Stravinsky vs Schönberg

youtube fight yall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFT6NIYMF1I

nah maybe some restraint with the youtubes is in order cuz both of these have enough great things to create a The Geir Hongro listening club -esque thread unloadable on computers more than 18 months old

orpheus and apollo both have limpid pellucid sunlit brlliance to rank against the agonized geometry of les noces

idd, I actually prefer those pieces over the early big works — more personable; I relate to them

this is where i note that KLANGFARBENMELODIE is one of the greatest words. the latter versh of petrushka was on the program for the first really good concert i saw, which probably helped endear it as my immediate favourite stravinsky. third movement of symphony of psalms attains a rare unity of form and articulation and i've been known to play it on repeat for hours. so damn great........

totally — that was the first non-Rite Stravinsky that sold me and was one of the catalysts for me getting deep into CM

Sorry to be argumentative, but I think that's also very extreme language.

well Tim I should make my bias clear -- in my early twenties when I started investigating classical beyond Charles Ives, I found myself allergic to almost everything between Bach and Schoenberg -- I kept trying, but something in the sound and performances of it threw me, I didn't enjoy it, had trouble even respecting it. This was reenforced when I randomly discovered Gesualdo and branched out into early polyphonic choral music, it seemed like there was a wrong turn around the 18th century and it was righted for me around the early 20th. so while I don't mean to be overtly judgemental when I use words like 'deprogramming', it's really only very recently that I've been even really been able to enjoy most things from the baroque / romantic stretch. If an occasional term creeps in that shows my residual allergies they should just be taken as a problem that I have.

And I like Schoenberg. The second you begin studiously avoiding tonality as the central organizing principle, you rediscover sound as music in and of itself -- and before he came up with an atonal system, there was almost nothing left to notice. it almost seems like he considered 'klangfarbenmelodie' as a side-effect of his real invention, but he couldn't help but notice it and name the phenomenon. It wasn't really until Varese that people began accepting arrangements / orchestrations / organized sound as anything more than decadence or ornament, but Schoenberg was one of the first people to run into it and the Five Orchestral Pieces are still my favorite of his, they are far more of a sound riot than Rite of Spring & they still sound shocking

xpost

bartok while comparably great still seems very much individuated and without a distinct and arguable lineage overshadowing his successors, for all that he may have influenced them.

Well, the relationship is not exactly the same (more an attitude than a particular musical DNA passed down) but Bartok is father to the many many folk-modernists who quickly followed. His effect upon the way folk tunes would be used in forward-thinking composition was huuuge, surely!

orpheus and apollo both have limpid pellucid sunlit brlliance to rank against the agonized geometry of les noces

― kid 606: the nultness (nakhchivan), Tuesday, March 15, 2011 7:03 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

idd, I actually prefer those pieces over the early big works — more personable; I relate to them

― corey, Tuesday, March 15, 2011 7:07 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

In that case, if you haven't heard Persephone, get it post-haste!

ya i think of these two as special in that embody so much polemical baggage that later composers had to confront. i like babbitt's reading of bartok.....

For all that these works span an entire creative career, there is,
throughout, a single conceptual attitude, and, from the second quartet on,
a personal sound is present, through which this conception is disclosed. Most
important, the unity of purpose emerges in all its significance as
the identification of the personal exigency with the fundamental
musical exigency of the epoch, emphasizing the impossibility of a
strategic aspect. For it is in this respect that Bartok's music is so
completely of its time, and achieves a contemporaneity far trans-
cending mere considerations of style or idiom. It is non-provincial
music that reveals a thorough awareness of the crucial problems con-
fronting contemporary musical composition, and attempts to achieve
a total and personally unique solution of these problems.

this is a beautiful thread.

Hate both, but hate Schönberg the most. "Firebird" isn't too bad actually....

J. OTM! Voted Schoenberg. (np: Maurizio Pollini's performance of the "Piano Suite".)

I don't know to what extent I'm siding this way since I've studied him so much more though tbh.

No, that seems to be like all the Ginastera I've heard — parts cribbed from Ravel and Stravinsky, all flash, little substance.

Do you know the Sonata for Guitar? (You might still feel the same way but I'm just curious.)

in my early twenties when I started investigating classical beyond Charles Ives, I found myself allergic to almost everything between Bach and Schoenberg

This is a pretty incredible statement btw!

No one cares, Geir.

Do you know the Sonata for Guitar? (You might still feel the same way but I'm just curious.)

I don't! I also hear his SQs are more interesting than his orchestral music, so I should give him another try.

It's one of the major late 20th century pieces for the instrument, ranked as the greatest by some. Roberto Aussel's recording is really good.

(Tbf, Geir was called out by name on the thread.:P)

Thanks!

The Guitar Sonata was also on the bill I saw last Thursday night-- it was performed right before Cantata Para America Magica. I was definitely impressed with it, but it was my first hearing and I would need more listening to really 'get it'.

I'm weirdly ignorant about classical guitar repertoire given that I'm a guitarist (electric) myself...

For good or ill Stravinsky didn't break as decisively with Classical harmonic tradition or rhythm, until under Schonberg's influence. Very different composers ultimately. Schoenberg definitely more strictly modernist, and admirable for that, but perhaps Stravinsky was more all-round musical?

xxxxxx-p Didn't Beethoven's Fifth's opening motif invent metal? (And no, the rest of it didn't invent disco, lol)

Huge "Rite of Spring" and "Petrouchka" fan but it's not fair to vote since I've never heard any of Arnie's works, even though I keep intending to, just 'cause he irritates Geir so much.

Start with Verklärte Nacht and the 1st Chamber Symphony.

and the 5 Orchestral Pieces

^^

the scherzo fantastique is really pretty great, if not quite first tier stravinsky

http://www.amazon.com/Glenn-Gould-Plays-Schoenberg-Webern/dp/B000025VDL
http://www.amazon.com/Schoenberg-Piano-Works-Arnold/dp/B0000028O6/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1300324409&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Schoenberg-Webern-Berg-Orchestral-Works/dp/B000083LR4/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1300324610&sr=1-3

Gould plays Schoenberg Piano -- First link is the earlier CBC recordings, really ruffneck & adrenalized. Second is slightly more elegant / linear & more like Bach. I said upthread that 5 Orchestral Pieces were my favorites but I've listened to these two discs more than my copy of Simon Rattle doing the Pieces.

and this is a good rec. of the two chamber symphonies (No. 1 is in his "atonal" period, No. 2 is a reworking of an early piece he did late in life) and verklärte nacht — all are very accessible imo, and the recording is extremely clear so you can hear all the instrument-doublings and color combinations

I think you can try "Pierrot Lunaire" too. Something like really demented cabaret music. And the third string quartet has a pretty great riff.

If you're going to credit any classical work with the tendentious distinction of Inventing Metal it's Holst's "Mars" fullstop

(I was making Schoenberg recommendations for Myonga, to be clear, not making any claims about the invention of metal.)

Sorry Sund4r that was an xp
Also I've never heard the guitar sonata (!) thanks for the recommendation

For good or ill Stravinsky didn't break as decisively with Classical harmonic tradition or rhythm, until under Schonberg's influence.

This makes no sense to me. How do Le Sacre and Les Noces NOT break decisively with classical rhythm?

Appreciate the recommendations, everybody, thanks.

And hahaha I think I made that "Mars" --> metal connection myself in a Holst thread a few months ago! (Or somebody else did and I agreed)

Even before Mars, there was Liszt in doom mode -- check "Funerailles" and "La Notte". And the third Mephisto Waltz supplying the tritones for the first Sabbath album and King Crimson's Red.

...plus King Crimson's cover of Mars

Plus that Mars quote in the British Nuggets box set-- I think it's "Listen To The Sky"?

Plus Led Zep's "Friends"

Plus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SB-3TUEcQU&feature=fvwrel

Frogman Henry here. Old account unworkable on this pc.

In this contest it's undeniably Schoenberg, actually it would be Schoenberg up against most 20c composers for me, only Webern, Mahler and Bartok would seriously challenge him for me, but I'm happy to concede that says something about my listening experience, there are many composers of whom I have only a cursory hearing.

I'm going to make some enemies here maybe, but I find Stravinsky soulless in most of his catalogue.
I like the symphonies (in C, 3 moves, Psalms etc) precisely because some anger and some personality seems to come out in them, but an awful lot of Strav in the middle/later ballets and the widdly neo-classical pieces seems to me to be note-spinning with little feeling or commitment( I listened to Dumbarton Oaks the other day; wow was that ever inconsequential). This is very pleasant somtimes, I love chilling out to the colours and pungent sensuality of Apollo or Pulcinella, but they move me not a jot, and they leave me feeling like you do when you listen to music by minor composers of Haydn's time. Stravinsky is often ravishing to the ear, but strangely empty.

With Schoenberg, as you can guess, it's jsut the opposite. Completely agree with this "I get the same searing hanging-off-a-cliff-edge-by-your-fingernails romanticism that he was overtly pursuing in his early pieces, it's all completely feverish & heart-rending when it's done right" to the extent that it's probably redundant for me to add to it cos I can't expresss it better, but I will do anyway - I feel I am involved with AS, with him on his journey, and subject to the the same perils. Of course there are times where you can feel lost, where you don't know if you trust the old Trickster/Nemesis, like around the middle of the Variations for Orchestra op.31, which I struggled with, and where you really do feel the 12-tone bogeyman of classical music start to confuddle and maybe repulse you. But repeated listenings allowed me to unravel the musical logic as well as be enraptured by the sound, and now I do see how it's one of his masterpieces, and one that I can feel (relatively) comfortable with. I got into AS via Webern, so the comparative heaviness, struggle and as it seemed imperiousness were hard to reconcile with what I conceived about 12-tone at first from AS's pupil, but I like all these things now, and AS seems - once again to use this divise term - more human, more afraid, more subjective, maybe more interesting.
I've immersed myself in the string quartets and the orchestral pieces - Erwartung (I noticed no one mentioned that, don't know why) the Chamber Symphonies, the Five Pieces and the Variations.
Verklate Nacht is also great of course.

It's weird how there's so much baggage around these two as well, I guess that's why nakh slected them, they're both constantly mentioned in context of 'greatest' or 'most conterversial' 20c composer.
They both make people very scared and wary. All this stuff is quite a barrier to appreciating their music, particularly so with AS. The bollocks surrounding his life and legend is almost imprenetrable sometimes.

He's kind of the villain of "The Rest Is Noise"

alex ross is a retard

his heart's in the right place but he likes a lot of crap

and he's not really a retard

Yes, that was a bit harsh, the crap bit was OTM

It's weird how there's so much baggage around these two as well, I guess that's why nakh slected them, they're both constantly mentioned in context of 'greatest' or 'most conterversial' 20c composer.

― glumdalclitch, Friday, 18 March 2011 13:22 (5 minutes ago)

totally

i don't think adorno was the first to counterpose the two but he virtually enshrined it as an either/or binary

the answer to which is 'both'

ya i used to read ross' blog and his enthusiasm and scholarship are exemplary, which is why he really ought to be careful legitimizing the 'schoenberg fucked it up for the rest of us' narrative to the new yorker crowd

he likes too much new orchestral fluff for me to take his taste seriously — like recent music textbooks that feel compelled to include John Corigliano in "recent developments"

'schoenberg fucked it up for the rest of us'

Wait, I just read The Rest Is Noise recently and I didn't get this out of it at all. (I think I would have noticed since I'm a huge Schoenberg fan.) He does seem to have perverse taste when it comes to Schoenberg though. I've never read anyone else who focuses so much on Schoenberg's operas (!) when it comes to 12-note music, at the expense of the piano music or last two string quartets. Or are you talking about the blog rather than the book?

I loved the book by the way. It was wonderfully written and the historical detail was incredible. His taste in 20th century music mostly just seems like the mainstream American Norton Anthology-style canon to me, which is fine. He at least covers a broader range of music than Griffiths does and seems to try to engage with it on its own terms. His adoration for Sibelius was the one really surprising thing for me. The focus on Strauss is also a little striking but I actually agree with him there!

Why was it surprising that he rates Sibelius so highly? It took a long time for CM criterati to check whether there was anything beyond Finlandia and Symphony #2, but at least for a couple of decades now I think you'll find plenty who'll inveigh that Sibelius' symphonies and most of his sym poems are every bit as formally interesting as Schoenberg-- his achievement was simply "masked" by the fact that he worked entirely in the tonal system and without the use of any signature 20c sound sources (one symphony has bass clarinet and harp, that's about as wild as the personnel gets. But he achieves incredible klangfarbenmelodie anyway).

(Cards on table, Sibelius is my favorite of all).

Anyhow. Ross' best chapters were the ones on Feldman, SIbelius, Strauss, and Berg, all amazing pieces of writing. He's full of shit re: schoenberg though.

'schoenberg fucked it up for the rest of us'

Yeah, not at all. ADORNO fucked it up for the rest of us. H8 that fucking guy, seriously.

he likes too much new orchestral fluff for me to take his taste seriously — like recent music textbooks that feel compelled to include John Corigliano in "recent developments"

So what's Simon Reynold's favourite rock band these days? (that comparison probably doesn't work but I'm not even gonna spend too much time on it) Really can't trust him.

Schönberg, no hesitation - had much more of a trip w/him than anything. Also it helps that he had Webern and Berg (a 2nd viennese poll would be much more difficult) and that he taught John Cage etc etc. Strav just doesn't offer enough to compensate for that.

And he seems more of a chameleon to me. Gets bored, try another thing and move on, is my impression - an interesting quality for a composer to have (suited more to pop than anything.) I like the Rite of Spring and some of the brutal sounding minimalism that it sorta gave birth to.

Thanks.

Thinking also as to whether this could be the version of the Rite for me but effect has worn off a bit in the morning.