Firebird suite
― culture of mayordom (voodoo chili), Thursday, 30 January 2020 13:58 (four years ago) link
That said, Sund4r, I'd love to read your thoughts on Sprechgesang, so feel free to post them as you see fit. As you know, my technical knowledge of music is severely limited.
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 14:09 (four years ago) link
Concord Sonata, frankly. Stravinsky was ooga booga-ing for the bourgeoisie while Ives was creating a masterpiece of proto-post-modernity
― Montegays and Capulez (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, 30 January 2020 14:09 (four years ago) link
Jesus Christ tho it’s like
The Debussy sonata AND the Janacek AND Prokofiev 1 AND Elgar Cello AND even El Amor Brujo which totally rules
This was like the zenith of fun classical music
― Montegays and Capulez (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, 30 January 2020 14:14 (four years ago) link
More fun than the roaring twenties?
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 14:15 (four years ago) link
I suppose we'll find out soon enough.
i'd like to see an informed defence of sprechgesange which set out how you can tell the good performances from the bad
(it all sounds annoying to me but i am also unreconciled with most classical singing, in all its various evolving periods, so maybe i am just irredeemable as a listening appreciator -- ps i get that juggalot lunaire is meant to sound unhinged, and expressionist versions of unhinged get p overstatedly caligari p quickly)
― mark s, Thursday, 30 January 2020 14:22 (four years ago) link
first line reads snarkier than intended, that's actually what i'd like to read! esp.from sund4r!!
Probably gonna vote "Vers la flamme" tho.
An excellent choice. Which version do you prefer? (I'm partial to Roger Woodward.)
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 14:38 (four years ago) link
― mark s
i can't give you an informed defense, but if you want to hear bad sprechgesang listen to frank zappa, for instance "the dangerous kitchen"
― you know my name, look up the number of the beast (rushomancy), Thursday, 30 January 2020 14:48 (four years ago) link
or even more than that, "star wars won't work"
― you know my name, look up the number of the beast (rushomancy), Thursday, 30 January 2020 14:51 (four years ago) link
when the venn diagram of things i very much don't want to hear forms a perfect circle
― mark s, Thursday, 30 January 2020 14:53 (four years ago) link
Mark do you like Wozzeck
― Montegays and Capulez (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, 30 January 2020 15:05 (four years ago) link
ooga booga-ing for the bourgeoisie
Thanks for the display name!
― ooga booga-ing for the bourgeoisie (voodoo chili), Thursday, 30 January 2020 15:08 (four years ago) link
im persuadable (i'm listenable to the boulez version right now)
― mark s, Thursday, 30 January 2020 15:08 (four years ago) link
yes thats what i meant to write
― mark s, Thursday, 30 January 2020 15:09 (four years ago) link
Try Dohnányi's – Eberhard Wächter is a much better Sprechgesänger than Walter Berry imo.
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 15:11 (four years ago) link
(This may go some way towards responding to your initial challenge.)
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 15:12 (four years ago) link
ok :)
(tho i'd still also like an actual real informed musician-composer-teacher to pin down their sense of the necessary precepts) (to give me something to disagree with as i'm processing it lol)
― mark s, Thursday, 30 January 2020 15:15 (four years ago) link
BTW, I can only assume that Prokofiev's 2nd Piano Concerto is going to be counted as a 1920s piece based on the reconstruction. Because that absolutely is one of the top 10 pieces of music ever written.
― I Heard You Ain't HOOS's (Eric H.), Thursday, 30 January 2020 15:18 (four years ago) link
Indeed (to the former – I'm not a huge Prokofiev stan beyond the 1st Violin Concerto and the War Sonatas).
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 15:20 (four years ago) link
That's fine, so long as it has a seat at the table.
― I Heard You Ain't HOOS's (Eric H.), Thursday, 30 January 2020 15:46 (four years ago) link
Don't worry, it will. And I'm still curious to hear your Vers la flamme recording pick. :)
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 15:48 (four years ago) link
Might be the piano he's using, but Horowitz's is right up there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0nrg7Lqfak
― I Heard You Ain't HOOS's (Eric H.), Thursday, 30 January 2020 15:56 (four years ago) link
Good stuff.
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 16:17 (four years ago) link
(At work. Will post at lunch!)
― With considerable charm, you still have made a choice (Sund4r), Thursday, 30 January 2020 16:20 (four years ago) link
I think this is my favourite decade of classical music but there's quite a lot I haven't heard of here! Got a lot of love for the Bartok string quartet, Three Places in New England, the Debussy preludes and images, the Planets, the Firebird (got a totally charming recording on pedal steel guitar), the Rite of Spring, both the Vaughan Williams, and Strauss' absent Alpine Symphony (if just for the opening, which I used to play over & over).
I'd like to write in a vote for Charles Villiers Stanford's The Blue Bird from his 1910 8 part songs, which cuts me deep for personal reasons and feels so full of loss. Of these I'll vote for Debussy's first book of preludes
― ogmor, Thursday, 30 January 2020 16:27 (four years ago) link
I'll seek out that Stanford piece (I'm not familiar with his oeuvre at all tbh).
As ever, don't hesitate to prop up favourite recordings should you have any. I very much admire Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's way with Debussy and the Préludes in particular. And the immortal Michelangeli…
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 16:31 (four years ago) link
Voted Book I of the Préludes, where I think Pollini gets it more right* than most (*right as in, "how I think each one should go"). Hope someone throws a bone to Webern's 6 Pieces though - the version on the complete works box conducted by Boulez is controlled hysteria.
― Jeff W, Thursday, 30 January 2020 17:35 (four years ago) link
You can refer to a score here: https://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ImagefromIndex/03959/pnba
NB: I am not a singer.
So this may be basic stuff but, as per Schoenberg's instructions, aiui, the vocalist is expected to follow the notated rhythms strictly. The notated pitches are to be struck but let go immediately and the vocalist follows the line in sliding towards the next note, which strikes me (a non-singer) as pretty tricky. With a mix of conjunct and very disjunct (plenty of sevenths and ninths) contours in the line, and the wide, detailed dynamic range, you have quite a substantial expressive repertoire to work from, but it is one that is also carefully notated and can certainly be followed (and evaluated). Compositionally, the way he could use recognizable sets of intervals in each movement can provide unity. Is that a helpful start? Any vocalists want to jump in?
― With considerable charm, you still have made a choice (Sund4r), Thursday, 30 January 2020 17:44 (four years ago) link
no clue for this decade, gonna have to listen/relisten to everything
― ciderpress, Thursday, 30 January 2020 17:45 (four years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnMv6-XTROY
― I Heard You Ain't HOOS's (Eric H.), Thursday, 30 January 2020 17:50 (four years ago) link
2xp He did elaborate later that the pitches should be 'good' but not 'strictly adhered to'.
― With considerable charm, you still have made a choice (Sund4r), Thursday, 30 January 2020 17:51 (four years ago) link
xp ^^^^ a bourgeoisie properly ooga booga'ed
― I Heard You Ain't HOOS's (Eric H.), Thursday, 30 January 2020 17:51 (four years ago) link
Ever since I came back around on "classical", this period has been the anchor for my appreciation and understanding of music in general. Amazing how this hazy anxious uncertain cloud of sound just swept in and made the stuff from just a couple decades before seem old and antiquated. This is probably my favourite decade of "classical" music. Voted Concord Sonata on this but I could have gone with any of a dozen pieces, especially the Scriabin sonatas.
― ascai, Thursday, 30 January 2020 18:06 (four years ago) link
<3
I love Rite Of Spring on a technical level, top 10 works of all time for sure, but when I think about what Concord was attempting (and succeeding at, gloriously)? There is honestly no 20th c. work I admire more.
I don't know if I've been posting about it recently-- upon reading "Essays After A Sonata" my awe of this sonata just runneth over-- but I think the only comparable work to it is Finnegan's Wake; FW works so well as a casual read (or read aloud) and is richly rewarding upon close examination. And in Concord, there are stupefying moments throughout. Certain nudge-and-wink compositional aspects of it-- the viola and flute, the board-- are, sure, hilarious in their apparent superfluousness, but are SO GORGEOUS in execution.
I mean listen to this, this moment in "Hawthorne" is so glorious
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDNPpsUaVYo&t=17m40s
My favourite passage
― Montegays and Capulez (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, 30 January 2020 19:58 (four years ago) link
Hm: hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDNPpsUaVYo&t=17m40s
― Montegays and Capulez (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, 30 January 2020 20:00 (four years ago) link
Oh wow, Debussy Jeux didn't even make the long-list here? scandaloos
― Montegays and Capulez (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, 30 January 2020 20:02 (four years ago) link
Fuck.
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 20:08 (four years ago) link
This is as ridiculous as the absence of Sibelius's Violin Concerto in the last poll. Mea culpa, once again.
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 20:09 (four years ago) link
You gotta have either Jeux or the Etudes, man. The place-setters for the next phase of Debussy if not for that goddamn colon tumor. This is the decade to end all decades. So many masterpieces left off but you know, it’s ok, it makes the vote a little less agonizing!But I was all set to vote Preludes Bk I for this one, Sibelius either the 7th or Tapiola for the next one. But I forgot fucking Pierrot aggghhhhhCuriously I don’t feel too tempted by the rite...
― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Thursday, 30 January 2020 20:53 (four years ago) link
It's a testament to the strength of the decade that the Debussy Preludes are not currently in my top 2. I'm pretty sure I wrote a paper on the Concord Sonata in undergrad but I don't remember it very well, weirdly. I can't not listen to it now. Unlikely that anything will beat Pierrot in the end, though.
― With considerable charm, you still have made a choice (Sund4r), Thursday, 30 January 2020 20:57 (four years ago) link
That is indeed helpful, thanks.
There are quite a few excellent performances of Pierrot lunaire available on YT, so side-by-side comparisons are easily undertaken by amateurs such as myself. It also goes without saying that the visual component is hardly irrelevant to the work.
Kiera Duffy does an amazing job here and I'm surprised to encounter Cristian Măcelaru in this repertoire:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd2cBUJmDr8
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 21:02 (four years ago) link
The place-setters for the next phase of Debussy if not for that goddamn colon tumor
Tbf three more Sonatas were in the works, so the first three are as much an indication of future directions as Jeux and the 12 Etudes. Not to mention he was a jingoistic motherfucker who could have easily devolved into writing ear-numbing music pour la mère patrie, especially given his response to WWI. But I like to think that wouldn't have happened regardless.
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 21:06 (four years ago) link
I mean I love it, it rules, it birthed a new moon, but I love it just as much for the sweepstakes it kicked off where every place on earth eventually had a composer floating that land’s own stomping folk colossus. And for the glorious genre of horror film scoring. Xpost to self
― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Thursday, 30 January 2020 21:07 (four years ago) link
it's Ives' Concord
you dating his Fourth Symphony to the 1920's? fair enough if so!
― Milton Parker, Thursday, 30 January 2020 21:26 (four years ago) link
Yep.
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 21:28 (four years ago) link
Re Prokofiev peak works convo The 2nd and 3rd symphonies are magnificent monsters, you pom need to hear them if you haven’t
― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Thursday, 30 January 2020 23:15 (four years ago) link
I have heard them and I don't get them at all. But it's been ages... I'll revisit them next week.
― pomenitul, Thursday, 30 January 2020 23:17 (four years ago) link
Rushed another Spotify playlist last night but then just went to bed. LOL.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5uAi4Ii8OSGQqfZp78MH9L
Recording choices subject to ongoing refinement, etc, etc...
― Nag! Nag! Nag!, Thursday, 30 January 2020 23:27 (four years ago) link
Debussy Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp is peak music
― J. Sam, Wednesday, 5 February 2020 03:20 (four years ago) link
Don't worry Sund4r, I've got you covered. I've got reservations aplenty about Villa-Lobos's output but those Etudes are all-time.
― toilet-cleaning brain surgeon (pomenitul), Wednesday, 5 February 2020 09:23 (four years ago) link
Xpost quite possibly my favorite piece of chamber music
― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 5 February 2020 13:56 (four years ago) link
So many cool prototypical and influential ensembles from this general time period That Debussy trioThe “Pierrot ensemble”Bartok two pianos and percussion
― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 5 February 2020 13:58 (four years ago) link
OTM
― With considerable charm, you still have made a choice (Sund4r), Wednesday, 5 February 2020 14:01 (four years ago) link
Yeah, that's 100% otm.
I'm really struggling here. Might just go with The Oceanides in the end but Vers la flamme is equally tempting (they all are).
― toilet-cleaning brain surgeon (pomenitul), Wednesday, 5 February 2020 18:12 (four years ago) link
Fuck it, I'm going with Mahler's 9th, which was probably the most important music ever to me as a 19 year-old.
― toilet-cleaning brain surgeon (pomenitul), Wednesday, 5 February 2020 18:14 (four years ago) link
the first movement is about as good as music gets
― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 5 February 2020 18:39 (four years ago) link
Yep. And when Jascha Horenstein is conducting it, the whole thing.
― toilet-cleaning brain surgeon (pomenitul), Wednesday, 5 February 2020 18:40 (four years ago) link
i'll give this one to scriabin sonata 10
― ciderpress, Wednesday, 5 February 2020 18:44 (four years ago) link
Deserved imo. Which reminds me:
My Tenth Sonata is a sonata of insects. Insects are born from the sun ... they are the kisses of the sun.
Ok Alex.
― toilet-cleaning brain surgeon (pomenitul), Wednesday, 5 February 2020 18:47 (four years ago) link
you know he's right
― ciderpress, Wednesday, 5 February 2020 18:54 (four years ago) link
I never heard back from mark! Did the description of sprechgesang give you something to process and disagree with?
― With considerable charm, you still have made a choice (Sund4r), Wednesday, 5 February 2020 19:03 (four years ago) link
Almost ran out of time again. Somewhat arbitrary late vote for the Ravel (D&C) I had in mind before I even saw the list. Aaargh.
― Nag! Nag! Nag!, Wednesday, 5 February 2020 23:46 (four years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Thursday, 6 February 2020 00:01 (four years ago) link
Poor moonstruck Pierrot.
― With considerable charm, you still have made a choice (Sund4r), Thursday, 6 February 2020 03:29 (four years ago) link
Hard to argue with the winner, though.
― With considerable charm, you still have made a choice (Sund4r), Thursday, 6 February 2020 03:36 (four years ago) link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Art_works_that_caused_riots
― mookieproof, Thursday, 6 February 2020 03:40 (four years ago) link
I respect Stravinsky far more than I enjoy his music but it's impossible to argue with the Sacre.
― toilet-cleaning brain surgeon (pomenitul), Thursday, 6 February 2020 09:02 (four years ago) link
Onwards, fellow travellers:
Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Classical Compositions of… the 1920s
― toilet-cleaning brain surgeon (pomenitul), Thursday, 6 February 2020 09:06 (four years ago) link
While I feel the best piece won this poll, I'm now listening to the Ralph Vaughan Williams compositions for the first time and these two here are unbelievably sublime. The Lark Ascending and Fantasia are just magical pieces of music. Possibly a bit on the tail end of fashion given their romantic roots, but good lord what sheer beauty.
― octobeard, Tuesday, 24 March 2020 20:57 (four years ago) link
yeah they're wonderful, just an absurdly rich decade
― ogmor, Tuesday, 24 March 2020 20:59 (four years ago) link
Indeed they are, and Arvo Pärt's now ubiquitous compositional style seems unthinkable without the Fantasia in particular. It's tempting to think of Stravinsky (and Prokofiev) as the torchbearers of 'primitivism' in the 1910s, but Vaughan Williams's musical language in these pieces also taps into an imagined 'archaic' consciousness, one grounded in endless melody instead of polyrhythm and not all that dissimilar Erik Satie's own self-consciously naïve experiments in simplicity.
By the way, Andrew Davis's studio recording of the Fantasia with the BBC Symphony Orchestra is stellar, but I think I like this live performance even better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpwqZSp_CyM
― coco vide (pomenitul), Tuesday, 24 March 2020 21:21 (four years ago) link
*dissimilar from
― coco vide (pomenitul), Tuesday, 24 March 2020 21:25 (four years ago) link
all these last posts otm
― Two Gentlemen with the Rona (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 24 March 2020 21:26 (four years ago) link
pom could you suggest a relatively recent piece which exemplifies “Arvo Pärt's now ubiquitous compositional style” and wherein i might hear this RVW influence ?
― budo jeru, Tuesday, 24 March 2020 22:29 (four years ago) link
I hear echoes of both in Dobrinka Tabakova's music.
― coco vide (pomenitul), Tuesday, 24 March 2020 22:36 (four years ago) link
Btw Pärt's Silouans Song strikes me as a good example of what he (consciously?) owes to RVW.
― coco vide (pomenitul), Tuesday, 24 March 2020 22:38 (four years ago) link
The Lark Ascending and Fantasia are just magical pieces of music.
Indeed they are. Thanks for linking to that Davis' recording Pom!
― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 25 March 2020 09:41 (four years ago) link