is your favorite painter... an artist who rarely used little more color than Wyeth. Most of his paintings are limited to earth-tones, white, and red.
He'll use some yellow, orange, and flesh tone, but yes his palette is comparatively limited. He'll color people's hair, or throw in some green drapery, but when he uses color he really goes for it. His reds are RED. They pop, and stand out, they direct the eye like his use of light. If I had to name the two characteristics that attract me most to Caravaggio it would have to be the same things I admire in Rembrandt: the chiaroscuro, and the personality of his figures.

There are many other fascinating painters within the figurative/narrative tradition that you would seemingly follow. You might wish to check out:
None of those are really my thing. The first one is a little plain, but with a few changes it could be something good.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2683/4389719446_fa2805f196.jpg
Houdon's The Cold Girl
The next couple, it's like, if you're going for photorealism take a photograph. We have some really talented photographers.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4052/4389719466_3242410014_m.jpg
Gordon Parks
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4002/4388951363_99b6afda76_m.jpg
Evans
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4017/4388951385_223e8d1dd0_m.jpg
Waldman
Karsh, Newman, Rodchenko...

Seriously, what's with Peacock Clown Lady and Zombie Bride?

[stlukesguild]

Well, so was William Schuman. And now he's dismissed as being cerebral and academic. You know, not "accessible" enough.

That seems to be somewhat similar to some of criticism leveled at Minimalism and the "New Simplicity" (Gorecki, Part, etc...). One camp find them to be too cerebral with their forms pared down too far denying all possibilities of sensuality and emotion... while the other camp criticizes them for being too accessible... clearly tonal in structure.:out:

William Schuman is indeed someone I need to explore further. It has only been over the last year or so that I have made a concerted effort to focus upon contemporary and late Modernist composers... including a great many Americans. I have a disc on order. I also have been listening a great deal to Walter Piston, Alan Hovhaness, Ned Rorem, Charles Griffes, William Bolcom, etc... I'm actually quite struck by the fact that Alan Hovhaness and John Cage were so close and mutual admirers of the other's work.

Right now...? I'm on a Mozart kick. I haven't seriously listened to him much for quite some time. Right now I'm listening to the Gran Partita.

[Babbalanja]

That seems to be somewhat similar to some of criticism leveled at Minimalism and the "New Simplicity" (Gorecki, Part, etc...). I have my doubts about it as well. I find a lot of it very interesting, like the Kronos CD with quartets by Pärt, Reich, and Glass. I've seen good performances of some of Gorecki's chamber music here in Boston. I quite like John Adams. But only Morton Feldman really fascinates me. Just those static, spacious compositions, flowing at a glacial pace. Wow.


I also have been listening a great deal to Walter Piston, Alan Hovhaness, Ned Rorem, Charles Griffes, William Bolcom, etc... I love Walter Piston, just as much as I do Schuman. But the rest leave me cold. There have been times I've been in the right mood for Hovanhess, but his stuff can be a little hokey. Is there anything in particular from these gents I should listen to?


Right now...? I'm on a Mozart kick. I haven't seriously listened to him much for quite some time. Right now I'm listening to the Gran Partita.Coincidentally, I was just listening to his Symphony #40 last night. Now who did the Illuminati get to ghost-write that for him? :smilielol5:

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

So you can appreciate the purely abstract art of music... and even architecture... but painting must be a picture of something? Why?

I don't know that I'd characterize music as purely abstract. A lot of music has words and narratives. After all, the most beautiful instrument is doubtless the human voice, which is one reason why I like Doo Wop and A Cappella so much.

Of course... and I am probably as enamored of vocal music as anyone... but then again there is an endless array of music that is purely instrumental and without any implied narrative (such as that of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Beethoven's 6th, or Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition).

I suppose I make distinctions in my art. Architecture serves different functions and operates by different aesthetic rules than painting. With the exception of fortune cookies, communion, and Bazooka Joe, food is rarely didactic. Applying the same rules to the culinary arts as I do to literature just doesn't make sense to me.

The culinary arts are quite removed from the visual arts. Architecture, the Persian carpet, the ceramic vase, and the painting are all works of visual art and all employ similar elements of composition, design, color, etc... You have seemly made an assumption that painting should function according to a single set of aesthetic rules that include the notion that painting should be a representation (ideally an illusionistic representation) of something else... especially a human being... and that it should employ narrative elements. This assumption was commonly held from the Renaissance until the onset of Modernism... but it has been rejected for several reasons. With the "discovery" of non-Western art and the "re-discovery" of older artistic traditions as a result of the development of art history, painters embraced the notion that there were other possibilities open to them. At the same the developments of the age led artists to question the rationale of continuing to cling to dated forms and traditions. Narrative is clearly serviced far more effectively through literature. Illusion is achieved far more effectively and easily through photography. Painters began to look at the other possibilities open to painting. Of course this has not eliminated narrative and realism from painting... but it has challenged the notion that these elements are requisite and standards by which all painting need be measured.

My God! Mortal! You're a 19th century academician!! Your concept of the heirarchy of artistic subject matter was dominant in the early 19th century and was the very thing against which the great landscape painters, J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, Casper David Friedrich as well as the Impressionists... and later painters such as Cezanne and the Modernists rebelled.

I guess, to you, a world filled with Bouguereau, Cabanel, and Gerome wouldn't be worth living in.

I would be a rather one-sided and disjointed one in which art had little or nothing to do with the reality of the world.

Besides, I think if you look at Friedrich's best work, he'll usually have figures contemplating the landscapes. I don't see him as too far outside of the stylistic zeitgeist of the time. He's just working Edmund Burke's concept of the sublime with it's large, imposing, vague shapes, instead of the beautiful with it's balance, proportion, and clear lines.

Of course the initial impetus to explore the landscape in painting was firmly rooted in Romanticist thinking... in notions of the sublime and the beautiful that mirror Burke... and in thoughts that the landscape was a reflection of human emotion... a motif to give form to the inner thoughts as we find in Wordsworth:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2754/4390905422_0b759d5f90_o.jpg

It was initially essential that these landscapes contain elements of the tragic... or the dramatic... of the sublime... Turner, for example, often clung to dramatic narratives such as in his painting of Regulus in which the blinding light of the setting sun suggests Regulus eyes as the sun burns away his sight... as well as it suggests the sun setting upon the Carthaginian Empire.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2766/4390136379_53acc6913e_o.jpg

While later artists embraced the formal innovations of the Romantic landscape painters... especially their freedom in the handling of paint... they rejected the need for the sublime... the grandiose... It was imagined that there just might be an equally worthy beauty and visual poetry to be found in the landscape of one's own back yard...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4020/4390905554_e17f2ea8e6_o.jpg

... or in the contemplation of one's own intimate surroundings: one's lovers, wives, and family...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4045/4390136425_3e45263184_o.jpg

Seriously, I see very little "wit" in Close. He is coolly analytical. Cotton's subject matter is certainly light and witty... but his splendid and equally light and fluid handling of paint perfectly suits the subject. Essentially, he is a Neo-Rococo painter: all powder puffs and candy canes.

To me, they look like the visual arts equivalent of M. Night Shyamalan. They are clever instead of profound. They are working from cliche's but giving them a fairly obvious twist that anyone could think of. They are like Anatole France who liked to take a common phrase and then change it just enough to make it novel. That's why I call them clever.

Perhaps... but the "ideas" are but a single aspect of painting. Painting is not story-telling or philosophy. There is much more to be found in the thought that goes into the actual painting process... the artist's mastery (or lack thereof) of the handling of light, line, color, the material elements of paint, etc... The notion that painting should be rooted in a deep philosophical thought is what has led us to Duchamp and Conceptual Art as a result of artists who failed to understand the thought that goes into each and every brush-stroke... just as it goes into each note written by a composer such as Mozart.

It is intriguing that you speak of the lack of color, considering that brilliant color has long been connected in the minds of some critics with light-weight art.

Yeah, that Michelangelo was a real light-weight.

You might remember the outrage in certain circles following the restoration of the Sistine Ceiling. This outrage... in spite of the scientific documentation that proved that no pigment was ever removed... that in fact the slightest layer of ancient varnish and soot was left in place in order to avoid even the chance of removing anything by the master's hand... was based purely upon an emotional response and a belief that the brilliant colors of the Sistine could not have been what Michelangelo intended... for real profundity is not to be found in brilliant colors (look, after all, at Rembrandt). This thinking, which even went against all we know of Renaissance painting and its brilliant colors, was an expression of the belief (common especially among British and Puritanical American critics) that profundity is to be found in drawing (disegno) rather than color. This belief led to battles between the supporters of such colorists as Delacroix and supporters of Ingres and David (in spite of the fact that Ingres is actually one of the most daring of colorists). It continued into the 20th century among critics who dismissed painters such as Bonnard... and even Matisse as overly "decorative" and lacking the intellectual rigor of Picasso. Of course the entire idea in bunk... but there are still those who bristle at the seductive and "decorative" aspects of color.

If I had to name the two characteristics that attract me most to Caravaggio it would have to be the same things I admire in Rembrandt: the chiaroscuro, and the personality of his figures.

Yes... these are certainly their greatest strengths.

There are many other fascinating painters within the figurative/narrative tradition that you would seemingly follow. You might wish to check out:
None of those are really my thing. The first one is a little plain, but with a few changes it could be something good. The next couple, it's like, if you're going for photorealism take a photograph. We have some really talented photographers.

Seriously, what's with Peacock Clown Lady and Zombie Bride?

banghead:

[stlukesguild]

That seems to be somewhat similar to some of criticism leveled at Minimalism and the "New Simplicity" (Gorecki, Part, etc...).

I have my doubts about it as well. I find a lot of it very interesting, like the Kronos CD with quartets by Pärt, Reich, and Glass. I've seen good performances of some of Gorecki's chamber music here in Boston. I quite like John Adams. But only Morton Feldman really fascinates me. Just those static, spacious compositions, flowing at a glacial pace. Wow.


Some might suggest that such an admission makes you clearly a tied-in-the-wool Modernist... clinging to Modernist concepts of what constitutes the best in new art and music just as the tied-in-the-wool Romantics cling to Mahler, Bruckner, Vaughan-Williams, and Richard Strauss.:hand:

I also have been listening a great deal to Walter Piston, Alan Hovhaness, Ned Rorem, Charles Griffes, William Bolcom, etc...

I love Walter Piston, just as much as I do Schuman. But the rest leave me cold. There have been times I've been in the right mood for Hovanhess, but his stuff can be a little hokey. Is there anything in particular from these gents I should listen to?

Rorem's strongest work seems to be in the genre of the American "art song". I am particularly fond of the recent Susan Graham recording of his songs. Griffes is certainly not a Modernist but rather an American Impressionist (of course he died in 1920). His output is rather limited (he was 36 when he died) but I quite like the Naxos disc which includes The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan and Three Poems of Fiona McLeod... a lovely suite of orchestral songs. I find Bolcom's settings of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience to be fascinating... if flawed work... but what else could one expect of something so broad and grandiose? Hovhaneness? Like many contemporary or near contemporary composers one is almost limited to the offerings of Naxos... most of which I find quite marvelous.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

I apologize for diverging away from the current visual vis-á-vis audible art line of discussion, but I wanted to share an evening that my son and I enjoyed with Itzhak Perlman and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. For those who are not aware, outside the usual suspects of this thread, Itzhak Perlman is a world renowned violin virtuoso and accomplished conductor.

The performance included:
Johann Sebastian Bach; Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor (BWV 1041). Perlman performed as the solo violinist utilizing his nearly 300 year old “Soil Stradivarius”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4XUiks5I6s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_Stradivarius

The second piece was Antonin Dvořák’s “Serenade in E major, Op. 22 conducted by Mr. Perlman. Here is a recording of the first movement (moderato):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY6eORIi-y0

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, rounded out the evening. Here again, Mr. Perlman took on the role of conductor.

All in all, it was a magnificent performance. We were a little disappointed that Perlman played the violin in the one Bach piece only. (He conducted the other two performances.) Sitting to my right was an elderly woman along with her daughter who had treated her mother to this performance as a birthday gift. I have no idea why I am relating this anecdote other than I have polished off my third glass of Chianti and the woman was so kind and pleasant. We chatted between movements and during the intermission. Behind us, many could hear the torturous attempts of a woman trying to prevent a lung from being coughed up. Fortunately she was able to keep the violent hackings in check during the performances. However, all hell broke loose between movements and during the intermission.

Gilliatt

[LitNetIsGreat]

I apologize for diverging away from the current visual vis-á-vis audible art line of discussion, but I wanted to share an evening that my son and I enjoyed with Itzhak Perlman and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. For those who are not aware, outside the usual suspects of this thread, Itzhak Perlman is a world renowned violin virtuoso and accomplished conductor.

The performance included:
Johann Sebastian Bach; Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor (BWV 1041). Perlman performed as the solo violinist utilizing his nearly 300 year old “Soil Stradivarius”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4XUiks5I6s

Oh excellent, I'm quite addicted to this little piece and its piano equivalent - delicious!


All in all, it was a magnificent performance. We were a little disappointed that Perlman played the violin in the one Bach piece only. (He conducted the other two performances.) Sitting to my right was an elderly woman along with her daughter who had treated her mother to this performance as a birthday gift. I have no idea why I am relating this anecdote other than I have polished off my third glass of Chianti and the woman was so kind and pleasant. We chatted between movements and during the intermission. Behind us, many could hear the torturous attempts of a woman trying to prevent a lung from being coughed up. Fortunately she was able to keep the violent hackings in check during the performances. However, all hell broke loose between movements and during the intermission.

Gilliatt

It sounded like a good night and interestingly, you seem to express my belief that the audience dynamic is as much a part of the overall performance as the artists on stage. There's something about the shared live experience, as well as the relationship between artist and audience that matters - even down to the little annoyances like the sudden relentless coughing fits that always seem to come alive whenever there is silence. One of my past theatre tutors was always going on about the special relationship or dialogue which exists between performer and audience, and over time I have come to feel the extent to which she was right, though I would say that it is more than just a two-way dialogue from performer to artist and back again, but also from audience to audience and from performer to performer, sort of like a magic letter "I": I.:D

As we're talking performances, I had quite a funny experience with going to see Ibsen's Enemy of the People the other week. I had taken Mrs Neely out for a meal, usual Italian, and as I had managed to get tickets for the performance that day we headed down to the newly refurbished Crucible Theatre to see the play (leaving enough time for an extra drink of course). Anyway, as soon as we walked in we realised that something was a little unusual with the amount of really "posh" people there in attendance, dressed more aptly really for a wedding reception than to see a play. I mean top-hats, shirts with ties on and everything! There were also a host of minor celebrities there, soap actors and the like (I didn't know who they were but Mrs Neely did) as well as a load of "important" people like the leader of the Council, the Lord Mayor (whom I had met three weeks earlier at something else) there were TV cameras there and apparently, Prince Edward himself was hovering around someplace!

Anyway, in we walk, I, the only one in the whole place wearing jeans, thinking that it was rather good of them to celebrate the fact that I had taken out Mrs Neely (which is a bi-annual thing thankfully) to be met by that lot. It turns out to be the grand official opening, and for some reason, I had managed to get hold of some spare tickets on the day. The celebration of the event was also complete with free food and free champagne and little goodie bags of stuff. Quite an unexpected little reception. The play was quite good. I've told Mrs Neely not to expect royalty on our next night out, but I feel that I'm going to have a hard sell to get her to the real ale pub quiz night! :arf:

This audience contrasted quite sharply with last week’s Lyceum performance of The Woman in Black (I took my brother in my on-going attempts to "civilize" him - he doesn't read books) which was complete with several classes worth of screaming school girls and several violent coughers. Needless to say the dynamics were very different, but just as fun. :hat:

Anyway, back to music...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4XUiks5I6s

[Babbalanja]

Congratulations on everybody's successful nights out!


Some might suggest that such an admission makes you clearly a tied-in-the-wool Modernist... clinging to Modernist concepts of what constitutes the best in new art and music just as the tied-in-the-wool Romantics cling to Mahler, Bruckner, Vaughan-Williams, and Richard Strauss.:hand:I hardly object to the Modernist tag. But what exactly did I admit? That I like John Adams? That I find Feldman's music ravishing?


I find Bolcom's settings of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience to be fascinating... if flawed work... but what else could one expect of something so broad and grandiose?I'll give it a listen. There is a lot of Bolcom's music I find unoriginal, but I was amazed by his Symphony #3. This is really strong stuff. But it depends what side of the fence you're on. I thought the broad theme of the scherzo was probably meant to be satirical. But that was the only part my wife liked.

Regards,

Istvan

[mortalterror]

Of course... and I am probably as enamored of vocal music as anyone... but then again there is an endless array of music that is purely instrumental and without any implied narrative (such as that of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Beethoven's 6th, or Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition).
All three of those have narratives, and are fine examples of program music. Vivaldi's Four Seasons originally had sonnets too.

For example, "Winter" is peppered with silvery staccato notes from the high strings, calling to mind icy rain, whereas "Summer" evokes a thunderstorm in its final movement, which is why said movement is often dubbed 'Storm'. -wikipedia
Beethoven's 6th or Pastoral Symphony bears the subtitle "Recollections of Country Life." Take the movement Andante molto mosso

This movement, entitled by Beethoven "By the brook," is heldto be one of Beethoven's most beautiful and serene compositions... At the opening the strings play a motif that clearly imitates flowing water.-wikipedia
Beethoven even identifies the species of bird call different instruments are supposed to represent, much as Prokofiev would do in Peter and the Wolf. Then you have music meant to suggest peasants dancing and on and on.

Pictures at an Exhibition is meant to evoke an actual day that Mussorgsky spent looking at paintings by his friend Viktor Hartmann. The ten movements are about ten specific paintings, and then there's this promenade part that evokes the sensation of walking from picture to picture.

That music is about actual stuff. It attempts to be an audio representation of a visual and kinesthetic experience. There's a narrative running through each. It's like your boy Richard Wagner said, "Where music can go no further, there comes the word… the word stands higher than the tone.” I like his concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. I can get behind that. "You mean I can have pictures in my books? Rock on." "So they're going to dance and sing. Awesome." I can have my pie and eat it too. Adding a narrative, or words to music, is just like adding a figure to paintings. It just makes them that much more interesting.


Architecture, the Persian carpet, the ceramic vase, and the painting are all works of visual art and all employ similar elements of composition, design, color, etc...
Yeah, I really don't got a lot of use for them either. I like them functional. Their forms should suit their utility, and the best you can hope for from buildings or crockery is that they not be eye sores when you're called upon to use them. Buildings ought to keep out weather, stay cool in Winter and warm in Summer, and if they do that I don't care what they look like. Same goes for mugs, glasses, and vases. I just want them to hold liquid and not break too easily. When it comes to carpets, I've never seen one I'd be afraid to wipe my feet on.

I spent much of yesterday looking at architecture to try and form a response to your criticism of my aesthetic. My contention was going to be that the best architecture had meaning, like how Notre Dame of Paris is shaped like a cross, and blah blah blah, the rose windows are a circle which represents eternity, the one God, unity, harmony with visual depictions of Jesus in the center. I was going to go on about how the columns and arches drew the eye up toward a contemplation of God and the whole construction was a visual prayer toward heaven.

I could have said that the spires of the Sagrada Familia represent the 12 apostles, the 4 evangelists, Mary, and Jesus and that the globular structure, which apes natural forms was an attempt to imitate God without exceeding him. Or I could have talked about the Muslim's use of domes on their mosques to represent the sheltering sky, and the pyramids line up on the constellation Orion to activate the stargate. But the truth is, if they weren't huge and old I wouldn't give a damn about the pyramids.

I'm looking back and forth between the Registan complex and the Taj Mahal, when it occurs to me that the reason I like looking at most of the buildings I like is because they employ domes, columns, and arches. I like the colors they use in Registan, not the patterns, and if I have a choice I prefer solid blocks of color. I'm comparing Angkor Wat to the Temple of Karnak and it occurs to me I wouldn't give either a second look if it weren't for their ornate pictoral carvings. I may love the Colosseum, but I don't wander around gazing at baseball stadiums.

So... gut reaction? I don't really care about sacred geometry or any of that stuff. Meenakshi and Khajuraho might just as well be glorified shelves for displaying real art.


While later artists embraced the formal innovations of the Romantic landscape painters... especially their freedom in the handling of paint... they rejected the need for the sublime... the grandiose... It was imagined that there just might be an equally worthy beauty and visual poetry to be found in the landscape of one's own back yard...
I like the Friedrich and Turner better than the Monet. That painting your backyard idea seems a little bourgeoisie and lazy, and his water lilies do nothing for me.


Perhaps... but the "ideas" are but a single aspect of painting. Painting is not story-telling or philosophy. There is much more to be found in the thought that goes into the actual painting process... the artist's mastery (or lack thereof) of the handling of light, line, color, the material elements of paint, etc... The notion that painting should be rooted in a deep philosophical thought is what has led us to Duchamp and Conceptual Art as a result of artists who failed to understand the thought that goes into each and every brush-stroke... just as it goes into each note written by a composer such as Mozart.
Yeah, well Bob Ross, Thomas Kinkade, and Hitler ruined the landscape painting; so let's all go back to figure drawing. Just because Duchamp was an idiot, doesn't make every idea he ever had wrong. You can be right about some things and still make lame art.

[stlukesguild]

I hardly object to the Modernist tag. But what exactly did I admit? That I like John Adams? That I find Feldman's music ravishing?

I'm not suggesting that you should be ashamed of the "Modernist" label. I quite like Modernism, myself. I'd argue that it was second perhaps only to the Renaissance in terms of the changes it brought to the arts of the West... and perhaps also in the sheer volume of brilliant art produced. On the other hand... might one not interpret your doubts about the worth of Minimalism and other Post-Modernist developments in music as clinging to the past in a manner no different from those who cling to Romanticism or Impressionism and reject tole of Modern and Contemporary art/music/literature?:D

[stlukesguild]

Of course... and I am probably as enamored of vocal music as anyone... but then again there is an endless array of music that is purely instrumental and without any implied narrative (such as that of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Beethoven's 6th, or Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition).

All three of those have narratives, and are fine examples of program music. Vivaldi's Four Seasons originally had sonnets too.

Poor wording on my part. What I meant to suggest was that there is an endless array of purely instrumental music that lacks any implied narrative unlike The Four Seasons, etc... A clear example would be Bach's Well Tempered Clavier.

[Babbalanja]

On the other hand... might one not interpret your doubts about the worth of Minimalism and other Post-Modernist developments in music as clinging to the past in a manner no different from those who cling to Romanticism or Impressionism and reject tole of Modern and Contemporary art/music/literature?:DSince I never explained what my "doubts" about the Minimalists entailed, I wonder what this interpretation of your is based on.

In fact, I think Minimalism was a retreat from the emphasis on innovation prevalent in the supposedly academic forms of serious music of the Sixties and Seventies. An attempt to produce something more digestible than the truly avant-garde statements of the time, the work of most of the Minimalists was actually pretty superficial. Call it post-Modernism if you like, but to me it was Modernism lite.

Only Feldman's work seems substantial and forward-looking. Too often, Minimalists like Pärt pander to the most sentimental and nostalgic tendencies in the audience. The music is pretty, but there's not much in it that's brave or new.

Regards,

Istvan

[LitNetIsGreat]

I’ve been listening to, and watching, various bits of opera performances this weekend including The Marriage of Figaro and what I thought was a brilliantly done cinematic version of Madame Butterfly: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113731/

I’m going to book tickets for a production of The Marriage of Figaro that’s coming my way next month, though I am a wee bit annoyed by the fact it is sung in English and not in Italian with staged sub-titles as I would have preferred. Maybe I’m just being a little picky, but surely it loses something in translation more so than it does with literature? It looks like a solid production, and I’m more than happy to go along, but I just wondered what the general opinion on operatic translation was. Any thoughts?

Thanks.

[stlukesguild]

Since I never explained what my "doubts" about the Minimalists entailed, I wonder what this interpretation of your is based on.

In fact, I think Minimalism was a retreat from the emphasis on innovation prevalent in the supposedly academic forms of serious music of the Sixties and Seventies. An attempt to produce something more digestible than the truly avant-garde statements of the time, the work of most of the Minimalists was actually pretty superficial. Call it post-Modernism if you like, but to me it was Modernism lite.

Only Feldman's work seems substantial and forward-looking. Too often, Minimalists like Pärt pander to the most sentimental and nostalgic tendencies in the audience. The music is pretty, but there's not much in it that's brave or new.

In critical discussions of the visual arts (and I assume these are somewhat similar in music) Minimalism was seen as the logical last step of Modernism. Modernism had stripped away various elements of pre-Modernist art: illusion, representation, color, the artist's touch, until such a point as it had painted itself into a corner... disappearing into a white or gray square... and then even that was gone... leaving us without any art object at all... which led to the embrace of Conceptual Art... "art as idea".

Post-Modernism rejected the notion that novelty... endless experimentation for the mere sake of experimentation... was the end-all/be-all measure of art. It was recognized that Modernism was essentially dead... that experimentation had been pushed to the point where the art was unrecognizable as ART to all but a limited cognoscenti... that it had nothing to offer... not merely to the masses, but even to the audience of knowledgeable art lovers.

Of course to the died-in-the-wool Modernists, Post-Modernism represented a retreat from the the imagined "thousand year Reich" of Modernist experimentation. Any retreat from the "purity" of the Modernist experiment was certain to result in pandering, aesthetic debasement, and an embrace of populist urges.

One of the strongest Post-Modernist painters, Odd Nerdrum, dealt with this attitude in an ironic manner... declaring that if what Modernism had become is art, then he wasn't an artist... essentially giving over the claim of ART to the Modernists and allowing them to go whither away in the corner somewhere with the full recognition that if ART is only that which is defined as such by the late Modernists, then ART is essentially dead or irrelevant to the vast majority of humanity.

The Post-Modernists, essentially, see the late Modernists as mere academics... clinging to an outdated philosophy... a belief that art can only evolve in response to its immediate predecessors... whereas Post-Modernism sees the whole of art or music or literary history as one grand palette from which one can pick and choose. Modernism, with glassy-eyed belief in progress and the future is surely representative of a world before Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Post-Modernism is a more apt view of a world in which historical eras and artistic styles (high and low) rub up against each other and blur together via the media, popular culture, the internet, etc...

[Babbalanja]

The Post-Modernists, essentially, see the late Modernists as mere academics... clinging to an outdated philosophy... a belief that art can only evolve in response to its immediate predecessors... whereas Post-Modernism sees the whole of art or music or literary history as one grand palette from which one can pick and choose. Modernism, with glassy-eyed belief in progress and the future is surely representative of a world before Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Post-Modernism is a more apt view of a world in which historical eras and artistic styles (high and low) rub up against each other and blur together via the media, popular culture, the internet, etc...I'm not sure where to draw the line between the Modernists and post-Modernists in music, but I assume that some of my favorites, like Carter, Ligeti, and Xenakis, would be considered distinct from the ur-Modernists like Schoenberg and Sessions. However, since you seem more comfortable talking about the visual arts, I don't want to make any rash assumptions about the matter when it comes to music.

Regards,

Istvan

[mortalterror]

A nice track that I've recently stumbled upon is Gabriel Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine, and I'm like, "I love Faure. I love Racine. Two great tastes that taste great together. It's like the Reese's peanut butter cup of music."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WpPBym_n2Y
It's also about God, and I'm all for that guy.

I don't think I'm alone in the delight I receive whenever two or more of my interests converge. I love movies. I love music and I love it when they go together (such as they do in these two clips).

Waltz With Bashir, Bach Concerto No. 5 in F Minor for Harpsichord and Strings
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVgYHfqUk8M
Se7en, Bach Suite No. 3 in D Major
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjq1i0YTT1g

[stlukesguild]

I'm not sure where to draw the line between the Modernists and post-Modernists in music, but I assume that some of my favorites, like Carter, Ligeti, and Xenakis, would be considered distinct from the ur-Modernists like Schoenberg and Sessions. However, since you seem more comfortable talking about the visual arts, I don't want to make any rash assumptions about the matter when it comes to music.

Of course the line between Modernism and Post-Modernism is equally blurred in the visual arts... although it seems that one can be fairly certain that some artists clearly fall under the definition of "Modernist" (Mark Rothko, for example) while other artists such as Andy Warhol represent something entirely different... and not necessarily better in my book. I would also suggest that Post-Modernism is far less easy to define than Modernism and lacks any discernible dominant philosophy or style. While it seems that we cannot easily define what is happening now, it does seem clear that it is something new... that Modernism is essentially dead... but only dead in the way that the Renaissance was "dead" in art by 1530. I suspect we are in a period not unlike that of Mannerism (which followed the Renaissance)... a period in which there is a great deal of confusion... a taking stock of what has happened in art and what it means... what potentials it offers... where art should be heading. There are artists/composers who continue to work in a manner that is clearly rooted in Modernism. There are others who have rejected it or turned against it... and there are still more who embrace all it has to offer, but see it as just one more possibility within the whole of possibilities open to the artist/composer.

[stlukesguild]

I'm currently listening to the piano music of Charles Koechlin:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2698/4400444528_0c0f11be70_o.jpg

Koechlin is one of those composers who is lost in the shadows of the giants of the time... in his case it was in the shadows of Debussy, Ravel, and Faure. Many of these "lesser" artists, however, produced more than a few works of real beauty as well as the occasional piece of genius. Koechlin wrote some absolutely exquisite music. I'm not overly thrilled with his orchestral compositions, but his chamber music and his works for solo piano (and solo flute) are truly magical.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofUKzA9Ttqk

[Babbalanja]

Speaking of unsung composers, Nikos Skalkottas of Greece never got the attention he was due. His complex blend of Modernist methods and Greek music is amazing.

http://www.skfe.com/aifs/aifs/photos_aifs/skalkottas_bis1244.jpg

Largo Sinfonico (1944) Part I (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyvoZiwXhyQ&feature=related)

Largo Sinfonico (1944) Part II (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuOUBS6Ak9c&feature=related)

Largo Sinfonico (1944) Part III (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrNp_j4YSrk&feature=related)

It was decades after his early death before anyone bothered to catalog his eloquent, accomplished music.

Regards,

Istvan

[LitNetIsGreat]

Come on guys, any thoughts on operatic translations into English, do you think it's much of a problem or is it not really an issue?

[stlukesguild]

Speaking of unsung composers, Nikos Skalkottas of Greece never got the attention he was due. His complex blend of Modernist methods and Greek music is amazing.

I just came across Skalkottas' work myself... probably over at Talk Classical. I am intrigued and have added a few works to my wish list after listening to samples on Amazon.

[stlukesguild]

Come on guys, any thoughts on operatic translations into English, do you think it's much of a problem or is it not really an issue?

Operatic translations... Hmmm? I tend to go for operas in the original language... but there are instances historically in which the composer actually created a version in a second language. Off the top of my head I know that Gluck's Orpheo exists in French and Italian... and I have a collection of arias sung by the inimitable Fritz Wunderlich in which he sings some well-known Italian arias in German. And then there's Schubert's Ave Maria which was written in German, Latin... and I've heard in English. As a reader of poetry in translation I have long argued that translation brings a work which might otherwise be unavailable to a new audience. If it is done well, it is not unlike a transcription in music... from piano to violin, shall we say? One will need to rewrite the score... perhaps even change the notes... but in the end (hopefully) the music remains.

I can see nothing wrong with translating more operatic scores... especially when one considers that in many cases they do not stand up well as brilliant works of literature on their own. I can see nothing wrong with translating the recitatives and the unaccompanied dialog, especially. Somehow, however, I imagine that the music to an aria owes something to the specific words of the given original language and it would seemingly be incredibly difficult to translate these while retaining a similar flow of sounds... stresses of accent... vowels... consonants, etc...

[LitNetIsGreat]

Thanks, you've sort of confirmed what I was thinking here a little. I've got a chance to see either Don Pasquale, The Marriage of Figaro or A Midsummer Night's Dream as done by the English Touring Opera, performed in English. I'm going for The Marriage of Figaro though I would have preferred to see this in the original language with the aid of stage sub-titles, though really I haven't got the option to be that fussy when it comes down to it - we're not flooded with operas at the moment - at least it looks like a decent production.

[stlukesguild]

Neely... how far are you from London? I looked up Sheffield on the map and see it is a good bit to the north... but there was no key as to distance.

[LitNetIsGreat]

It is about 160 miles, if you can get a direct train it will take about 2-3 hours. Are you thinking of Operas in London, might be an idea? I've only been to London once as it happens - a trip to see Romeo and Juliet one time, it probably comes down to cost though, but I've heard that students can get a deal on the trains.

[stlukesguild]

London is only 160 miles away and you've only been there once??!! That blows my mind. I guess it is just that America is such a car-based culture and so huge comparatively that such distances seem like nothing. 3 years ago I lived some 40 miles away from my work and drove that distance twice a day. Pittsburgh is probably about 150 miles away and I have bee there 5 or 10 times... and certainly their art collections cannot match London. Washington D.C. and New York are both about 500 miles away and I probably visit them each 2 or 3 times a year. If I was 160 miles from London I'd be there virtually every other weekend. Certainly, London must have the greatest musical scene in the world. Looking at the various orchestras, operas, etc... I don't think that even Vienna can compete.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes that’s a fair point I suppose. I still tend to think that London is far away, though when you think it is just over 3 hours on a train there really isn’t much excuse for not getting down their more often. Certainly I’ve a strong desire to get the art galleries and the theatres, particularly The Globe, as well as the tourist things such as the Tower of London and Parliament even, at least once.

I think it is partly to do with having other places of interest much closer to home though as well, stuff that the kids will probably better enjoy like the Peak District National Park which is not 10 miles away, really there are loads of fabulous places there of outstanding natural beauty, which is perhaps second best only to the Lake District in the entire country. http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=61F&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&q=peak+district&oq=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=EMKOS-n8FMyTjAe76vmzBg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CDEQsAQwAwWithin In the Peaks there are tons of little villages and picturesque views, picnic spots, walks, cycle routes, lakes, reservoirs and stately homes such as Chatsworth House:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatsworth_House

Which has been used to film various Austen productions – really the house inside is quite stunning - you can stay there all day and enjoy the interior and exterior, relax in the garden by the fountain and pretend you are Mr Darcy and let the kids roam a little. Also there’s the likes of Haddon Hall http://www.haddonhall.co.uk/ which is a medieval manor house quite stunning but on a smaller scale to Chatsworth. As well as this there are 10s of other such houses, ruins such as Castleton, which is more or less a second home, certainly in the summer:

http://www.derbyshireuk.net/castleton.html

So much so that you never really get bored of just being around these places.

On top of this about 45 miles away, one hour by train lies York which we visit again quite regularly. The museums there are quite good and the medieval feel of the Shambles never loses its appeal.http://www.insideyork.co.uk/shambles

Then the likes of North Yorkshire, the coastal areas, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, counties like Shropshire are within reach (though not been there yet) as well as the wonderful Lakes District etc, are all quite close by train so there are plenty of distractions and places to visit which has sought to keep me from London in the past - though this year hopefully I’ll get down more often.

Edit: Oh, and I must get to Oxford and Cambridge, so I can hang out with the clever people and soak up the atmosphere...

[stlukesguild]

The question of mobility probably has much to do with the scale of Europe and the fact that so many cities are packed closely together. We have so many vast sprawling spaces here that European visitors are always stunned by... and in comparison to the lands west of the Mississippi we are are crowded. The first time my wife flew to New York she looked out the window and commented that it was such a shame... "all this land ruined by strip mining"... until she realized that all that "black" beneath us in Pennsylvania was forest... not coal.:hand: The drive from Cleveland to New York is about 500 miles (around 8 hours by car, or 45 minutes by plane) and following route 80... the major interstate highway... one will not encounter a single major city along the entire route until one hits the surrounding counties of New York. This immense scale is one of the things that has led to big sprawling houses and huge automobiles (one must be comfortable on these long drives). Its certainly has much to do with defining who we are: where Europe has the history... the endless monuments and artifacts... we have the endless wonders of nature. Emerson, Walt Whitman, the Hudson River Valley painters... and even the sprawling canvases of the Abstract Expressionists are surely rooted in this. And here I am... a typical American... far more seduced by the cultural side of this Culture/Nature divide.:sosp:

[stlukesguild]

I'm currently going through a Russian fix. I just finished Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and now I'm listening to a collection of his songs. I've always had a mixed reaction to the Russians. I often find them too emotional... to lax... too sprawling (perhaps this relates to that Sprawling Nature vs Structured Culture dichotomy). Or perhaps I heard the stuff too often as a teenager. Either way... I have no doubts about the merit of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto... or his songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh4efVD3R_E&translated=1

Two of my most recent CD purchases resulted in a spectacular padding out of my collection of French Impressionist music. For whatever reason, Sony has been marketing boxed sets of Pierre Boulez' inimitable recordings at grossly undervalued prices. One can also pick up on his performances of Berg, Schoenberg, Webern, Carter, Mahler, and his own music if your tastes lean in that direction. I ordered the sets of Debussy and Ravel. The sets number 4 and 5 discs respectively, with the Debussy set including the entire recording of his opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, which I have wanted to get my hands on for some time. I believe I paid about $10 US for the Ravel and $13 for he Debussy through secondary dealers on Amazon.com. That's less than many single discs go for. Considering the fact that these recordings are second to none (although Charles Dutoit's recordings are of equal merit) and include recordings with my own beloved Cleveland Orchestra (as well as the New York Philharmonic and the BBC Symphonu Orchestra... among other ensembles) I cannot recommend these highly enough for anyone interested:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4069/4407156462_c3de6d4b69_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2715/4406389711_598d51804a_o.jpg

Beside my Leopardi book arriving today the federal income tax return cam as well. It's something like Christmas in March.:banana: As a result I went a little nuts and bought a whole slew of music from secondary dealers on Amazon... including a goodly amount of Mozart. I think perhaps I'm undergoing an experience not unlike the proverbial prodigal son... returning home after straying... or in this case... returning to my first musical loves after having spent so much time recently exploring modern, contemporary, and unknown composers. I have long been enamored of Mozart's Great Mass in C and his marvelous Requiem... but for some reason I have never explored the rest of his choral oeuvre... in spite of being an absolute choral fanatic... and in spite of exploring the choral works of Mozart's great peer, Haydn, in greater depth. As such, I began by rectifying this shortcoming with this purchase:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4045/4412418202_7c2f8bd189_o.jpg

After that I focused upon the operas. With the exception of his piano concertos and a few other works such as the clarinet quintet and clarinet concerto, I have long felt that Mozart's greatest achievement by far is to be found in his operas... so I decided to look into three collections of his opera arias by three of the most exquisite singers:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2731/4412403906_dca922a119_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4050/4412403860_870f233f3e_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2690/4411634963_b3a5f64883_o.jpg

Kozena and Bartloi are surely two of the finest and most intelligent singers performing today... while Lucia Popp was one of those shooting stars who tragically died far, far too young.:frown5:

Then completely loosing all sense of self control I ended up looking at Rene Jacobs' HIP (historically informed performances) recordings of Mozart's great late operas. Building upon a profound study of the music, instrumentation, and performance style of Mozart's age, these recording employ period instruments, appropriate scaled orchestration (stripped back down from the grandiose orchestrations that have little to do with the orchestra as Mozart understood it, and much more to do with the sprawling orchestras of Wagner, Mahler, Richard Strauss, and the late Romantic era. The music is also performed with a certain "muscularity"... and a sense of humor and fun... rather than with such reverent delicacy which led Maria Callas to comment that so many sing Mozart as if they were standing on tip-toe. These recordings were all highly recommended and I had a chance to listen to them in part and to discuss their merits with an HIP fan over on an internet music forum. I found myself tor between the three great late opera (Jacobs has yet to record The Magic Flute) and so my solution...


buy all three!!:yikes::blush2::ack2::banana:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4067/4411635151_634a94d833_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2764/4412403926_2f30fe91e2_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2752/4412404012_3afefda72d_o.jpg

Anticipating their arrival, I've spent the afternoon listening to this equally... if quite different... recording:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4007/4412170792_0f51e22274_o.jpg

I am always left stunned by the final scene in which the Duke asks for and is given absolution for all his philandering. I am always reminded of Salieri's description of this scene in the film, Amadeus as God offering absolution to the whole world through this unstoppable, perfect music:

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

It always sends chills up my spine.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Oh, wonderful looking CD covers, surely worth the purchase just for that alone!

Having got my ticket for The Marriage of Figaro, which as I have left it late is just about on the roof, I've being listening and watching it over the last few days from a DVD production and online as well as various other pieces. (I still feel some of the beauty of the Italian is going to be lost in translation, but we'll see.)

Also attending a concert in a couple of weeks which includes Mozart's Oboe Concerto:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8_l0Sg7yGw

Wagner's Lohengrin Preludes Act 1 and Act 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMtRof9qJG8

Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-c1LLZaVCA

So, I've been listening to those too.

[Babbalanja]

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2005/june05/Bolcom_songs_855921618.gif


I find Bolcom's settings of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience to be fascinating... if flawed work... but what else could one expect of something so broad and grandiose?

The best stuff on this set is phenomenal. It's quite a task to take it all in, but I'm very impressed. Even when Bolcom's eclecticism gets the better of him, I have to give him credit for his audacity.

When it all comes together, like on The Angel (Experience Vol. I Pt. 3), it's amazing.

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

I have been listening to classical music "seriously" since high-school. I truly began to build up a formidable music collection when I began working a "real job". My initial focus was to develop a sense of appreciation for the essentials from Vivaldi and Bach onward to the 20th century. I had some music post-Stravinsky (including Philip Glass, Gorecki, Copland, and a few others) but this aspect of my music collection remained in its infant stage until the last 3 or so years. Over the past year my focus has been greatly centered upon modern British and American composers. I came across several persons whose opinions on classical music I greatly respected who recommended Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Considering the fact that William Blake is one of my absolute favorite artists/poets, I was greatly intrigued... but somewhat put off the idea of a 3-disc set by someone I had never heard of before. At some point last Spring I found this very set on sale from a secondary dealer on Amazon.com for a little over $4.00! I was unable to avoid it any longer, and so I ordered it.

I listened to it once all the way through... and was so impressed that I immediately gave it a second listening. Considering that I was just building my grasp of modern American classical music at the time I was not ready to declare the work an unqualified success... but I certainly found myself agreeing with others who suggested that the work was unquestionably Bolcom's masterpiece... and one of the greatest vocal works of the past several decades. There are but few new works that have so immediately grabbed my attention and impressed me to the degree that I wanted to listen to them again and again... almost as if to double check my first response.

[Babbalanja]

I certainly found myself agreeing with others who suggested that the work was unquestionably Bolcom's masterpiece... and one of the greatest vocal works of the past several decades. There are but few new works that have so immediately grabbed my attention and impressed me to the degree that I wanted to listen to them again and again... almost as if to double check my first response.Like I said, I like it a lot. Some of these are so well crafted that it's unfortunate they're such miniatures: "The Lilly" crams a lot of vocal, orchestral, and choral detail into a minute and a half, and doesn't seem overwrought.

But let's be honest, the brilliance of so much of this set makes the glaring lapses in taste all the more painful. I'll give Bolcom the benefit of the doubt for not being reverent and playing it safe: putting "The Shepherd" in a country music setting at least makes sense, and the faux soul of "The Little Black Boy" is harmless. I realize there are domestic rather than artistic reasons for having his wife sing a cabaret version of "The Little Vagabond." However, "London" and the (ahem) reggae finale sound like something Andrew Lloyd Webber would have concocted.

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

However, "London" and the (ahem) reggae finale sound like something Andrew Lloyd Webber would have concocted.

Yes... there are glaring problematic sections... and in confronting these I think of Cervantes Don Quixote and the inclusion of Cervantes' egregiously bad poetry... not merely mediocre poetry... not poetry that simply fails to rise to the level of the book as a whole... but rather poetry that is embarrassingly... comically bad. Still... I find the whole quite impressive... and surely it never descends to the level of Karl Jenkins. I made the unfortunate choice of purchasing one of his choral works (a requiem?) after having read comments comparing him to Morten Lauridsen, Arvo Part, and John Tavener... all of whom I quite admire. Unfortunately, Jenkins is so comically bad it makes Lauridsen sound like Mozart or Bach.:yikes:

[Mariner]

I don't know any classical artist or groups but strangely, when I'm driving to work or school, I find myself tuning the radio to the All Classical FM station. It's very soothing and it sounds beautiful, which is a nice change from the hardcore and rock on my iPod. It makes great driving music because I don't get so mad at all the slow/crazy drivers out there!

[stlukesguild]

Well... let's just hope they don't put Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or one of Bartok's pieces on your radio station at drive time.:hand:

[Babbalanja]

http://www.dramonline.org/content/collections/cri/images/cr569d.jpg

Robert Hall Lewis is someone whose music has fascinated me lately, a composer with a very classical approach to modern orchestral sounds.

Motto, for orchestra (1980) Part I (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDyQH-ayioM&feature=related)

Motto, for orchestra (1980) Part II (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGY-I-wQqGs)

From the liner notes of this CD:

Lewis said that he adhered "to no particular school or system of composition" and that he considered himself to be an "independent maximalist." Lewis claimed that "it is very important that a composition have an original, distinctive character and an identity of its own, devoid of the obvious, derivative tendencies and commercial influences that surround us in much music today." His intent, he said, was to create a music of genuine interest to the listener, alternately surprising, provoking, soothing, stimulating and hopefully inspiring—an experience comparable to the limitless facets of existence.

Regards,

Istvan

[stlukesguild]

I've been listening to some more modern and contemporary work for organ recently... pieces by Marcel Dupre and Peteris Vasks. I am especially intrigued with Vasks... who employs elements traditional harmony, atonalism or dissonance, folk music from his Baltic home, and Minimalism... without strictly adhering to any style. There is only one example of his organ music (Te Deum) to be found on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpEFkFpyJ5A&feature=related

Other works that can be sampled online include a work for solo cello:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YAJwxJ58hA

the Musica Adventus:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUbTYTT3cXw&feature=related

and part of a choral work, Dona Nobis Pacem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZsenEas8jw&feature=related

I quite like the Robert Hall Lewis works. They have something of the lush and ever-expanding sonic landscape and aural textures of Tristan Murail's work... yet with a more traditional/classical underpinning. I will need to look into him in the future. I'm always on the lookout for intriguing newer work.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Ah, I thought I was attending the aforementioned opera tomorrow but I findies out it is not until the 30th of this month? I am not very good at maths. But now I have nothing to look forward to tomorrow.:bawling:

Opera is beginning to warm my toes, I must say. I think that it is a shame that real life does not resemble opera more. I’ve been musing on a line by Wilde which goes “the real life is the life we do not lead” (my emphasis) which is in reference to something else, but also seems appropriate in the sphere of this unreal world of fiery passion and beauty which seems so superior to the everyday. Really, I find it hard to get excited by anything that is supposed to be real these days...

Forgive me, I’m just musing out loud or turning into a complete aesthete or something...:brow:

[stlukesguild]

Well... I'm currently listening to the same opera... Le Nozze di Figaro... in this new recording by Rene Jacobs on period instruments following a historically informed approach to the orchestral performance and singing:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4067/4411635151_634a94d833_o.jpg

The recording is absolutely eye-opening!!:yesnod: Its incredibly fresh... muscular... and fun!... Yes! "fun". Maria Callas made the comment that too often singers approach Mozart as if singing on tip-toe. Today we might say they approach him as if they had a stick up their posteriors. In other words their reverence for Mozart keeps them from conveying the real drama... the audacity... the revolutionary and subversive aspects... and the sheer joy... the "fun". I can't wait to listen to Jacobs' Don Giovanni, and Cosi Fan Tutte... and I can't wit until he records The Magic Flute. Perhaps even more promising is the critical response to some of Jacob's recordings of Mozart's less-well-known operas, including Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito... which are certainly as worthy as a good many of Gluck's or even Handel's operas... but have always been cursed by less-than-enthusiastic performances.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Sounds great. I'll have to look into that when I've exhausted the Naxos recordings. I quite like to see the performances as well though to get the whole picture, so I am currently borrowing or buying DVDs as much as I spare the time to do so. I’m just sticking with the “basics” at present the Mozart’s and Puccini’s etc, fabulous stuff.

[Petrarch's Love]

...I believe I paid about $10 US for the Ravel and $13 for he Debussy through secondary dealers on Amazon.com. That's less than many single discs go for. Considering the fact that these recordings are second to none (although Charles Dutoit's recordings are of equal merit) and include recordings with my own beloved Cleveland Orchestra (as well as the New York Philharmonic and the BBC Symphonu Orchestra... among other ensembles) I cannot recommend these highly enough for anyone interested:


:eek: Wow, at those prices, I think I'm going to go see about acquiring some Boulez recordings.


Beside my Leopardi book arriving today the federal income tax return cam as well. It's something like Christmas in March.:banana: As a result I went a little nuts and bought a whole slew of music from secondary dealers on Amazon... including a goodly amount of Mozart...

Ah, Mozart! How can you go wrong? Reading about your recent Mozart opera purchases prompted me to go look at that section of my own music library where I made a shocking discovery! I apparently (I am not sure how!) have no recording of Don Giovanni! I guess I have enough excerpts from it on other opera CDs that I hadn't thought about it before. This, however, must be remedied immediately. I wondered if you, as musical reviewer extraordinaire and man possesser of what, given your pattern of acquisition, must be a truly impressive musical library, might have any thoughts as to which of the many DG recordings I should make my own. (Opinions from other erudite thread members also welcome).


I am always left stunned by the final scene in which the Duke asks for and is given absolution for all his philandering. I am always reminded of Salieri's description of this scene in the film, Amadeus as God offering absolution to the whole world through this unstoppable, perfect music:

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

It always sends chills up my spine.


That is a gorgeous passage. I agree. It gets you every time. Made me think of one of my favorite Mozart bass moments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_IaJDqz2Zo

[stlukesguild]

I apparently (I am not sure how!) have no recording of Don Giovanni! I guess I have enough excerpts from it on other opera CDs that I hadn't thought about it before. This, however, must be remedied immediately. I wondered if you, as musical reviewer extraordinaire and man possesser of what, given your pattern of acquisition, must be a truly impressive musical library, might have any thoughts as to which of the many DG recordings I should make my own.

I have heard several recordings of Don Giovanni or parts thereof. I am an Karajan fan... but not in this instance... not for Mozart. There are several more "historical" recordings of real merit. The Josef Krips performance with Cesare Siepe and Walter Berry is particularly worthy... and at less then $10 through a secondary dealer... a real steal. But it is also over 50 years old and perhaps not a first choice (although I'm looking into it).

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2772/4439854340_009b3b3d71_o.jpg

Karl Böhm's recording is a good, solid first choice... a performance with the Vienna Phiharmonic, Sherill Milnes, Walter Berry, Peter Schreier, and Anna Tomowa-Sintow at the top of her game... and another grossly inexpensive choice at less than $13 from a secondary dealer. Of course DG (Deutsche Gramophon's) sound quality is second to none.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2798/4439077251_7e883a9a85_o.jpg

Perhaps THE first choice, however, among older recordings is Carlo Maria Giulini's rightfully famous recording with the Philharmonicia Chorus and Orchestra and masterful singers Eberhard Waechter, Joan Sutherland, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and Giuseppe Taddei. How could one go wrong with a young Sutherland and Elizabeth Schwarzkopf in her prime? This recording exists in several variations... and I am surprised it is not more gloriously packaged and promoted.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2733/4439077293_a2d6b716d8_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4024/4439854378_eea4674566_o.jpg

Among newer recordings there seem to be but two worthy competitors: John Eliot Gardiner and Rene Jacobs. Gardiner's is a muscular (as always) crisp and modern HIP version of the opera that stresses the drama.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4055/4439077223_8210afea74_o.jpg

Let's face it... Gardiner may be one of the best living conductors... perhaps THE best. Certainly he has almost assumed the mantle of Karajan as the conductor who cannot be ignored... who is either loved or hated. Personally... I am on the "love" side of the spectrum... to the point that he may be my single favorite living conductor. His recent recordings of Bach's entire cantatas are magnificent...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/4426100724_efba21ec75_o.jpg

... as are his recordings of Monteverdi's Orfeo, Haydn's Creation, Schumann's symphonies, Beethoven's symphonies, and a number of Handel's operas.

In spite of having said as much, among recent recordings of Don Giovanni, I would go with Rene Jacobs' version. One of the reviews on Amazon puts it quite well:

"Rene Jacobs is making us re-think what we consider to be "Mozartian." Years ago, Maria Callas criticized the habit performers have of singing and playing Mozart as though they were on their "tip-toes." Finally, Rene Jacobs gives us a reading that does not beat-around-the-bush with the mannered "tip-toed" singing and playing we are used to. Like his other Mozart releases for the Harmonia Mundi label, this one is dramatic: sometimes tender, sometimes bombastic, sometimes hilarious, sometimes austere and horrifying, full of that 18th century "Sturm und Drang" that Mozart was famed for.

Indeed, Rene Jacobs has said that in a recording his singers "must act using only their voice." And this is what they do. The result is 3-CDs full of music where you will never find yourself skipping over any recitatives. His characters are fully developed and fully acted, with the instrumental ensemble (especially the often overlooked fortepiano continuo in the dry recitatives) providing the perfect support for the action. This is true musical drama the Jacobs gives us.

Much credit goes to Jacob's casting decisions. I cannot begin to express how impressed I am with Alexandrina Pendatchanska in the role of Donna Elvira. After hearing her hot-red-blooded Vitellia in La Clemenza di Tito, I thought she would be perfect for the vengeful Donna Elvira, and here she is. I am excited to finally hear an Elvira who truly sounds as though she is vacillating between loving remorse, and vengeful, murderous hatred for Don Giovanni."

There's something to the sound quality... not merely the use of historically appropriate instruments and singing style... but also the muscularity and the nearness of sound that makes this an incredibly intimate listening experience.

Of one note... Don Giovanni exists in two very different versions: one for Prague and the other for Vienna. Most recordings combine the two into a single work. Jacobs chose to go with the Viennese version... but recognizing that this would involve abandoning a couple of arias (and who wishes to abandon anything by Mozart?), he adds these as part of an appendix at the end of the opera.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2764/4412403926_2f30fe91e2_o.jpg

[Drkshadow03]

Haydn? Any fans? I've been using that Classical Music Book St. Luke recommended awhile ago, so I've been going in order of the Top 50 list. I've been listening to Haydn's music and I find him him kind of blah, especially compared to Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach. Anyone else feel this way? Anyone want to tell me I'm insane and why?

[stlukesguild]

Haydn is very different from Beethoven and so comparisons there are difficult. Of course anytime we make such comparisons we must remember that if we use the values of one era or style as the standard measure it will certainly result in a skewed comparison. For example, if we compare Rembrandt to Matisse the comparison will surely not be fair if the standards we use are those of Rembrandt's era (anatomical accuracy in drawing, realism, the illusion of three-dimensional form). By the same token, Rembrandt might look rather "dull" by the standards of Modernism: his use of color is tame, he's not incredibly inventive in form, etc...

Haydn was one of the two central figures of the Classical era along with Mozart. Mozart was undoubtedly the greater composer and his early death was one of the greatest losses of Western music. Having said this much, Haydn still stands as one of the towering figures of classical music... not far beneath the "Three Immortals": Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. Classicism in music was sandwiched between the Baroque and the Romantic eras... both of which were far more about virtuosity. Classicism distilled, codified, or "simplified" musical forms so that the listener could virtually grasp the whole of a work in his or her mind. Perhaps one might think of how we can grasp a sonnet in the same manner... how it sets up certain expectations and limitations... but how these may result in the most masterfully original results in the hands of the best poets.

Admittedly, this era is one of the most challenging for many listeners... especially those familiar with the more blatantly outgoing music of the Romantic and Post-Romantic era which in many ways still dominates the airwaves of classical radio and stands as the established vocabulary of most film music. Where the Baroque has Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Biber, Telemann, and several other composers well-known to aficionados of the era, and Romanticism has an endless array of "greats" (Schumann, Schubert, Chopin, Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner, late Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Mahler, etc...) the Classical era is often imagined as divided solely between Mozart and Haydn. In a way, the classical era strikes me as not unlike the classicism of 18th century poets who are often quite ignored and underrated in comparison with the later Romantics... but these composers... including Haydn... certainly grow upon the listener who is willing to put forth the effort.

Haydn can also be initially difficult to appreciate as a result of the immense scale of his oeuvre which makes it challenging to know where to begin. Beethoven wrote but 9 symphonies; Mozart wrote 41... but generally it is only no.s 25, 29, and the final 6 or so that are considered among his mature and greatest works. Haydn wrote 104 symphonies!! His final collection of symphonies, known as the "London Symphonies", which include many of his finest works, in comprised of 12 symphonies which push beyond some of the ideas of Mozart. Beyond these there are the 6 "Paris Symphonies", and any number of works from his middle years which are included among those known as his "Sturm und Drang" Symphonies. Add to this his endless string quartets, piano sonatas, choral works, operas... and one may well be overwhelmed... especially when the works remain firmly footed within the given classical structures so that it takes several hearings to begin to discern the differences or the original elements that are so obvious in the works of the Romantic composers such as Beethoven.

The symphonies are full of magnificent moments... and as a whole reward repeated listening. Listen to the muscular start of symphony no. 98 which stands as a precursor to the brooding works of Beethoven. I like this particular rendering... which captures the muscularity of the opening of this work... and because of the discussion by the conductor who admits to his own youthful doubts about Haydn in a brief pre-concert talk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUlEBoqHYK8

Of course there's the magnificent 104th:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90t9w7aLZL0

The closing to this symphony reminds me of one of Beethoven's more joyous passages... such as the peasant dance from his 6th (Pastoral) Symphony:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVHVRLQ79K0

And of course there's this playful symphonic exploration of a simple theme and variation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJDWh9F3Vig

Of course this but scratches the surface of Haydn's symphonic output... and his symphonies may not be his greatest achievement. Haydn was quite literally the inventor of the string quartet... and an unsurpassed master of the form. What Haydn achieved in the quartet was something of a democratic art form. Rather than the concerto in which a single virtuoso instruments dominates the dialog, as it were, with the string quartet Haydn virtually created a musical equivalent of a dialog... in which four instruments/speakers take turns talking, arguing, laughing, etc...:

Here is the famous adagio cantabile from the Emperor Quartet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc34Jr9udlU

And a few other marvelous selections:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS_TFgdh_8A&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hymdXgFND4I

Of course, being a fanatic of vocal and choral music, I might just suggest that Haydn's choral works are his most towering achievements. Haydn quite well surpasses both Mozart and Beethoven as a choral composer. Among his great choral achievements: St. Cecilia Mass:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmixNaGtxAs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uqw37PwVYA

The Lord Nelson Mass:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E9Iuv3Hnuc&feature=related

and Haydn's nearly undisputed masterpiece, The Creation... an oratorio that clearly builds upon Handel... and vies with Handel's Messiah as one of the greatest oratorios ever composed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5RHDwdaanQ

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yg6PMCkmJc

[mortalterror]

Haydn? Any fans? I've been using that Classical Music Book St. Luke recommended awhile ago, so I've been going in order of the Top 50 list. I've been listening to Haydn's music and I find him him kind of blah, especially compared to Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach. Anyone else feel this way? Anyone want to tell me I'm insane and why?
I've never really liked Haydn, and I have some issues with St Luke's book; so I went ahead and compiled my own list:
1607 L'Orfeo- Monteverdi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjpFi9bn1do
1638 Miserere- Allegri
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x71jgMx0Mxc
1694 Canon in D- Pachelbel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZHw9uyj81g
1707 Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor- Bach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1z12_Ps-gk
1717 Prelude to Cello Suite 1- Bach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU_QR_FTt3E
1718 Air on the G String- Bach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOVwokQnV4M
1719 Double Violin Concerto- Bach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vesrqFeq9rU
1723 The Four Seasons- Vivaldi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSw7CcAXPWk
1723 Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring- Bach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwWL8Y-qsJg
1725 Badinerie- Bach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVxwuirUX-M
1748 Zais Ouverture- Rameau
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQHRu5wG6RI
1754 Halleluah Chorus- Handel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnHksDFHTQI
1771 Minuet- Boccherini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSE15tLBdso
1773 Symphony 25- Mozart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lC1lRz5Z_s
1780 Night Music of the Streets of Madrid- Boccherini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5pnr53S_qc
1783 Rondo Alla Turca- Mozart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCSevzJQ2-Y
1784 The Marriage of Figaro- Mozart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcuXkicCTro
1785 The Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466- Mozart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTqpqGIIYU
1785 Piano Concerto No 21- Mozart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df-eLzao63I
1787 Don Giovanni- Mozart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK1_vm0FMAU
1787 A Little Night Music- Mozart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb_jQBgzU-I
1788 Symphony 40- Mozart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZD9nt_wsY0
1788 Jupiter Symphony- Mozart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehqc17iiBBU
1791 The Magic Flute- Mozart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ODfuMMyss
1791 Requiem- Mozart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swkT07TP-mo
1798 Romance for Violin and Orchestra 2- Beethoven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64KW04601ts
1801 Moonlight Sonata- Beethoven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQVeaIHWWck
1804 Symphony 3- Beethoven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFltqVS8d9I
1808 Symphony 5- Beethoven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhcR1ZS2hVo
1808 Symphony 6- Beethoven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbFxVVLM2zc
1808 Clarinet Concerto 1- Spohr
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVcyRizubIc
1810 Fur Elise- Beethoven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQTTFUtMSvQ
1816 The Barber of Seville- Rossini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OloXRhesab0
1817 The Thieving Magpie- Rossini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSrLDHDQ2eo
1824 Symphony 9- Beethoven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAOTCtW9v0M
1825 Ave Maria- Schubert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bosouX_d8Y
1827 Piano Trio No 2- Schubert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQy-cgUYA6g
1829 William Tell Overture- Rossini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkymTHSbWe0
1834 Fantasie Impromptu- Chopin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvm2ZsRv3C8
1841 Spring Song- Mendelssohn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mz5Rtx-Eu0
1843 Wedding March- Mendelssohn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDr8Q7lDW8o
1843 Tannhauser Overture- Wagner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDwiYOCnuao
1843 The Flying Dutchman- Wagner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJtrXqRu9K8
1844 Ach So Fromm- Flotow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is1gMLBW_bY
1845 Carmen- Bizet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axvhEUyVfX0
1847 Hungarian Rhapsody 2- Liszt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goeOUTRy2es
1848 La Traviata- Verdi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcKdnkGBSgA
1851 Rigoletto- Verdi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYRZOEzoOgQ
1853 Anvil Chorus- Verdi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXFZckzjcKw
1856 Ride of the Valkyries- Wagner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V92OBNsQgxU
1864 Barcarolle- Offenbach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7czptgEvvU
1866 The Bartered Bride Overture- Smetana
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVTutjfb22s
1866 The Blue Danube- Strauss II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTqlLKBKFhg
1869 Hungarian Dance 5- Brahms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X9LvC9WkkQ
1871 Grand March- Verdi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUv-G8TzkMc
1872 Danse Macabre- Saint-Saens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyknBTm_YyM
1874 Dies Irae- Verdi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDbMzp86tOc
1874 Pictures at an Exhibition- Mussorgsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_98452AxFI
1876 Swan Lake-Tchaikovsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S76CGGPqI3s
1876 March Slave- Tchaikovsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5poSw7tFLB4
1876 Peer Gynt- Grieg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEXAruiTSjk
1879 Eugene Onegin: Polonais- Tchaikovsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19lJZGzOeEg
1880 Romeo and Juliet- Tchaikovsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmwMkMJlcfA
1880 1812 Overture- Tchaikovsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNatwyAJ6dI
1883 Flower Duet- Delibes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qx2lMaMsl8
1886 Night on Bald Mountain- Mussorgsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0h6H_vcSKc
1886 Carnival of the Animals- Saint-Saens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsD0FDLOKGA
1887 Pavane- Faure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpgyTl8yqbw
1887 Polovtsian Dances- Borodin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8C8frqCKKg
1890 The Sleeping Beauty- Tchaikovsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sU4mgkGtrs
1890 Intermezzo- Mascagni
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CVyf13B1vE
1890 Clare de Lune- Debussy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlvUepMa31o
1892 Vesti La Giubba- Leoncavalo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8WOKsdHuc4
1892 The Nutcracker- Tchaikovsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg1dMpu4v7M
1893 Symphony 9- Dvorak
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yctfXIqugXc
1894 Meditation- Massenet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObxzdawhM-8
1896 Sunrise- Strauss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mmuNxYLxTs
1899 Flight of the Bumblebee- Rimsky-Korsakov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXHd-ZLN_ew
1899 Enigma Variations- Elgar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUgoBb8m1eE
1901 Pomp and Circumstance- Elgar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moL4MkJ-aLk
1901 Prelude in G minor- Rachmaninoff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QB7ugJnHgs
1904 Un Bel Di- Puccini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpW8Jvl9low
1916 The Planets- Holst
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B49N46I39Y
1917 Dream of Doretta- Puccini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3PtVRWNYus
1918 O Mio Babbino Caro- Puccini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxy4qrnKwVo
1924 Rhapsody in Blue- Gershwin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK_ShoOL2ao
1926 Nessun Dorma- Puccini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOfC9LfR3PI
1928 Bolero- Ravel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-4J5j74VPw
1932 Suite For Jazz Orchestra 2- Shostakovich
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYhZVqODYsI
1934 Rhapsody on a Theme By Paganini- Rachmaninoff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Z-HCq5EeU
1934 Troika- Prokofiev
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hINfOSlMANc
1935 Dance of the Knights- Prokofiev
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUmq1cpcglQ
1936 Carmina Burana- Orff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNWpZ-Y_KvU
1936 Adagio For Strings- Barber
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRMz8fKkG2g
1940 Violin Concerto- Khachaturian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZexcMRKVMkk
1940 Comedians Gallop- Kabalevsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw0oQ4sD4us
1942 Rodeo- Copland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqah1rucyRg
1942 Fanfare for the Common Man- Copland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzf0rvQa4Mc
1942 Sabre Dance- Khachaturian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqg3l3r_DRI

[L.M. The Third]

Haydn? Any fans? I've been using that Classical Music Book St. Luke recommended awhile ago, so I've been going in order of the Top 50 list. I've been listening to Haydn's music and I find him him kind of blah, especially compared to Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach. Anyone else feel this way? Anyone want to tell me I'm insane and why?

I'm a very ignorant person to be bursting in here, but I had to comment on this. I was recently listening to "The Creation", and although there are undoubtedly some superb parts, the Adam and Eve duets left me with this impression:



"Philip burst into one of his invectives against 'The Creation' the
other day," said Lucy, seating herself at the piano. "He says it has a
sort of sugared complacency and flattering make-believe in it, as if
it were written for the birthday _fête_ of a German Grand-Duke."
[I]The Mill on the Floss[I]

Oh, well, it was probably simply the way of the times, and I do intend to listen to more Haydn. Once I've listened to the 5 new Beethoven CDs I just got, and some more sacred arias.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I just can't get enough of opera at the moment, in particular Verdi and La Traviata. I can recommend the Domingo/Zeffirelli enough, it just seems perfect in every way, I've watched it about four times...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Verdi-Traviata-Domingo-Zeffirelli-DVD/dp/B00007J4XZ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1269553017&sr=1-4

As someone quite new to the form La Traviata has resonated with me more than any others at present I think. More Verdi needed ASAP...

I mean the little overture is just so beautiful alone, it's delightful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEzEa_LUy84

[Drkshadow03]

@ St. Luke

I've listened to many of those pieces: Symphony 98, 104, parts of the Creation, etc. Basically anything Phil Goulding recommended in his book, and then some. I usually listen to a few pieces beyond what he recommends. Don't get me wrong, I think some of Haydn is okay, but I keep listening and I never find myself moved by his work the way I am by some of the other composers I've listened to so far. It just sounds so bland at times.

I think I'm trying to figure out if I should move forward to Brahms or continue listening to Haydn and hope I can learn to appreciate him or if something will click. I'll probably keep at Haydn for a bit since I'm moving in two days and don't really have time to put together a Brahms collection anyway. Plus I want to give Haydn a fair chance. Some of the pieces are growing on me, but I find it doesn't have that instant Wow factor that pieces by Beethoven, Handel, Bach, Mozart, and Tchaichovsky all have had for me.

[stlukesguild]

No one will love every composer... no matter how good. With the exception of the Symphonie Fantastique, Berlioz has never really clicked with me. I sometimes find Brahms to be a bit of an old fuddy-duddy in comparison with Wagner or even Bruckner (although his chamber works are unsurpassed), and I have a love-hate relationship with Tchaikovsky... and often the whole of Russian music. The reason I read or listen to music is for the aesthetic pleasure. Stick with what gives you the most pleasure... but certainly be open to exploring the unfamiliar and to re-examining that which you think you know well. As we grow and change as a result of our experiences, so too do our responses to art. There are any number of artists, writers, composers who once left me indifferent... who I even once hated (Emily Dickinson, Emerson, Matisse, Gauguin:blush:) whom I now love.

[Gladys]

I think I'm trying to figure out if I should move forward to Brahms or continue listening to Haydn...

Haydn's The Surprise (94) and The Drum Roll (103), along with other London symphonies, introduced my love of classical music late in high school. But pre-eminent in following years was Brahms's majestic Piano Concerto No 2 (Op. 83). I have since heard the odd exquisite trio by Haydn though, I agree, much of his output seems somewhat clinical.

[Drkshadow03]

No one will love every composer... no matter how good. With the exception of the Symphonie Fantastique, Berlioz has never really clicked with me. I sometimes find Brahms to be a bit of an old fuddy-duddy in comparison with Wagner or even Bruckner (although his chamber works are unsurpassed), and I have a love-hate relationship with Tchaikovsky... and often the whole of Russian music. The reason I read or listen to music is for the aesthetic pleasure. Stick with what gives you the most pleasure... but certainly be open to exploring the unfamiliar and to re-examining that which you think you know well. As we grow and change as a result of our experiences, so too do our responses to art. There are any number of artists, writers, composers who once left me indifferent... who I even once hated (Emily Dickinson, Emerson, Matisse, Gauguin:blush:) whom I now love.

How could you ever not like this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Woher_kommen_wir_Wer_sind_wir_Wohin_gehen_wir.jpg

I completely agree about age changing our responses to art. There are plenty of works I disliked in high school that grew on me when I reached college age and Post-College age. The particular example that comes to mind is Edith Wharton.

[mortalterror]

Not including a Gauguin in my list of visual masterpieces was a terrible oversight. The man is a master of color and composition. I like the picture you included, though I'm more partial to The Vision After the Sermon, or In the Waves.

In more music related news, the death of Seneca in Monteverdi's Corronation of Poppea is badass. I love that guy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb9nCKAQVyA I'm digging that scene even more than Orpheus' grieving over Euridice http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ll_u870PG8 or The Lament of the Nymph http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qz2aj2oB68

[Drkshadow03]

Not including a Gauguin in my list of visual masterpieces was a terrible oversight. The man is a master of color and composition. I like the picture you included, though I'm more partial to The Vision After the Sermon, or In the Waves.


Well, I was recently in Boston and saw that painting in the Museum of Fine Arts, so I selected that one.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Well it was Figaro last night and my head is still full of this wonderful unreal world. Real life is just so dull compared to the opera! I'm feeling a serious addiction coming on. The language thing was hardly an issue, yes I would still prefer Italian with English stage titles, but overall the thing was totally spell-binding - I couldn't sleep last night and I can't function now. The whole thing is completely under my skin, wonderful!!! What a fool I’ve been for ignoring this form for so long. I wish it was on again tonight for I would go again and again, incredible!!!

[stlukesguild]

Neely...

Opera can surely do that to you. Just think... an art form that merges narrative, theater, song, music, a sheer visual spectacle. And Le Nozze di Figaro is surely one of the finest ever. I envy you. I haven't been able to get to the orchestra or the opera from quite some time now... although the wife's birthday is coming up soon. Hmmmm???:ihih:

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes, yes exactly it's just a combination of all these forms married together and in the case of Mozart perfectly so, sublime! Music and drama perfectly combined bringing out the very best of both! I went to a full concert a few days before but this was completely over-shadowed by the opera performance. It's the ETO - English Touring Opera and I've looked to follow them around for at least another performance but the logistics (trains) are just not workable. I read that when Figaro was first performed it was a sensation and everybody was addicted to it - I can see why. :eek:

Yes you'll have to 'treat the wife' to a performance, let her pick or better still use your own judgement on what she'll like :wink5: and book them for her! It's my birthday soon, I also feel a little trip coming on too...

Really though the amount of opera on offer around the country seems to me to be really thin on the ground, disappointing.

[stlukesguild]

London, man! London! I'm quite serious... if I lived as close to London (or New York or Washington D.C. for that matter) I'd be there every other week. I doubt that you can possibly live in a greater cultural wasteland than Cleveland... although the orchestra and art museum are world class.

My own taste recently has swung toward Modern and contemporary composers... and the Baroque. I'm currently listening to John Tavener...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOCXMi0cyXc&feature=related

while Peteris Vasks is waiting in the wings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZsenEas8jw

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4020/4482484355_893d03ba53_o.jpg

I have been listening to a good deal of "early music" recently... especially Baroque works... including Pachelbel, Buxtehude, Vivaldi, Handel, and of course Bach. What I have come to recognize is how limited my range of composers is for the music of this period... in spite of the fact that I am so enamored of it. If I were to look at the works I have by late 19th century composers, for example, the sheer range is astounding: Wagner, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Mahler, Bruckner, Bruch, Debussy, Ravel, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Faure, Dvorak, Puccini, Duparc, Delius, Elgar, Vaughan-Williams... and this barely scratches the surface. But my Baroque collection on the other hand...? It is actually embarrassingly slim... with the exception of Bach. I have a good amount of music by Handel... but nothing like what I should have when I consider his wealth of operatic and choral compositions. With the rediscovery of a cache of music by Vivaldi I certainly need to explore his choral and operatic oeuvre far more. And then there's Telemann:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOfDfqgr18A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQatlvFvGdM&feature=related

(who was THE biggest composer of the era)...

Buxtehude:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FJIw0e1Te8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s-j7YyQuiM

(whose organ and choral music inspired Bach and Handel... and whose oeuvre has recently been tackled by the great Ton Koopman... who also recorded the whole of Bach's cantatas).

And what of Biber?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6vTF85l_AU

Schütz?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBXMlZrmiB0

Frescobaldi?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdup8lxR8m0

Allegri?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C4xmB1QWYk

Scarlatti?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lmqDOjHx70

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-oVkAKBgOo&feature=related

(a magnificent composer of works for keyboard)

Praetorius?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj2kz8nSSfE

And the French: Rameau?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKvd4tMkFHc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpwYjawWCZE&feature=related

Lully?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6ggBiOyEUY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6ggBiOyEUY&feature=related

Charpentier?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT9nCNIAQzs&feature=related

And Purcell?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB3lStMh_O8&feature=related

Of course here is a slightly more modern version of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVVnB3ojrrY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAnQQ4_Jpd8

It's like reading: so much music... so little time... and money.:prrr:

[LitNetIsGreat]

Absolutely, so little time and so much hidden away.

Yes, yes London I have been looking into that place - £60/70 return ticket for the train and a two hour journey. I’m currently looking into what’s on and when. It is essential that I see more opera and soon...

Some of these shows are out of Mrs Neely's price range though. :arf:

:yikes: I must see this:
http://www.roh.org.uk/video/index.html?bcpid=1733261711&bclid=1740131613&bctid=71372967001

[kasie]

Neely - so glad you are enjoying discovering opera - you have many happy hours ahead!

Keep an eye open for Welsh National Opera on tour - they sometimes make it over the border! Their productions are a bit of a curate's egg, the new ones are imaginative and innovative but some of the old productions are a bit tired. Their latest Marriage of Figaro is a joy, set in the 20s - it really works - and their production of Rossini's Cinderella was a delight, costumes like the pack of cards. I see Fidelio is in their autumn repetoire.

[stlukesguild]

Yes... This production of Le Nozze di Figaro looks like something not to be missed. But Salome also looks like a real stunner... especially if you ant to shock the hell out of the Mrs. with a little garish German Expressionism and a little late Viennese decadence... besides... its Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss!!! What more could you possibly want???!!!

[LitNetIsGreat]

Thanks Kasie I will check that out for sure, I am addicted to Figaro at the moment, it is the only thing that matters.

Oh yes StLuke, I clocked the Salome of course, I will have to get to that one too. There is a Carmen on at the O2 but I think three is pushing it. I don't think that the evil one will be coming though, she's not that interested (don't ask) and it'll cut back on costs, I'll go with a friend or force my brother to come! :hat:

You are so correct about London, (you always are, like Wilde) how blind I have been - it is because I am only a thick Northerner... I mean from St Pancras station to the Royal Opera House en route, which is only three miles, there is The British Library, the British Museum and the Dickens House Museum – what distractions - gasp!

* I know that I've got to book quickly because the Aida and the La Traviata are fully booked already, (and I would have certainly wanted to have gone to those) - I've registered on the mailing list to book immediately!

Really, life can't get better than this...actually it is life, it is the only thing that is truly real!!

[stlukesguild]

I saw Salome live about 2 years ago. The wife absolutely loved it. To make things better the film Salome (with Rita Hayworth) was playing just the night before. Strauss and Wilde sure had a different spin on things.:yikes: Of course I've long been a fan of German Expressionism and Viennese Decadence: Strauss, Mahler, Schreker, Zemlinski, Klimt, Schiele, E.L. Kirchner, Max Beckmann, and films like Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligary, M... not to forget such literature as the works of Hesse, Kafka, George Trakl, Frank Wedekind, Bertolt Brecht, etc...

[stlukesguild]

To return to Mozart (Le Nozze di Figaro) I recently came across this insightful post by a member on a music site which I frequent:

There's a kind of quicksilver character to the best of Mozart. He has a way of conveying, in his greatest music, certain essential qualities - or perhaps I should say, parallels to the qualities - that we experience, moment by moment, in our lives and in the way we live them. Those little complexities that we barely notice, consciously - the touch of humour in our most serious moments, the doubts that flicker even in our deepest convictions. These - or rather, symbolic equivalents of them - are present in Mozart to a degree that I find astonishing, and which I've never encountered with any other composer. I don't know how it's taken me so long to see it. I must have been blind, or deaf, or something. But now I do see it, it has me completely hooked.
quoted: Elgarian: http://www.talkclassical.com/8259-mozart-god-garbage-3.html

In much of the music there is an absolute child-like... some might say "God-like" joy... pure... perfect... untouched by mortality or the least sadness. This absolute perfection... this fluidity or fluency... this simplicity... is often mistaken for something "simple"... something lacking depth and profundity, and Mozart is perhaps the single giant among composers whose reputation is so problematic to some. But his music is not as simple as some would have it. Every so often... the dancing... or the theatrical drama stops... as if the actor suddenly were to reveal the man behind the mask.. and there is this sublime moment... as if Mozart had suddenly stopped... and a momentary darkness passed before him... a momentary thought of sadness and mortality... only for a moment... and then off he goes singing joyfully once again. And such moments occur again and again... more in Mozart's work than in the work of anyone else I can think of.

For example following a minute and a half of theatrical drama there is this moment of profound sadness that cuts to the very soul from this scene from Don Giovanni beginning at 1:36 and ending at 2:17 when Mozart goes off dancing again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRYc149doI8

Of course Le Nozze di Figaro has several such moments... but none is as heart-wrenching as the moment in the finale in which the Count loudly refuses to pardon any whom he believes have deluded him... only to come face to face with his wife who holds out the ring he had given to her when she was disguised as her servant, Suzanna, and when he had earnestly attempted to seduce "Suzanna". The Count falls to his knees begging... and being granted... pardon... forgiveness in the most magnificent manner. It is such a moment that I quite concur with Salieri's interpretation in the film, Amadeus, tha we are witnessing an absolute forgiveness... God's pardon to all:

The entire scene can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcB0Nb6_0qQ&feature=related

but the sound quality is far better in this clip which begins right at that magic moment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2yrDWEoCpc&translated=1

[Emil Miller]

Here is a clip from a film about spies in East Germany during the cold war starring James Mason and directed by Carol Reed. The final scene shows an attempt to smuggle Mason and his accomplice out of the East while Salome is being performed at the opera.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6B0cq10NQM

[LitNetIsGreat]

That's an interesting little find.

I think that I’ll certainly have to get the production of the 2006 ROH recording as well because it seems to me to be a particularly well set performance all round with excellent sound quality to boot. Though for some reason it seems to be set slightly later in the 1830s? Even so it comes across to me as a wonderful production that I must own as well as see. Certainly Figaro is stoping me from getting any work done at the moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF655YJolQI
(Incidentally I just love the playful opening section, I'm watching/playing this part alone about 10 times a day - as a minimum. :crazy:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymRVgj_KBE0

[Emil Miller]

That's an interesting little find.

I think that I’ll certainly have to get the production of the 2006 ROH recording as well because it seems to me to be a particularly well set performance all round with excellent sound quality to boot. Though for some reason it seems to be set slightly later in the 1830s? Even so it comes across to me as a wonderful production that I must own as well as see. Certainly Figaro is stoping me from getting any work done at the moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF655YJolQI
(Incidentally I just love the playful opening section, I'm watching/playing this part alone about 10 times a day - as a minimum. :crazy:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymRVgj_KBE0

I have to admit that I have always been afraid of opera, knowing that once I commit to it it will take up all my time and money. However, it's not possible to avoid it completely and seeing this performance by Ljuba Welitsch reminds me what I am missing. It's just stupendous and Richard Strauss's music is overwhelming in its glorious orchestration.

[LitNetIsGreat]

:hand: Ha, ha "every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us" you'll just have to yield to it! Mrs Neely I'm sure will be fine with the fact that we might have to go without food for the rest of the year in order to supplement my new addiction! I can't think of a better way to spend both time and money than being as fully immersed in this beautiful art form as possible - surely one of the highest, if not the highest of them all!

[LitNetIsGreat]

Woo hoo! :party:

I have managed to get hold of a Noddy seat for the aforementioned Le Nozze di Figaro - really though they opened bookings today and are virtually sold out already!

Look out London; here comes Neely!!! :yikes:

Aside from that though how perfect is the prelude to La Traviata? Just so dainty and heavenly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WomiJqiPQY