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The March Hare posted:Hi thread, I've been really enjoying Veljo Tormis for the past week or so after learning that he had passed earlier this year This isn't really in a similar vein and I have no idea if this is up your alley, but this old dude is the poo poo and is still making music. Epitaph For Moonlight - R. Murray Schafer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzUXzu7JYFc Lots of cool tone clusters and his scores are awesome to look at. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOlxuXHWfHw
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Oct 3, 2017 01:08
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and wanting to get more of a feel for him. He did a lot of work from and or inspired by Finnish epics (I think he was Estonian though), but the songs I've been listening to so far all have a really great feel to them. Has been nice to listen to some contemporary (western) choral music that isn't explicitly in the Christian tradition and or corny as gently caress. Anyone else have maybe some slightly more fringe stuff they could share that is in a similar vein?
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Just subscribed to the Met HD on demand service because I enjoy burning money, what are the unmissable opera classics?
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Oct 6, 2017 04:50
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Out of all of them? Mozart - The Magic Flute, Cosi fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro Puccini - La bohème Verdi - La Traviata, Nabucco, Aida Bizet - Carmen Rossini - Il barbiere di siviglia Beethoven - Fidelio Wagner - Ring der Nibelungen
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Oct 6, 2017 17:45
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Just subscribed to the Met HD on demand service because I enjoy burning money, what are the unmissable opera classics? I'm also a money burner, and the Cav/Pag from last season is exquisite. Also the Marriage of Figaro from the last year or two was also delightful. Basically any of their productions are worth watching, but those two from the Met stand out to me. cebrail posted:Out of all of them? Also this.
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Oct 6, 2017 22:00
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Just subscribed to the Met HD on demand service because I enjoy burning money, what are the unmissable opera classics? Gorge yourself on Puccini and Rossini to really get yourself in the mood, if you try to start with poo poo like Wagner you'll be like 'jesus christ is this actually going anywhere" and the answer is no, not really, hope you packed a lunch. Italian opera is ridiculously melodic and full of ear worms that'll stick with you for life. So is anything Mozart did. Bonus points to Mozart operas for having ridiculous bullshit in them like a character who hosed thousands of women who is a rather obvious Mozart mary-sue. My personal favorite is Alban Berg's "Wozzeck" though, I think it is shamefully underperformed and under-listened to. Kinda depressing though, but that's opera for you, and also serial compositions in general. No idea if the Met has done it, though.
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Oct 7, 2017 08:52
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Just subscribed to the Met HD on demand service because I enjoy burning money, what are the unmissable opera classics? I bought the Met's production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger on DVD and it's one of my most treasured possessions. Check it out if you have the time. It's almost five hours long so you might want to spread it out over a few days.
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Oct 9, 2017 03:07
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Been listening to some Poulenc motets and I really like them. I'm super unfamiliar with him though, what by him do y'all like?
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Oct 11, 2017 02:49
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A lot of his stuff is cool, I like his concertos.
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Oct 11, 2017 05:16
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smug n stuff posted:Been listening to some Poulenc motets and I really like them. His Sextet for Piano and Quintet is one of my favorite pieces. You can also check out his Trio for Horn, Trumpet and Trombone, it's a fun little piece and a historically significant piece of repertoire for brass.
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Oct 11, 2017 06:44
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smug n stuff posted:Been listening to some Poulenc motets and I really like them. Poulenc's clarinet sonata is great, I played it on one of my undergrad recital. I never get tired of playing that piece.
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Oct 11, 2017 15:47
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empty whippet box posted:Gorge yourself on Puccini and Rossini to really get yourself in the mood, if you try to start with poo poo like Wagner you'll be like 'jesus christ is this actually going anywhere" and the answer is no, not really, hope you packed a lunch. Italian opera is ridiculously melodic and full of ear worms that'll stick with you for life. So is anything Mozart did. Bonus points to Mozart operas for having ridiculous bullshit in them like a character who hosed thousands of women who is a rather obvious Mozart mary-sue. This is a great post.   :encore:
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Oct 12, 2017 02:46
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So far I've watched: Eugene Onegin - I love Tchaikovsky and this did not fail to disappoint! I loved the mirror set, particularly during the duel sequence, and though I was left kinda cold by the "letter" sequence, the burning, organic poetry that foams up elsewhere is really stunning. The guy who played Onegin looked kinda like Walter Matthau and he was loving amazing. La Cenerentola - omg I loved this! I had Rossini music in my head for days afterwards, I woke up hearing Rossini music. The production was a little heavy-handed (the big wedding cake is cool but tbh it just felt like a dark, empty room) but Joyce DiDonato was so impossibly endearing and wonderful, like an Italian Emily Watson. The Magritte flourishes were cool. Hansel and Gretel - I loved this too. I'm a huge fan of folk-inspired music, and the set design was terrific, particularly in the forest sequence. I really want to see this again, and I'm now agonizingly sad that I missed the Seattle Opera's production of it. The melodies are so charming and beautiful. La Traviata - I have to admit I found this to be kind of a snooze, but straightforward romances kind of lose me. I liked the set (the use of the huge clock was neat), and the music was pretty good, but something about it just didn't grab me. I also watched part of Madama Butterfly but Kristina Opolais looks like the terrifying evil villain in a movie about children trying to save puppies so I put it on the backburner. I'm really looking forward to this season's production of The Exterminating Angel, which is one of my favorite movies and I like new opera (Breaking the Waves is amazing). Sadly, there's no video of Wozzeck, which I was hoping for (Sondheim calls it his favorite opera) but they do have Lulu.
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Oct 18, 2017 07:00
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Mozart in the Jungle is good
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Nov 8, 2017 01:38
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Money Bags posted:Mozart in the Jungle is good My orchestra director/conducting teacher from my undergrad directs the orchestra used in the show (the Chelsea Symphony.) He is also a horn player in the show and had some fun stories from filming!
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Nov 8, 2017 17:00
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Cobaltshift posted:My orchestra director/conducting teacher from my undergrad directs the orchestra used in the show (the Chelsea Symphony.) He is also a horn player in the show and had some fun stories from filming! Do please share any stories. I'm having a huge amount of fun watching this show.
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Nov 9, 2017 08:10
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Money Bags posted:I bought the Met's production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger on DVD and it's one of my most treasured possessions. Check it out if you have the time. It's almost five hours long so you might want to spread it out over a few days. I watched this like a miniseries and loved it! The characters and story move in a way that feels so contemporary, almost like a Bergman film that's blown up to zeppelin proportions. That burst of Hitlery nationalism at the end was a little startling but a) sort of expected and b) a fitting ending. One of the most intriguing things a story can portray is craft, and while that includes broader terminology (eg Kieslowski's "Blue" could be construed as depicting the craft of grief), it's also just fun and engaging to watch a story detail and inform you about an actual craft, or trade, or skill. It's why I like upstairs-downstairs stories, and backstage movies. The craft of the master singers was so well detailed and explicated, and I'm glad Wagner had the guts to spend so much of his five hours on the ins-and-outs of it. Beckmesser's humiliation reminded me of Frasier botching Buttons and Bows. I also watched La Nozze Di Figaro, which I enjoyed but didn't love - the plot moves like a Swiss watch, which I appreciated, but the music didn't lift me. After that, I watched the other version of Madame Butterfly, which I had a similar reaction to. The music is terrific (the humming chorus is incredible) but the story felt too languid, and when the tragedy finally strikes it was too little too late. I think I was just kind of distracted by the yellowface casting and the slightly overbaked production - the black-on-black mirrors remind me of the bathroom in a fancy Japanese restaurant we used to go to when I was growing up, which was done entirely in glossy black, even the toilets. I enjoyed Patricia Racette well enough, she has a certain innocent motherly look, though I was still craving the true childishness that I imagine is required to make the role pop. At least she didn't look like a witch, though having to see the child puppet in so much detail via camera close-up was unsettling. Since I can't do anything without overdoing it, I also watched Capriccio, which is apparently an opera for devoted opera buffs only but wow, I loved it! Again there was the concept of craft put to the forefront, and the debate was spirited, lively, and engaging. The production feels a little dusty, though - it's set in a 1920s villa, which I think I prefer to the 1700s setting suggested by the libretto, but it was premiered in the 90s and it really feels like it, lots of clashing muted colors. There were also moments of weird comedy that felt out of place. Most of the opera is really witty and kind of understated, which I liked, but the bits with the ballet dancers and the opera singers were done in a bizarre, broad style.
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Nov 11, 2017 00:31
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Saw Britten's War Requiem performed tonight and the performance was sadly underwhelming... it just wasn't as visceral as it should have been, especially the tenor soloist and the choir. The baritone was world class though and the children's choir was great too. Oh well, it's a huge undertaking, so kudos to them. It just didn't grab me like I thought it would. Also I never noticed how Britten quotes himself during the Abraham and Isaac bit. Goddamn Britten is good.
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Nov 13, 2017 05:03
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Don't die, thread. I've been on a Monteverdi binge today, here's a music video (yes, really) of Anna Prohaska singing Lamento della ninfa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHRjvK9syQc
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Jan 3, 2018 23:44
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zenguitarman posted:This isn't really in a similar vein and I have no idea if this is up your alley, but this old dude is the poo poo and is still making music. Oop, hey, thanks for this - Schafer is great. The father of soundscapes! I've also been on a major Monteverdi kick, glad I'm not the only one.
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Jan 4, 2018 00:20
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cebrail posted:Don't die, thread. I'm due to get into Monteverdi. Any other suggestions?
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Jan 24, 2018 02:28
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Yeah, listen to the Vespro della Beata Vergine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S99FCAFNgaA (Sir John Eliot Gardiner founded his Monteverdi Choir for this work, this is a video of their 50th anniversary concert with the English Baroque Soloists in Versailles.) And a whole bunch of his madrigals are great, he wrote 9 books of them and if you listen to them in order they're great for retracing the transition from the rennaissance to the Baroque era.
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Jan 24, 2018 22:26
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New orchestra season means I get to post our new repertoire- Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21 in C- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVJkkCvdyZo Dvorak Symphony No. 8- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXAv-NGppFw We actually managed to find a tuba player for the Dvorak which rules. We're still lighter on cellos than I'd like to be, also no basses 
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Jan 29, 2018 01:47
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Oo I just was at a concert today and heard Dvorak 8! Great piece, super fun. You play horn, don't you? Those loud horn trills are real fun once you get em down.
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Jan 29, 2018 03:23
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Hawkgirl posted:Oo I just was at a concert today and heard Dvorak 8! Great piece, super fun. You play horn, don't you? Those loud horn trills are real fun once you get em down. I'm playing Horn 1 and yes it's a really fun piece, but I haven't had to do a trill in over a decade so I don't remember how to do them. Time to practice!
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Jan 29, 2018 13:23
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Do any of you use tablets for your music instead of hauling around stacks of music? I know quite a few of my colleagues enjoy using them instead. Seems slick.
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Jan 29, 2018 21:46
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For some reason, I find the song Arietta by Leroy Anderson to almost be emotionally overwhelming. There has to be a reason, but nothing comes to mind. I'd appreciate anyone's insights about why the song hits me so hard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4_iEuo0yUA
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Feb 7, 2018 07:24
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I found this cool Dutch composer on youtube after clicking around on random links: Simeon Ten Holt - Canto Ostinato It's a pretty sick rear end minimalist piece. It's structured so there are these small cells of music, maybe 1-3 bars long, and each cell can be repeated ad libitum for however long you want, and then you move on to the next one. It's sort of like Terry Riley's In C, but there is, I think, less leeway for individual performers to drop out, play on different beats, etc. so that while the piece is long and has a set of musical ideas with irregular repetition, the ideas themselves are strictly presented. Pretty cool poo poo, the performances naturally vary in length, so there are a bunch on youtube that are 1.5 hours, and there's one that's four hours! That's so long! haha anyway 2 questions to maybe get some discush going: 1. Can you recommend me some sick rear end minimalist pieces. I'm pretty familiar with the big names, maybe something off the beaten path would be cool. 2. How do y'all find new music? do you click links on youtube, read reviews, have friends with good taste, google 'best piano sonatas of all time'? I've fallen into a rut for classical music, and there are too many resources/I'm too lazy to develop a rigorous plan to find some new poo poo.
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Feb 24, 2018 22:45
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david crosby posted:1. Can you recommend me some sick rear end minimalist pieces. I'm pretty familiar with the big names, maybe something off the beaten path would be cool. Have you heard Julius Eastman, he was incredibly cool https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_QGQcKq1ik
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Feb 24, 2018 23:13
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A human heart posted:Have you heard Julius Eastman, he was incredibly cool https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_QGQcKq1ik no, this is good. I read about his life on wikipedia and it's really sad.
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Feb 25, 2018 02:02
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What do y'all think of Franz Schubert?
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Mar 4, 2018 20:42
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Tiresias2 posted:What do y'all think of Franz Schubert? He's good.
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Mar 6, 2018 06:00
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david crosby posted:He's good. Like, rivaling Beethoven and Mozart good or just good? I really like his stuff, and I definitely would put him up there, but I'm just an amateur listener.
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Mar 6, 2018 17:49
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Tiresias2 posted:Like, rivaling Beethoven and Mozart good or just good? I really like his stuff, and I definitely would put him up there, but I'm just an amateur listener. That's a terrible comparison, but yes, he can hold his own in the same room with Beethoven and Mozart. edit Magic Hate Ball posted:They use one of his clarinet sonatas for the hold music at a medical insurance company we work with and it actually makes me like calling them. lol there ya go
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Mar 6, 2018 17:55
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They use one of his clarinet sonatas for the hold music at a medical insurance company we work with and it actually makes me like calling them. edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcK_VSzsv1s edit 2: it's bitterly ironic that this is the music they use at a company that treats dying people Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Mar 6, 2018 |
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Mar 6, 2018 17:56
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Tiresias2 posted:Like, rivaling Beethoven and Mozart good or just good? I really like his stuff, and I definitely would put him up there, but I'm just an amateur listener. Pretty darn close. His final years of life were so incredibly productive that he would potentially have reached Bach/Beethoven/Mozart levels of greatness/popularity (not even sure if that means anything) if he lived longer. His chamber, songs, and piano sonatas are his best works, imo, and it took the musical world a long time to realize how great they were.
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Mar 6, 2018 17:57
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Out of curiosity, why are the Bach/Beethoven/Mozart comparisons meaningless? I know it's abstract, and doesn't delve into the more interesting yet probably technical details of what makes music captivating, but it seems like a fairly good rule of thumb for what's best. I know the whole idea of "best" in art is questionable, but I believe it's down to what evokes the most meaning, and that's basically knowable quantitatively simply by how many mental associations and feelings can be derived from a given work by the universe of potential listeners. Though there will most likely never be a way for us, rather than some theoretical God or objective universal observer, to know that reality, I don't find it absurd to suppose that it is real nonetheless, by analogy, which is the same reasoning we must use to even suppose that other consciousnesses are even real.
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Mar 6, 2018 18:34
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Schubert is Beethoven/Mozart level good, yeah.Tiresias2 posted:Out of curiosity, why are the Bach/Beethoven/Mozart comparisons meaningless? I know it's abstract, and doesn't delve into the more interesting yet probably technical details of what makes music captivating, but it seems like a fairly good rule of thumb for what's best. I know the whole idea of "best" in art is questionable, but I believe it's down to what evokes the most meaning, and that's basically knowable quantitatively simply by how many mental associations and feelings can be derived from a given work by the universe of potential listeners. Though there will most likely never be a way for us, rather than some theoretical God or objective universal observer, to know that reality, I don't find it absurd to suppose that it is real nonetheless, by analogy, which is the same reasoning we must use to even suppose that other consciousnesses are even real. The comparisons are only meaningful as a shorthand for describing things that are much more complex and also as a sort of barometer of taste. Any artist who's work exists on that very high level of quality is, at least within a human lifetime, infinitely rich; you can always go back to their work and find new things about it that are exciting and make new mental associations & have new feelings. I think you could very easily spend your life listening to Mozart or Schubert, which makes the questions of 'who's best' dissolve into meaninglessness. At least when taken on the human scale, which is the only scale that matters!!! THat said Schubert is better than Mozart.
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Mar 6, 2018 20:14
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david crosby posted:Schubert is Beethoven/Mozart level good, yeah. If both Schubert and Mozart were infinitely rich then we would have to cease to distinguish their quality numerically and begin to do so qualitatively, which is to say by what kinds of associations and feelings they tend to invoke. And I agree that, in that case, Schubert would be better, but that's only because, though I love the silly, I love the solemn more, and I don't know how I could justify that preference objectively. In fact, I can't even be sure that everyone would see Mozart as mostly silly and Schubert as mostly solemn and not the other way around. It's plausible that it only seems to me that Schubert is mostly solemn and Mozart is mostly silly. Except, perhaps, by the same rule with which we deduce that someone is being passive-aggressive or vapid, both of which must be very careful deductions in order to not turn out presumptuous. A rule which itself is vague, and perhaps even different or non-existent in some humans! For a start, let's say that in passive-aggressiveness, we suppose the person is not being aggressive, and deduce a contradiction between what this implies and the person's behavior that, though it may be well concealed, can never be, in true aggression, concealed entirely. For inevitably the person must give offense. Even then it might be true that we are just projecting. And so, we would have to suppose we are not projecting and plumb the depths of our character and come out certain of the absence of contradiction. I hope this rule is found always agreeable, and, if not, that some improvement can be made. And so, while examining our character such that we realize that we are not mostly silly people ourselves, we can try to pretend that Mozart is not being silly, but not help but be affected by all that a universal concept of silliness contains when we watch Don Giovanni, for example. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty profound tragedy perhaps in proportion to how goddamned silly it is. Even then, can we really have such universal concepts agreeable to all minds or is the endeavor doomed from the start? But disregarding that they are both equally infinite, we may advance on a quantitative level. Then, how can you say that Schubert is better than Mozart if both are so near-infinitely complex that we would have to spend our entire lives just listening to one of them to know how deep he goes? We would have to live twice and maybe three times to complete the comparison. I mean, I agree that that is the case, but for us not to be deluded we would have to accept in ourselves some kind of ability to gauge depth of unimaginable proportions without actually plumbing those unfathomable depths. Well, if a rule for gauging depth did not exist, it would be very difficult to get any thinking done, and the difference between a rule that gauges 10 deductions worth of depth and one that gauges an unfathomably large number's worth of deductions worth of depth is only numerical, and, so, they are both, by analogy, the same in their essential function. Also, if only a musician could know what kind of music God does or would prefer, if that musician were also adequately skilled at playing and composing, that musician would be best. Tiresias2 fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Mar 6, 2018 |
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Mar 6, 2018 21:35
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Tiresias2 posted:If both Schubert and Mozart were infinitely They each did God's work, as each immensely enriched humanity with their own work. Which is perhaps infinitely ironic considering each one was utterly dissolute as a person. Maybe that should give you an idea of God's sense of humor as well.....
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Mar 6, 2018 23:20
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Tiresias2 posted:If both Schubert and Mozart were infinitely rich then we would have to cease to distinguish their quality numerically and begin to do so qualitatively, which is to say by what kinds of associations and feelings they tend to invoke. And I agree that, in that case, Schubert would be better, but that's only because, though I love the silly, I love the solemn more, and I don't know how I could justify that preference objectively. In fact, I can't even be sure that everyone would see Mozart as mostly silly and Schubert as mostly solemn and not the other way around. It's plausible that it only seems to me that Schubert is mostly solemn and Mozart is mostly silly. lol jfc This is cool: Robert de Visee - Suite in d minor
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Mar 6, 2018 23:57
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