[Audio Redneck]

Well I am comming into this even later than Stuartr. But, before I begin, [size=small]What A Really Great Thread, Guys!!![/size]

So anyway, first I have no musical talant. Zero, zip, nada. I play a CD and when I'm brave, I play the Turntable. Consider this "The Redneck Guide to Classical Music". Heres what I like about classical music or the emotional pull:

The Puzzle: trying to picture the story, or feel the emotion that the composer is trying to convey.

- Vivaldi, The Four Seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, the storms, the warm breeze, the shepard, the village, the snow, etc.

- William Tell Overture: The four seasons in 10 minutes. The hot summer, stormy winter, new life of spring, the rush of color as the flowers bloom! How would Rossini react to the Lone Ranger? I always wanted to do a music video about college life using this peice - sort of a freshman orientation video. But I digress.....

- Smetna, Mouldau: following the river from its beginnings as a mountain stream until it is a mighty rushing torent that can't be stopped.

- Tchaikovsky, 1812 Overture: War and Peace set to music! Were else can you get music with high explosives and BIG bells!

for emotion:
-Rachmaninov, Vocalise: what could have been.

- Holst, The Planets: imagine meeting the Greek god that is the planets name sake - Jupitar, god of war; Mercury, the winged messenger, etc.

I also like to make the connection between classical and modern music and movies:
-Lone Ranger Theme/William Tell Overture
-Rachmaninov Syph No. 2/ All by Myself, Eric Carmen
-Jupiter, Holst/Darth Vadar's Theme, John Williams
-Bugs Bunny on Broadway (which cartoon goes with which piece)

Classical music to laugh at:
See the PDQ Bach thread in this forum

I guess this is part of the reason why have more Classical than any other catagory of music.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Audio Redneck -- sounds like you might like Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite. I can't recommend a particular performance, because my first one was Isao Tomita's (electronica-fied version). I am not sure what the story is, but it's very ..."cinematic".

 

[scrypt]

Quote:

Originally posted by stuartr In any case, I was hoping you all could recommend some Berg, as I am a very autumnal guy myself -- my personal favorites are Shostakovich, Bartok, Kodaly, Britten (cello works mostly), and of course Bach. I love other stuff as well, but those are the primary. Beethoven too...but mostly his c sharp minor quartet -- I like other stuff, but that takes the cake.

Really. Shostakovich is a favorite, you say. That seems rather odd to me, given your Avatar (chortle, bray).

The Fourth, the Eighth and the Fourteenth Symphonies are perhaps my favorites.

We've already mentioned Berg's Violin Concerto. To that I'd add Wozzeck and the Lulu Suite which, if ou like it, will lead directly to your devouring Boulez's and Bohm's recordings of those two operas (see the writings of George Perle for fascinating analyses of those large-scale works). I also love his Piano Sonata and Chamber Concerto, though for utterly different reasons. And after you listen to his piano sonata, you can listen to Takemitsu's and Henze's solo piano music and hear Berg's influence (most people Hear T. and only hear Debussy, which is just wrong). Then after you've absorbed Berg, you can listen to later composers like Schnittke and hear how Berg's deliberate stylistic impurity led to polystyle and indeed the conscious stylistic disjunction of postmodernism generally, only Berg did it far better than anyone since. I say that despite my fondness for Alfred Schnittke.

The irony is that in the 50s, avant garde composers like Boulez and Stockhausen looked to Webern for the future: indeed, Stockhausen's entire method of organizing electronic sound was based on what he'd learned from Webern. But from the 60s on, Berg's influence proved more timely than Webern's for the simple reason that modern music had grown far too pure already for people's taste.

I would also suggest you listen to Schoenberg's Erwartung and Pierrot Lunaire as precursors to Berg's later use of expressionism.

And I wonder if you've heard Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs, especially the recording that features Leontyne Price accompanied by Barber himself on piano. Barber might have written a little easily-appropriated schmaltz, but that isn't representative of his output. I consider him to have been the most tasteful American classical composer ever to have set words to music. I don't think I've ever heard a bad song by him. After him, the other early twentieth composer I happen to like is Roger Sessions.

Like you, I'm fond of Britten, particularly the things he wrote for his boyfriend, Peter Pears, to sing. However, I *don't* like his settings of Rimbaud. In my view, Hans Werner Henze set Rimbaud far better in his canata, "Being Beauteous" (the recording featuring Edda Moser is amazing). Like you, I have a particular fondness for the cello. As a matter of fact, I'm in the process of writing a quartet for violin, viola and two celli, in a style that more closely resembles polyphonic vocal music than instrumental music per se.

Interesting, that you mention Kodaly and not Bartok, who can be much darker than K., in my estimation -- Duke Bluebeard's Castle and many other pieces seem to combine B's grim drive with an undertone of violence, which is why Kubrick used him in The Shining. And also, one finds in certain late Bartok what his biographer, Halsey Stevens, called *resignation* and I suppose I would call dark night music (as in St. John of the Cross), insofar as it involves restless pessimism.
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste is de rigeur, as are the Concerto for Orchestra, String Quartets (which might be too dissonant for some people here) and the last Violin Concerto, but I'm assuming you've been exposed to those already, Stuart.

Arthur Honegger shares something of Bartok's mood in certain pieces. His Fifth Symphony ("di tri re") might be something for you to listen to.

I happen to like Schumann's Dichterliebe for its hyper-romantic, even abnormal qualities. I can understand what it must have been like for the deteriorating composer to have heard flowers speaking to him, to have felt everyone else seem to pull away. I feel a deep sensze of pity for people who go mad, let alone someone who expressed the feeling so beautifully in his songs and in the sonata in f-sharp minor. I once looked at a manuscript of Schumann's that seemed to have been written in three different sets of handwriting. And for that reason, I also like Hugo Wolf in small doses (since he's more garish and blunt than anyone else we've been speaking about).

Have I mentioned Monteverdi? He's not exactly autumnal, but his madrigal setting of "Lasciate mi morire" has haunted me for a lifetime, and his operas are among the only ones I can tolerate. He was the most dramatically intelligent composer of the late Renaissance and I find his l'Orfeo to be a perfect musical/literary object.

If that doesn't tide you over, I don't know what will.

 

[stuartr]

Fabulous. Those suggestions come at a time when I am on the prowl for some more classical -- I go in cycles where most of my listening is either modern or classical, and classical has just poked its powdered wig above water again. I did find a new recording that I really like though...not classical -- Middle Eastern I guess. It reminds me of the Algerian quater in Paris...though I have never been to Paris, and I don't know if there is an Algerian quater, arrondissement or wee area per se, but if there was, I would hear this music coming from the second story window of a wooden building that used to be a guild house. It is Anouar Brahem's "Le pas du chat noir". He's Persian, not Algerian, but don't ruin it for me. The music is lugubrious in an Old World decay sort of way. It is for piano, accordian and oud. Check it out.

 

[elipsis]

Quote:

Originally posted by mbriant Does the ability to play a classical instrument help a person merge emotionally with a classical piece?

No. I'm purely an electronic musician, and listening to Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, or Verdi's Requiem or even the Kronos Quartet will still floor me emotionally.

I'm shocked that this hasn't happened to you, since I kind of thought it was a pretty fundamental human reaction to music.

 

[elipsis]

Quote:

Originally posted by stuartr It reminds me of the Algerian quater in Paris...though I have never been to Paris, and I don't know if there is an Algerian quater, arrondissement or wee area per se, but if there was, I would hear this music coming from the second story window of a wooden building that used to be a guild house.

This post is gold.

 

[Audio Redneck]

Quote:

Originally posted by Dusty Chalk Audio Redneck -- sounds like you might like Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite. I can't recommend a particular performance, because my first one was Isao Tomita's (electronica-fied version).

Got an early RCA of this (LM-100?). I haven't been to the GC since I was about 1978 but its a fitting piece. I love the covers of these early RCAs and Columbias - this one looks like it could be the cover of a Louis L'Amour novel.

Quote:

I am not sure what the story is, but it's very ..."cinematic".

As I understand it, it was inspired by his travel through norther Arizona and Southern Utah.


I picked up a columbia of Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead and The Bells last week. IOTD definately fits the mood of the paintings. Thats something that I like about Russian and East European composers in general: they can really set a mood - and just about any mood you want.

 

[mbriant]

Quote:

I'm shocked that this hasn't happened to you, since I kind of thought it was a pretty fundamental human reaction to music.

If that was the case, everyone in the world would be a classical music fan.

 

[Audio Redneck]

Quote:

Originally posted by mbriant If that was the case, everyone in the world would be a classical music fan.

I think finding the right stuff and, which is always the problem with classical music, the right recordings is part of it. Ya know how some bands sound awesome live but only ok on the recording? Unfortunately, there are more BAD classical recordings than good IMHO.

And a lot of pieces leave me dry as dust, like a lot of the post WWII stuff that came out where the composer was trying to describe the horrors of the holocaust and Hiroshima musically. Unfortunately some succeeded

I just thought of something that plays into this: What acoustic instruments do you like? If you don't care for the inherent sound of the insturments usually played, you probably won't care for the pieces written for them. YMMV

 

[Leporello]

Quote:

Originally posted by stuartr In any case, I was hoping you all could recommend some Berg, as I am a very autumnal guy myself --

'Altenberg-lieder', most definitely. Margaret Price with Claudio Abbado conducting LSO. Should be available in DG 'Originals'.

"Leben und Traum vom Leben, plötzlich ist alles aus..."


Regards,


L.

 

[elipsis]

Quote:

Originally posted by mbriant If that was the case, everyone in the world would be a classical music fan.

No, you misunderstand, I simply thought that AN emotional reaction to purely instrumental music in the right circumstances was a fundamental human phenomenon, though not necessarily MY emotional reaction.