I love Beethoven. And the Beatles. My thread is not about "taste"....Who are interested to know our tastes? Or what we hate? I am not intereted by the love/hate polarity but by the more subtle love/like polarity.... When our music listening is more than an unconscious habit, it begin to be a conscious journey.... In unconscious habit the polarity love/hate dominate....In the conscious music journey the polarity love/like dominate.... It is about the immediate communion with some music, i call " love"... And about a more distant link mediated by the brain, i called " liking"... The 2 are important, i listen to way more music i like than music i love... For sure also many music i listen to, i like and love at the same times....Here i ask for those music we mostly "love" and the music we mostly only "like" to study the forces which are at play behind these contrast in ouselves....These 2 polarities reflect something that is in the music and something that is in us....The 2, what is in us and what we pick in the music, describe our journey and sometimes something about the music itself when a great number of people could agree... We dont want to know only or mainly what you love, we want to understand with a multiple double lists choices how you related to music.... "Tastes" are only anecdotal in themselves....But our way to link ourself to music, sometimes more with the brain than the heart, can teach us something....It begin to be more than anecdotal and can reveal an aspect of our journey... It is simple to spontaneously name what we love or hate; it is less easy to spot what we love and what we cannot love but like a lot.... This is the "crux" question of this thread.... My best to you.... «Crocodiles also love, but we can think before eating»-Groucho Marx |
Well, the two of you have provided much food for thought! At this point, I think I need to take some time and try to digest what you've shared. Thanks again for a deeply engaging discussion. I'll keep an eye out for your posts in the future. My best wishes to both of you.
Thanks and much appreciated.... My best to you.... |
Great post...
Ernest Ansermet, the great director and maestro, who was a mathematician of first formation and wrote a masterful 1200 pages book about the musical experience says that the history of music reflect the history of the soul and the history of each soul mirror itself in the history of music...
Like you said we cannot love all there is to love on the same footing because we are all different in our approach to music, but studying a bit history and styles help a lot for a deeper experience.... |
I’m curious how intellectual understanding can impact the spontaneous reaction to music/sound that occurs on a non-intellectual level. Acclimating our soul to another soul through biography or essays is not only an intellectual work or even mainly an intellectual one... It is mostly a contextualization of another soul..A way to link our journey on earth to another one journey... If you stay only on an intellectual level in reading you will miss the task... If an interval "feels" unpleasant to us, it’s not clear to me how understanding the composer’s intention can affect the interval’s "energetic charge" -- it’s effect upon our metabolism. Understanding the composer intentions participate of this contextualization of his soul...And to the contextualization of your own listening interpretating soul at our own time.... I will give you an example because it is easier to give an example... When i listen Schoenberg atonalism music i feel a strange out of this world emotion that is very powerful but that is not "metabolizable" by my spirit/soul/body organization ... The chords and colors feel are icy cold and invit me in some ethereal artificial world... It is interesting but not gripping in a transformative way for me... No reading will modify that experience... When i listened to the late works of Scriabin, on the fine line between tonality and atonality, the dynamic movement which withdraws me from this world and returns me there immediately after in a continual back and forth, dynamise all my creative spirit, in an uncontrolled enthusiastic surge toward the infinite, through my own being... Reading about Scriabin, his intention, his superhuman wishes for humanity through his music illuminated his work.. Schoenberg was only a genius with his creation of atonality, Scriabin appeared before me like a Christ-like figure who used atonality WITHOUT making it a dogma and used it to transform humanity not to entertain it..... But the main reason of my love for him was also the discovery of a rare pianist able to play him at the required level....Sofronitsky... Then Schoenberg i may like him and admiring him... He did not touch me at all ...Like Stravinsky they are brain and genius only...I admire them and i know exactly why... But Scriabin transform my life at each listening like Bach.... I love hin and i feel exactly why... For other reasons but related one in the history of occidental music, Bach and scriabin partake a concious masterful use of the colors tonal scale for the redemption of humanity at the limit of the tonal world but never completely out of it like Schoenberg...Schoenberg method is only new entertainment not alchemical transfrmation... The brain play the more important part in Schoenberg .... Thhe brain and the will play the more important part in Wagner.... With Beethoven, Scriabin or Bach the heart and the will play the more important part the brain come in third .... But the first time i listened to Scriabin i only perceived a complex and uninteresting curtain of harmonies without melody...My ears/brain cannot proceed the information that was too powerful to be understood by the ears/brain/heart/will in the form of their complex initiated completely new interactive movements ... I read much, i was also initiated by some musician in my younger years about him, that initiation kept my curiosity alive; i begun to understood slowly the promethean task behind Scriabin creation, which is not unlike Beethoven or Wagner ( that is more artificial in Wagner more natural in Beethoven ) and my complete listening of music was changed for ever.... I begin to perceive complete new dimensions in sounds colors.... Thanks to a patient curiosity and a slow investigation.... And i loved him spontaneously at the right mature moment of true discovery and enlightenment when the moment was right in the person of his greatest interpreter on piano... Not loving something at some time only means that we are not ready sometimes.... Without Scriabin my musical life would have been way poorer...Because listening to a new colors perceived dimensions has no price... I place Scriabin now next to the greatest composers of all times... Not under.... |
I could go on, but I’ll restrain myself. Never restraint yourself here.... 😊 I suggest between this fine line between "effort" and "allowing" to read and study a little bit around the music which interest you without having yet all your heart in it.... Article of music critics, philosophers, or simply bios.... Reading and studying a bit help a lot.... I remember younger when the reading of the text on the vinyl cardbox presentation of the intention and epoch of the composer and his situation in it help me a lot....Same thing about Indian and persian music elementary introduction... I read biographies of Scriabin and Sun Ra that help me to appreciate their journey for example....Reading about unusual instrument help a lot.... Do you know where come from the vichitra veena or the sarangi ? The other helping method to cross and navigate this fine line between effort and allowance is listening at small dose, and reading at the same time around the intention of the composer or the musician... It is listening without imposing anything in the attention....Like background listening.... Alternating this with some deep attentive short listenings sessions looking for the ideas and concepts we are discovered in our reading studies... This was my way.... Perhaps good for me and not for all.... I dont know.... One thing is for sure, enlarging my musical scope was always enlarging my own soul at the same time.... |
If you have the time and inclination, I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts re: the process of "education". in order to make a more complete and honest assessment of the true value of a musician’s musical vision the listener needs to have, at least, a modicum of humility. Education of self need humility.... We must learn how to learn first.... We must accept our own limitations, music touch us in a way that is a unique perspective and a specific take on our own body/soul/spirit organization...Music increase or decrease our own spititual metabolism in each of us in a particular way... The price to pay for a deep plunge in this ocean is that we cannot inhabit all islands.... Choices must be made and are made before even our birth... Then it seems that some music will never touch us , some other will if we discover it or learn how to digest it... Knowing that we must also open our ears and mind.... Discovery has a price.... We must Learn how to listen to music like a musician must learn... Perhaps not in the same exact way, i am not a musician, and i dont read sheet of music for example...But we must learn to listen to the effect of sounds and also the effect of music on the metabolism increase or decrease body/soul/spirit.... The interaction of these 3 will change with different sounds, frequencies, rythm, chords melody, harmony, timbre etc... We must learn to listen to sounds and music .... They are not the same....In the 2 cases a learning experience is necessary but cannot be forced nor imposed.... We must put in place the conditions to do so ourself...Reading about what we listen to is a good idea... We will never change our basic body/soul/spirit specific metabolism, the relation for example of will/emotion/ and thinking is different in each of us.... The goal is not to like everything , we will never be able to change totally our "taste" but we can enlarge it toward new worlds of sounds, but also to new realm of music... Other cultures music is a good way to do so.... Not only classical or popular jazz or european music.... I remember the many important moment of my musical life: The discovery of poetry with folk singer or popular singer.... The discovery of Bach and all choral music or of the spirit... The discovery of Bruckner or the discovery of orchestral music....Mahler after that.... The discovery of Scriabin and of piano music with pianist Sofronitsky...And the power of the musician playing and recreating the works... The discovery of spirit no more with only Bach but with Iranian masters....and with Indian one.... The discovery of the supremum importance of the musicians themselves with jazz music..... We must listen also to each chapter of musical european history like if it was a chapter of our own soul history.... And it is even if we are not conscious of this deep fact....Learning why a period captivate us more than other period is also a key to understand where we come from and where we can go.... If the soul is an earth, music is the geology of this spirit..... |
There is a very nice album of Kenneth Wheeler with John Taylor - i also like Wheeler. Check out also Paolo Fresu if you like trumpet.
Thanks niodari very good recommendation for those who may not know them....I already had all their works....Or almost and i love/like them all... My best to you.... |
I read you post with great interest.... You are spot on...
I think the same as you...
I think we must take the time to learn and educate our "taste" toward something larger...
But we cannot change totally what we are.....The precise connection we have with music, the privileged channel we used will not change... But the road we travel may be enlarged and can be made to encompass more than what is in our past history...
My best to you and my thanks for this interesting reflexion of yours....
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I’d be curious as to "which Miles" you’ve listened to, as his recordings cover a wide stylistic range. My responses to his playing range from love to outright dislike, depending upon the musical setting. Thanks first for your participation and kind and interesting observations... Food for tought! First thing to be clear i like Miles Davis.... I dont know of anyone who like jazz who will not like him... I admire him for the player he was, taking the trumpet playing in a whole new range of styles and adventures.... His production is not all to my liking but in general i like a great portion of his creations... Miles take the trumpet to his ultimate possibilities, and the trumpet serve him , impossible to not like him... But the mystery for me is and always has been that Chet Baker touch me deeper in the heart with a minimalistic playing completely devoted to singing emotions with trumpet or voice.... I love him.... I dont even know if i admire him ! In truth i admire him, without being bothered by the admiration and the distance it create between the object of admiration and the admirer.... Because there is no distance, no separation at all between his music and my soul... I listen to Miles always with pleasure, i listen to Baker with crunching emotion.... Another example is Sun Ra i admire him without reserve, but i dont know a single piece of him that can touch my heart.... None i know of.... But his production is enormous i must wait.... I like Sun Ra a lot....I will be always fascinated by him and his music engine.... But i will never love him like Bill Evans....I even bought the biography of Sun Ra.... 😁 I like Kenneth Wheeler for example very much like Miles, a true genius also, and i listen to all his cd with awe for his unique musical improvisation and sound....I admire him with all my spirit and soul and i know i admire him totally..... But why did he never touch me like Chet? I like Wheeler so much i can listen to him 12 hours in line, i did it just days ago.....😊 I cannot be tired of his mastering of the trumpet.... It is a TRUE genius not at all under Miles... But not one of his piece touch my heart like Chet? Why? In classical music my favorite example is Stravinsky, i admire him, but here admiration has killed my love.... I rarely listen to him, for me his music is always a cold perfect creation...A perfect object.... Unlike Scriabin that touch my soul.... Why ? I dont say i am right, that my "taste" are right.... I am only fascinated by the mystery of music and the many levels where music touch our body, heart, soul, mind..... Like most has understood my thread has nothing to do with bashing an artist and defending an other one at all.... My thread is a reflection about how deep music go into ourself and why? |
I dont know what you will learn but i know already that i will learn a great deal with your posts and suggestions...
Thanks very much and my deepest respect..... |
Here’s a Sisyphus-worthy task. Go to the whitecamaross thread where you posted recently about youtube quality, and try and persuade him to use classical music in his demos.
I dare you. Your sarcasm hability improved from last posts...Congratulations! By the way i like his direct way and passionate way to compare costly gear....I am direct and passionate myself...My different and complementary goal to his goal is how to improve at no cost....But i like audio gear even which i cannot afford at all.... And i have listened all genre of music for your information....Not only classic....Jazz, folk,singer classical or not, Indian music, Persian music, Choral music etc....Even Chinese music and other less known music... The "youtube files" were not the main problem i presented in this post, but discussing that with you is of no interest at all... Some people fix to a target and like brainless dart go their way.... It seems i am on your list.... Enjoy being a small dart zig-zagging to the target.... By the way go to practice your sarcasm rare talent with him also......He dont know you yet.....But being direct and passionate himself like i am, i doubt he will enjoy your talent.... But who knows! dare to try..... |
Funny, I love Stravinsky and Miles Davis, but only admire Chet Atkins and Scriabin (sound/colour spectrum be damned!). This prove my point.... We learn with different histories and the relation with music is contituted in a specific history which is ours and this relative history is conscious if we confronted ourself with possible other roads in the map of significations... Why are we so different in our understanding of music? What this polarity love/ like or heart/brain or intimate realtion/ distant relation or internal resonance/external link means in relation with the history of music itself...History of music is first an history of collective consciousness...Not only our personal history also.... |
Thanks I know them already....The sonatas of Feinberg are underestmated they are great works of piano and one of my very loved piano works...
But others who read this thread may try them if they dont know them....
welcome and come back with your choices in a more detailed way..... 😊
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No problem for my face ....😁
But comparison of my system to yours will be unfair...
My audio system is under 500 hundred dollars of cost, but greatly enhanced by my own homemade creation i called mechanical, electrical and acoustical embeddings controls, and probably your system is more refine technically than mine and costlier...
Then my S.Q. even lower in qualities than your own, may produce a "shock" in you.... SO good for peanuts? Yes.....
😊
More seriously i think that the history of music is a soul cryptography that can be deciphered by our own soul but with listening attentive experiments on ourself....
I am fond of these experiments and i like to investigate my choices to contemplate their deep unknown motivation in me....
This is the reason for my thread...
I wish you the best there is.... You are always welcome....
P.S. i was not a university professor, but i worked at the library, counselling prof. or students about books on all subjects... I know a little bits on all subjects or can learn very swiftly.... 😁
«What is the difference between numbers ,music and philosophy? None, no difference can rip them apart... All is geometrical poetry in action» -Anonymus Smith
«What is geometrical poetry? Only chain of exact metaphors»-Anonymus Smith
«I always mixed or confused Euclid with Shakespeare, i must have been wise all these times without even knowing it»-Groucho Marx |
First thank you for your very interesting post, which is food for our own tought.... And i appreciate particularly this part that illustrate perfectly the frame of my question/answers and my appeal to the thinking of us all about the many other possible answers about the same composers or group of composers than our own.... There is some analogy in paintings for me. There are painting that I like at the first glance, but more I look at them, less I like them, and there are painting which i do not like from the first glance (I think they are just interesting), but more I observe them, more I like them. I would attach Bach to the first category and Tchaikovsky to the second one. The more i think about that the more i think that the history of music reflect itself in us differently and touch us on spots with a different emphasis that reflect our own individual soul’s histories and events... «History mirror itself in us but we strike back »-Anonymus Smith |
Yeah, as Miles himself would often say: the silence says more than the notes.
Anyone who like Jazz like Miles Davis... My question is not about hating something... If you read my last post it is explained...this is it: LIKING is related to the brain and the admiration is justified by an a posteriori reflexion...It is related to the fact that some composers ask in us for an adaptation who made ourself able to taming them... LOVING is related to the heart and the emotion is spontaneous and direct without a posteriori analysis... It is this way because emotions contains an a priori analysis... Pascal: " the heart has his reasons that the reason ignore". Then we must look at your list if we want to know you and comparing your intellectual and emotional motivated choices.... I bet people now begins to understand why a list pondered by the polarities of the heart and brain is very instructive and said to us something which pertain to the character of the person who has chosen the list more clearly than just a linear list.... We can then imagine ourself listening to a composer with the perspective given to us by an other who like or love a specific composer... If we do that it is helping us to relativize our own choices and then we learn something about ourself too... This is the OBJECTIVE REASON for my thread....Not imposing my tastes.... 😌Or not for other to impose their tastes... Behind my thread is a real question.... MY best to you.... |
Yes the part about ourself is the first aspect, but the invitation to change ourself, if someone like you interrogate my love in this case for Chet Baker is the key part of my initial question...
Now reading you, saying what you said, and thinking what i think about Chet, it will be interesting for me to listen at the first occasion Miles' music and reconsiderating my "liking" without for sure imposing nothing artificial on myself, just listening with an open minds...
Revisiting ourself is an exercise in consciousness...
Thanks to make me able and tempted to do so...
My best to you and my deep salutation to Miles.... |
This is an example of an interesting list thanks
gardners501
LIKING is related to the brain and the admiration is justified by an a posteriori reflexion...It is related to the fact that some composers ask in us for an adaptation who made ourself able to taming them...
LOVING is related to the heart and the emotion is spontaneous and direct without a posteriori analysis...
It is this way because emotions contains an a priori analysis...
Pascal: " the heart has his reasons that the reason ignore".
Then we must look at your list if we want to know you and comparing your intellectual and emotional motivated choices....
I bet people now begins to understand why a list pondered by the polarities of the heart and brain is very instructive and said to us something which pertain to the character of the person who has chosen the list more clearly than just a linear list....
We can then imagine ourself listening to a composer with the perspective given to us by an other who like or love a specific composer... If we do that it is helping us to relativize our own choices and then we learn something about ourself too...
This is the OBJECTIVE REASON for my thread....Not imposing my tastes.... 😌Or not for other to impose their tastes...
Behind my thread is a real question....
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Thanks to remember us...
My best to you.... |
Dont judge too hastilay....I am reliable in any work not military one...
I never even have a boss in my life....Then imagine an officer giving me an order?
More than that i cannot endure more than 2 persons or 4 around me....
The last time i go to a cinema was 30 years ago...I almost never go to restaurant. ... I walk instead of taking the bus....I never accept to live in a house with any neighbours.... I run away from any collective festivities and i hate travel if not solitary or with only one traveller....
Then keep the flake or the march order.....😊
The only one voluntary for a war in my family was my young father, alone and without family which was not accepted because he was too young and too short.... I dont retained his qualities...Alas!
The next war with Canada will play above my tombstone.... They will never need or miss me....
😁
Now back to music from war.....
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My first vinyl was military marches given with the stereo furniture in 1964...
😊
But i am anything save a war dog..... |
At first i was not able to choose...For the first listening...
Well tempered Klavier of Bach by Andras Schiff...
And the rival version of Vladimir Feltsman...
Schiff is perfect really....
But when you listen something one time, it is like making love with an unknown beautiful woman , the sex may be great...For sometime...
But love manifest itself only with the time passing...And love making can erase itself with time even with the more perfect woman... And with an imperfect but loved one love making can increase with time...
All those who review 2 musical recorded performance rarely listen to the cd 1000 times...
I had listen to some cd 1000 times...Yes not 100 but 1000...Not many but....Love is impossible to control...
Then at first the perfect playing of the Hungarian Schiff is without any defect at all...
After that i listen to Felstman the Russian school of piano is in my heart for sure...
No more perfection here, only a singing above perfection, a perspective that sometimes pertain to the sacred but from the heart not the brain like Schiff...
Understand me please, i like Schiff without reservation, i will listen to him time to time...he also give the sacred mystery but not with the powerful immersion that give Feltsman...
i love Feltsman and i know that i would be able to listen to him without end...With time to time Schiff for my background listening...I love Bach so much that i swim in it without listening sometimes....
My favorite Goldberg are with Feltsman.... Irresistible live at Moscow when the wall was broken and with his return to free Russia... An event ....He plays with freedom an interpretation completely without comparison... He even add something to Bach.... This is difficult for anybody....He succeed....
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An american journalist was asking to the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard why there are so many geniuses in mathematics and physics coming from Hungary to the US... This was at some times after the Manhattan project... Szilard answered: "Which geniuses? There is only one genius from Hungary it is Janos Von Neumann". That says a lot about Hungarian soul...And after the long list of Hungarian genius in america, that says a lot about Von Neumann... For me the greatest pianist i ever heard in my life is a Hungarian...He towered so high that it is unbelievable... Listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLk6vqaxU1YCompare this version with Horowitz and Richter for example...The tempo of the Hungarian god is very slow but is more intense and explosive than the other 2 giants...The emotional flow is so powerful that it is impossible to not enter in a transe listening it...Try it... The volcanic power of the lava flows break all walls and any other pianist sound like first class prize pupils practicing ... This amazing pianist was considered Liszt reincarnated when very young and a book was written about him by a greal psychologist in Holland when the boy has 13 years of age...The book was about transcendental musical genius among children... He live unrecognized in America except for the first 15years, after that without any imporesario, poor, and witout any ressources he dive in misery, near prostitutes, composing his own works all day without a piano for himself most of his life... He make no public appearance for 35 years except at 74 years, when his 10th wife, sicked by cancer he was in need of money to cure her... The journalist making an interview with him in the cardboard pocket of this vinyl ask him why there is no piano in his appartment; he answered " no garagist keep their tools in their house"...He does not need a piano and NEVER practice... For those of you who may think that i have exagerated a bit about his playing listen to this, written in the US by Shoenberg, the great composer for which any pianist is mainly only a tool for his genius, in a letter to the young Maestro Klemperer in Germany: In a 1935 letter to Otto Klemperer, Arnold Schoenberg wrote the following about him: ...a pianist who appears to be something really quite extraordinary. I had to overcome great resistance in order to go at all, for the description I’d heard from Dr. Hoffmann and from Maurice Zam had made me very skeptical. But I must say that I have never heard such a pianist before...First, he does not play at all in the style you and I strive for. And just as I did not judge him on that basis, I imagine that when you hear him, you too will be compelled to ignore all matters of principle, and probably will end up doing just as I did. For your principles would not be the proper standard to apply. What he plays is expression in the older sense of the word, nothing else; but such power of expression I have never heard before. You will disagree with his tempis as much as I did. You will also note that he often seems to give primacy to sharp contrasts at the expense of form, the latter appearing to get lost. I say appearing to; for then, in its own way, his music surprisingly regains its form, makes sense, establishes its own boundaries. The sound he brings out of the piano is unheard of, or at least I have never heard anything like it. He himself seems not to know how he produces these novel and quite incredible sounds – although he appears to be a man of intelligence and not just some flaccid dreamer. And such fullness of tone, achieved without ever becoming rough, I have never before encountered. For me, and probably for you too, it’s really too much fullness, but as a whole it displays incredible novelty and persuasiveness. And above all he’s only [sc. 33 years] old, so he’s still got several stages of development before him, from which one may expect great things, given his point of departure... it is amazing what he plays and how he plays it. One never senses that it is difficult, that it is technique – no, it is simply a power of the will, capable of soaring over all imaginable difficulties in the realization of an idea. – You see, I’m waxing almost poetic.[9] Wiki
«We also have the testimony of Arnold Schoenberg. Arnold Schoenberg was not a man to suffer fools greatly. Nevertheless, the letter in which he wrote to Klemperer, Schoenberg lavishes praise on this pianist just about unlike any musician he had before encountered. Schoenberg’s own students were sometimes victims of their master’s caustic comments. He did not bestow praise lightly on anyone. However, he seems to be absolutely captivated by Nyiregyházi and his playing.» part of an article on the net.... To finish my post about this pianist i will give you this anecdote: Earl Wild was a first class extraordinary pianist... It is easy to verify with his career spanning almost a century, his playing is so powerful technically and musically, probably no one with a great name never ever could impress him so to make him doubt of himself... With reason, Earl Wild is anything except a second grade pianist , it is one among the giants... But what is happening, what happened when a giant encounter, by luck or fate, a god? An american journalist asked Earl Wild after a public concert what do you think of the playing of this unknown Hungarian genius which just recorded a disc for the first time since 30 or 40 years... Earl Wild answered about the playing of the Hungarian, was one short word: " baloney"... Think a second how the giant pianist was feeling about himself compared to the unknown god; for the first time in his life probably he was listening to something he cannot emulate or mimic not even rival and never surpass even in dream.... It is not unlike the jealousy and anger of Salieri toward Mozart in the great epic scene of this great but fictitious film "Amadeus".... If you want to verify compare his playing on youtube with anyone.... At worst and it is rare he seems on par with some giant for some piece, most of the times the god in healthy form crush giants like children... No one except the extraterrestrial octopus musical virtuoso Simon Barrere rival him, and perhaps in Scriabin only tough, not in Liszt, the 3 russian gods, Sofronitsky and Heinrich Neuhaus with Scriabin himself and very very few others rival him... |
Romania produce Celibidache ! One of the most original maestro ....
Greatest romanian thinker and poet is Lucian Blaga a completely original philosopher....And a poet of the first order... He also has written great theater pieces... It is a shame that a genius so interesting was almost unknown in the Europeean philosophy circle and litterature.... That speak volume....
I read 2 times his main philosophy works....😁 His metaphysic is the most tragic metaphysic ever written in all european history and the most original one hands down.... Ceaucescu torture him at the end of his life and veto all the publication of his books in the last ten years of his life...
It is only one name in the list of my 10 romanian heroes...
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Thanks frogman...
Bohemian,moravian,romanian are all in deep poetry...
For the anecdote at least 10 romanian writers have changed my life....
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I love Britten "Christmas Carols"....
This piece is new to me....
Thanks to remind me about Britten.... |
Janacek is a poet, It is a surprizing good news for humanity indeed...
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This is one of the best recordings of its type I have ever heard .Both from player and composer.
https://youtu.be/zN8llXUFNxc?t=9 Wow! You certainly have the 2 ears in the right holes and connected to the heart... Absolute poetry in an incomparable interpretation.... Thanks... It is a discovery.... Happy new Year.... |
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Be careful with that assumption. It is a conversation between friends and when we judge someone or something that say more about ourself than about the people or the work judged indeed... My thread is a way to express but also to know ourself... This is the reason why i speak about loving someone or some works and liking someone or some works... I never use the word "hating".... All composers create from their heart and soul and brain and spirit and body... Our access to their world is never mind mediated by our own heart soul and brain body and spirit history... Judging between friends exchanging our experiences is a way to learn about ourself first and last and about others impressions to confront ourself also... Not a way to condemn some composers and some works.... Then your caution are appropriate but refusing our own judgement is refusing to know our own limitations or our own intuitions because they operate a choice that eliminate some and not some others...These choices are inevitable... I never condemned Stravinsky, i only like him, i admire him greatly....I love Scriabin... But if i sense that the Stravinsky music come more from the brain, others in the contrary could say the opposite that the Stravinsky Sacred Spring for example come from the visceral body experience and Scriabin music comes from his brain disconnected from his body in an astral realm...All these contradictions define each one of us and are reconciled in the greater History of the soul....All judgements, even contrary to one another are right because they are all limited to some perspective that speak about our own origin in the journey... No one is right...All are right... This is not a contradiction, this is all convergent but distinct travels... Judging, evaluating has values like many stops on a road that is our personal and collective histories encounters.... Happy new Year.... |
As long as Chet is not singing.
Miles had it right “Chet you cannot sing!”
😊 |
I was in Germany when Christa Ludwig was at her prime and she was, beyond doubt , #1 with the German nation .My best friends sister was an excellent trained singer, leader in a great Choir in Berlin’s Catholic Cathedral.I told her once she sounded like Ludwig , she gave me a dirty look and
said "Bist du verruckt " aka Are you Crazy .
Magnificent story thanks.... 😊 I was in love with Ludwig after hearing his Mahler lieder and Bach.... You were a lucky fellow, i never had a singer for friend....😪 Happy New year..... |
Magister[one who is of the magistrate?] Magister whitout the "h" is a latin word meaning teacher or mentor... I advised university students about books for 35 years, i was not the one who classified the books on shelves, but the one who help them to discover ideas in new books or old one .... I miss my job because each day i was waiting to partake ideas with students in all fields....Listen to them and if i can motivate them to read classical or unorthodox books....I was reading in my job waiting for a student to come... I usually advised chemistry student to write poetry, and advise poet to study number theory and music....To give you the gist of the matter... But sometimes i motivated number student with the beauty of prime numbers or p-adic one and the young poet with an unknown poetical genius of my own liking... 😊 Here in audio forums i advise people to stop upgrading their gear, listeningto it with a set of listening experiments instead and then learn all along the way how to embed rightfully their audio system mechanically electrically and acoustically before thowing money... I speak also too much, it is a remnant of my job, but my wife said of my passionate character also.... |
mahgister -- I guess you go for the slo-o-o-o-o-o-o-w. For change of pace, try the final movement of Mozart’s Symphony #39. Good recommendation indeed... I love Mozart particularly these last symphonies... Mozart is a signpost for celestial harmonies...His music dont always come from the heart like in his Requiem but mostly from another world where harmonies ARE life itself....He was inspired indeed more than he really hardly work... Cosi fan tutte is for me the equivalent of the art of the fugue, it is the pure art of harmonies for voices.... Anyone who read the libretto of this opera waste his time not because it is a bad libretto, but because the harmonies of voices are so trancendentally beautiful that the argument of the libretto appear without any link to these out of the world harmonies and seems ridiculous... I dont even want to see this opera, only listening to it, eyes shut and sealed... He work rarely but the day he encounter Bach made him think for the first time in his life about writing music slowly with his brain and not only with his spirit beside him... 😊 |
Curious about what composers and or symphonies move you? I can listen and appreciate all composers.... Most of them i like them a lot... Only very few i love dearly tough... Some works are so powerful that almost all others works are under their level of power to transform my soul... But once this thing is said, i despise or i am only cold for very few composers... There is even composers i can admire with only a cold heart and a cold brain... For example i can write a 500 hundred book pages to prove the genius of Stravinsky.... It will be easy because all his works demonstrate a complete mastering of all musical history and technical skills at the highest level...Same thing for Schoenberg....an incomparable genius indeed... Why am i able to learn to like these 2 but never able to love them? Their music come ONLY from their brains, almost never from heart or soul... Scriabin at the same times is the complete opposite to them, his brain is the slave of his encompassing soul... All his music come through the heart of the listener but does not stay there tough and take him toward the spirit world....His genius is not less than a Schoenberg, but he is no more a human genius, mostly an angel, a magus, a divine thaumaturge of the world soul almost like Beethoven, some messiah with an urgent mission on earth that cannot be only musical prowess only.... |
By the way Elly Ameling is with Christa Ludwig among my few passions... Hayypy New Year to all of you my friends... |
This is the song that Jussi Bjorling bought me to classical music with and is sung by a artist that was almost as good as he and is VERY
seldom heard today . A scandal !
It seems we pray to the same gods...Wunderlich is alone with Bjorling and who knows who else? Thanks... |
Sometimes it is possible to have both:
https://youtu.be/x2XUaCWezRY
On the other hand, perhaps I am mistaken about which you love? 🤔 Excellent proposition... I love Christa Ludwig like Marian Anderson for the same reason they not only sing they pray...Christa Ludwig is one of my dear loving singer near Anderson for 35 years....It is not so much the context even if you are right about that, it is the subtle motion in the heart of the singer that count most.... Neither of the 2, Anderson or Ludwig sing with their throat mainly... Their hearts sing and it is not perfect like when the song is singing by mainly the throat , it is sublime perfection of love embodied in living imperfection of the human heart for me... I like dearly many female singers.... I love dearly a few... |
I am in LOVE with that one who pray with his beating heart... I LIKE very much the magnificent perfect rendition of that one who sing so well... Guess which one i love, and which one i like very much.... A clue: the one who sing well can be replaced by many other voices on par with her... The one i love cannot be replaced by almost ANY other voice i think of , she is out of the scale...
Anne Sofie Von Otter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2C8TvF3dJk Marian Anderson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14MwxfiPHVY |
Thanks for this interesting posts.... Elly Ameling was my first love in Bach voices... 😊
Richter is certainly a genius....
Who could not or would not love "la petite bande" do not love Bach enough.... |
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My thread is more interesting than i think it would be.... Thanks to all of you.... Food for thought! One remark, i like Beethoven, but when i listen to the 6th symphony, , and the 14 th quatuor, the same Oppenheimer rush to listen to after the detonation of his bomb, and the allegretto of the 7th symphony, which is the more powerful musical movement in the history of music able to ressuscitate and able to reanimate dead flowers and dead souls....i listen to all that and said to myself that this Beethoven i only like, it is in fact impossible to not love him completely whithout any restriction at all.... If i only like him now the fault is then with my cold heart indeed or my brain too great influence.... Beethoven like Christ or Bach, is a myth rooted in human heart and not only in musical history.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDpDwZZA248 |
Yes we do a have Arvo Part and Georgy Sviridov..... 😊
I think the same that your French Professor...
Tv and computer are helpful in everyday life but for the soul they are " entertaining" like a circus near an hermitage...
You cannot "micmic" mysticism nor the "soul gesture" in music....Nobody can mimic Desprez or Hildegard of Bingen ....Even Chet Baker cannot be mimic to this day because he was not playing trumpet like other virtuoso but his own soul....
« God cannot be fooled, nor my mother »-Groucho Marx
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Thanks Jim and schubert for interesting posts and kind words... Our heart lie oscillating and beating between what we love dearly and what we like... This difference reveal very much what we are....We cannot live without those we love, but life will be hard without all this music we like very much.... For example naming these composers "souls cleaners" : Perhaps the most important is what I call my "soul cleaners’
Josquin Desprez, Tallis. Byrd., Purcell, Monteverdi, Carlo Gesualdo and handful of other early music religious composers . That tell something which pertain to those composers unacknowledged by some of us...For example the inclusion of Gesulado after Monteverdi in this list is understandable, but very surprizing for me after Despez, Tallis, Byrd and Purcell... Then this observation means for me that i must listen these 2 composers in another way and not separating them from the first four....What there is in Monteverdi and Gesualdo with their very expressionist powerful moving "modern" use of voices that can clean the soul, compared to the equilibrium of all voices whe discover in the first four ? For me it is their common link at play: choral music whatsoever.... Choral music clean my soul also ....But there is more .... Even Gesualdo, with his tortured expressionism that is almost contemporary, calm my soul and clean it...In a sense Gesualdo is more contemporary than the Gurrelieder of Schoenberg, because the music is more direct and less in the "romantic gesture pose" like Schoenberg... Then YES Gesualdo clean my soul in a way Schoenberg does not....Than all these choral composers has something in common that is not in Schoenberg.... They create spontaneously without any "pose" directly from the "soul"....Schoenberg is beautiful indeed but not more.... Your posts made me think, thanks and Happy New Year to the 2 of you.... |
I got to say, though, that I’ve always found that my like vs. love selections do seem to change over time. Very good point.... That make me able to say something very important: my thread questions are NOT about our tastes first and foremost, BUT about the way music affect our own evolution and our way to be conscious of that....I begin to think about this mysterious fact that there is musicians and composers that even if i admire them, i dont love them so much....There exist also musician that i love at first sight without being able to say in the beginning that even if i admired them in the first place... Chet Baker was the best example of that for me...Is his playing a good virtuoso playing or a very elemtary one? But is was also evident at first listening that Miles Davis was a giant to be admired and his playing virtualistic and creative, but i do not enter in a love story with him at the levl of what i sensed with Chet Baker, even after the pleasure of listening Miles often... In classical music it is impossible to not admire Shoenberg, it is a true genius; but i never loved him at all; in the contrary i loved Scriabin at first listening without even knowing whats his music is all about.... I dont express that to express or glorify my tastes, i want to think about this phenomenon: Music changes our body and soul metabolism... How and why? Then confronting different "tastes" and habits can be an enlarging and a modifying of our own consciousness.... Audio tastes or music tastes are not walker of a long way walk....But our evolution history in the understanding of audio and music are better road for the best hikers....And the beginning journey of a sea of deep questions.... |
Wow! Thanks frogman indeed for all this food for our tought... Especially i am in the same boat than you for Gesualdo, one of the absolute master of music....My admiration with him has go to the roof inducing after the first listenings a special love/ passion, like for Scriabin his russian brother in some way.... I put them on the same class of transforming promethean geniuses of the soul with Monteverdi for example that create by himself a "new world" where all of us can and could live .... I will need to read many times your post to try something new for me.... Merry Christmas.... |
edcyn very interesting ....We are all different then we react differently.... I can understand why you love Miles so much, i admire him very much and listen to him often.... My thread is here for each of us to realize at which level the complexities of sound and interpretation of music work on our complex soul/body... And at the same times suggesting a musician to one another out of our normal listening habit perhaps.... And to think about why something that is so much evident for us, the love of someone, appear less evident for someone else....Admiration and liking are not love.... Sometimes love begins in the reflexive part of us and transform the heart....And sometimes the reverse is going.... Neither is bad or better.... It is a learning process that’s all.... |
Very constructive remark thanks....But it will help to know which you admire or love... Hating is not our line of work here in music.... 😎
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Thanks millercarbon.... Your Tchaikovsky example is spot on....
Try his quartets if you dont already know them....I recommend Borodin quartet version...
One day some great Russian musician , remembering a word he read in a book by Tolstoi speaking about some movement of a quatuor by Tchaikovsky, says that he was curious to look for this mysterious movement not precisely named by Tolstoi that was making him burst into tears....But there is 3 quatuors and what could this mysterious movement be? Each of this 3 quatuors has 4 movements, then one in these 12 is the right one....
Thinking that it will be easy to discover it after all, he listened to the 3 quatuors, but tears flows from him immediately from each and every movement of each quatuor.... He will never know after all which was the movement that has affected Tolstoi so much, because each movement of each one of these quatuors speak so much to the heart that it will stay a mystery...
I can assure you that Tchaikovsky stay in my heart also after listening to these quatuors...Before that i only admired Tchaikovsky, but after that i loved him dearly....
Merry Christmas millercarbon....
P.S. i just begin to listen to Patricia Barber seems interesting thanks.... |
