I admire Miles Davis, i admire Stravinsky; but i loved Chet Baker and Scriabin...You?

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...

mahgister, I am a big fan of la petite bande , but Wachet Auf was not one
of their best outings .

I’m also a big fan of Canada and in your honor I give you a period instrument band of your fellow countrymen playing Bach.


Ever if it’s only Texas North . https://youtu.be/sLHyKl8Y3N8?t=1               Atlantic Bands were busy .

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 !

https://youtu.be/e4SaCYgxze8?t=1

The best thing I ever did was learn German , many thanks to my  Girlfriend (s)  !

https://youtu.be/XXbP055Hx2I
As great as Elly is with Bach, she does even better with Schubert.
If I should get to  Heaven  AND God takes wants I want to hear Arty
Shaw play this jewel .

**** I particularly see beauty in the symphony, individual parts working together. ****

Beauty indeed. Not unlike the beauty when a soloist and accompanying ensemble work together as described above. When more than one artist is involved, seldom does beauty happen if all are not working together.

Magister[one who is of the magistrate?]

Enjoy your musings and see much experience and an emphasis on the artist(singular).

I particularly see beauty in the symphony, individual parts working together. Just listened to Bruckner's 7th, 2nd movement. 

Curious about what composers and or symphonies move you?

In fairness to Von Otter, I would venture to say that part of your reaction is to the “context”.  A performance by a soloist does not occur in a vacuum and is greatly influenced by the “supporting cast”.  Imo, in the Von Otter, the conductor’s tempo is entirely too fast and feels rushed; and the “setup” by the solo violin (and the ensemble in general) is not played with the sensitivity and reverence that this glorious music deserves.  In the Anderson, Robert Shaw’s tempo is more appropriately relaxed and the gorgeous and beautifully restrained solo violin is by the great Joseph Fuchs.  Even those who “sing so well” need good context.

Sometimes it is possible to have both:

https://youtu.be/x2XUaCWezRY

On the other hand, perhaps I am mistaken about which you love? 🤔

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....

Think I will just get to the point .

I believe this the Greatest piece of Music ever written.The first is what you would have heard in a small North German Church in Bach’s Time . I prefer this version.

https://youtu.be/__lCZeePG48?t=1

Full version take your choice .
https://youtu.be/6j8BJ21yLoA?t=3


I VERY seldom use the word genius , Karl Richter was a genius !

This is Bach's  hello to the New Year beautify played and perfectly sung
by the lady who does him the best , Elly Ameling  .
https://youtu.be/R0wRAt4rIUQ?t=2

To all the Mahler fans , and it seems he has the most. If you are in Vienna(Wien) and you should be because everybody that does such things , including the UN ,says it is the best city in the world to live in .

You must go the Central Cemetery(friedhof). From left to right two other composers. I believe to be his betters, Schubert and Brahms, lay side by side .


But not to worry, just left the around corner from Schubert lies Mahler .When I was there standing before Schubert, two Japanese Couples came next to me . The two men had at least 50 pounds of every know flower which they laid with great care(Japanese) . Then one of the men laid down on Schubert’s resting place and wept like a baby ! The other 3 went to their knees , lowered the heads and raised their hands in prayer . Were still there when I left .

Gimme a good tune. Even if it’s a weirdo, spiky, backwards one. One that cuts through the clutter. One that gets past the frontal lobes.

This one will past the frontal lobes of anything, except perhaps stones...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK3OnGXnbkg

This one too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Web007rzSOI

If you want to know why sometimes angels are silent in heaven it is because they listen to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXhdUC43Jq0


I dont know if we can qualify all that to be "good tunes" tough....

Perhaps not..... 😁😊





I forgot this one than can make stones think with frontal lobes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbg4TSP44yU

It is certainly no more a "tune"...

Harmony takes melody to another scale so to speak.....




This one no one can whistle it walking between the reddening volcanic embers on the last shore of the world :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6E18gH-w1A

Pure harmonies out of this world...

No frontal lobe could have ever ever written this music, nor any A. I.






But at the end, perhaps you only want a "good tune", a bit weirdo...

Try this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpNn1nht0_8

I dont know if it will get past the frontal lobes but this will certainly mix them ... 😁


Happy New Year....

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

Gimme a good tune.  Even if it's a weirdo, spiky, backwards one.  One that cuts through the clutter.  One that gets past the frontal lobes.

You have a point newbee .One I thought of .

Because a song of Beethoven brought Classical to me , I played him all the time for years and finally  got burned out on him .
I still listen to his string quartets perhaps once a week because, to me,that is his best .Glad you did what you did.

Gibbons on God


https://youtu.be/9jo6q5bXTDQ?list=RD7CBF1r7xBVg&t=1

Beethoven, Sibelius, and Mahler I love. The rest I admire, for the most part anyway. Some more, some less, mostly Eastern European and Russian composers. Interesting, I think, that I appear to be the only person, at least in this thread, who loves (and greatly admires BTW) Beethoven. Orchestral, Chamber and Solo piano. The only composer that connects in all forms of music (except opera) for me.

For music for solo piano only I should include in the 'love' category,  in addition to Beethoven and Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Liszt, Prokofiev, Schumann and Schubert (in no particular order).

Indeed .  I should have thought of Orlando Gibbons as well. Has someof the just plain beautiful music(esp. on strings) ever and also  Anthems to the infinite  that are stunning .

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

My early music composers are in no particular order.
They are so compelling because the Church was the center of life then
and now is an after-thought , if that .
I sat in on a Philosophy class in Paris where the Prof was THE foremost
academic in France in that subject .She said no human will ever be like the early musicians because our brains and souls will never be able to focus as theirs did because of TV etc.

In general I think she was kinda-sorta correct but we do have Arvo Part.

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....

Every thing you say is interesting Jim , always a treat !

What I did not say at 2AM is I still try to make room for the music I grew up on , American Big-Band which was THE American music .There are hundreds of people I love there , but one, to me, stands out .Arty Shaw , the great clarinet player and leader of a band that had more
discipline than the Royal Marines .If there is a better instumentalist I have not heard them .
Scotland forever !

@schubert      Thanks Len that was a very illuminating post and it just lets us know what we have missed. 
What I missed were , R. Strauss, Brahms, Scriabin, Byrd, Rameau and a whole bunch of others.
@maghister  This is a very interesting thread and thanks for instigating it.

Seasons Greetings to all of you.
Jim.

I’m old, it is late and I make a lot of mistakes but i’ll try.


The two composers I love with all heart are Bach and Brahms.


The ones I like very much are Haydn,Mozart, Schubert,Vaughn Williams,Sibelius,Rameau,Part,Puccini, , Janacek., Barber,Elgar,Grieg,Schumann, Dvorak and about 20 others.

I worship Jussi Bjoring . I heard him sing a lovely LvB lider on Armed Forces Radio , the first classical music I ever heard . It was bad day, a very bad day and it was like God had turned on a light in a dark room

to illuminate the world with light and pure beauty , I doubt if I ever would
have come to Classical otherwise , perish the thought !

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 .




My hero’s in Jazz are Sonny Stitt and Mingus . A Sonny a day puts troubles away.
Also listen to folk music ,mostly Celtic because there is a lot more music
there than one might think and many great composers didn’t use it for no reason.
Cheers !

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....

Frogman. I love your post. I got to say, though, that I've always found that my like vs. love selections do seem to change over time.  In other words, sometimes you can be too picky.

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....

As Mahgister points out, “for sure it is different for all of us”. Important to give enough relevance to the simple fact that the distinctions made often say much more about ourselves as music lovers (and possibly in other ways as well) and less about the artists in any absolute sense. Moreover, when making this type of comparison, for me it works best to keep matters in at least some historical context. Music is always a reflection of the time of its creation. So, for me, a better context for making these distinctions is to look at artists/composers from the same (or close) periods in time; particularly as concerns composers, but also performers and whether they, to some degree, honor that consideration.

I wish I could say that I admire Chet Baker. I like some of his work very much; especially early Chet. “...And Strings” is a minor gem, but the orchestrators, especially the great Johnny Mandel deserve a good bit of the credit. However, I have heard little in his trumpet playing that “I love”. There is a very appealing accessibility in his playing that makes it easy to take in, but I need to be challenged a bit more in order to “love” a musician or composer. While I save the word “hate” for bigger things, for me, his singing comes dangerously close. The over riding feeling that I am left with is one of indulgence in melancholy. For me, that feeling of indulgence has always been there in his singing, but also crept into his trumpet playing later in his career when he lost his teeth and was having severe “chops” problems. He then leaned more heavily on the melancholy. Not really that important, and subject to one’s personal definition of “virtuosity”, but a trumpet virtuoso he was not.

On the other hand, I LOVE Miles Davis and I admire him to no end. On emotional grounds, he touches all the right buttons for me. His ballad playing was superb. I cannot think of a more evocative sound than that of a single note from his horn with Harmon mute. The construction of his improvisations, no matter the tempo, was likewise superb; in great part for his inspired use of space, the silences between the actual notes played. There is a saying among Jazz players that says that “you can’t play (improvise) outside the harmony before you know how to play inside the harmony”; otherwise it’s just bs. This is the bane of many of the so called “free Jazz” players. Miles was a master of both approaches. The same idea can be applied to the criteria for a claim to “virtuosity”. Miles was such a virtuoso that when he sounded rough and undisciplined, sloppy even, it was by design and for emotional effect, not because of lack of technical control and finesse; he had those in spades. I also admire him to no end for his unrelenting need to grow and evolve as an artist; the reason he was one of the great innovators in the music.

Just a few more that come to mind before my morning coffee:

I like and admire Giovanni Palestrina, but I absolutely love Carlo Gesualdo and his unbelievably ahead of his time use of harmony and chromaticism. Difficult to “admire” someone with a personal story as twisted as his music (in historical context).

I like and admire Tchaikovsky, but I love Dvorak; and moving slightly forward in time Prokofiev reigns in my book.

I reluctantly admire Wagner (I know, I know), but I adore the other Richard, Strauss; and to a slightly lesser degree, Leos Janacek.

I admire Brad Mehldau, but I adore Herbie Hancock.

I admire Stravinsky, but I love Bartok; and, if in the right mood, Alban Berg.

I admire Aaron Copland, but I love Bernstein.

I admire Jascha Heifetz, but I love Nathan Milstein.

I admire Oscar Peterson, but I love Kenny Barron.

I admire and like Count Basie, but I adore Ellington.

I admire Frank Sinatra, but I love Tony Bennett. There is great joy of singing in Bennett. Sinatra often sounds to me as if he is doing the listener a favor by singing.

I admire Karajan, but I love Kleiber.

I admire Maurizio Pollini, but there is simply something about Murray Perahia that pushes my buttons. Love his playing.

I admire Nina Simone, but I love Dinah Washington.


I could go on, but I need my morning coffee. Interesting thread. Thanks!

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....

I only stick with the musicians/vocalists/composers I love. It isn't enough just to admire them.  Music has to do more than just cater to my frontal lobes.  For me, art trumps technique every time.  I got to say, too, that cool & controlled as he might have been, Miles Davis almost never failed to hit my emotional buttons.

mahgister

I concur- Chet Baker was West Coast Cool.
Miles Davis was East Coast Cool. Very competitive back in those days.

Happy Listening!

Says you.

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.... 😎

I hate Chet Baker.

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....

Know just what you're talking about mahgister. For years I admired Mozart but never loved any, not at all. Classical music as a whole was kind of like that- liked some, admired some, never really loved any of it. 

One day by accident someone helped me make the connection with composers, realized Tchaikovsky turns me on, now I have just ordered my 3rd Tchaikovsky White Hot Stamper and am stoked and amazed at the coincidence because UPS notified me it was delivered just now!  

What I really love of course is the combination of superb music with beautiful recording. This is another fantastic coincidence because I just last night heard the new Patricia Barber Cafe Blue. Which is not new and I've had it a long time but on CD and this is the new 45 Impex 1Step pressing and oh my God what an experience!  

Can't say I am in love with Patricia Barber, per se, but I admire the talent on this record and absolutely love the way it sounds. The songs are all very different. All of them I get what they are doing, but some of them I LOVE what they are doing. Why some and not others? Why'd I love Jennifer Warnes Bird on a Wire first time I heard it? Why'd I fall head over heels for Born in Time? That's the million dollar question.

I discover Chet for his trumpet voicing.... i understand perfectly your point all the more that his body voice is particular and his singing change a lot with time....I then understand that like any body voice, this voice could not appeal to all...

I confess i love his body-voice BUT i love Chet Baker for his way to voice the instrument so much that at some times you forget completely the trumpet playing and remember only the singing of the trumpet and speaking of the trumpet in your heart...

Like i said i discovered many years ago Chet Baker and at first i was surprized a lot by the impactful way he speak with the trumpet like anybody else....I was surprized because i have the impression that many other trumpet players are on par and even better virtuoso than him, for example Kenneth Wheeler is a genius like Miles Davis.... Kenneth Wheeler that i like a lot very much to the point to want all his cd like Miles Davis....But none of the 2 put tears in my heart....Except Chet Baker....

Why?

Interestingly i discovered a trumpet player, a classical one, that have the same natural and moving voicing of the instrument....Andre Heuvelman in his album " Silence"....Interestingly Heveulman succeed his career in spite of a shorter arm infirmity at birth, in some way a tragedy that gives him a fragility, a humility, and a simplicity that is similar impeding event than the drug disease of Chet Baker, in spite of the great difference coming from their training histories and style.... By the way Chet Baker also relearn himself to play without any dentition after an attack and he succeed what seems impossible and reach even greatest musical  heights or deeper state after that test event.... Heuvelman also learn to go over his impediment and became the first trumpet of the Rotterdam philarmonic orchestra...Like Chet his "sound" is warm and cool at the same times and speak directly to the heart, you will completely forgot that it is a trumpet.... Astounding for me....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yERDKKbWx70

Then the question to know if Baker is a virtuoso of the trumpet begins to fade and to be secondary after some time for me, unlike the others trumpetists that we can listen to in the virtuoso scale where for example Miles Davis is at the top with few others... But then Chet Baker is on a scale of his own almost alone.....That explain the great love for many toward him....

His playing is a drama obsess with melody where he take refuge against himself and against the world, nothing else....It is this humility in his failings, and his simplicity in admitting them that touch the heart when he play....Listen to Andre Heuvelman who plays in the same scale for analogous reason....

Thanks for you interesting take on Chet....

Merry Christmas to you three_easy_payments

I like Chet Baker except when he sings.  I have tried so hard to warm up to his voice but I simply can't connect.  To my ears his voice comes across thin as water, lacking both soul and conviction.  One of the least compelling voices I've ever heard....but I dig his trumpet playing.  His trumpet has a voice with the nuance and conviction that his voice is lacking.

You are right a great artist...... i deduce you  love him much....

Merry Christmas to you....

I feel the same about many of the folk and r&r artists of the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s. I was listening today to Gordon Lightfoot’s album "Gord’s Gold". It occurred to me how sad it would have been if Gordon Lightfoot had not been here to write all those great songs.

Thanks Jim very interesting and stimulating post..... we are all different and i love tho learn about that....

Merry Christmas....


I will read your post slowly a second time to not only know but learn.... 😌

For Shostakovitch his piano works made me not only admire him but loving him very much......

That's a long list mahgister mines won't even be half that size , for a start I only like classical music and have spent over sixty years listening to it.

I love with a passion Claudio Arrau, he is the pianist with whom I clicked in the sixties and it has been a love affair ever since (spiritually) !!!

I really admire Horowitz for his wonderful technique but I could never love him the way I do Arrau.

Moravec I love especially playing Chopin.

I really admire Barenboim for both his pianism and his conducting.

With composers the ones I love are Bach. Beethoven , Haydn, Liszt , and Chopin.

The ones I admire are, Mahler, Bruckner, Ravel, Scarlatti , Handel , Purcell.

There are some composers unfortunately who I just can't stand and they are the second Viennese school and their ilk. 

There  are a few twentieth century composers that I love but they are few so apologies if I ruffle anyone's feathers. My two that I love and admire are Rachmaninov and Shostakovitch , both giants in my mind.
I am also partial to some Stravinsky now and then but it has to be when I am in the mood. As for the rest who came after those three I simply do not listen to something twice, once being enough. I now would rather arrive at a concert after the opening piece as where I come from 
( Scotland ) the orchestras do not get government funding without programming 20th century and beyond which is a laugh as when the piece is finished you cannot hear the meagre applause for the sound of feet clomping into the hall.
People do vote with their feet !!!