posted
haha, at the philly book signing he came in telling us that he was listening to (i forget) and it got him in an english speaking mood.+
Posts: 262 | Registered: Jan 2005
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I'm very eclectic, but quite picky, as well.
In classical music, I love Satie, Stravinsky, Barber, Copeland, Bach, Chopin, Brahms, and after "Immortal Beloved" I finally acquired a taste for Beethoven. I'm also a fan of most of the Russians from Mussorgsky and Borodin to Prokofiev, with only Tchaikowski as a prominent exception.
I love country music - it almost equals classical on the running time count on my XM radio.
I also love MPB - musica popular brasileira - the Brazilian post-samba music of Maria Bethania, Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, and many later singers like Djavan and Marisa Monte.
The folk-rock of the early seventies is prominent in my listening - I cycle through the complete works of Joni Mitchell and Carole King and James Taylor. But there's lots of pure rock and roll from that period in my collection as well.
But my deepest roots are, I'm afraid, in APS - American Popular Song. Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, on up through Johnny Mercer, Bacharach and David, and the handful of others who continue to write well-structured, musically interesting, and truthful and moving songs. Michael Feinstein, Tony Bennett, Diana Krall, and many others (whom I have reviewed, often!) are keeping this branch of music available in fresh recordings.
And then there are odd bits and pieces from every other genre. But within each of these genres there are performers and songs and recordings that I truly loathe ... so it's not that I like everything of anything; but I like something of everything.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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OSC... do you listen to music while you write-- if so, do you feel that sways the emotion you convey as you write.
I used to write all the time (if you ever see a Trarian Trilogy series on the shelves in 50 years or so, it's mine ) and I used music to help me feel and convey the emotions, but it paced my stories all wrong.
Posts: 84 | Registered: Jun 2005
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You don't like Tchaikovski? That's surprising; everyone loves Tchaikovski!
Okay, granted, Romeo and Juliet is vastly overplayed and overrated, but there has to be at least something from Nutcracker that you enjoy. Moreover, if you don't know the 1812 Overture, how can you possibly appreciate the 1712 Overture by P.D.Q. Bach?
I'm also rather surprised not to see Liszt in that list (hah!), but I guess you couldn't write down everyone.
For a completely different style (piano/vocal), try out Vienna Teng. I've found her to be an exceptionally talented musician, a natural with the piano and capable of writing truly affecting songs.
Posts: 293 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
what about the Red Army Choir?
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Tchaikovsky, Liszt, and Wagner all had an "uber-romantic" chromatic palette that lacks the subtle beauty of Brahms, Satie, or Beethoven. Chopin was also very chromatic, but his piano music still has a French touch of restraint over the gushing chords of Tchaikovsky and Wagner. Tchaikovsky sounds the most like the other western composers, whereas the other Russians of the mighty 5 all had unique, nationalistic sounds.
So I guess, as far as classical music, Card likes the unique, simple, and less popular composers...
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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Do you like opera? Tchaikovsky wrote Eugene Onegin. Dmitri Hvorostovsky sings an excellent Onegin and pretty much everything else. I love Baritones. And also Dir en grey and jazz, classical, poppy songs that have soul and something intense about them and anything that is good.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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People seem to be deliberately avoiding Mozart. I wonder why this would be, as Mozart was (IMHO) the greatest musician who ever lived. Listen to Twinkle, Twinkle-the original version, played on piano. There is no need to hate a composer just because he was(and is) extremely popular.
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Mozart's "greatness" was that he was a child prodigy who could pump out ridiculous AMOUNTS of music from every genre in a short period of time. As far as umm...originality...the vast majority of Mozart's music is simple, formulaic, and quite limited in terms of form and harmony. Mozart composed conventional, popular music with great melodies--which makes it good listening--but a lot of it is really quite boring. Beethoven, on the other hand, pushed the boundaries and conventions of the classic period and really changed the course of music history. Most of the great 19th century composers cited Beethoven as their biggest influence.
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The great mass in C minor comes to mind. It's definetly not boring, it gives me chills. Not to diss on Beethoven, I adore him, you get the beautiful beginnings of the Romantic Era, but Mozart is pretty damn cool.
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When you listen to music, you shouldnt always be analyzing whether it is simple, or original, or if it pushes the boundaries. Nor should it be about their influence. Back in those days, popularity was actually a pretty good measuring stick of musical quality, and Mozart's music was extremely popular.
I also love Scarlatti's piano arrangements, and Rachmaninov's piano work-he played the instrument to an incredible extent.
And metal, of course.
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Ooo You might like Dir en grey, the Best Band Ever... But not everyone likes them as they are a bit intense... I adore that band...
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Launchywiggin: Mozart's "greatness" was that he was a child prodigy who could pump out ridiculous AMOUNTS of music from every genre in a short period of time. As far as umm...originality...the vast majority of Mozart's music is simple, formulaic, and quite limited in terms of form and harmony. Mozart composed conventional, popular music with great melodies--which makes it good listening--but a lot of it is really quite boring. Beethoven, on the other hand, pushed the boundaries and conventions of the classic period and really changed the course of music history. Most of the great 19th century composers cited Beethoven as their biggest influence.
I think you marginalize a tad bit too much LW. I have myself pointed out all these things about mozart, but its important to remember the time period in which Mozart was writing, and what kind of person he was really.
A mind like Mozart's is obviously quite rare. He was such a savant, such a truely gifted musician that for him, hearing and remembering and analyzing and playing a peice of music was what picking up a book and READING is for most people. There are stories of his sitting at the lap of CPE Bach and playing an improvised second movement to a suite of peices for keyboard, which he would later write down for the man. This was a young child who could live largely and minutely through any peice of music, breathing it in and blowing it out like air.
Here's the problem your pointing out and its a valid one too: Mozart was SUCH a genius, such an uncanny ability that his music perfectly expressed the desires of his audience and his heart. What is considered for Mozart to be his "mature period" is for any other composer, the developmental stage in compostion, when the composer mimicks and mirrors the work he hears aroun him. For Mozart, one of the greatest keyboard players who ever lived, and possessor of the one of the largest repetoires of any musician known to history, his influences were so much a part of him, that his voice had yet to shine through.
In fact we DO sometimes see insights into what Mozart's real work would have been, and I'm telling you it would have been simply unbelievable. Look at the fantasia in C-minor, for instance, and you'll see that if that kind of mastery on form and function can be had by a composer in his twenties (his twenties for God's sake!) then his death was an unspeakable tragedy.
It was really only until quite recently in musicological history that Mozart's works have been redefined with his life-span in mind. He is now seen as the genius that was, and the super-man who would have been. Beethoven on the other hand, really did reach his personal apex with the 9th symphony. If he hadn't died of syphilis or alchoholism, or the cumulative effects of his unhealthy life-style, its not altogether certain he could have topped that work, since it took him half his life to formulate in his own mind. So while I agree with your basic premise, you do need to give Mozart quite a bit more credit; after all he didn't live half of the lifespan he should have expected, and in that time he wrote more than nearly an composer ever has in a full life.
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posted
Points all well taken. I was just responding the the claim that he was the greatest musician who ever lived. Definitely one of the most gifted--AND he composed successfully in every genre, so it's a valid claim if we were still in the 18th century. It's obviously not really fair to compare Mozart to any of his successors--especially because of his tragically short life, and I DO give Mozart credit for his achievements.
BUT...for sheer personal listening enjoyment--only about 30% of Mozart's music is really great. The rest is all quite "good", but it gets old fast.
And, uh...I took 4 semesters of Music History, too. But thanks for the review anyway... :-)
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posted
Alas, the greatest musician who ever lived was a Saxon boy named Brunhelm, born in 313 a.d. in a village not far from the current site of Dresden. It's tragic that there was no musical notation in those days, so the only people who got to hear his music were people of his village and the occasional traveler. He could improvise intricate melodies with fantastic chord changes implied by his melodies, and so clear was his sense of pitch that he actually discerned quarter tones and thus worked with 24-note chromatics. He never sang the same song twice, and nobody else could sing anything he made up, but those who heard him often wept with the beauty of it. He was killed by a falling tree in a lightning storm at the age of 22, and the only child he sired (unfortunately, with his older brother's wife) was born stone deaf and never reproduced. So we can only speculate about what all of music might have been like had his genes been able to continue.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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If none of his music was ever written down or recorded, how is it that you know that Brunhelm was the greatest composer who ever lived? (joking)
Seriously, though, a good deal of middle eastern and oriental music uses quarter-tone scales. I listen to some of that stuff-It's mind-blowing. I personally play guitar and piano, so I can't play most of those songs, but my barber and his dad play the ourde, and they'll occasionally let me play. It's really fun.
P.S. I like Dir en grey too. Their singer can do some pretty cool things.
Posts: 1594 | Registered: Apr 2006
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Actually its more common in eastern music for the octave to be divided among 8 key tones, just as in western music, however they are sometimes divided by third steps instead of half-steps. This makes the octave divisible into 24 tones, with 8 key tones, or 5 key tones in the pentatonic scale. This doesn't produce quarter tone scales, since the scales are actually the same as in western music, with with a difference in tuning, because they ignore equal temperment, and instead tune according to the natural harmonic series on most traditional eastern instruments. This makes the scales sound very different, but in fact they are only arrived at differently. I recently heard about a set of tuned bells found in the ashes of a burned village, buried in the earth in China for 8,000 years. The bells were tuned very near to a major scale, as in western music.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Mozart's "greatness" was that he was a child prodigy who could pump out ridiculous AMOUNTS of music from every genre in a short period of time.
I'm inclined to think Mozart's "greatness" was that he wrote music that sounds great.
And I'm sure he didn't write music in every genre. Although I'm sure if rock had been around when Mozart lived, he would have composed some great-sounding rock songs too!
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: And I'm sure he didn't write music in every genre. Although I'm sure if rock had been around when Mozart lived, he would have composed some great-sounding rock songs too!
Just consider Freddie Mercury as the logical extension of Mozart's career in Rock, and it all comes together.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Actually its more common in eastern music for the octave to be divided among 8 key tones, just as in western music, however they are sometimes divided by third steps instead of half-steps. This makes the octave divisible into 24 tones, with 8 key tones, or 5 key tones in the pentatonic scale. This doesn't produce quarter tone scales, since the scales are actually the same as in western music, with with a difference in tuning, because they ignore equal temperament, and instead tune according to the natural harmonic series on most traditional eastern instruments. This makes the scales sound very different, but in fact they are only arrived at differently. I recently heard about a set of tuned bells found in the ashes of a burned village, buried in the earth in China for 8,000 years. The bells were tuned very near to a major scale, as in western music.
Orincoro, this sounds fascinating. Do you have any sources where I could find more about this instrument?
Also, the tonal system that you describe: would that be reminiscent of how western keyboards were tuned prior to the popularization of the well-tempered claviers (the instruments, not the music)?
Your expertise in the musical field makes me curious as to your profession Orincoro. Are you, like me, a professional in the field of music, or simply an extremely knowledgeable hobbyist?
Posts: 1099 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
(My point, with Brunhelm, was that it's absurd to try to determine who was the best or greatest at any art. Greatest for whom? At what aspect of the art? I happen to know that I am the greatest writer of Orson Scott Card novels that ever lived; I would be very depressed if I were not.)
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Orson Scott Card: (My point, with Brunhelm, was that it's absurd to try to determine who was the best or greatest at any art. Greatest for whom? At what aspect of the art? I happen to know that I am the greatest writer of Orson Scott Card novels that ever lived; I would be very depressed if I were not.)
Bando and OSC, Funny coincidence, I posted that last comment about tuning systems mistakenly in this thread, I think it was destined for a thread on the other side of the river. I just now noticed.
Someone had been talking about eastern tunings in another thread, and amazingly there is this little bit about chromatic melodies from OSC, and anyway my comment looks like it fell out of the sky, sorry about that. It did!
Bando, I am a music student in my 3rd year at UC Davis. I was fortunate enough to have a number of classes with some experts on the subject, so I know a little trivia about gamelons, and eastern music and the "Long string instrument," who's inventor came to give a lecture to one of my classes. (Its an instrument 30 yards long played by several people, all in harmonics, very wierd.)
OSC, I agree completely. I've heard of Brunhelm before, however I am tad skeptical the veracity of a story that is so old. Nevertheless a fascinating idea, and something to chew on for a while.
edit: Bando, the bells I mentioned are something a proffessor brought up, but with only about as much info as i've related to you, and i haven't bothered to read up on it myself. The tuning system I described is unrelated to early keyboard music, but rather it has to do with traditional chinese and japanese instruments, zithers, harps. and bowed string instruments as well.
Keyboards developed more or less alongside the development of western polyphony, so that by the time equal temprament became the fashion in the Boroque period, the keyboard had already attained its basic shape. Before equal temprament, the keyboard or organ pipes would be "tuned" according to the natural harmonic series. 16, 8, or 4 foot pitch on an organ is still rougly the same as the modern A=440, but it didn't matter before the boroque how long the lowest pipe was. You simply built the lowest pipe and tuned the other pipes to perfect intervals above that, but each interval was perfect, whereas today only 8ves are perfect and everything else is a slight cheat.
posted
Incidently OSC, this is something I have always wondered about Paganini. He was the "greatest" violinist in history, but no-one alive today can attest that Itzac Perlman isn't better still, or has better tone, or some other virtue lacking in Paganini. We have descriptions of his abilities, but we also know that the standards were different, and the people wrote lovingly of him; perhaps they forgave faults we would notice?
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While Paganini was undoubtably great, it is impossible (and completely unnecessary) to try to determine the best. This is true for many reasons. 1-Most "great" musicians are dead, and the vast majority of them never made proffesional-quality recordings. 2- There are billions of musicians to choose from, most of which are unknown. 3- Everybody has a different perception of what goodness or greatness is. For example, me and Synesthesia really like metal. Some may find it to be garbage.
The study of music should not be about who was better, but about the music itself. Just my opinion.
Posts: 1594 | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
Well, then substitute a value judgement for a judgement on objective qualities. Did he have the most refined technique? Why? How did he approach music, what were his methods? Can they be learned?
That is a side of this question which can't be shut down by the "it's all relative" proclamation, because it isn't; it never is. Knowing about things like this is very important, and IMO the fact that most people don't know, and obviously don't want to know, is troubling at the least.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
My argument was that you can't determine the best. Furthermore it accomplishes nothing to try. I never said it was "all" relative, but most of it is. And yes, people should ask all those questions, and find any answer they can, but not for the purpose of competition.
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Mozart wrote music for money, and sucked. Sorry, but other than developing music for children, not many people play piano music of Mozart... The exception being his Operas. Those are true works of art. His piano music is only unique in the way that kids can play it, but adults have trouble.
Chopin is good, however he emmulated Beethovan a lot... Even the musical notation looks like the second movement to a Beethovan sonata. (I just learned the Revolutionary Etude... FUN!) He always denied being influenced by Beethovan, but then, I guess Debussey never considered himself an impressionist either. <Grin>
That killed at piano class. (I'm a band geek)
And yes, I am biased towards the piano... Chopin's my favorite because he wrote primarily for the piano.
I liked the nutcracker, but it's played so much I hate it now! Tchaikovsky not a composer I'm all that fond of.
I like Rachmaninoff. He wrote romantic stuff along with his big loud stuff.
With classical, I appreciate all of the music... However, when it comes down with what I have to listen to, I get much pickier.
Posts: 438 | Registered: May 2006
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Did you just say that Mozart sucked? Apart from being one of the most proficient and dedicated musicians of all time, he is a composer of timeless music that anyone can appreciate.
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FYI Nathan2006: The reason Debussy never considered himself an 'impressionist' is the same reason that Mozart and Beethoven never considered themselves 'classical' or Chopin considered himself 'romantic'. These are names that people came up with much later to classify different eras. I imagine that Chopin and Bach had much of the same idea that what they were composing was called 'music.'
On another note, to me Mozart is a genius, but I don't particularly care for him.
That is the joy of music. Everyone can like whatever they want and no one is wrong. Posts: 511 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Mozart wrote music for money, and sucked. His piano music is only unique in the way that kids can play it, but adults have trouble.
Chopin is good, however he emmulated Beethovan a lot... Even the musical notation looks like the second movement to a Beethovan sonata.
... ... There is so much wrong with these two statements. Please tell me you don't actually believe this. BTW, emmulation is not the same thing as immitation...FYI
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Fashions change, even in an art as mathematical as music. For instance, in singing, the clear tone of the Renaissance was completely replaced by the vibrato-toned bel canto voice; the pure tone is actually best preserved now in backwoods folk and bluegrass, where a vibrato is often seen as pretentious. What was once a flaw can be a virtue.
Right now we expect our singers to decorate the tune with melodic furbelos, but not that long ago the decoration was with syncopation, while the tune was handled fairly evenly, with only a few blues-influenced melodic variations and little decoration (Sinatra, Bing, Perry Como <grin>).
Ditto with other instruments. I've heard people who reconstruct ancient instruments talk about how different the tone is, and how it changes what will please the ear in the playing of it.
The revolution of tempering instruments so intervals were made equal instead of natural transformed the "meaning" of various modes, flattening the differences between them ... all so that we could get the pyrotechnics of keyboard instruments. It would be hard, now, to go back; all our trained musicians are used to hearing tempered scales in half-step increments, and it's hard to recover true tones; they would probably disturb us (though, come to think of it, that's what was said of some of the modes back when they still had meaning).
At the same time, isn't it rather silly to say that Mozart "sucked", when what you mean is that you don't value his music as highly as you value music from different periods? You don't have to kill one composer in order to praise another ...
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
I hardly killed Mozart, and I speak mainly of his piano works... Sucked was a harsh word, I use it for anything that was slightly lower than mediocre. I'm seeing this all from the viewpoint of the piano... And impressionism was addressed during Debussey's day, named, and he still denied any connection to it, or the famous composers also titles as 'impressionists'... He actually refused the term, rather than the actual style. And Mozart once wrote a concerto for I believe piano and harp because he was paid money to do so. You have to make a living. Beethovan had sucky 'For-the-money' works too, but he seperated those from the ones he considered his best. His best are under 'opus' and he catorigized them himself. With Mozart, he intermingled his music, whether it be good or bad.
Posts: 438 | Registered: May 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Orson Scott Card: Ditto with other instruments. I've heard people who reconstruct ancient instruments talk about how different the tone is, and how it changes what will please the ear in the playing of it.
The revolution of tempering instruments so intervals were made equal instead of natural transformed the "meaning" of various modes, flattening the differences between them ... all so that we could get the pyrotechnics of keyboard instruments. It would be hard, now, to go back; all our trained musicians are used to hearing tempered scales in half-step increments, and it's hard to recover true tones; they would probably disturb us (though, come to think of it, that's what was said of some of the modes back when they still had meaning).
I hope you appreciated the difference between most recordings of Handel's Messiah and the American Bach soloists concert cd I recommended. This post reminded me of that because everything they do it "period" oriented.
Recently I've been taking a series of classes on early music/instruments, and I began studying the Viola Da Gamba. The sacrifice that is made with "true" natural harmonic tones is really very great, and the advantage in equal temprament is what allowed Bach to write such complicated diatonic music, but nevertheless the da gamba has its singular virtues.
On the note of singing styles, I couldn't agree more. I think quite a bit of the fashion in grotesque ornamentations and silly wailer croonings, or overly growley and ridiculous rock voices, is the over-use of the "singer-songwriter" dynamic. Today an artist can claim authorship of music he or she doesn't have the skill or patience to actually write, they just come up with lyrics and are "assisted" by a pro studio musician with a melody. This encourages divatic histrionics and alot of vocal mugging, IMO. It also produces an increasingly dishonest sound from the performer as the albums pile up.
When I write accompanied songs, I rehearse the performers myself and learn from what they reveal to me in the uraveling of the music. However, I never credit performers with helping me to write the song or the peice, because even their input was at my direction. There is very little respect for this kind of relationship today, and I think thats a shame as a writer, and a performer of the work of others.
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