The Classical Music Thread

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Moo!

[Primula Baggins]

Go away. I'm not done listening to the Goldberg Variations.

[Whistler]

Got 'em on my iPod here at the office. Thanks for reminding me!

Aaaaah! How could anybody not love the music that's the personal favorite of Hannibal Lecter?

[Primula Baggins]

There are a number of things for which I'm reluctant to forgive Thomas Harris, and that's probably at the top of the list.

[Erunáme]

Is this gonna turn into another Bach thread? :|

[Whistler]

It is, unless you change the subject!

[Erunáme]

Haven't I been doing my best? I've been discussing Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Brahms, and Mahler!

I do have to say one of my peeves with classical music threads is that they usually always end up revolving around Bach and Mozart. Those composers just don't do it for me unfortunately.

[Whistler]

Wagner.

Scared now?

[Primula Baggins]

I do have to say one of my peeves with classical music threads is that they usually always end up revolving around Bach and Mozart. Those composers just don't do it for me unfortunately.

<pat pat pat>

No doubt you'll appreciate them when you're older, dear.


...Now—hit me as hard as you can! It will feel good.



Er, ah. I have trouble not talking about Bach, because I love his music so deeply. Of course Bach and Mozart don't appeal to everyone who loves classical music. I have played and enjoyed and listen to the others you list. Brahms' First Symphony is wonderfully powerful.

Have you listened to much Shostakovich? I played in his Tenth Symphony in college and love it, but haven't branched out much from there (there is always more Bach I've never heard! ).

How about Beethoven? For me he has such a strong "flavor" that I can't listen to too much at once, even though it's really good—it's like eating an entire apple pie or something.

[Whistler]

And Wagner is like eating a whole apple tree.

[Primula Baggins]

Wagner is like getting lost in an apple forest while being pursued by angry demigods.

[TheTennisBallKid]

Aaaaah! How could anybody not love the music that's the personal favorite of Hannibal Lecter?

Ooooh, Silence Of The Lambs: Howard Shore. (yes, that's how my mind works...life is a word association game, and "Howard Shore" is my favorite word )


I'm sadly ignorant when it comes to classical music...


However, I do know Prokofiev from his scores to Alexander Nevsky and Ivan The Terrible. "The Battle On The Ice" is stunning, even more so when combined with the visuals.



ttbk

[Whistler]

Now, at the opposite end of the spectrum, there's Satie, whom I often listen to late at night in my studio.

Satie is unique among composers in having written BACKGROUND music meant to be listened to as an accompaniment to other activities. At performances of his work, he was sometimes known to have turned to his audience to say, "Why are you just sitting there? Get up and do something!"

He was out of his mind in a number of ways, most of them charming.

[Primula Baggins]

His Gymnopedies are wonderfully restful—if that's not an insult. It sounds as if he wouldn't have thought so.

[Jude]

Haven't I been doing my best? I've been discussing Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Brahms, and Mahler!

I do have to say one of my peeves with classical music threads is that they usually always end up revolving around Bach and Mozart. Those composers just don't do it for me unfortunately.

You could always start a "Late German Romantic" thread! Nobody would impose Bach and Mozart on that!

Technically, even Bach is out of place in a Classical Music thread.

[Primula Baggins]

Pedant!

[Jude]

And proud of it.

[Whistler]

That still leaves Mozart, though.

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

I've listened to and performed classical music for most of my life. I played the flute from age 9 through my early 20s. I eventually became a vocalist, and earned a Bachelor of Music Degree in Vocal Performance.

My dad has quite eclectic musical tastes. A large part of his record collection, however, is devoted to orchestral works of the late 19th century: the so-called "Romantic Era". His favorite instrument is piano, so piano concertos are among among the recordings he possesses. Of course the music my father listened to had a large influence on my tastes.

That being said, in general my tastes differ from my father's. I prefer Baroque (late 17th-early 18th centuries) and Classical Era (late 18th-early 19th centuries) works, which generally require smaller orchestras than Romantic Era. I do, of course, enjoy many 19th and 20th century works for vocalists, chorus, and/or orchestra. I enjoy German Lieder very much, particularly works by Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms.

My favorite Baroque composer is Georg F. Händel, my favorite Classical composer is Wolfgang A. Mozart. Of course there are a number of other composers whose works I enjoy very much.

I'm especially interested in opera. I guess that's not surprising considering I'm a vocalist. My favorite composer opera composers are Mozart, Giuseppe Verdi, and Giacomo Puccini.

Some of you mentioned the less-than-successful premier of Stravinsky's Le Sacre Du Printemps. My recollection was that there was a near-riot. Of course the sort of music Stravinsky had written was completely new to that audience. Today we've been exposed to a much greater variety of music, so it's hard to hard to imagine people responding that way. I do like Stravinsky's music very much.

If you've never been to a concert featuring 20th century atonal music written by the likes of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg you should give it a try sometime. You'd probably find it an ear-bending if not mind-bending experience.

[Primula Baggins]

Modern stuff—I actually learned to appreciate it through playing it. The professor who conducted our college orchestra was a composer, and we premiered a couple of his pieces, which sounded like noise the first time through but were music by the middle of the second week.

For me, at least, part of the pleasure of music is the flow of it—the progression, with its little surprises and its interesting left turns and its safe return home. We didn't get that with Dr. Meier's compositions, so it wasn't until I knew the flow of it that I could hear it as music.