Classical Music

The Hubster said:
Henryk Gorecki: "Symphony No3: The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs"

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Fantastic recording with soprano Zofia Kilanowicz providing amazing and haunting vocal work. I can't recommend this highly enough, guranteed to destroy a good mood.
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Sound very good, I especially am interested in pieces with vocal work such as Arias. I will definitely check this out. Cheers
 
Reading the lyrical content on these kinds of works helps a lot, as it does with reading librettas for Operas (the CD I recommended does come with this).

A soprano or tenor might not be singing in English, but comprehension of their words will open the music up for you remarkably.

Unlike many other forms of music, this is vital to the understanding of western art music - it opens the compisition up to the listener that much more, as 99.9% of compositions, especially that of older (e.g. Baroque, or Early Music) have a clearly defined purpose.

I also recommend (but not for melancholy as such) this recording of Mozart's Requiem. This kind of work is infact a "death mass", or "religious mass for death", and this work of his is extremely powerful. In some sections, I can almost imagine souls in heaven and hell, it is such visual music, brilliantly written only by someone so stark raving mad as Mozart could be.

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The musicianship and recording is simply mind-blowing, vocal work is stunningly powerful. A must-have.

My favourite sections for example:

Track 3 - "III. Sequenz 1. Dies Irae (Allegro assal)": the singing drives this movement entirely imo. A crushingly powerful wall of soprano voices supported by their tenors crying to heaven:

"King of majesty tremendous,
Who dost free salvation send us,
Found of pity, then defend us".

It is so powerful, it reduces me to tears almost every time. You cant do anything but sit back in awe, it's THAT fucking amazing. Music at its purest and most uncomprimisingly powerful best.

Track 7 - "III. Sequenz 5. Confutatis (Andante)", a thunderous, super-tight, almost galloping movement of the deeper strings, with heralding trumpets and booming kettle drums. Fucking dark as hell.

As you can tell by my babble above, you just must buy this CD. It's too fucking good to not own.
 
Prognostic said:
metal wrath i was joking about the john cage. that particular "piece" is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence.
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Cage was an artist and he was avante garde as hell, but he also had his head very far up his own arse/in the clouds. 4'33 is a good example actaully, think about it, the concept is mind blowing but in practice it really says nothing. He apparently based it on the idea that (in actaully complete silence) you would theoretically hear your own heart beat after 4'33 seconds. Don't ask me for the science of it because I don't know, it just what I've been told. Style over substance taken to indefinate extremes.
 
all_sins_undone said:
well im fairly new to this genre. could anyone recommend some artists/composors? ~*~thx~*~
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did you get to listen to any of the recommendations?
 
Geez, what a bunch of crap posts in this thread.

For sorrowful, check out Barber's Adagio for Strings. You've probably heard it in movies (Platoon comes to mind), and it is, to me, a peice that, performed well, can bring tears to my eyes for reasons I can't even begin to explain or understand. Real. Good. Stuff. (Interested to know what performances of this people suggest. For me, the slower, the better.)

For musicians who are interested in "classical" (don't know about the OP) and want to be amazed, check out Paganini. The 24 Caprices are a good place to start. The violoin virtuosity will floor you. Midori played it when she was, what? 12? Completely ridiculous. These pieces were basically written to own other violinists, and Paganini hands them their asses.
 
soundave said:
Geez, what a bunch of crap posts in this thread.

For sorrowful, check out Barber's Adagio for Strings. You've probably heard it in movies (Platoon comes to mind), and it is, to me, a peice that, performed well, can bring tears to my eyes for reasons I can't even begin to explain or understand. Real. Good. Stuff. (Interested to know what performances of this people suggest. For me, the slower, the better.)

For musicians who are interested in "classical" (don't know about the OP) and want to be amazed, check out Paganini. The 24 Caprices are a good place to start. The violoin virtuosity will floor you. Midori played it when she was, what? 12? Completely ridiculous. These pieces were basically written to own other violinists, and Paganini hands them their asses.
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awesome. thanks
 
Virtuosic violin playing is horrendously over rated and the biggest poncy fashion statement of the 19th & 20th centuries.

Please, spare me the wailing infant cries of a classical violinist using too much vibrato because they have little else to do. Massive yawn. I'll take a superior harpsichord cadenza (see Brandenburg Concertos) any day of the week.

Besides, for string instruments, the later metal wound string instruments are NO MATCH for the tone of the earlier gut strings. Period. There's simply no comparison.
 
i find different things to like in earlier and later music. there was a time when i couldn't listen to anything past beethoven (and even he was too modern for me in his last string quartets, i barely could listen to grosse fuge op.133 - now it's among my favorite works for the string quartet), but over time i started enjoying later in the 19th century and finally discovered some of the great stuff in the 20th century. i would pick tchaikovsky's or sibelius' violin concertos as masterpieces of the violin literature over most violin concertos from the baroque period. the emotion displayed on the sibelius concerto is phenomenal and no baroque concerto i know of matches it in those terms. it might be a different matter with chamber compositions, especially for compositions for (some) solo instruments. bach's cello suites, or works for the bass viol by marais or ste colombe stand proudly above basically all works for solo cello composed later on.

compositions demanding virtuoso violin playing by paganini and others may not appeal to everyone and this is understandable, since their purpose is basically just explore the limits of the instrument. paganini unfortunately couldn't go beyond that in composition. but, lizst, who composed the equivalent of the 24 caprices for the piano - the transcendental etudes - could go on to compose excellent music that isn't just for the sake of displaying virtuosity. one should not miss out on the other compositions just because he has also written stuff for showing off.
 
I just can't dig it, derbeder. :lol:

After listening and reading, I just find...

...well, let's put it this way - I was having a conversation with my gf the other day about this, and I feel that the evolution of instruments might have actually been a "big mistake". It was all revolving around "show" and "size" not substance or quality, it was a fashion revolution, not a logical one imo.

The changes from viol's to the present string family was an attempt at loudness, or rather their first attempts heading towards amplification if you look at it in a broader sense.

That's why the gut strings became obsolete: the "fashion" became "large".

I also find the later music to be a bit more "narcisstic" and less spiritual... it's deeper meaning, while still there, just isn't as epic. it should transcend the self, and I don't find more modern styles achieving this. Also, the focus becomes more on "shredding" (hehe, excuse a pun there) and the limitations of the instrument as you said.

I may well break free of this gripe, but I don't think I can see it happening.

I hear violins, cellos, double basses... my mind's alarm goes off saying "primitive". A single note from a piano... against the mighty resonance of the lute harpsichord.

For some reason, I see the earlier music and its instruments as more advanced, not the other way around.
 
The Hubster said:
I also find the later music to be a bit more "narcisstic" and less spiritual... it's deeper meaning, while still there, just isn't as epic. it should transcend the self, and I don't find more modern styles achieving this. Also, the focus becomes more on "shredding" (hehe, excuse a pun there) and the limitations of the instrument as you said.
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I don't think there is an excessive focus on virtuosity in 19th and 20th century classical music. There certainly are works which demand virtuosity, but one can't say that about the majority of the compositions. A work that is difficult to perform, like Prokofiev's first violin sonata, may also be rather spiritual. Or take Penderecki's Violin Concerto no.1. It isn't the easiest work to play for a violinist, but if that work does not have a deeper meaning, I don't know what does (perhaps getting close to Penderecki's Threnody in that respect).
 
I wonder how many of you realise that half of the composers you are talking about aren't even considered 'classical' by any means other than an arbitrary cataloguing nomenclature? Not that I give much credence to nomenclature myself.
 
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