Classical/Traditional Music

[Onder]

Listening to Fibich's first. Oh this kind of rural classical just makes me happy.

 

[SentinelSlain]

Richard Wagner is a baddass legend.

I don't actually care about opera, I can't cope with the sung lines, it's just jarring and fail to me, but the instrumental music and also Pilgrim's Chorus (which isn't) from Tannhäuser is amazing. Of course Ride of Valkyries is cool too.

I like some Beethoven and Bach too, plus what I've heard by Arnold Bax. It's just the damn operatic singing, it's so annoying. Fail.

 

[Onder]

John Tavener died.

 

[UltimateApathy]

Oh fuck yeah:


Oh hell yeah:

 

[Onder]

^ Neither of those really belongs in this thread if we're following the title, but w/e.

On topic, fucking december and christmas and shit. I somehow have christmas feels connected to baroque music and I should feed myself some also because I barely listen to baroque otherwise (I even remember saying I didn't like music this old few years back - in this thread I think). But that calm, churchy feeling. What are some of your favorites from this era and which ones evoke the christmas powa if any?

I'll start with some obvious shit:



+ some Bach cantatas maybe? Some Zelenka chamber music? And out of contemporary, how about Tavener, the recently passed away genius of sacred music?

 

[Onder]

Fucking birds everywhere. Carola Bauckholt.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

I recently discovered Darius Milhaud. He was a member of "Les Six" along with Arthur Honegger. The friend who recommended him to me called him the "French Ives," and I think that's very fitting. He frequently utilizes polytonality and sometimes juxtaposes different French folk tunes in this manner, so very Ivesian. Apparently they were well aware of each other. Interesting too, Milhaud was one of the European composers who fled to the United States as a result of WWII (Hitler, that is. He was Jewish), along with Schoenberg and a number of others.

He was an extremely prolific composer, a unique quality in the twentieth-century. As a result, however, I've had trouble finding a work that I really identify with. What I've heard is all very fun to listen to, but I haven't heard anything just yet that really sticks. That said, both his fourth symphony and fourth chamber symphony were great works. I'm not sure which I prefer. The fourth symphony has frequent use of percussion, which I love in orchestral works, and doodles on some marching tunes, but his fourth chamber symphony sounds much more vibrant, inspired, and lively. The two were composed about twenty years apart.

Definitely worth the listen if you're interested.

 

[uhhhhmmmm4]

Anyone else listen to Telemann of Quantz?

 

[Onder]

He was an extremely prolific composer, a unique quality in the twentieth-century. As a result, however, I've had trouble finding a work that I really identify with. What I've heard is all very fun to listen to, but I haven't heard anything just yet that really sticks. That said, both his fourth symphony and fourth chamber symphony were great works. I'm not sure which I prefer. The fourth symphony has frequent use of percussion, which I love in orchestral works, and doodles on some marching tunes, but his fourth chamber symphony sounds much more vibrant, inspired, and lively. The two were composed about twenty years apart.

Definitely worth the listen if you're interested.

Holy shit he has a shitload of quartets! I will have to look into those, yeah. Another prolific composer I can think of from the same period is Bohuslav Martinů.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

Anyone else listen to Telemann of Quantz?

Telemann is the type that I would only listen to for scholarly purposes. Baroque and Classical aren't my eras of favor. I'm more partial to empfindsamer Stil, Romantic, and Modern.

Holy shit he has a shitload of quartets! I will have to look into those, yeah. Another prolific composer I can think of from the same period is Bohuslav Martinů.

Holy shit, thanks for the rec. This is what I found a few moments after you mentioned him:



Totally awesome, I'll have to check out his works with more conventional instrumentation as well.

edit: So far his Fourth Symphony is great too.

 

[Onder]

^ I'm myself in the process of getting to know his works. As usual I first listened to the quartets and I loved the first one as it's still an early work and thus much like Janáček's. I liked some other chamber works too. Today I will go through some violin concertos album with Josef Suk playing. I'm excited.

 

[Onder]

I'd like to promote some youtube channels containing classical music if I may. The two with running scores are incipitsify and Score Follower. Both of them specialize in extra-modern music though so I'm not sure if they'll be received well here. (Oh well, by the two or three dudes going here). The third one doesn't have running scores but has a nice amount of less known 20th century czech classical.

(EDIT: Because there's not just Martinů.. )

 

[viewerfromnihil]

Some modern scores are ridiculous Iannis Xenakis' scoring actually really pissed of the Kronos Quartet and played a role in their departure from atonal music for minimalism. Thanks for the links, incipitsify's video of George Crumb's Black Angels was the video I watched a few months back. Though his scoring is conventional, it's not impossible to read like some others' are.

edit: On a side note, I'll be doing one of my honors projects on Richard Wagner for a history of race and racism course his semester. I'm currently working my way through Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation for a bit of a philosophical backdrop and listening through Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen while reading an English translation of the libretto. I doubt I'll listen to all 16 hours of it, but it's been fun so far.

edit2: I have to say, there were quite a few great 20th century Czech composers. I suppose it could be argued that they're "behind the curve" on modernism, but that's a crap argument. Musical perception is relative.

 

[Onder]

edit2: I have to say, there were quite a few great 20th century Czech composers. I suppose it could be argued that they're "behind the curve" on modernism, but that's a crap argument. Musical perception is relative.

Musical theorists complain that the taught progression of Smetana-Dvořák-Janáček-Martinů overshadows other Martinů's contemporaries, such as Schulhoff and then Haas for example.

BTW, your comment on percussions in orchestral works made me remember Rodion Shchredrin's second piano concerto where he goes straight into full-on jazz. That's really something. I had to search for it but it's the last movement. Another that I thought of was Vítězslav Novák's capriccio for cello and orchestra, he uses a lot of percussion there and it's also very jazzy. I enjoy things like that.

EDIT: Holy shit I'm listening to that Novák's capriccio and that's a brilliant jazz-classical fusion. Let me know if you can't find it on youtube, I can send you a sample.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

My music history textbook, written by Burkholder, doesn't delve into any of these works. As far as Czech composers, it ends at Smetana and Dvořák. But, that's the geographical effects on musical historiography for you, not to mention the limitations of survey textbooks in general.

The work by Shchredrin you mentioned was very good, the ending was awesome. The jazz snuck up on me, I barely noticed it. I checked out Novák's capriccio. It's very good for the style and fuses the two very well, but I'm not really much of a fan of jazz. I can appreciate it and all, but I don't go out of my way to listen to it. That said, I do enjoy it when it's in an unconvential setting, like Tim Buckley's Lorca. You may enjoy this:



If you like jazzy sounds in classical settings with a use of percussion, have you heard Charles Ives' Central Park in the Dark? It's pre-jazz, more like ragtime, but I always get a kick out of it when I listen to it. Ozawa's interpretation is the best.

 

[romanticism]

Come discuss things with me, Onder.

 

[Carpe Mortem]

I could use more recs, most of my classical interest involves the scores of movies I've seen and been paying enough attention to appreciate. Also I don't really know what constitutes classical, but I'm sure somebody will inform me if some of these don't fit.

My favorites, by my favorites, so you know what else I might dig:

Paganini


Elliot Goldenthal


Ennio Morricone


Howard Shore
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUly7GRsprQ&list=PLE8897D4BEFE2F520&index=1[/ame]

John Williams
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GHmXbhPlPY&list=PLABB56F4F645F1786&index=4[/ame]

Gustav Holst

 

[romanticism]

I'm not sure how to classify movie scores or video game scores, but either way you're in luck because John Williams takes a lot of themes straight out of 19th century classical. I could perhaps see some influences on Howard Shore in some more programmatic or pastoral symphonic works from the Romantic period. Well, when I say Howard Shore I'm obviously thinking Lord Of The Rings. Don't listen to the other two, really.

The easiest point to branch out from there is, of course, the Paganini concerto. Technically it's a classical era concerto so I'd be obligated to recommend something like Mozart's 5th violin concerto, but why not just go straight to Mendelssohn's masterpiece in E minor?

 

[romanticism]

I grabbed some Rameau and Couperin last night. Somewhat excited to hear just because my baroque collection has always been nearly as limited as my classical era collection (let's see, off the top of my head... Corelli, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Zelenka, Purcell, Scarlatti...fuck that's all I can even think of right now)

 

[viewerfromnihil]

Time for some Vivaldating.