Quote:
Originally posted by Flasken
when your music teacher has never heard of Samuel Barber, or the Adagio for Strings... OR when that same music teacher says that sad music is bad music. "I only like HAPPYYYiii music!!" |
I'm going to pretend you weren't joking when you said that because I'm portraying another kind of bad teacher (the kind who lacks a sense of humor):
What a horrible experience. I hope it didn't actually happen. I've taught piano and theory before and never ever have I told anyone to stop listening to a piece based on the emotion conveyed. People often have characteristic moods that draw them to particular music. You can widen their scope, but why ignore their characters? It's better to make the student feel motivated by finding great (not necessarily difficult) pieces with which s/he can connect, so that s/he gets interested in technique and craft and longs to be a virtuoso.
Samuel Barber has written far more than the Adagio, though, and even that comes from a longer string piece that is beating on your chest and demanding a detailed listen. So, too, are his Hermit Songs, Knoxville, Dover Beach, Anthony and Cleopatra, difficult Piano Sonata (which Horowitz played, BTW), Excursions, Violin Concerto and Reincarnations for chorus. Barber had impeccable taste in prose and poetry and, if you don't mind classical vocalists, you should listen for yourself. He wrote some of the most perfect songs in English.
But perhaps I'm selling you short and you know about all of these pieces already.
So Flasken: Does this mean you connect with autumnal (or even wintry) music like Mahler's 9th, Berg's Violin Concerto and Shostakovich's Eighth (Symphony and String Quartet)?
I'm in the middle of writing a cycle of pieces that share something in common with the Adagio: They're short movements for strings that are voiced like choral vocal compositions. The voice leading and everything else suggests movements from a requiem. I was also thinking of Monteverdi and Josquin.
