Classical Listening

[stlukesguild]

Currently listening to Jean-Philippe Rameau, one of the great composers of the Baroque, performed with such verve and muscularity by Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations:



Honestly, I love Romanticism every bit as much as Emil... but I just can't imagine limiting myself to a single musical era or genre. Before Rameau I was listening to the Rolling Stones... and even earlier today... while at the studio painting... I played Herbert von Karajan performing a selection of Romantic era ballet music... followed by Sonny Boy Williamson. Tomorrow I must give a new disc of Eleanor Steber singing Richard Strauss... recorded here in my hometown.

[Emil Miller]

Honestly, I love Romanticism every bit as much as Emil... but I just can't imagine limiting myself to a single musical era or genre. Before Rameau I was listening to the Rolling Stones... and even earlier today... while at the studio painting... I played Herbert von Karajan performing a selection of Romantic era ballet music... followed by Sonny Boy Williamson. Tomorrow I must give a new disc of Eleanor Steber singing Richard Strauss... recorded here in my hometown.

Strangely enough, the first music I fell for was Bach. It used to be played by the school orchestra, consisting of the teacher on piano accompanied by about a dozen nine-year-old boys on violins and recorders, and would drift into our classroom during boring lessons. Obviously it wasn't his more complicated music but the kind of thing I now play on the piano. Then when I was eleven, we were taken to a children's concert where the London Symphony Orchestra played, inter alia, Borodin's 'Polovtsian Dances' and I was overwhelmed by the power and melodic invention of the music. So while I find Bach and pre-romantic composers pleasing enough, they don't measure up to the far greater expressive capacity of the modern day symphony orchestra. Naturally, I didn't stay stuck in the romantic era and I have posted composers as varied as Shostakovich and Gershwin on this forum but for preference I always return to the romantics, from Beethoven to Richard Strauss, Rachmaninov and all the others in between.

As for genre, while I like popular music that has a melody, good lyrics and well modulated voices, I don't consider the grotesque and infantile noise that passes for music now worth listening to.

I have never heard of Sonny Boy Williamson but the name doesn't inspire confidence.

[stlukesguild]

[stlukesguild]

...when I was eleven, we were taken to a children's concert where the London Symphony Orchestra played, inter alia, Borodin's 'Polovtsian Dances' and I was overwhelmed by the power and melodic invention of the music. So while I find Bach and pre-romantic composers pleasing enough, they don't measure up to the far greater expressive capacity of the modern day symphony orchestra.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Great photo Emil, amazing experience and I'm currently listening to that brilliant overture as I type and ponder my empty Cumberland glass (don't panic I have plenty more in the fridge, breathe out).

I can also relate to Stluke's suggestion about mixed genres though, as today I have been listening to Black Sabbath's new album with Ozzy!! Not bad. Bach, Beethoven and Black Sabbath!? For me I think maybe it is just a question of mood.

In terms of reading I have also been doing, lots of chess 1-2 hours a day (driving me insane), but also All Creatures Great and Small, Wordsworth and a little Milton. Post modernism in action or just mood music? I don't know.

I just enjoy going where the mood takes me. For example I have not listened to the Beatles for months and months but when I did I was playing it for hours a day. I just think I have an addictive personality that milks enjoyment while it is there.

Anyway, the Jean-Philippe Rameau stuff is fun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zegtH-acXE

I shared the above brilliant piece with a friend and made him show it when he covered a French lesson and he made them watch it over and over; the council estate kids must have though what the .....

In terms of classical music though, or music at its most serious, I tend to return to either Mozart or Bach and usually the same pieces as previously posted over and over. Bach and Gould for example can often throw out everything else. And Mozart opera has the same effect.

Edit: How can you not want to run around like a nutter and renounce life in worship to the arts when you hear such things as this?:

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

[stlukesguild]

I have come to wholly embrace Picasso's thoughts on the sources of art. Picasso suggested that art built wholly upon the "elite" or "fine art" eventually stagnates... ossifies... and becomes academic. I think of this not only when I look at something like this... which was being churned out as Impressionism and Post-Impressionism were rethinking the direction of painting and pointing the way toward Modernism:



... nor even the contemporary equivalents such as:



... but I think that art such as this:









... is just as much "Academic". I can't imagine the development and the proliferation of such art prior to the shift in Art Education away from the ateliers and art schools toward the universities and colleges. Its a purely intellectual art devoid of any sensuality, passion, or emotion... any element drawn from the world outside the protective cocoon of the university art department and the contemporary gallery system.

Picasso argued that "true" art is created in the same manner in which the Aristocrats of the Italian Renaissance "created" their children: through a merger of the "high" and the "low-born." When I look at the work of the Modern artists I admire I recognize this merger. Degas could draw like an old master... but drew upon imagery from the contemporary ballet, night clubs, brothels, etc...





Max Beckmann might employ jazz singers, bellhops, and the New York Times alongside Wagnerian or Homeric heroes:





The idea of limiting oneself to listening solely to some notion of an elite "high art" when it comes to music doesn't interest me in the least... any more so than the reverse: those who only listen to pop music.

By the way... that's a great performance of "Les Indes galantes"... William Christie with the fabulously theatrical Patricia Petibon... and there's also the lovely Danielle de Niese is the earlier portions of the opera. I have this performance on DVD... one of my absolute favorites.

But I also love Marc Minkowski's version:

[Emil Miller]

This video contains content from
Warner Chappell and UMG, one or
more of whom have blocked it in
your country on copyright grounds.



Divine intervention?

Edit: How can you not want to run around like a nutter and renounce life in worship to the arts when you hear such things as this?:

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

Because I'm more likely to be listening to something like this. At 9.08 it actually reaches for heaven with a breadth and scope that makes Mozart seem like a miniaturist.
As a young man Strauss studied aesthetics and so was able to compose this at 25. It's the Berlin Philharmonic at its best under the composer's greatest interpreter.

However, you have the consolation of knowing that Mozart was Strauss's favourite composer as he was for Tchaikovsky also.

http://youtu.be/_XkQi_dfWEA

[stlukesguild]

Because I'm more likely to be listening to something like this. At 9.08 it actually reaches for heaven with a breadth and scope that makes Mozart seem like a miniaturist.

What you are missing is the realization that scale or grandeur and the wealth or breadth of elements at ones disposal are not a measure of artistic merit. There are "miniaturists" like Vermeer whose works can stand alongside the greatest epic paintings of Rubens or Veronese without blanching in the least. If we look to the history of film we find that more recent film-makers have the advantage of color and special effects and CGI and other elements that earlier film-makers could not have even imagined. This is not unlike the rich breadth and variety of musical sounds available to a composer like Wagner, Strauss, or Tchaikovsky... vs that which was available to Back or Mozart. But if I look at what was done with the limits of black & white film, for example (The Grand Illusion, Citizen Kane, Virgin Spring, Persona, The Seventh Seal, Casablanca, Double Indemnity, It's a Wonderful Life, Dr. Strangelove, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Apartment, 12 Angry Men, Psycho, Strangers on a Train, The Lady Vanishes, M., The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, etc...) I find that in no way do these films pale in comparison to those in which the film-makers had a broader array of resources at their disposal. Genius in art has nothing to do with the scale... the medium... or the breadth of tools and techniques at the artist's disposal. The painters of the Baroque were blessed with an education that included an understanding of anatomy, physiology, linear and aerial perspective, and techniques for creating the visual illusion of 3-D form that surpassed that available to most artists of the Renaissance... yet only 4 Baroque painters (Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Velazquez) can stand their own against such Renaissance masters as Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Durer, Van Eyck, Giotto, Giorgione, Veronese, Bellini, etc... In other words... its not the tools, but what you do with them (as we've all probably heard before).

As much as I love Strauss and Wagner... neither surpasses Bach:

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=stlukesguild;1225401]Because I'm more likely to be listening to something like this. At 9.08 it actually reaches for heaven with a breadth and scope that makes Mozart seem like a miniaturist.

What you are missing is the realization that scale or grandeur and the wealth or breadth of elements at ones disposal are not a measure of artistic merit. There are "miniaturists" like Vermeer whose works can stand alongside the greatest epic paintings of Rubens or Veronese without blanching in the least. If we look to the history of film we find that more recent film-makers have the advantage of color and special effects and CGI and other elements that earlier film-makers could not have even imagined. This is not unlike the rich breadth and variety of musical sounds available to a composer like Wagner, Strauss, or Tchaikovsky... vs that which was available to Back or Mozart. But if I look at what was done with the limits of black & white film, for example (The Grand Illusion, Citizen Kane, Virgin Spring, Persona, The Seventh Seal, Casablanca, Double Indemnity, It's a Wonderful Life, Dr. Strangelove, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Apartment, 12 Angry Men, Psycho, Strangers on a Train, The Lady Vanishes, M., The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, etc...) I find that in no way do these films pale in comparison to those in which the film-makers had a broader array of resources at their disposal. Genius in art has nothing to do with the scale... the medium... or the breadth of tools and techniques at the artist's disposal. The painters of the Baroque were blessed with an education that included an understanding of anatomy, physiology, linear and aerial perspective, and techniques for creating the visual illusion of 3-D form that surpassed that available to most artists of the Renaissance... yet only 4 Baroque painters (Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Velazquez) can stand their own against such Renaissance masters as Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Durer, Van Eyck, Giotto, Giorgione, Veronese, Bellini, etc... In other words... its not the tools, but what you do with them (as we've all probably heard before).

As much as I love Strauss and Wagner... neither surpasses Bach: QUOTE]

Well yes, of course, but great music is a very personal pursuit and each will find in it that with which they identify. In the case of the Strauss piece posted, this music has a great emotional meaning for someone who spent much of his youth in Germany, immersing himself in German history, the language and the people. For me it's not just a piece of music to be enjoyed like any other, it is Germany and, while many may plump for Bach, to my mind Richard Strauss is the summation of German genius .

[mortalterror]

You forgot to include Caravaggio and Van Dyck in the baroque. Plus, a few of those painters you list as Renaissance artists are Mannerists (Titian, Veronese).

[stlukesguild]

Titian and Veronese are most certainly NOT Mannerists. Mannerism, which was born as a reaction to the Renaissance following the sack of Rome, had very little impact on the art of Venice. Of the major Venetian painters of the period the ones most impacted by Mannerism were Tintoretto and his follower, El Greco. The only paintings by Titian that suggest the least influence of Mannerism were a series of ceiling paintings that show the impact of Michelangelo:





While these painting show the unexpected point of view common to Mannerism, neither the anatomy nor the color exhibit the sort of exaggerations common to Mannerism.

The same is true of Veronese:





Veronese's paintings show a clarity and simplicity of form, a clarity of narrative, a naturalism of pose, expression, anatomy and color, a solid clarity of space... all key elements of the Renaissance.






Looking at Bronzino and Rosso Fiorentino... key figures in the development of Mannerism we see a confusion of form and narrative (especially in Bronzino), a gross exaggeration of anatomy, artifice of pose, a central void, a confusion of space, etc... all key elements of Mannerism.

As for the Baroque... yes, Caravaggio is an inexcusable omission. Van Dyck? A brilliant painter... but I don't know if I'd place him on the same level as the others. If I did... I'd have to add Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Piero della Francesca, Botticelli, Brughel and Bosch (who I somehow forgot), Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Holbein, Correggio, Simone Martini, and a number of others for the Renaissance.

[mortalterror]

I was thinking of Mannerism in terms of it's time period 1520-1580 and you were thinking of it as a style distinct from the High Renaissance masters. True, Veronese and Titian aren't Mannerists, but they don't quite belong to the High Renaissance like Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael either. If you want to split hairs upon it and define them along stylistic lines they should be classed apart as the Venetian school.

[stlukesguild]

There are definitely distinct differences between the various regional schools: the Roman/Florentine, the Venetian, the Sienese, the German, the French, the Flemish/Netherlandish. I remember that there were students who struggled in school to recognize that this was Renaissance art:



... but was this:



... and this:



... and this:



... and this:



... and this:



... and this:



... and this:



... and this:



An incredibly diverse period.

[stlukesguild]

All three recordings are fabulous. The Eleanor Steber (1914-1990) recordings of Strauss' opera extracts... and the Four Last Songs... were recorded here in my hometown. The quality of these live recordings is quite impressive. Seriously Beim Schlafengehen and Im Abendrot sent chills down my spine... and judging by the ovation following the performance, I am not alone in my response. Emil might know more of Steber as she was closer to his generation ... a great singer and also a real beauty in the old Hollywood style:

[stlukesguild]

Well yes, of course, but great music is a very personal pursuit and each will find in it that with which they identify. In the case of the Strauss piece posted, this music has a great emotional meaning for someone who spent much of his youth in Germany, immersing himself in German history, the language and the people. For me it's not just a piece of music to be enjoyed like any other, it is Germany and, while many may plump for Bach, to my mind Richard Strauss is the summation of German genius .

A great many might choose this as a more apt summation of Germany... and German history of the 20th century: