an attempt at a general "What are you currently digging re. classical music" thread

Hah, and I'm sure they all only listen to that one thing, too.

― Zero Dark 33⅓: The Final Insult (Eric H.), Wednesday, February 27, 2013 8:45 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bet they probably don't listen to it at all

satie and glenn gould, shit i'm that customer

"Well, it's not meat but I suppose I better buy some for appearances."

i think as a precursor of ambient music and huge film/TV earworm people might be able to handle listening to the rugged stylings of "Trois Gymnopedes"

OH GOD WHAT IS THIS SHIT TURN IT OFF I THOUGHT IT WOULD ROCK MORE

guys

IF IT FLOATES, WE KNOAWE IT'S A HIPSTERE

*wonders if xenakis is #3*

annnd i'm sorry for running in on that note, i love this thread but i never have anything to contribute. *sidesteps off*

Ha, I always thought of Satie as 'classical music for people who don't listen to classical music'.

satiesque is one of the worst reviewer-speak for "tinkly major key piano music" but none of the assholes writing "satiesque" music would've written something as weird as the "3 sonneries de la rose-croix"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlOGPcD2A9g

one of the worst reviewer-speak buzzwords* rather

hating on people for wanting to hear some classical music they enjoyed in a movie is kinda the worst caricature of the classical music listener - I don't listen to lots of Satie but c'mon y'all drop the snob act, it's a bad look

i like when someone buys ANY classical. i ain't no snob. still think i should give out a free classical album with every purchase. but i don't even know if people would take them for free! i mean i sell classical but 99.9% goes to classical people. i'm always amazed by the lack of crossover. despite being a rockhead i ALWAYS bought classical records at thrift stores and elsewhere. for decades. and apparently this is really not that common. it really is a rarefied audience. in this case meaning the audience is rare to find. which isn't the meaning of rarefied at all.

Who was being snobby about Satie?? I like Satie fine. My comment wasn't a putdown.

yeah i don't think anybody here said otherwise?

I admit I intended my wedding piano music book to be a little bit snobbish.

i sell classical but 99.9% goes to classical people. i'm always amazed by the lack of crossover. despite being a rockhead i ALWAYS bought classical records at thrift stores and elsewhere. for decades. and apparently this is really not that common.

To generalize: much classical music, especially common practice repertoire, would seem to work pretty differently from pop/rock and emphasizes a different mode of listening from that used for music with relatively flat dynamics, a steady rhythm section, repeated cyclic chord progressions, and riff/motive-based melody. (Sure, CPP music works with motives but often does so in a different way, emphasizing e.g. transformation and development.) Many pop/rock listeners might not be in the habit of listening for the large-scale formal issues and developmental processes we find in CPP music? Satie's big 'hits', on the other hand, do work pretty similarly to how pop works!

Jazz is much closer to pop/rock in many ways.

classical might share an intimidation factor with jazz. like, where do you start? i have definitely had people ask me to recommend some jazz to them cuz they had no idea what was good/what they would like/etc. which is hard! a lot of people start with miles davis and never go on from there. i don't know what i would give people in the way of classical. to start with. maybe bach is the way to go. or come to think of it just some nice piano music! some debussy maybe. then i'd tell them that miles davis was a big debussy fan and sell them some miles davis.

And then you can sell them some Gil Evans, and then you can tell them how Gil was a big Delius fan, and then you can sell them some Delius!

Today is Kalevala Day so please listen to Kullervo or Pohjola's Daughter or something!

As if you people needed to be told!

I did need to be told! I'll be spinning Sibelius' 4 Legends (the Horst stein recording) and Amorphis' Silent Waters!

Good choices. You can stare at stuff like this at the same time: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Gallen_Kallela_The_Aino_Triptych.jpg

I adore Gallen-Kallela. Someday I'ma make it over there and get me an eyeful of him first-hand.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/arts/music/van-cliburn-pianist-dies-at-78.html?src=rechp&_r=0

Anybody see the first part of The Sound and the Fury on BBC Four last night?

― wronger than 100 geir posts (MacDara), Wednesday, 13 February 2013

yeah. this is a three part three hour bbc series on 20th century classical music. if unlike me you're in the UK you can still watch the whole thing online, though ep 1 has only three days left.

the full perfomances on the red button were nice
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01531w2/The_Sound_and_the_Fury_in_Concert_Cage_Feldman_Reich_Monk_Part_and_Benjamin/

Listening to late Stravinsky. Getting near the end of Stephen Walsh's hefty biography and listening along to the late serial stuff I've not knowingly heard before. Threni (or most of it) is much more engaging than I was anticipating and Movements for Piano and Orchestra sounds just as Webernian as its reputation suggests. I believe I can dig these.

Listening to Crime and Dissonance

believe in the webernianisms

Only thing I believe in these days..

"Il Buio" always sticks with me

Ricreazione Divertia is my favourite atm.

I want to argue that Band of Susans was the best that NY minimalism ever got, by quite a distance (even if Young composed the works he is know for in NY, he is an LA kinda guy).

http://thestar.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341bf8f353ef0120a8ebc725970b-320pi

so Elgar's first symphony is pretty awesome, huh

Yes it is. The 2nd even better IMO. My faves are the 2nd, the Cello Concerto and the Falstaff symphonic poem.

I only know the Cello Concerto and it is indeed awesome.

Sorta related: I finished reading Britten's Children, about Benjamin Britten's relationships with adolescent boys, and about how he uses children and child singers in his works. Really interesting, and a bit hard to take at points... As a former boy singer myself, I have sung so much of his stuff, which probably increased my interest.

I want to argue that Band of Susans was the best that NY minimalism ever got, by quite a distance (even if Young composed the works he is know for in NY, he is an LA kinda guy).

NOOOO...

But, really, Band of Susans over Steve Reich??

And, come on, that's totally cheating re Young.

Absolutely: there was no way he could ever have found enough La Montes for a band of them.

Ha.

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

Favorite performance of this. Holy shit.

Can't click at work, whose is it?

Hollywood Quartet's.

Oh yeah, cosign on that. Have it on CD.

I want to argue that Band of Susans was the best that NY minimalism ever got, by quite a distance (even if Young composed the works he is know for in NY, he is an LA kinda guy).

NOOOO...

But, really, Band of Susans over Steve Reich??

And, come on, that's totally cheating re Young.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 12 March 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha ok fair enough on Young but Reich and Glass' model of minimalism was to develop their own groups, v post-rock era type stuff...and I think its a bit sluggish. Really you have to tackle this from another angle, as a rock group playing with ampage and volume, using that to develop minimalist songs off that, and it totally works. I love the 2nd CD of Wired for Sound without the vocals (even if those were great if a bit without character, which they acknowledge by compiling a whole CDs worth of instrumentals)

otoh there was a dave q post comparing them to OASIS and actually I can kinda see it just richness of sound-wise. There is a weird correspondance I'd rather leave unexamined bcz I like it so much.

Susan Stenger plays Cage this week

Anyone have a spare ticket? :)

I think Band of Susans was junk tbqh.

By all rights, I should like them: 80s noise/drone guitar rock with a post-minimal pedigree (Chatham proteges no less), pop hooks in the classic Amerindie style. Somehow, nothing seems to come together right on the records, though: The cheesy 80s production with giant gated drums might work if this were spare new wave/postpunk but it seems to work so strongly against what they were going for. The rhythm section is plodding and uninspired, just a constant predictable backbeat. I find Poss's voice completely unappealing. The guitars drone but never quite seem to deliver much in terms of rich textures or innovative sounds. They never seem to really nail a pop hook like REM or Husker Du or, say, the Mary Chain or MBV could. ("Hard Light" comes closest.)

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Wednesday, 12 September 2012 00:18 (6 months ago) Bookmark