Classical Listening

[mal4mac]

Ralph Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending has been voted the country's favourite piece of classical music. (according to Classic FM listeners, that is).

We English dilettantes love him. All of his stuff seems to hit a chord with our English senseabilities- it sounds like nostalgia - an invocation of a long lost England that probably never really existed. I suspect he is hardly known Internationally.

And the equally wonderful Tallis Fantasia at number 3 - Simon Rattle had this as the centrepiece of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra's Philharmonie 50th anniversary last October, played on radio 3 last week. You might still catch it on BBC iPlayer if you want a real treat...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b040hxj7

"Perhaps because of Vaughan-Williams’s success in breaking free of the German influence, it’s often said that his music is so English that it could not possibly appeal outside these shores. Strange to realise, then, that there are more performances of his symphonies in Germany than in England."

http://www.classicfm.com/composers/v...s-re-assessed/

I'm biased, but has anyone composed more beautiful music? Certainly I'd admit that Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninov, and a few others, have written music as beautiful, but I think he's up there with these greats. Anyone outside England agree with this?

[MorpheusSandman]

Ralph Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending has been voted the country's favourite piece of classical music. (according to Classic FM listeners, that is).

That list was utterly bizarre. There were tons of film and video game soundtracks on it.

I think English music is generally less appreciated internationally. It's almost treated as a joke, I think, by some people. I've got a Swiss friend who just loves to wind me up about the poor quality of English music, despite never having actually listened to any VW, Elgar, Britten, Purcell or Byrd.

I think the one genuinely, almost indisputably, great English composer was Purcell, who is absolutely sublime and grossly underrated. The others, I think, are more variable in quality. Britten, VW, Elgar, and Byrd all have some really, really good music, but I don't think they were consistently great enough to list them in the top tier of great composers.

[prendrelemick]

There's always Gustav Holst.

[stlukesguild]

I think English music is generally less appreciated internationally. It's almost treated as a joke, I think, by some people. I've got a Swiss friend who just loves to wind me up about the poor quality of English music, despite never having actually listened to any VW, Elgar, Britten, Purcell or Byrd.

I think in part England's music pales beside its literary achievements. I also think that there is this unfortunate gap between Purcell and the great British contributions to early music...

William Byrd:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZSB0WTyIrg

Thomas Tallis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT-ZAAi4UQQ

John Dowland:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7vLOjzG4no

Henry Purcell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IhWTB2Y_w8

Then there are but a few truly interesting figures until the late 19th & 20th centuries.

Personally, I quite like John Field:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYqOOY4pTNE

His Nocturnes were the model upon which Chopin would produce his masterworks.

I actually have a sizable collection of British "classical" music... more, I suspect, than by Americans. I certainly love Ralph Vaughan-Williams:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd3nWm2PitI

But I'm probably equally fond of Delius:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVeaAhYluOc

I've never really warmed to Elgar... but this is indisputably beautiful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqvOVGCt5lw

But there are others... lesser known... but brilliant at times...

Arnold Bax:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixF5f2cqIKo

Ernest J. Moeran:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebP_ehR6oLE

Herbert Howells:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ozrtxC4TmE

Britten is undoubtedly a fairly major figure... Top 50?... That's always open to debate. I think Britten's "weakness" as far as popularity... beside his embrace of certain Modernist atonalities... is the fact that his strongest works are predominantly vocal works... especially operas. Still I quite love his Cello Sonatas inspired by Shostakovitch and Rostropovich.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_FyQPsILnU

I know in the past I've also had an amicable barney with our own St Luke's over that book he often recommends to people (Classical Music: The 50 Greatest Composers and Their 1,000 Greatest Works), which I think has a distinctly anti-British bias.

Goulding's book could be argued to have an even greater anti-American bias as not a single American makes the list. His list was actually quite objective in that he, the author admittedly knew little of classical music, and based his list upon statistics (how many pieces by each composer were played on the major classical music radio stations in a year, number of recordings of a given composer, record sales, length of entries of each composer in major texts on the history of classical music.). What we need to remember is that the world of "Classical Music" spans a period from approximately A.D. 1000- until the present. There are dozens of major composers from the Middle Ages, as many again from the Renaissance, quite a bit more still from the Baroque and the Classical Era... and then things really take off during the Romantic/Post-Romantic/Modern era.

...is Elgar really the inferior of Borodin and Couperin

Perhaps not... but he probably is less important than J.S. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, W.A. Mozart, L.v. Beethoven, Joseph Haydn, G.F. Handel, Monteverdi, Wagner, Brahms, Debussy, Faure, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Mendelssohn, Mahler, Schubert, Schumann, Rameau, Gluck, Vivaldi, Alessandro & Domenico Scarlatti, Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Donizetti, Boccherini, Shostakovitch, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Offenbach, Massenet, Perotin, Leonine, Gesualdo, Dufay, Hildegard of Bingen, Bartok, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, Jan Dismas Zelenka, Hugo Wolf, Chopin, Liszt, Dvorak, Arcangelo Corelli, Purcell, Buxtehude, Vaughan-Williams, Mihaud, Poulenc, Bellini, Telemann, Sibelius, Grieg, Bruckner... and if we count the Modernists: Schoenberg, Berg, Webern.

My point is that it is quite easy to compile a list of 50+ major composers who quite honestly deserve such recognition. Whether Elgar deserves to be placed upon such a list is quite debatable.

I'm biased, but has anyone composed more beautiful music? Certainly I'd admit that Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninov, and a few others, have written music as beautiful, but I think he's up there with these greats.

Yep, you're biased. I love Vaughan Williams but I have no delusions of placing him alongside Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Handel, etc... The core of VW's oeuvre are his 9 symphonies... laden with beautiful music, no doubt, but certainly not as innovative or brilliant as the finer symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms, etc... Beyond this?

In the Fen Country
Norfolk Rhapsody
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Fantasia on "Greensleeves"
The Lark Ascending
Five Mystical Songs
Fantasia on Christmas Carols
Dona nobis pacem
Hodie, a Christmas cantata

All counted you might get a full 10 or 12 CDs worth of music as VW's "essential" core works. You'll need more than that for Beethoven's piano sonatas, Haydn's major string quartets, or Mozart's 4 great operas.

[prendrelemick]

I think St Luke's point about innovation is the key. The true greats brought something fresh that influenced and affected those who came after. Britten, VW, Elgar probably didn't do that.

[Emil Miller]

My teacher, a conservatory trained pianist, is making a particular study of the Beethoven piano sonatas and she was showing me the complexity of a certain passage in the Waldstein. Clearly, there are few compositions in English piano or orchestral music that would match Beethoven's but one would have to be musically dead not to appreciate this Vaughan Williams piece.

http://youtu.be/S9x9RwMt0l0

[Aere Perennius]

Yep, you're biased. I love Vaughan Williams but I have no delusions of placing him alongside Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Handel, etc... The core of VW's oeuvre are his 9 symphonies... laden with beautiful music, no doubt, but certainly not as innovative or brilliant as the finer symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms, etc... Beyond this?

We're all biased, silly boy. This is art and it never ceases to amaze how many propose that an opinion can be turned into a fact—as if taste was, in anyway, objective. Canons are but monuments that are either too old and sticky to rid ourselves of our parents tastes, or simply the generation's favorites as a rebellion to such. Even innovation and it's worth, influence and it's properties (all impossible to prove, even with acknowledgement), are but mere opinions when used in judging the "brilliance" or "quality" of an artwork.

So slow down before you start calling someone out for being biased as if you were not yourself.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Wow, 4 1/2 hours of Mozart Violin Sonatas on one youtube video! That's got to be a more than decent youtube post:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTEn6SRVAE4

[stlukesguild]

This is a stunning performance (Charles Mackerras was THE "go-to" man for Leoš Janáček) of a stunningly beautiful opera... one that is rarely performed... and that I had never heard until now. I picked up this recording in hope of listening to it prior to attending the innovative performance of The Cunning Little Vixen by the Cleveland Orchestra:

http://www.clevelandorchestra.com/13...LITTLE-VIXEN-/

http://www.cleveland.com/musicdance/...cunning_l.html

Unfortunately, the performances came upon the end of the school year with all the added paperwork as well as retirement parties for several close co-workers.

Ah well... this recording will have to do... and it is quite brilliant... and hard to believe the entire opera was inspired by a comic strip!!!

I highly recommend this work... and this recording... for anyone fond of/with an interest in Eastern European music or opera.

[mortalterror]

Stluke, I heard a lovely little ditty recently called Gaudete from 1582, and I'm not sure whether I should put it with my classical list or my folk music list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaudete What do you think?

Here's the version I really like from folk rock band Steeleye Span
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDc2FD-vy8M

But there are others from more classically inclined groups
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbKWk6RzaiM

Anyway, it's got me looking at a bunch of polyphonal sacred music of the era. It sort of ticks some of the same boxes as Monteverdi's madrigals for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKPK3CINlWU

[stlukesguild]

The term "classical music" is difficult to define considering that it essentially includes everything from this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdJSy9vXGNQ

to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87UE2GC5db0

to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi6SDINpeTw

to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZazYFchLRI

There is no defining style to "classical music". Quite honestly, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSZxmZmBfnU

... has more in common with the lieder of Schumann, Schubert, and the mélodie of Faure and Debussy... has more in common with the tradition of Western Classical music than does Xenakis. Yet many within the world of classical music would argue that Xenakis represents modern/contemporary "classical" music, while Somewhere over the Rainbow is mere popular music.

And the dividing line can be even more blurred. Many would define this as "classical music":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRDMKOMsyQ4

or this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFHdRkeEnpM

but not this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGLpczTtnEM

or this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHJoS2gMx3Y

Ultimately, the term "classical music"... which was only first employed (outside of referring to the Classical Era of Mozart, Haydn, and Boccherini)... around the late 19th and early 20th century... in an attempt to differentiate "serious" music of the upper class elite from that of the masses is not a term intended to define a style (like Baroque, Romanticism, or Jazz) but rather a term intended as a value judgment. Many within the world of classical music, however, deny this notion because ultimately it would suggest that it is just possible that the finest songs by Hollywood songwriters, jazz, even "standards" of country, bluegrass, and pop may eventually be recognized as the "classical music" of our era as much... or more than the music of Stockhausen, Xenakis, and Philip Glass. They counter that "classical music" can be defined as music with a known composer that has been given a definitive form by said composer in the form of the score. This concept, however, clearly doesn't hold water. Baroque composers frequently employed improvisation... as much as jazz musicians... in their performances. Then there are examples of works such as Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition which is known more in its orchestral transcriptions by Rimsky-Korsakov and Ravel than in its original score for solo piano.

Older music... songs, dances, motets, dirges, etc... by unknown composers... "folk music" if you will... has commonly been accepted as a form of "classical music". Tunes such as Gaudete have often been collected in medieval and Renaissance song books and re-scored for multiple voices or even instrumentation. One need only think of Christmas carols that have been orchestrated for large Romantic-era orchestras.

There are any number of interesting blurrings of classical and popular music. I'm especially fond of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKzkbpIiuSs

Here we have John Potter, member of the Hilliard Ensemble, performing John Dowland's music with jazz-like improvisations... and then we have to consider that Dowland himself quite blurs the line between the traditional idea of "classical music" and popular music.

But lets go a little further and build on Monteverdi's famous Lamento della Ninfa:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d83WpdINleE

[mal4mac]

That list was utterly bizarre. There were tons of film and video game soundtracks on it.

Classic FM isn't aimed at the serious classical music lover, it's aimed at people wanting a change from Pop music on BBC Radio 1/2, but don't want to be challenged too much. Hence the film & game music. The game music appearing is intriguing, it shows that more young people are listening than I might have expected! Classic FM attracts a lot of Daily Mail readers who want to appear sophisticated, and feel that voting for this list is a worthwhile use of their time. Hence, I guess, the patriotic "little England" feel to the voting. (Not that I dislike Vaughan Williams - this shows Daily Mail readers have some taste - but gaining 1 & 3 spot is ridiculous!)

Those Brits who would say "ack" along with you are listening, mostly, to BBC Radio 3 I tend to flick between the two stations, I usually change to Radio 3 when film music or the too-well-known "smooth classic" pops up yet again. But I retreat from Radio 3 when something *too* challenging appears.

[mal4mac]

Wow, 4 1/2 hours of Mozart Violin Sonatas on one youtube video! That's got to be a more than decent youtube post...

Good, but not Perlman/Barenboim:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boqbZTBAlOY

That box set is one of the highlights of my life, with at least eight sonatas, for me, up there with VW's "lark".

The points being made about several composers beating VW for variety, volume, and innovation are, I think, well made.

And how on Earth could you choose between this Mozart Sonata and Lark? It's like choosing between ice cream and strawberries! Both number 1 (along with a hundred other delicacies...)

Why is there an obsession with lists in British pop culture?

[Lokasenna]

This is a stunning performance (Charles Mackerras was THE "go-to" man for Leoš Janáček) of a stunningly beautiful opera... one that is rarely performed... and that I had never heard until now. I picked up this recording in hope of listening to it prior to attending the innovative performance of The Cunning Little Vixen by the Cleveland Orchestra:

http://www.clevelandorchestra.com/13...LITTLE-VIXEN-/

http://www.cleveland.com/musicdance/...cunning_l.html

Unfortunately, the performances came upon the end of the school year with all the added paperwork as well as retirement parties for several close co-workers.

Ah well... this recording will have to do... and it is quite brilliant... and hard to believe the entire opera was inspired by a comic strip!!!

I highly recommend this work... and this recording... for anyone fond of/with an interest in Eastern European music or opera.

Welsh National Opera did a well-reviewed production of it the other year - I had hoped to go, but time constraints meant that I could not. I've never heard it, but following this glowing recommendation I will do!

[Emil Miller]

I am always uncomfortable with the use of 'classical music' as a catch all expression for that which exists outside the genre of popular music.
I prefer to think in terms of the great eras of mucial development such as the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic, but even here the looseness of the terminology is open to misinterpretation.
Back in the dim mists of time ( the 1970s to be exact ) I was given an LP of music by a German friend. It was a series of pieces by a contemporary French composer called Saint Preux and was a tuneful if not a particularly distinguished composition. I had forgotten about it until recently when my piano teacher drew my attention to an Ave Maria attributed to the early Baroque composer Giulio Caccinni; whom I had never heard of. The melodic structure immediately reminded me of Saint Preux and I said it sounded very much like seventies French music, such as was used as a background to various French films of the period, and I couldn't see how anyone would think that it was a 16th century work.
On investigation I discovered that it wasn't French but composed by a Russian and subsequently passed off as Caccini's work. Here's the story:

Ave Maria" is a popular and much recorded aria composed by Vladimir Vavilov around 1970. It is a musical hoax generally misattributed to Baroque composer Giulio Caccini. Vavilov himself published and recorded it on the Melodiya label with the ascription to "Anonymous" in 1972. It is believed that the work received its ascription to Giulio Caccini after Vavilov's death, by an organist Mark Shakhin (one of its performers on the mentioned "Melodiya" longplay), who gave the "newly discovered scores" to other musicians; then in an arrangement made by the organist Oleg Yanchenko for the recording by Irina Arkhipova in 1987, then the piece came to be famous worldwide.


http://youtu.be/zXehRR_ziBw

http://youtu.be/3hE-cxohDGY