Classical music - what makes you listen?

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 06:10 AM

Raggy,
       You swine!

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Helen
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 08:00 AM

Al, you don't need to bug off at all. Your opinions are welcome. I was trying to say in my post of 09 Apr 06 - 05:41 PM that there is some classical music I don't like listening to, but there are other pieces that I could listen to over and over. There are a myriad of styles of music within the "classical" label, and there are also a myriad of interpretations of pieces which can change my opinion of the piece, from love to hate, or vice versa, or from love or hate to indifference.

Helen

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Grab
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 12:38 PM

Don, I'm not denying that there's emotion in the storyline of operas.

We could also say that Jean-Claude Van Damme films have emotional content. Let's take "Kickboxer" for an example. His brother is a champion kickboxer, Van Damme isn't nearly as good. Then his brother gets paralysed by the bad guy hitting him when he's down, and Van Damme finds someone to train him up to get revenge. His brother gets kidnapped before the fight, so Van Damme basically stands there and gets beat up. Meantime his trainer raids the bad guy's place and frees Van Damme's brother, and Van Damme then fights back and demolishes the bad guy. Lots of emotion in that storyline, for sure.

Now take a guess at how much emotion you see Jean-Claude Van Damme (or pretty much any of the cast) putting in... ;-)

As far as I can see, the majority of operatic singers are hired on the basis of maintaining a decent tone at high volumes (which as you say is a rare ability in itself), and not on their ability to portray a character (which is also a rare ability). So this is rather like hiring people for a martial arts film based on whether they can do a jumping spinning back kick, rather than on acting ability. There will be some who can do both, but simple statistics tells you that they're going to be the minority.

I'm not saying that opera can't be performed by people with the ability to inject emotional content and acting into their performance - or for that matter that martial arts films can't be well-acted. I'm just saying that the vast majority of both aren't. Done well, they can be things of beauty. Done as most of them are, they're interesting for the technical ability of the participants, and nothing more.

All opera singers can do huge volume levels, wide vibrato, amazing range, etc. That doesn't mean that they *should*. That's the problem as I see it - an excess of technical ability and an insufficient amount of emotional involvement in the character to know when to use it.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 01:08 PM

No need to bug off, Al. What prompts my remarks here is that there is a great deal of enjoyment to be found in the whole run of classical music, and I think it's a pity that, for some reason, you're missing it. Perhaps these things are a matter of early exposure, but I have met people who've told me that they hate classical music, but when learned something about it, wound up real fans.

I'm thinking particularly of a woman I know who thought that my wife and I were some kind of culture-snobs because we had season tickets to Seattle Opera. "Nobody could really like opera!" she used to say. "All that screeching. . . ."   I asked her a few questions, learned that she had heard a few opera singers on the radio (one or two cuts from a "highlights" record), and that was it. It was a style of singing that she was not familiar with, and they were singing in a foreign lamguage so she had no idea of what they were singing about. So I challenged her, she winced a bit, and accepted the challenge.

I picked a full-length recording of a fairly short, well-known opera:   I Pagliacci (The Clowns). This is the one that contains the famous "Laugh, clown, laugh" tenor aria. I gave her the libretto (little booklet with the Italian lyrics in the left column and the English translation in the right column) so she could read the words they were singing, and if she got lost, I could explain what was going on in the plot. Anyway, we listened to the whole thing.

The opera ends tragically (I did a very brief synopsis in one of my posts above), and she was deeply move, practically teary-eyed when it ended. Her response to the opera when she knew what was going on? "That was beautiful! I had no idea!"

She's a real opera fan now. Never misses the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. Has a book on opera plots and reads up on whatever opera is coming up.

I think it's a real pity when people don't like classical music, because there is so much there, not just to enjoy, but to be inspired by. I just wish there were some way I could show you the way I did her.

Okay, I don't enjoy it all, but the field is so broad that there is a huge amount that I really love. As Helen says, there are many styles and many interpretations. But the whole smorgasbord of classical music is so broad and varied that it doesn't seem reasonable to issue a blanket dismissal of the whole thing.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 02:23 PM

Graham, as I mention above, these days two of the casting decisions made when putting an opera production together, in addition to a particular singer's vocal ability, are: do they look the part? And can they act?

The soprano with the big, powerful voice, but who is built like a pouter pigeon, is not going to be cast as an ingénue these days. The late Maria Callas lost a lot of parts when she bloated into a tub. She just wasn't being cast for the kind of parts she used to sing, so she went on a diet, slimmed down, and started getting the parts back. Lesson learned.

Just a point: some decades back, Mario Lanza was cast as the lead in the movie version of "The Student Prince" (1954). He cut the voice tracks for the movie, but was told by the studio execs that he had to loose weight. He had ballooned up to about 300 pounds. They weren't about to have this 300 pound globule of suet appearing as the handsome young prince, no matter how beautifully he sang. Lanza refused. So they dropped him and cast the slim, good-looking Edmund Purdom in the role. Purdom lip-synced to Lanza's voice tracks. This incident pretty much ended Lanza's movie career.

Granted, this was a Hollywood movie, but the same kind of casting decisions are being made by opera companies these days. Singers like Luciano Pavarotti (who, when he sings the young hippie poet, Rodolpho, in La Bohème tends to stretch credibility a bit, even if he does sing magnificently) are being "grandfathered" out. These days, you are more likely to see someone like Jerry Hadley singing roles like that.

In the Wagner Ring Cycle (four very long operas about—what!??—a stolen "ring of power" with a curse on it. Different story, similar maguffin), the Valkyrie, Brunhilde is usually depicted in cartoons as a very large woman carrying a spear and a shield, wearing wings on her helmet and a iron brassiere. There used to be some basis for this stereotype. But the last production I saw of it on television (Live from the Met, I think), the role of Brunhilde was sung by a tall, slender, very good-looking red-head. In addition to having the big voice required for the role, she looked very convincing as a warrior maiden.

These days opera singers have to have a) the voice, b) the looks, and c) the ability to act if they want to get the roles. If they have the voice, but not the looks or the ability to act, they have to be content with a recital career rather than opera. But even in recitals, being able to act with their voices—sing with emotion—is essential.

The times they are a-changin'.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 May 07 - 06:05 PM

My new project is getting my brother's classical works up on youtube with video or slide shows. Eventually, we will have live concert footage. In the meantime, I have done a "down and dirty" simple slide of the first page of his Rondo in C with live concert audio. If you'd like to check it out, please go to youtube. Thanks!

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 May 07 - 06:27 PM

All Mozart. Bach too. The late string quartets by Beethoven and the Diabelli Variations. And the late piano sonatas. Schubert's Quintet in C, the Great C Major Symphony and the last three piano sonatas. Schumann's piano works, especially Kreisleriana if Martha Argerich is playing it. "Rach Two" of course, because my teenage son played the clarinet in it once. Absolutely anything by Ravel and Vaughan Williams. Absolutely nothing by Vivaldi, Chopin, Tippett, Britten or Wagner (fascist pig!) and very little by Brahms and Elgar (both lugubrious) or Stravinsky (irritating), though I have exceptions apropos of the last three.   Thanks for asking.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 31 May 07 - 10:40 PM

Steve--

Curious as to what Vivaldi, Chopin, Tippett, and Britten have in common (you explained Wagner) Does every piece by each composer sound like everything else he has written to you?

Also curious as to whether you've sung or played classical music.

I suspect you have more adventurous taste than I do--you like the late Beethoven quartets. But you don't like Stravinsky--is Firebird an exception?

Thanks.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: elfcape
Date: 01 Jun 07 - 12:52 AM

This is really hard to describe but I'll give it a try.

What makes me listen to "classical" music?

First, it's my home place. I grew up in a place where it was ever present and constantly being made. By the time I was 2 I was participating in making it. My father played and taught the piano for a living and our whole life was centered around that. He lived in a very interesting and diverse musical world, but it began with Bach and more or less ended with Debussy who was still composing when my father started seriously being a musician.

But I think the thing that keeps me with it is the variety in the content.

First It has ideas and works them. Even when there's a movement of variations, the best composers play with the basic material in such a way as to spin it out for 8 or 10 minutes. So one gets to be with the music for a long time, compared to pop or folk or rock where everything starts, runs 3 minutes and ends. And the time is extended further when you have a multi-movement work. So the emotional effects are sustained longer and have variety within them.

Another form of content is harmony. There's very little to no sense of harmonic possibilities in any other genre except jazz. In modern rock and pop there's no harmony at all, no sense of being in a key and creating tension by moving away from and into another key. No return to the original key at the conclusion. Even Schubert's Lieder, which are little vignettes, explore harmonic relationships to create emotional effects. Contemporary singer-songwriters seem generally to be harmonically illiterate - they know nothing about how chords are related so chord progressions are nonsensical because they've been raised on pop music which has no understanding of harmony. Even the dance suites of Rameau and Couperin take advantage of the harmonic tension inherent in the relationships of chords by modulating temporarily into distant places instead of just to the dominant and back.

Still another form of content is imitation, which is widely used by the best composers of every period. Even Monteverdi, who was rebelling against the counterpoint of the late medieval church masses, and thus tried to write very vertical music, eventually realized that he could use contrapuntal and imitative writing to heighten tension and that bashing his listeners with chords wasn't going to work as a steady diet. This is where improvisers like the Dead ultimately fell down. They depended on the beat just heavily enough that they couldn't get loose, despite their basically contrapuntal improvisational style. And, of course, the Dead also suffered from very limited harmonic skills, as well as basing their improvs on music with a narrow harmonic premise to begin with.

Then there are all the colors - like flutes and bassoons, horns and 'cellos, solo passages and massed sections. Variety. High voices and low. True, some music is more limited - string quartets are not a colorful as a small orchestra. A single singer with piano may not have the colors of a small chorus with orchestra. But the entire genre does have that variety in aural color. And someone like Beethoven didn't allow himself to depend on the small range of colors in a string quartet when he could use harmonic color, modulation, counterpoint and structure to compensate for the bareness of the quartet. Brahms seems to have felt so limited by the palette of the string quartet that he had to add a piano or clarinet to hold his own interest.

Still another form of content is rhythm. First there's the meter - 2 beats or 3. Not much non-classical music has more than 2 beats. True there's a maverick tradition of waltzes in celtic dance music, and after a few hundred years of 2 beats some irish musicians discovered the irregular meters from eastern Europe. But, of course, Bartok did that back in 1910 before he fled the Nazis, and he transformed his collecting by composing his own really scary works using what he absorbed. But aside from the occasional waltz, non-classical music seems to be bound by 2s whereas "classical" music has had units of 3 since the 13th century and certainly triple time is normative from the beginning of the Renaissance.

In addition, the beat is often played with so it shifts, or conflicts with the harmonic rhythm (the rate at which chords change) - the other kind of rhythm.

And then there's enormous variety in tempo - the speed the music moves along at. Everything from frantic to somnolent somewhere in the repertoire.

Now I admit the comfort factor is really strong for me. I've been immersed in "classical" music for just shy of 65 years now and it's undeniably my home place as I said. And it is interesting to try to figure out why I continue to find it so satisfying.

And it's not the only music I listen to, I've passed through the folk scene seriously at least twice since college and done a lot of various kinds of folky dancing too. But the American singer-songwriter scene has pretty much lost me, and there's no way I want the pop and rock racket that people mistakenly call music in my ecosystem. I really don't like being beat over the head with that rhythm, nor do I find any sort of sheets of screaming reverb attractive. And if I want to listen to poetry being declaimed with an undercurrent of music I'd like to be able to hear the words, too, above the beat.

My quite a bit more than 2 bits for you!

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: kendall
Date: 01 Jun 07 - 07:28 AM

I was not exposed to classicaL music at home, with the exception of the Lone Ranger on radio.
My first real taste of it came in grammar school, then in...wait for it...cartoons!

I can't say I like all classical music, in fact, much of it bores me, and I can not abide sopranos, and worst of all,the coloratura. They remind me of the old Mainers description of the bagpipes. He said "They sound like someone gathered up a dog fight, and threw it into a pig pen."
Like Al, I'm not trashing someone elses opinion of this music, I'm only saying I don't like it.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: kendall
Date: 01 Jun 07 - 07:31 AM

Batgodess, do you know about WBACH? it's a local radio station that plays only classical music. You can get it on your computer, and there is one station in Kennebunk that you might be able to get on your radio.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Woods
Date: 01 Jun 07 - 06:02 PM

I started out with music playing the piano, when I was 10 or 11 years old. It wasn't long before I latched on to Baroque (which usually gets lumped into Classical music, just as the Romantic and later periods do). Later when Bluegrass caught my ear, I wondered at what made it seem 'similar' to Baroque to me. I finally decided that it was: moto perpetuo. I still jump back and forth easily between listening to Baroque and Bluegrass. I love the intertwined melodies of polyphony of the one, and the sometimes complex chord progressions of the other. Anyway, that's my tastes.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: kendall
Date: 02 Jun 07 - 07:24 AM

Well said, Woods. I agree.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: keberoxu
Date: 18 Apr 16 - 03:46 PM

I'm posting here because, in Breeze Shooting land below the line, somebody caught a steelhead trout and it reminded me of "Die Forelle" by Franz Schubert. I thought I ought to continue above the line, in the music section, without starting a new thread, so here we are.

No, I'm not going to answer the question, I'm just going to shamelessly continue the Forelle digression, totally exploitative of me.

You know what I think about Schubert, after years as an accompanist at the piano for voice teachers and their students? I think Schubert had some kind of a THING for running water. Not just water:
has to be flowing, running water. The pianists who have to play those accompaniments know what I am talking about: Die Schöne Müllerin, a whole cycle that takes place next to a millstream with all these running-water noises. I don't know that Schubert was so concerned with the Pro-Fish, Anti-Angler viewpoint of the poet, whose name I mercifully forget, in "Die Forelle." No, I think Schubert just took one look at the first line of the poem:

In einem Bächlein helle...

In a clear little stream...

and said the Viennese equivalent of: HOT DAMN, running water! And he's off and running himself.

Yes, Steve (Shaw), I have played those variations with a string quartet. My problem is that I have sat through too many Disney feature-length animated films like "Fantasia." When we get to the variation, I forget which numbered one, where the double-bass viol takes the melody and the piano goes absolutely frantic, I forget about the trout and the stream completely: I imagine a big old whale, sporting in the ocean, breaching and blowing and flapping his flukes, with maybe some dolphins and/or sea otters going all frisky. Whew!

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Apr 16 - 04:36 PM

If you want Schubert and running water, listen to the A flat Impromptu, D. 899 no 4.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Apr 16 - 04:50 PM

Or Ravel, Ondine from Gaspard de la Nuit. Very shimmery-watery.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Apr 16 - 06:06 PM

Then, in contrast to shimmery rivery music, there's big wave music such as La Mer, Fingal's Cave and Sinbad the Sailor in Scheherazade. Vltava is sort of rivery, but it's big-rivery. And Blue Danube. You've got me started now! I'm only counting watery-sounding music, so Handel doesn't get a look-in. 😉

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Apr 16 - 06:34 PM

I have just been listening to a CD of music by Toru Takemitsu, mostly music about rain. Drips, splatters, trickles, whooshes - wonderfully atmospheric.

But for me, the most intense music about water is the prelude to Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, depicting a sunset over the sea. Nobody else ever created orchestral sounds like it.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Apr 16 - 07:02 PM

To answer Paul's complaint from 10 years ago about Classic FM, their music sounds so tiresomely loud and in-your-face because they use crude compression. At times it's hardly listenable-to at all. You even hear digital clipping due to overmodulation. When I hear a symphony I don't want the solo flute to sound louder than the whole flippin' orchestra. Radio 3 is far from perfect at times but at least they use far less compression. I understand that some of their broadcasts are at near-CD quality with regard to compression and bit rates and all that other stuff I don't understand. And, after all the hype and all this time, DAB sound quality is a disgrace. We live in the era of mass MP3!

I see I posted about nine years ago to this thread. I've changed my mind about Stravinsky, who I admire, and I've also come to admire Sibelius. But those late Beethoven piano and string quartet works remain the pinnacle for me. I can live with absolutely everything that Mozart ever composed too. I sometimes think that The Magic Flute is a most perfect work of art.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Apr 16 - 07:17 PM

Oops, that was Paul Burke. I know he's still around!

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 18 Apr 16 - 10:02 PM

Peace, Flow, Harmony.

Another lifetime ago...a local radio station gave out free tickets to classical events if you sent in a postcard with the correct answer to a radio question.   While reading and taking notes for graduate studies the gifted 1941 Music Dictionary was close by.

At least twice a month, and sometimes twice a week tickets arrived for theatre, ballet, and classical. If you dressed "to the nines," you were frequently bumped to "the golden circle." Ahhh...the highball perqs of being a well mannered graduate student.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Escorts are still in demand...you just need to listen in a ratio of five to one.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Apr 16 - 10:05 PM

I'd like to see that, gargoyle! You, dressed to the nines, that is.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Mr Red
Date: 19 Apr 16 - 03:09 AM

Classic FM here in the UK had a phase of playing Oshokan Farewell.
Who could tire of that?
But then what about Salut d'Amour & Chanson de Matin?

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Apr 16 - 04:50 AM

Gosh, I tired of that dirge years ago. We must have played the damn thing five hundred times at our session, not through any choice of mine. Pauline Cato and Tom McConville made a good fist of it in the 90s. Bloody Cnat, nightmare on a diatonic harmonica. Had to get my chromatic out.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Helen
Date: 19 Apr 16 - 06:39 AM

Wow. What a thread! I started it 10 years ago and it flourished then, died down for a while and sprouted again. I'm halfway through re-reading it.

So much music, so little time!

I'm surprised I wasn't evicted from Mudcat for inciting such an enthusiastic discussion about "boring old classical music". LOL

Helen

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Apr 16 - 09:02 AM

This thread belongs here, good and proper. The great composers were influenced by traditional music big-time. Mozart wrote several sets of German country dances, and I could show you at least three places in Beethoven's late quartets that pay homage to country dance, and they're not remote references either. Then there's the Pastoral Symphony, as was mentioned above, where he has a village band getting its rhythms tied up in knots (who among us hasn't been there!). The trio of the seventh symphony is a tune from an old pilgrims' hymn and he made valiant attempts to set a number of Scottish folk songs. Brahms spent many a night boozing on his own in a local tavern, intensely interested in the resident pub band, and there's his big set of Hungarian dances. Then there's Vaughan Williams. What more can you say! (Plenty!)

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: keberoxu
Date: 19 Apr 16 - 12:53 PM

And then there's Mozart, for string quartet and two French horns: "Ein Musikalischer Spass," A Musical Joke.

This is actually a multi-layered, complicated thing. As I recall it has four movements, and you need some twenty minutes of time to get through it.

The wrong notes written in are obvious, and so are some of the rhythmic mistakes, also written in. All to depict incompetent players. But Mozart also gets some things out of his system about incompetent COMPOSERS, who write things that he cannot bear to hear performed -- so of course Mozart has his hapless sextet executing some groaners, but they are bad jokes on the COMPOSER's level. People who sit through a performance, and giggle at the big WHOOPEE funny spots, can barely appreciate how much rehearsal Mozart requires to execute all the gaffes...correctly. I do hope Mozart felt better after getting that off his chest.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Apr 16 - 01:31 PM

I bet Les Dawson had to practise like mad to play the piano so accurately badly!

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Apr 16 - 08:51 PM

I need to rephrase that, don't I?

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: gillymor
Date: 19 Apr 16 - 10:22 PM

There is a very funny comedy series on Amazon Prime called "Mozart in the Jungle" starring Gael Garcia Bernal and it follows the travails of a young oboist (Lola Kirke) who's trying to catch on with a big time orchestra (think New York Philharmonic). In addition to all the yuks I'm picking up on some interesting pieces that I was unfamiliar with like Danzon #2 by Arturo Marquez.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Stanron
Date: 22 Jan 17 - 09:14 PM

Lovely thread. Nice to read postings from some of those who are no longer with us too.

I like early music, Renaissance music and Baroque. After that I am less enthused. For me Beethoven summons more respect than affection. I like Mozart, all the Bachs, both Scarlattis and Handel. Heading backwards in time Purcell, Dowland Byrd and Tallis. Out of England just about all of polyphony is, of course, heavenly.

Sunday afternoons on Radio 3 there is an hour of Early music followed by Choral evensong. Now I'm not in agreement with the doctrine but the music makes it more than worth it.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 01:57 AM

Prokofiev "Chout"
Beethoven early dance music
Shostakovich 5th
Verdi ballet music
Faure "Requiem"
Purcell
Mussorgsky "Pictures" piano
Scriabin

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: treewind
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 03:28 AM

I'll happily listen to almost anything on BBC Radio 3, from Susato to Stravinsky and including some jazz, but not Choral Evensong, even for the music.

The Early music show is a particular favourite, also the Saturday morning record review programme which is a great education in listening to classical music and understanding the subtleties of different performances.

Also R3 is the only national radio station where you hear proper folk music! Especially on Late Junction when Verity Sharp is in charge.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Acorn4
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 04:22 AM

Max Bruch ; "Kol Nidrei"
Brahms: First Piano Concerto

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 05:53 AM

I gave up on Radio 3 after Donald Macleod turned it into a soapbox for reactionary propaganda, using Shostakovich at every opportunity to refight the Cold War. I don't find a medium scripted by MI6 any fun to listen to, and almost entirely stopped listening to the radio years ago.
(As far as I know Donald Macleod hasn't died of sclerotic bigotry yet, and when he does MI6 will just appoint another ventriloquist's dummy in his place).

Fortunately I have an enormous collection of ex-charity-shop CDs. Two composers I've been listening to a lot lately are Monteverdi and Messiaen. And the darkest music of the early Baroque, like Schutz at his most elegiac. The Thirty Years War is what we're living in now.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: keberoxu
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 12:51 PM

Monteverdi! My favorite music history professor, Dr. Sheveloff, gave a memorable metaphor for Monteverdi: a colossus with one foot in the Renaissance and the other foot in the Baroque. One unique thing about Monteverdi, is that even though his scorings for instruments and ensembles repay close attention, every surviving composition of his (entire compositions, not excerpts) has the human voice in it, and words to be sung. "Primo la parola, doppo la musica."

Have you heard "Con che soavitá"? brief, bold, and beautiful.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Helen
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 02:00 PM

I just re=read this whole thread yesterday. I'm happy that I asked that original question over 10 years ago and that so many people have contributed to it and listed your favourite music.

So much music, so little time.

Here are a few more of my faves:

Jordi Savall's early music CD's, e.g. Hesperion XX! Estampies & Danses Royales. I especially the Estampies.

A Vivaldi choral piece called Domine Deus, Rex Coelestus - which I want played at my funeral. In my opinion, it is a perfect piece of music, especially that version.

5 CD set

Just in case the long link doesn;t work:
https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Choral-Music-Vol-Introduzione/dp/B00000E3KJ/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1485196963&sr=1-3

Then there is Bobby McFerrin's version of Vivaldi - Concerto for two cellos in g minor, RV 531, especially the Largo part starting at 4 mins 20 into the track.

And someone mentioned Bach, St Matthew's Passion. I first heard this piece on a tinny tiny little transistor radio about the size of a cigarette packet. I was sitting in the doorway of my teeny-tiny student one room flat in the sun and it came on the radio. I couldn't afford a record player but I went out and bought the vinyl record as soon as I could and waited years before I could actually play the record.

Thijs Van Leer -
Erbarme Dich from 'ST Matthew Passion' BWV 244

Thijs Van Leer was in the fusion group called Focus, way back when.


There's more, but I'll have to gather my resources for another posting.

Thanks for keeping this thread alive. What a joy!

Helen

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Helen
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 02:26 PM

Oops. Spelling error: Coelestis not Coelestus.

Domine Deus, Rex Coelestis

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: gillymor
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 03:05 PM

I'm also glad it's Bach, Helen. Where's it been Haydn?

I'll get my cape.

I've been seeking out works by English composers, here's my Lizst (sorry):

Sospiri by Elgar

Gerald Finzi: Lo, the full, final sacrifice, Op.26 - Amen (Instrumental)

Romance for String Orchestra - Finzi

Nocturne Op.7 (New Year's Music)- Finzi

And I agree, Jordi Savalli rocks!

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Helen
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 04:52 PM

Well, Mr g, about time you showed up again, wisecracks and all.

Way back on 01 Apr 06 - 04:12 AM MBSLynne mentioned one of your favourites: Einaudi.


Helen

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: gillymor
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 05:25 PM

I hadn't noticed that, Helen. I'll have to read back through this thread though I've fallen out of love with Einaudi (not really) since I heard his music in a T.V. commercial recently.

BTW, Savalli wasn't a typo on my part, I just think of him in the plural as he means so much to me.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 06:00 PM

And someone mentioned Bach, St Matthew's Passion. I first heard this piece on a tinny tiny little transistor radio about the size of a cigarette packet.

I first heard Messiaen's "Turangalila" around 1965 on the next size up from that, a 1960s portable tranny the size of Bible. My father had won it on a quiz show. The classical radio station (1YC Auckland) was 80 miles away, low powered and AM - reception was terrible. I'd found I could boost it by holding on the tip of the aerial. But a lot of Messiaen's sounds came through just fine.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Helen
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 07:53 PM

Jack Campin,

Re the transistor stories, my hubby once asked me how I could stand my stereo system not being top of the range in terms of quality of sound when I love music so much. I told him I hear it in my head, and the sound is just a reminder of how wonderful it sounds in my head. Like a mnemonic, helping me to remember.

He's an electronics engineer with a passion for sound systems. He probably doesn't get what I was saying, but even hearing a piece of music on a tinny little transistor radio can still be a revelatory experience.

gillymor, that just sounds like post-implementation justification for a wetware failure/operator error, i.e. your typo. But funny!

Helen

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 08:03 PM

The very first classical music I ever listened to was Schubert's four Impromptus, D899. I was 22 and living in the teachers' hostel in Chelsea, the old MaJon's site. I had a Ferguson radio cassette recorder and I taped the music from the radio. The wow and flutter was legendary. I couldn't get my head around the transcendent beauty of that music. Not long after that I taped Beethoven's Seventh too. I picked precisely the right music to get a chap hooked for life. I first met Mrs Steve in that hostel and we got married two years later. I had a wonderful friend called Steve Rose (not the Guardian one) who lent me his records of Beethoven's late string quartets. I knew hardly any other classical music at all but those "complicated" works drew me in straight away and have been my companions for over forty years. I have five versions of them on CD, including the CD versions of those LPs he lent me, played by the Smetana Quartet. You can still buy them today, as you can the 1930s versions played by the Busch Quartet. The only barriers to letting this wonderful music into your life are the barriers you yourself might put up. There's no "hard" music. Beethoven, Mozart and Bach all jump straight out of the record player, grab you by the lapels and shout "Oi, you, listen to this! I wrote this for YOU!" Even Messiaen!

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 08:22 PM

This video of a performance of Turangalila shows why a simple little tranny and a bit of auditory imagination is all you need:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PjyCpRKDrk

It's a big complicated orchestra, but most of the time there are only a few things happening. The videographer does a very good job of zooming in on the constantly changing small groups of players who are the focus of attention at any moment.

What my little tranny couldn't do (and my computer speakers can't do it either) is convey the sheer chest-slamming impact of all those brass instruments hammering out that Statue Theme (think Easter Island megaliths) near the start. But if you've ever heard massed brass you can imagine it.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 09:33 PM

I find it a bit overblown for my taste, Jack, though a mate of mine puts up fierce advocacy. I must admit that it's impressive if nowt else. Same bloke browbeat me into loving Stravinsky and Sibelius. He's tried to get me going on the Second Viennese School. No bloody danger.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: kendall
Date: 23 Jan 17 - 10:01 PM

In a less classical vein, I don't swoon, but I feel like it when I hear HEIFITZ PLAY Scottish FANTASY. I'm A DOON FOR lack of JOHNNIE WOULD BRING TEARS TO A GLASS EYE.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Jan 17 - 01:38 AM

Charles Ives' 4th Symphony.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Jan 17 - 04:31 AM

If I were forced by some malevolent power to choose a single piece of 20th century music as my very favourite I'd choose Rhapsody In Blue.

Subject: RE: Classical music - what makes you listen?
From: Helen
Date: 24 Jan 17 - 02:25 PM

Steve, I am at a loss to work out why a malevolent power would be forcing you to choose your fave cm piece. Surely that malevolent power's priority to-do list would be a little more universal than putting you on the spot over your cm preferences. LOL

However, Rhapsody in Blue is definitely a good top choice, in my opinion.

After re-reading this thread a couple of days ago, I hunted out the Music of the Renaissance CD early in the thread. I am blessed with a job which requires repetitive processing work on a computer. The blessing is that I can sit and listen to my mp3 player all day at work. My original mp3 died a few years ago and I had to set up the music on a new one through different software, and I forgot to put the Renaissance CD on the new one. I listened to it again yesterday.

It is beautiful. Some of the music is a bit gloomy, but still beautiful.

Helen