Classical Music II

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Elfhelm

Question for the hard-core among us:

How many times have you listened to the Ring Cycle all the way through pausing only to eat? And when you do, what do you feel when the forest murmurs start? I don't know why, but they seem to make alpha waves start flowing or something, especially after all that precedes them.

My answer is three. And I'm 50. I have a feeling someone half my age has done it twice as many times.

On my part, one time. It was a day I was so bored I could have cried my eyes out, but I opted for Wagner instead.

Individually, I've probably listened to Die Walkure the most, and then Siegfried, Das Rheingold, then Gotterdammerung.

That duet finale at the end of Siegfried really puts you in the clouds, no?

Orignially by ElfhelmDomingo, on the other hand... I love him! He is even more than what he's hyped to be. But I don't know the technical reason why. It's his ability to convey feelings, added with his ability in many different forms of opera, and his voice remaining wonderful well beyond the typical age of retirement that makes me sing his prasies, so to speak.

Care to add anything about his technique, Tessar. I'm not really knowledgeable there. I just try to sing right.

I am a big fan of Domingo. I have La Boheme with Solti/Domingo, and I really don't know of a more heartbreaking scene than the last in that opera.
(Weird though, apperantly there is a certain toddler Placido Domingo III on the recording...it was cute the second time around, but on the first it really gave me a scare!)

Also, Domingo doesn't stick with just the Italian/french reportoire that goes with his vocals. He dangerously went Wagnerian in Tristan und Isolde, and from what I've heard, it's impressive.

Orignially by Karl ThingNice thread!

I enjoy classical music, although I haven't heard much of it. You could call me something of a convert. I began my life as a country fan, moved to pop, and now I'm moving more and more into classical music. I think that has something to do with my training in classical piano and voice.

Tessar, I'm going to have to say that I think Caruso's version of Nessun Dorma was much better. Pavarotti isn't my cup of tea at all.

I'm happy to see some other singers here. What parts do you all sing? I sing Bass I or Tenor II as I'm needed, although I find Tenor II to be a little uncomfortable to sing.

From country eh? ...still a Johnny Cash fan aren't you? (I always though Ghost Riders in the Sky would make a great orchestral piece).

It's funny that we Classical listeners, when we get stereotyped, Pavarotti usually figures into it!
He really isn't bad, at all. But, as I said before, it really has to do with his way and sounding...

[Tessar]

I'll have to look for Domingo's version. I don't think I've heard it before.

[Elfhelm]

Domingo did some Wagner at the Met a few years back (more than ten, I think). I think it was Siegfried. It was broadcast and I captured it to a VHS tape (audio only). Maybe it's time I digitized that.

I do love the love duet.

I think I mentioned Toscanini's La Boheme that I got when I was about 12, but when I wanted a CD, I was given a gift of the Bernstein.

Does anyone have operas on DVD? I have a few, and I am thinking of converting them to play on my video iPod but so far I am finding it takes three times the playing time to rip a DVD using HandBrake, so I don't know.

Anyway, what opera DVDs does anyone have or recommend?

[hectorberlioz]

THE ORGAN…FOR DUMMIES?

Some people have said that the Organ is the most wonderful instrument ever invented. Franck called it the “King of Instruments”, and it has kept that title.

The Organ represents something extraordinary; some people respond ecstatically to the sound of an Organ, I imagine that it is the “height” the Organ can reach that other instruments can get near. It’s like a tireless, beautiful lung. (Wow. Whoa. Weird.)

On the other hand, I can occasionally understand some people’s opinions that it is a heavy, tiresome, irksome noisemaker. In church especially it often comes off that way. The great English Tradition of having an Organ in church perhaps may be credited with scaring off the younger congregation. (I’m just kidding, but you never know how true might be!) It gives some people headaches, it really does. My dad for instance.

A Catholic Church I visited for awhile had a magnificent organ, with over-head trumpets and all. Early before mass, the priest would give a little recital (I’m quite sure it was Bach he usually played…Lutheran Music from a fervent Lutheran! In a Catholic Church!)
It was a truly magnificent organ in a magnificent church…though I’m glad we don’t use organs in our services in the Antiochian Orthodox Church, just plain mid-eastern a cappela.
Anglican churches especially will be most equipped with an organ. I haven’t been in one yet that wasn’t.

Now, my relationship with the organ might be described as perhaps a little too “fervent”. More than any other instrument, it works up my nerves (which is exactly what some people hate about it), and depending on the composer, intellectuality abounds (apperantly). But even if an organ piece doesn’t meet those standards, it still thrills (i.e. Widor’s famous “Toccata”).

And so the Organ is either the Greatest Instrument or the Worst. It either lifts you up, or bogs you down. What people like about it, the others hate.

[hectorberlioz]

Hector discusses English and French conductors…

Let us suppose that you are an innocent concert-goer in London. You await the impressive presence of Sir Colin Davis at the podium. Davis is perhaps one of those musicians that might have helped Berlioz when that great composer visited London.

At last the great man comes, and he leads the orchestra into an exciting performance of the Symphonie Fantastique. You wonder at the music, and you say to yourself, golly, even though Mr. Berlioz was French, only something Anglo-Saxon could have inspired this piece. Unconsciously perhaps you have hit the nail on the head. For indeed, it was the English Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson who inflicted passion so intense into Berlioz’s heart and mind that only something as original as the Symphonie Fantastique could have bee imagined.

The very next day, you read an unpraising review of last night’s performance by a French critic. His words infuriate you, his analysis doesn’t make any sense, and he is totally biased of course.

Welcome, my friends, to the world of English and French criticism.

The French of course cannot deny the inspiration of Harriet, BUT, they’ll say; only someone French could’ve written something wonderful using that inspiration.

Nonsense! The brits rise up. We never denied Mr. Berlioz his genius…in fact; WE are the ones who helped it. A fat lot of inspiration YOU gave him.

Back to you, the French retort. We DID inspire him. He wrote the “Fantastique” in France, not England. As he did most of his masterpieces. In fact, we tend to think that the ones he wrote outside France are a bit tedious. Look at the Rob Roy overture, written in Italy about an English subject by a prettified Scot. What kind of inspiration is THAT? Even Berlioz disliked it.

Let Scott be Scott, and Rome has it’s own powers of sorts on composers. Though of course you must forget he wrote Harold in Italy there. And on a subject by an Englishman.
And speaking of English inspirations, Berlioz was one of the greatest Shakespeare composers ever. THERE is inspiration for you.

We French don’t deny Shakespeare his place; in fact our understanding of him is superior to even your brightest Shakespearean scholars. You English have a hard time understanding even your own poets, except perhaps Scott.

How can you people BOAST when you practically STARVED your own man to death? He made money abroad mostly, indeed a lot from London concerts, and it was the Italian Paganini who gave him 2000 francs.

We don’t spoil our artists. In fact, it was probably good for him.


You know, at the age of 69 it isn’t exactly considered old here in England.


And so they go on in this manner extensively. Finally they come to what may be they most touchy topic: interpretation of Berlioz.

Sir Colin Davis has been unfairly labeled a “prettifier” of Berlioz, trying to make B’s lean and powerful music into the thick sounding texture of Franck or Rachmaninov.
This accusation and others can be dismissed shortly after hearing that great artist’s recording of the Fantastique, and his two recordings of Les Troyen, where the music comes off as grand and heroic, without being Meyerbeerian.

You will never, or at least rarely, hear criticism of Davis from the English…the French on the other hand…

Now, Pierre Boulez is a wonderful conductor, and not just of Berlioz. But let us pretend that French and English music lovers pit them against each other. Boulez puts his frenchness into the work, as well as Berlioz’s frenchness. Something only a Frenchman can understand apparently. He gives the work the colour, the vividness…

But, brits hold, he doesn’t inflect the Berliozian PASSION, strength. And that is something that Davis is unparalleled in. And who is to say that only French orchestras can play Berlioz the way Berlioz wanted? For quite a large part of his life, Berlioz worked with FOREIGN orchestras. Yes, he loved his French Orchestra, despite that he was not treated as respectfully. But the French cannot alone claim inheriting great orchestra practices from Berlioz, for he equally bestowed his artistic vision on the English, and it was through the ENGLISH, and Americans that Berlioz was saved from the depths of obscurity.
Berlioz can claim, whenever he feels like floating his ghost self down here, to have worked influence on a slew of great composers that England produced from Elgar onward, and having even considerable influence perhaps on the more conservative Mackenzie, Parry and Stanford.

Without Berlioz there would have been no First Symphony of Elgar, called by some the greatest since Beethoven.
So Berlioz had as great an impact on English music as Handel and Mendelssohn, and certainly as great if not greater influence on English music than on French.

The French roll their eyes however, though it might not enter into their minds to play the American game of marbles. They say that the only things the British are good at is boasting and making a big deal out anything that is in the most miniscule way British or Anglo-Saxon.

If we French at first seemed skeptical of the composer, it was because we were still in the political thrall of Republican government under Napoleon III, and he was a proud supporter of that personage. But now we’ve forgiven him for that…

You British think that just because you participate in something that you’re automatically the best at it. Whereas we French have been the leading in the arts for centuries.

O please don’t YOU boast so pathetically! We may have been invaded by Handel, but before that we were leaders in music as well as literature. We had Orlando Gibbons, William Byrd, John Blow, Thomas Tallis, and Henry Purcell…
Who did FRANCE have? Machaut, who is a great composer in his own way…

And what was their lasting affect on music? Choral singing. Mediocre choral singing.

Nothing less than fury ignites the English here. Insulting their choirs is nearly as bad as murder, though murder may very well be the result of this particular fury.

[hectorberlioz]

Hector Discusses A subject that he now hates...

How do you start an article about “liking” Classical music? What do you say? What do you hope to accomplish?
After all, a Rock listener may read your arguments, but they may repel him further away from classical music than before. To find, in his eyes, that Somebody could say Something like That, is plain disgusting.

What does it take to make someone see that classical music is more than aleatory mumbo-jumbo, background music?

Well, a live concert performance, preferably. Though just perhaps not just of ANY music. Perhaps Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony is too ‘uninteresting’ for an unseasoned listener? I havenoticed that Tchaikovsky overall, is the composer that seems to hit the right notes with newcomers, that was true of even myself.

It isn’t law in this country that everyone must know his/her bit of classical music and music history, so I think it’s a bit presumptious to expect everyone to know who Giacomo Meyerbeer or Niels Gade is, or even perhaps Hector Berlioz.
And that lays out our mission to educate, subtly, politely and primly-those who don’t know.
There’s a certain pride actually in knowing what other don’t, but you can run into snags when you realize that people can’t comprehend the range and knowledge of your geniuif they don’t know what you’re talking about.
Whereupon you should educate them…but only enough so that your knowledge is still seen as supreme. You have to mould their minds around interesting facts, simple analyses that comes off as sophisticated.

But of course, you really DO know a lot, or you would ner have ventured as far as you had, much less brave to educate people about the subject.

I can’t bring myself to think like a rock listener, because I can no longer receive Rock the way I would have when I was younger…therefore, it is nigh impossible for me to understand the complaints that plain “sounds” (that is the initial idea of classical to a newcomer) are the main part of the music. But it isn’t as if all of Rock is constant vocals, I have known some that is entirely instrumental for sustained periods of time. But perhaps they never see I that way, which brings me to the conclusion that it has something to do with the instrumentation. The Violin sounds, probably in the clips they’ve heard, come off very dreamy, lyrical, and therefore for them, mushy and stupid. (Perhaps it never occurred to them that some of us think that most rock songs are mushy?)
And if it’s mushy and all old-fashioned feel-good music, it’s Grandma’s music, the kind she knows from old musicals…and those are junk! Right?

“And it all sounds the same!” Meaning that it employs usually the same sized ensemble with almost all the usual instruments…so? It’s like that in every genre.
Or perhaps they refer to the actual flow of notes in the music. Well, perhaps at first it does. But after repeated listenings Bach and Handel were most definitely different composers. The same holds true for The Monkees, who have been accused of being Beatles copycats, but who, after time, seem more and more their own band.

“Well, It’s boring”. No it isn’t! It’s the most exhilarating music on earth! (You’re thinking Shostakovich, Scriabin, Beethoven’s Seventh, Mahler’s First and Fifth specifically, while they’re thinking Handel’s Water(?) Music).
And go on to describe vague crescendos, little twists op melody and phrasing, a crash of brass in the bass (“What the Heck!” and it’s because they don’t understand what brass and bass mean here. For all they know, a large copper door knob fell onto Jerry’s Bass Guitar during a session.), a voluptuous stand-still as the orchestra poises for the next thundering.
But, you make sure to add, that isn’t the full extent of classical music…and you list the energetic scherzos of Beethoven, the intellectual round-dances and fugues of Bach. The mystical call of Palestrina…
You open your eyes from your rhapsodizing to find that their gaze is either diverted to the floor with a smile on their lips, or a confused and worried-for-your-health kind of look.

“You’d understand if only you knew!” you say to them, but these are fatal words if you were hoping to make them see your view…it repels them, it suggests that the world that is Classical Music is a place for convoluted snobs, stuck in their armchairs eternally, with their cigars and Champaign close to their lips always, with and arm across their affected brows, their pig-noses held as high as possible, ecstatically exclaiming at every scratch of the violin.

“Well, we like what we like” one of them ma venture to say. And just when you protest in your mind “No! You must like it, don’t you see?”, your arguments expires because you see that you would be making an exception for your music if you disagreed with them…and how can you support that? At that point the discussion may turn as nasty as a conversation about religion and science. So you end up leaving well enough alone, which is pretty unsatisfying.

“Why am I trying to convince anyone in the first place?” You ask yourself. After all, it’s THEIR loss if they won’t listen to you. Let them have their Rock and Pop, YOU can enjoy Mahler as only a Mahlerian can.
But who to talk to when you want to talk about the music? Other Mahlerians? No! Goodness no.

You try to find someone with your level of knowledge of music, and sometimes you are fooled.


EDIT!!

Added to Collection

Mozart: The Piano Sonatas/Christoph Eschenbach (Hey Merc, you didnt tell me he was a pianist too)
Tavener: The Protecting Veil/Isserlis
Reger: Organ Music Vols. 4 & 6/Welzel/Still
Buxtehude: Organ Music Vol.3/Rubsam
Penderecki: St Luke Passion/Antoni Wit

[Tessar]

I disagree about the organ. I know just as many people who are completely neutral about it as I know people who love or hate it. Like all other things, it is an instrument--nothing more, nothing less.

[trolls' bane]

Guess what I came home to last night? Yep! Siegfried's horn call. I didn't really know what it sounded like, but the good thing about Wagner's operas is that you can guess what's going on. The crystal meth--clear! Don't judge...*sniff*--motives are what define the scene. And the choice of voices for the characters are also good indicators. I mean, come on, you hear the Siegfried motive played by the horn section, then you hear it played by the flutes (the forest bird?), then you hear him arguing with a deep voice, which of course is a dragon because we all know that dragons are baritone, don't we?

Hector, do you recommend any modern composers? I want to hear some modern music without having to "tune in Saturday nights at 8:00 for Modern Masterpieces". I'm looking mainly for the somewhat common, maximalist music compositions. I'm always in the mood for those when I get home from school.

[Mercutio]

Originally Posted by Tessar

I disagree about the organ. I know just as many people who are completely neutral about it as I know people who love or hate it. Like all other things, it is an instrument--nothing more, nothing less.

*Swiftly bops Tessar on the head*

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by trolls' bane

Guess what I came home to last night? Yep! Siegfried's horn call. I didn't really know what it sounded like, but the good thing about Wagner's operas is that you can guess what's going on. The crystal meth--clear! Don't judge...*sniff*--motives are what define the scene. And the choice of voices for the characters are also good indicators. I mean, come on, you hear the Siegfried motive played by the horn section, then you hear it played by the flutes (the forest bird?), then you hear him arguing with a deep voice, which of course is a dragon because we all know that dragons are baritone, don't we?

Hector, do you recommend any modern composers? I want to hear some modern music without having to "tune in Saturday nights at 8:00 for Modern Masterpieces". I'm looking mainly for the somewhat common, maximalist music compositions. I'm always in the mood for those when I get home from school.

As in, modern as in contemporary? Or will some Soviet Decadence do just fine? If that's the case, Shostakovich's Fourth and Fifth Symphonies are worth looking into (they ARENT pure modernism however...they are Pure Shostakovich).

Well, first of all Penderecki's St. Luke Passion. The Naxos recording is top notch, and its cheap, and probably easier to find than others. It's a great work! it's funny to think it was a big sucess when it was premiered, because it really is a very modern work. But it isnt unpersonal like many modern pieces. It's very graphic, passionate, and moving. Very visual too.

Secondly, Sir John Tavener's "The Protecting Veil", for Cello and Orchestra. NOT your usual Cello Concerto type at all. In fact, at times you can forget it's a cello! Very beautiful work, not exciting in the sense of Adventure is exciting, it's exciting to hear such heartfelt (that doesnt mean the same thing as SLOW....here) music from a modern composer. It's not a boring piece as I first suspected.

[Rosie Gamgee]

Did I read you right?? Did you just bad-mouth Handel's Water Music?

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Rosie Gamgee

Did I read you right?? Did you just bad-mouth Handel's Water Music?

Not read right at all! ...I didn't bad-mouth it, my theoretical skeptic did, and I was writing his viewpoint

I LOVE Handel. He is very much at the top of my list.

[Tessar]

I'm learning an art song by Handle at the moment... How Art Thou Fall'n. Quite interesting, and fun to sing.

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Tessar

I'm learning an art song by Handle at the moment... How Art Thou Fall'n. Quite interesting, and fun to sing.

Art song...hm. I still can't like that definition ...it sounds juvenile.

But a Handel song eh? Way to go Tessar! I wish I had a decent voice...

[Elfhelm]

I like Boulez, but he doesn't understand the Romantics. I only buy his recordings of pieces composed from the 1890's forward.

edit: If I may recommend some modern music, there is a recording by Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the Boston Symphony. It's got a triptych by Charles Ives called Three Places in New England, a piece by Ruggles called Suntreader, and Symphony #2 by Walter Piston. Here's a review: http://classicalcdreview.com/ruggles.htm

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Elfhelm

I like Boulez, but he doesn't understand the Romantics. I only buy his recordings of pieces composed from the 1890's forward.

edit: If I may recommend some modern music, there is a recording by Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the Boston Symphony. It's got a triptych by Charles Ives called Three Places in New England, a piece by Ruggles called Suntreader, and Symphony #2 by Walter Piston. Here's a review: http://classicalcdreview.com/ruggles.htm

That's not modern ...I'm joking of course, Ruggles and Ives are/were very modern...
But Michael Tilson Thomas? No thank you. blech. He doesn't understand the composer's wish at all. At least Boulez is good at it

[Tessar]

I thought it was silly and little kiddy too... till I started trying to sing some of them . They can be damn hard, and are frequently used to stretch your head voice register and develop a good legato sound for slow songs... For me, anyways, slow songs take an incredible amount of focus to get anywhere near correct.

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Tessar

I thought it was silly and little kiddy too... till I started trying to sing some of them . They can be damn hard, and are frequently used to stretch your head voice register and develop a good legato sound for slow songs... For me, anyways, slow songs take an incredible amount of focus to get anywhere near correct.

In Handel my friend, you find an underestimated composer of songs. He wrote for castratos, who had the ability to hold a note for a whole minute...

A lot of people don't think he competes with Bach, mostly because they see his cosmopolitan exterior...but his music is as skilled.

[trolls' bane]

Thanks, HB!

Guess what! That physics teacher I e-mailed, who does the lecture podcasts also happens to be a major classical music fan.

[Elfhelm]

A modernist who I like to think of as a Hungarian Debussy is Bela Bartok. I love his pieces for violin and viola as played by Yehudi Menuin. Also his Concerto for Orchestra. I've never heard Boulez conduct Bartok. That would really be good.

HB, I haven't found any other Suntreader. *shrug* and until I do I'll settle for this one. It's fine by me.