Kleiber get the allegretto of my favorite symphony to a new meaningful level...( The greatest musical orchestral movement ever written in my opinion so strong it was in his effect on the soul)
I see a seed invincibly pushing rocks to grow...
( i always see music or associate it with images not as a mere poetic expression of my feelings but more like a movie, i can for example wrote a novel about the Bruckner 5th because i listened to it so much and it entered into my imaginative perception as "the meaning of life " itself as we experience it after death , because of the structure of this work especially the final fugue recapitulating and integrating each movement from the beginning. Bruckner rival Bach mastery of fugue here in a way Bach never did.)
For me the 7th is the symphony , the art of Beethoven symphony as a creative engine with an irresistible rythm of his own able to liberate humanity from the sleep of inertia , habit, and lack of motives...
Music is cure and thought meditation...( the allegretto of the 7th must be able to make some paralysed person to walk again against all odds, which other piece of music can do this? listen to it )
By the way i love Scriabin so much, because all his work motives core is sparking human heart to begin to be divinely creative again as Beethoven was inducing it particularly strongly in the 7th , it is clear as crystal...
Beethoven soul (not his style) is Scriabin forebear...A Promethean giant inspiring another one...
«... Scriabin... Where does he come from?
And who are his forebears?»
IGOR STRAVINSKY in Poetics of Music
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Besides being a fantastic musician, Kleiber had a gift for establishing great rapport with the musicians in the orchestra. He was greatly admired and liked by the players. That is huge. He also had a specific and relatively small repertoire. He didn’t conduct as many different works as other conductors and so dug very deep into the details of the works that he did conduct, Fantastic conductor.
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@stuartk
I remember listening to Stravinsky's Firebird on my little, cheap college stereo. Man did I enjoy that. I think the mind is the most important compnent in an audio system. Willfull suspension of disbelief. You can fill in the bass that isn't there and the space that isn't there with your mind.
Beethoven's 7th is a much more dynamic piece than his 6th which was written to be laid back. If you can find Carlos Kleiber doing it, he's considered very good. Very, very good because it took him forever to get out a recording. He broke the budget on over rehearsing. Most of his recordings are almost perfect. He also somehow managed to find as much expression as everyone else while sticking to the script. I don't know how he did it exactly. @frogman ?
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@audio-b-dog @frogman, @mahgister :
I feel so fortunate to have three music mentors to help me over the hurdle into enjoyment of Classical music. Thanks, guys!
@frogman
I greatly favor the Adams recording. This selection sounds somehow more akin to Jazz to my ear.
Maybe you can suggest more in a similar vein???
@mahgister
I’d heard Beethoven 6th before and found it pleasant ( I utilize this "lukewarm" adjective with some humility, recognizing the fault is mine for not appreciating it as you do). I just listened to Beethoven’s 7th and this I find immediately more engaging. Same goes for the Bruckner. I'm going to explore more Bruckner.
@audio-b-dog
Seems I was wrong -- I do have a capacity for enjoying orchestral music. It all comes down to the piece/performance.
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I’m taking a different approach. For someone with as varied and insightful a “taste” in Jazz and other more recent genres as @stuartk , more modern works with more emphasis on rhythm (groove) and “crunchier” sonorities seems potentially intriguing. Hardly overtly dissonant in the scheme of things (Webern, anyone?), btw, and demonstrate a different potential of the orchestral sound. Once the groundwork is laid, those intrigued can explore the entire history of the music. Example: what introduced the vast majority of the recent “Jazz curious” to the genre? Jazz/Rock and Jazz/Pop.
BTW, @audio-b-dog , that piece is not by Hindemith, Pacific 231 is by the great 20rh century French composer Arthur Honegger.
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For orchestra introduction to someone disliking orchestral work :
Beethoven 6 and 7 th symphony is impossible to dislike...( you can listen to the movie "Soylent green" as an intro for Beethoven sixth symphony "Pastorale" ) The 7 th of Beethoven is irresistible masterpiece about creativity and how to become creative as life itself (seeds) moving rocks (allegretto) .
Once you had heard them buy the 6 th of Bruckner by Karl Bohm among few other maestros choice the most beautiful symphony ever written...Takes off the light and listen...
( The 6th is the only symphony he never corrected and Bruckner was compulsive and obsessed by inferiority complex and corrected hundred times all his works. Curious for the greatest organist since Bach and the greatest symphonist with Beethoven)
I prefered choral music all my life over orchestral works by the way...
I entered into real orchestral obsession after my 6 months listening of Bruckner non stop ...
I am a bit excessive ...
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@frogman
Good choices. I thought of recommending Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. I went to a live concert conducted by Dudamel. Fritz Reiner is my top choice for my album at home, but Dudamel did an excellent job. Reiner commissioned the piece and championed it. I thought it might have been a bit too dissonent for somebody finding their way into classical music, though.Thanks for the Hindemith piece. I’ve been trying to get to know his music better. Bernstein! Interesting. I’ll stream it. We were supposed to go to the Adams concert with Dudamel and Wang, but something happened (something always happens) and we had to exchange the tickets for something else. Now I’m really sorry I missed it.
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I kind of like all of their interpretations. Like seeing Hamlet done by great actors.
Great comparison!
I like all the pianists mentioned here about Mozart or Chopin...
And some others...
My favorite Mozart and Chopin pieces though are played by Ivan Moravec ( One of my godly saint pianists). But he never did an integral though just few pieces but very well recorded (Nocturnes) and played with a majestic control of colors...
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@stuartk
I'm sure she could be emotionally affecting on Chopin. On Mozart, however, I think, although I've never heard it said, that modern musicians are beginning to play him more emotionally. I have Fazil Say playing the sonatas and it's very different than Pires. But you don't have to be an aficianado to have your own taste. And your taste might change over the years. I listened to Mitsuko Uchida play Mozart's sonatas the other day and she did a lot of "interpretation." I liked it a lot. I like Pires, too. She makes Mozart sparkle. It's fun to listen to a few different artists and compare them. Mitsuko Uchida has specialized in Mozart, but that doesn't mean she's the last word, by any means. I really like some of Geza Anda's interpretations, and I think he plays Mozart more like Pires. What I consider to be a more "classical" style. I kind of like all of their interpretations. Like seeing Hamlet done by great actors.
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@audio-b-dog
I'm not a classical aficionado and therefore, lack your refined sensitivity and discernment when it comes to comparing different versions of a particular piece. I will say that, personally, I find the Pires recording of the Nocturnes quite emotionally affecting. I bought it after listening to perhaps a half dozen pianists' interpretations of the Nocturnes on Spotify. However, this was some time ago and I do not recall the names of the other pianists.
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@stuartk
I have Maria Pires playing Mozart’s sonatas. She is pristine in her delivery. I have others playing Mozart piano sonatas who bring out emotional depth that Pires avoids, I think. Her notes sparkle. For her, I think, it’s all about the touch and the timing. She leans more toward a Classical interpretation, where others lean toward the Romantic.
Argerich is bold and powerful, at least that’s the way I hear her. I know you don’t play orchestral music (although I think you can. I used to listen to it on a $100 Sears suitcase stereo that probably didn’t go below 80 Hz.) If you were to try a piano concerto, she does a mean Prokofieff’s 3rd piano concerto. It has the most amazing build I’ve ever heard. He mastered the art of the build, rising up to a crescendo then descending. Rising up again and descending. Until finally the crescendo comes and it is extremely satisfying.
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@audio-b-dog
Thanks.
I’ll check out the Chopin. I already have a recording of Nocturnes by a S. American pianist whose name I don’t recall... Maria Pires, I think.
Not sure I want to hear the sonic equivalent of a child
"descending into madness" ;o)
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@stuartk
Argerich has a numerous solo piano albums. She is known for Chopin and Schumann, among others. Schumann is a hard composer to cozy up to. He died in a mental institution at 35 of manic depression, I think. His long piano works will move from absolutely beautiful melodies to dark, cacophonous passages. His wife, Clara, was a composer in her own right and an extremely popular concert pianist. She introduced a number of his works. You might look for Argerich playing "kinderszenen." It is about the phases of childhood, if I remember correctly. The early passages are lovely, then he descends into a kind of madness, but pulls out of it. It must be so hard for a pianist to express his soul as @mahgister says.
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@audio-b-dog
Thanks for recommending Martha Argerich. I'm sorry -- should have stated earler that I've never been a fan of the orchestra. Perhaps if I had a dedicated room and a system that could present such recordings more realistically, I'd grow to appreciate the sound. Nevertheless, I do enjoy solo Classical piano, so I will seek out Argerich in that context.
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@frogman
When I was studying poetry with Gary Snyder back in the mid-sixties, we had a discussion about why poets no longer wrote in rhyme and meter. He talked about artists tapping into the music of their society. He quoted an Arab saying, "When a music of a society dies, the society dies." The implication is that the music of the society is the foundation of the society. As an artist, one needs to understand their society's music and tap into it.
I read about Rachmaninoff being upset that he was writing Romantic music in the twentieth century alongside "modern" composers like Stravinsky. Rachmaninoff was a great composer, I think, and I have read music critics say that he did incorporate modern elements into his music. The same story with Sibelius who is one of my favorite composers, despite the fact that he wrote in the late Romantic style while Stravinsky and other modern composers were changing the structure of music.
Here is an absolutely beautiful piece of music by Sibelius
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5xJAOlXdUI
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@audio-b-dog ,
**** It's amazing the way the arts correspond with similar changes around the same time. ****
All good art reflects the time of its creation. What defines its validity is how well it reflects that time. Whether we like what it is reflecting is an entirely different matter.
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@stuartk
Here's another one for you to try on your journey into classical music. "Nights in the Garden of Spain" by perhaps the most famous Spanish composer, Manuel de Falla. Like many composers in the early 20th century he wrote music that was tied to his countries identity. Sibelius did so in Finland. Dvorak in whatever the Czech Republic was called then. Aaron Copland in America. Anyway, this is a lovely piece. I chose a selection with Martha Argerich, one of the greatest living pianists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYCiyNbDmRM
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@frogman
And yet Wordsworth was a great poet. The Beethoven of English poetry, in that he began the Romantic era for poetry. It's amazing the way the arts correspond with similar changes around the same time. Late in the 19th century we have Impressionistic music and art. Maybe in writing too, if we count Rimbaud.
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Apology for the typo. Spellchecker strikes again. Of course, it should be Holdsworth not Wordsworth.
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Thanks simonmoon and frogman interesting posts about a guitarist i did not know and will explore...
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@simonmoon , I share your admiration of Allan Wordsworth. Amazing guitar player and highly individualistic and innovative musician. Personally, I would be tempted to temper your friend’s assertion about his influences somewhat. As you know, Jazz styles and their vocabulary are evolutionary. Players build on what came before. Influences are particularly difficult to detect across instrumental families, however. Interestingly, Holdsworth first wanted to play saxophone before settling on guitar. He cites the mighty Coltrane as a major influence; at least inasmuch as the quest for a totally individualistic style. He also credits the music of Stravinsky and Bartok as influences, You may find these comments from a JazzTimes interview interesting, Regards.
“He just kind of completely turned my life upside down,” Holdsworth says of Coltrane’s influence on him at the age of 18. “I remember when I first heard those Miles Davis records that had Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane on them. It was fascinating to me. Coltrane’s playing in particular was a major revelation. I loved Cannonball also, but when I listened to him I could hear where it came from, I could hear the path that he had taken. But when I heard Coltrane, I couldn’t hear connections with anything else. It was almost like he had found a way to get to the truth somehow, to bypass all of the things that as an improviser you have to deal with. He seemed to be actually improvising and playing over the same material but in a very different way. That was the thing that really changed my life, just realizing that that was possible. I realized then that what I needed to do was to try and find a way to improvise over chord sequences without playing any bebop or without having it sound like it came from somewhere else. And it’s been an ongoing, everlasting quest.”
Holdsworth plays Coltrane:
https://youtu.be/Qh7i1Ueg5Rw
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@stuartk
No, I don't think you missed anything. I just have this interest in the ontology of music that most people don't share. For good reason. It's impossible to know. It's just guessing.
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@stuartk
I knew that's what you were talking about. I was trying to broaden that out, because I think that spiritual fervor is in so many types of music. It usually comes from people who have been repressed, though. Brazil had slavery. The Gypsies have been repressed in many societies and their music is known to have a fervor. (I don't know if it's religious, though.) I would like to draw the line all the way back to people living in caves, but I can't. Like Bill Mahr--"I can't prove it, but I know it's true."
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@audio-b-dog
I don’t think the sexual aspect of music only came from Black churches. Later, of course, it was part of the blues.
I was talking about artists who grew up in the church and then turned to secular styles, such as a Aretha or Ray Charles. They carried over a certain "spiritual" fervour/intensity into their "secular" music. The resulting "hybrid" blurs definitions and presumed dividing lines.
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@frogman
“……….no genre boundaries”.
No matter the genre, sometimes a performance is so locked in and with such strong collective sense of purpose that it brings a different meaning to “spiritual”:
Perfect description of the vast majority of the performances of guitarist, Allan Holdsworth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcPbmPM7epY
As a good friend and a top LA studio musicians said about Holdsworth:
"For me, Allan Holdsworth was the most innovative improviser of all time on ANY instrument. The great jazz soloists (McCoy, Brecker, Freddie Hubbard, Trane, etc.), all had predecessors on their respective instruments that they copped licks from and modified with their own voice. There clearly was no guitar lineage leading up to Allan's approach. This freak landed ship with a completely new vocabulary not based on anything that was already established. No blues, pentatonics, bop, post-bop...NOTHING"
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@stuartk
Before Western religion dominated the west, the Greeks and probably others used to have Dionysian rituals which included music and sex. And now that you mention it, I think that is one of the problems I have with the "classical" period of classical music. It is too purified. I don't think the sexual aspect of music only came from Black churces. Later, of course, it was part of the blues.
But if we look at the Scotch-Irish with their wild dancing, and I think they ifnluenced country music a lot. Klezmer music had some bawdy Groucho Marx type humor. And of course we can't forget Gypsy music with women throwing up their skirts as they danced Flamenco. A number of composers were influenced by Gypsy music, but after the 18th century. As we get into the 19th century with its romanticism, many folk traditions were drawn upon. Even a bit earlier, Haydn drew on folk traditions which included the sexual aspect.
Here's a guitar concerto written by Rodrigo and played by Julian Bream. You might have heard it before. The second movement (I think) has the theme used in a very popular Miles Davis piece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJwbxkVNz9I
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@frogman
I saw Les McCann in a small venue in the mid seventies. He was highly charismatic. I attribute this to his ability to embody both what could be called the sacred and the profane. Earthiness and soaring spirit. the body and the soul.
Of course, one could say this about a host of Black artists who grew up in the church and then utilized their ability to channel a certain type of magnetism into songs that explored the dynamics of sexual relationships in a way that may cause us to question whether the spiritual and the physical are two sides of one coin rather than wildly divergent opposites, as they've been long portrayed by various religious traditions.
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@frogman
Yes. People get locked into other endeavors also. A pitcher pitches a perfect game. A basketball player scores 40+ points.
When I was teaching poetry, that was the hardest thing to teach. How to get locked into a poem so that you're no longer thinking. Kobe Bryant said to Pau Gasol, "You're the best center in the world. Stop thinking and shoot."
In music, it's the same thing, and musicians touring and playing every night probably don't get locked in all the time. Eddie Harris was during this recording, and you've reminded me that I have some Eddie Harris albums I haven't played in years. Tomorrow.
@stuartk
My pleasure.
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“……….no genre boundaries”.
No matter the genre, sometimes a performance is so locked in and with such strong collective sense of purpose that it brings a different meaning to “spiritual”:
https://youtu.be/kCDMQqDUtv4
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By the way it was in the course of reading about acoustics few years ago to learn how to set my system /room right that i discovered the recent acoustical science discoveries about human hearing .. ( i posted an article in my above posts )
Then i discovered why and how musical time is not reducible to physical measured time (linear Fourier measures) ...
Then i understood something i never understood about the way great musicians and maestro use musical time...(it is very clear if we listen Furtwangler use of musical time compared to some others maestro as maestro Gergiev pointed to in an article i read.My main example is Schuman 4th symphony, because it was my Schumann work of choice)
I am also interested by acoustics and linguistic (speech) and the way poets use the time dimension of speech and also its history and evolution..
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@mahgister
How did you rid yourself of the need to test your system? I hate when I’m listening to music and rather than enjoying the music listen to one piece of equipment or the other. How did you rid yourself?
I learned how to optimize my 4 systems one by one... The first one in a bigger room takes me a few years of learning , mainly acoustics experiments..
After that in few months with the basic understanding of electrical,mechanical & acoustical working controls devices and basic tweaks i was able to set and optimize my actual smaller room and smaller system, and my Top headphone and my secondary headphone...
There is no relation between the S.Q. of a system/room before and after his optimization process... No relation...
Most people buy and plug their system, their only optimization means and tools are upgrades of the gear...( they ignore the three working dimensions optimization process if not completely partially especially the acoustics)
But optimization work with what you already own if the synergy bwetween pieces of gear is relatively good... Because if you dont know how to makes the better with what you already own you will not be able to optimize the new upgrade either...
My small speakers, modified and optimized are satisfying now, i disliked them when i bought them by the way...
My headphone systems the main one the hybrid K340 and the lesser sextett K240 are done also and optimized by modifications and good synergy choices...
I dont need to listen critically now at all...My systems reach their peak level performance after optimization..
There is better gear system here by far in great numbers but many are not optimized...
A non optimized system at any price will not reach his peak working level...
I am glad and happy with the "minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold" i reach with a low cost system...
I dont had the budget nor the money to optimize a costlier system... To beat my 1000 bucks system will be easy and i will reach almost high end ( the maximal acoustical satisfaction threshold with 15,000 bucks but my wife will kill me ... I am retired and in a small dedicated room, it could be better in a bigger room which i dont own anymore anyway...)
I am not frustrated at all , my goal is reached the day i learned how to optimize anything at any price..
I now live with what i can afford with no envy, proud of the way my peanuts cost system could sound so good...
This week i listened for 2 days only Vivaldi "i Musici" complete recording of Vivaldi non stop in ecstasy because the sound was good enough for me to hear the music without being bothered by sound trade-off defects...
I then dont need to do critical sound listening anymore...
I will do critical listening again if i must optimize another system/room one day... But i am 74 and i dont think i will had a new room and a bigger budget for audio ( it must be 15,000 bucks to really beat my actual system for good in a bigger room with a Choueiri DSP )
For many "critical listening" is a fate and a malediction that curse their enjoyment of music because their critical listening is about the gear piece defects they just bought and they are not acoustically informed to use critical listening as a tool for optimization and tuning ... I learned critical listening when i used it as a tool to tune my 100 Helmholtz resonators in my first bigger dedicated room.. When it was done after a full year of work the result was stunning.. After that no critical listening was needed...
I used critical listening again in my last and actual room but now it is done...(it was way easier in this smaller room )
Critical listening when informed is a gift and a tool, not informed by acoustics it is a curse and a recipe for frustration in an upgrade wheel without end...My budget never could afford without end upgrades...
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@stuartk
I’m posting the first movement of Weinberg’s 21st Symphony conducted by Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla. I think he is a modern composer that has enough traditional groundings that he might resonate with you. It’s called Kaddish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-6ek2xa6Cc
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@mahgister
How did you rid yourself of the need to test your system? I hate when I'm listening to music and rather than enjoying the music listen to one piece of equipment or the other. How did you rid yourself?
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I have not yet listened to Phillip Glass’s "Akhnaten, but I have heard other Phillip Glass pieces that have that spiritual quality. And, of course, in jazz we can hear pieces that entertain and others that appeal to a more spiritual aspect of humanity.
i felt that Glass Akhnaten is not just a beautiful piece of music...
We dont lack beautiful piece of music anyway...
I was spell bounded by the way he succeeded to recreate something of the Ancient Egypt spiritually using rythms and words in a way no modern opera never dare to go ...
I read about Egypt a masterpiece on the Luxor temple i paid 125 Canadian dollars in 1978 ... A fortune for a book if you use the inflation index but well worth it...
This book was an initiation to the deep symbolism of Egypt in two huge books... it gives even to me a key for mathematics understanding when i was young and in need of it...
Philip Glass genius shine through this spiritual opera almost a kind of non christian oratorio which is a "felt change in consciousness" (Barfield) when listening to it...
As an aside it is the piece of music i used,with the astonishing Lotte Lenya version of the three penny Opera of Weil to test my sound quality ( "out of the head" effect of my AKG K340 hybrid and his bass tones) when i needed to do it ... ( i dont need to test anything now  )
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You get me right and that makes me happy...
The point I want to make is that all art must have been extremely important to early humans or else they wouldn't have spent precious time normally used for survival creating and exploring art. I would say that if this argument is true, then early music, as well as the visual arts, would have been "spiritual" in some sense. And this is what we feel today, even those of us like myself who don't believe in traditional religion. And perhaps this is what @mahgister looks for when he talks about spirituality in music.
Not only i means that , the oneness of art,religion, technology, but i must remind you the 5 articles i posted above about universals in Timbre perception, and the musical time dimension created by man out of the physical linear time dimension linked to the reason why human beat the Fourier principle or the Gabor limit...
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@frogman
I agree with you on all counts, especially AI versus human creativity. And thank you for the information on the 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute, with a diatonic scale no less! I had either not heard of it or forgotten that I had heard about it. Perhaps the Neanderthals gave Homos sapiens the gift of music. So many of us seem to have a certain amount of Neanderthal DNA. It does not really matter, though, in regards to my main interest. Why was music and other arts created in a world where survival was of utmost importance. Why did humans need to create art. I think that question will lead to what @mahgister calls the spirituality in art.
I have watched over the years a TV series called "Closer to Truth." A trained neurologist (and it seems so much more) named Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes up a philosophical and scientific question for six 1/2-hour episodes. One question was about art and religion. I cannot remember the name of the institute he visited that studied art and religion. One of the researchers there said that in ancient humans--upper Paleolithic Homos sapiens--art and religion were the same. Those people made no distinction between the two.
It's probably clearer in the visual arts, since we have entire paintings and carvings from ancient times. In the book "The Mind in the Cave" by David Lewis-Williams, an archaeologist who has studied ancient caves, Lewis-Williams claims that these caves with early cave paintings were "churches." He has physical evidence to make these claims. He says that the animals drawn on these very early cave walls were not animals that were hunted for food. They were distant animals who were seen as "gods." It would take a thesis to explore this, so I'm just going to take it as fact for now.
The point I want to make is that all art must have been extremely important to early humans or else they wouldn't have spent precious time normally used for survival creating and exploring art. I would say that if this argument is true, then early music, as well as the visual arts, would have been "spiritual" in some sense. And this is what we feel today, even those of us like myself who don't believe in traditional religion. And perhaps this is what @mahgister looks for when he talks about spirituality in music.
I think music, as well as all of the arts, have branched out into things other than just spirituality, such as entertainment. In the Greek Golden Age (beginning around the 7th century BCE) we find plays about the gods as well as humorous plays that must have been for entertainment. And, of course, most of the arts are for entertainment today, especially music. But when a piece of music does appeal to the "spiritual" many people can hear it and feel it. I have not yet listened to Phillip Glass's "Akhnaten, but I have heard other Phillip Glass pieces that have that spiritual quality. And, of course, in jazz we can hear pieces that entertain and others that appeal to a more spiritual aspect of humanity.
This is a topic I am much interested in.
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The first musical instrument is our gesturing body...
Our body gesture on the members scale and on the throat/mouth scale ...
The two gesture are synchronized then as frogman said the rythm is fundamental...
The rythm is not merely something flowing in physical time but something creating his own time dimension...
The fist musical instrument is not physical object but body parts synchronising in something which is not speech as we know it now nor singing as we know it now in a separate way but the two as one...
Two feet and legs can synchronise with a bone sticking etc
Speech and music were conjoined twin never naturally separated but artificially separated by specialization...
it is why poetry register made us conscious about the deep root of language in music ...
Prose register is only the peak of language iceberg...
Methodologically Saussure advocated for the arbitrary of signs maxim , but he guessed that sounds in language are also motivated by meaning in his study about onomatopea...
Language is way less known than our science think it is...
The greatest linguist since Panini is not even translated in English by the way : Gustave Guillaume which opuses goes near 30 volumes and more to come in edition right now ... ( i studied it 35 years ago )
In the same way acoustics is a deep science which revolution is ongoing right now...
but all this is out of topic here ...
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For a variety of reasons, I won’t touch the more metaphysical/philosophical thoughts shared and arguments posed by some of you fine gentlemen. However, some thoughts about a couple of the more down to earth topics discussed:
While it is the opinion of some authorities that the “first” musical instrument was the flute, the 60,000 year old Slovenian “Neanderthal flute” being the prime example (proof?), there are other authorities that disagree and opine that, in fact, the first instrument was probably sticks or bones used as percussion instruments. I agree with the latter. The Neanderthal flute discovered in a cave in Slovenia is actually fairly sophisticated actually having tone holes that allow tones to be played whose relationship is diatonic. A diatonic scale as used in most Western music. That it was the first seems implausible to me. Additionally, if one considers that rhythm, even more so than melody, is the prime essential element of music it follows that some sort of rhythm instrument, however primitive, was probably the first.
I took the “Jazz pianist vs AI” test posted by Mahgister. Interesting indeed! I guessed correctly every time. I bring this up not in search of any undue kudos or credit, but to bring up something I heard in the comparisons that was interesting in the context of this thread which is, after all, part of an audiophile forum. One could point to the musical “looseness” (swagger as used in this thread) of the real Jazz pianist clips vs AI. This did not surprise me at all. What did surprise me was a certain timbral “tightness” in the sound of the AI clips, akin to what is claimed (heard) by some listeners in the perennial argument of “analog vs digital”.
I guess I have, in fact and without meaning to, ventured into the metaphysical realm, but it reaffirmed my feeling that as concerns the arts AI will ultimately only come so close, but as they say, “no cigar”.
Best to all.
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You are right for sure!
Yudina like Sofronitsky is pure spiritual power...
You cannot enjoy an erupting volcano...
You can only learn how to deal with his eruption...
Spiritual interpretation in my experience are too intense to be merely enjoyable...
You cannot listen to his Mozart like listening the magical Murray Perahia or any other magician on repeat just for pleasure...
Yudina lives on another world...you must listen to her in some sacred moment...Then you will understand why a giant like Shostakovitch considered her the greatest pianist he knew not because there is not many great pianists in Russia or in the world but because very few artist touch the spiritual plane or what he called the goal of art...
Sultanov gave a truly good Scriabin... I did not even knew him yesterday...A pity he died so young...
I would have bought his Integral piano work of Scriabin ...I did not like much any modern well recorded Scriabin ...I have many... All the one i like are not well recorded except Boris Zukhov a great pianist just under Sofronitsky the truly one god in Scriabin...
@mahgister
That Yudina performance of Lacrimosa is very intense!!! Perhaps I’m shallow but I don’t find listening to that particularly enjoyable. But then I’m admittedly not an experienced Classical music listener. I’m just reacting to how it feels energetically.
On the other hand, I enjoyed the Sultanov performance and listened to more of them on youtube.
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@mahgister
That Yudina performance of Lacrimosa is very intense!!! Perhaps I’m shallow but I don’t find listening to that particularly enjoyable. But then I'm admittedly not an experienced Classical music listener. I'm just reacting to how it feels energetically.
On the other hand, I enjoyed the Sultanov performance and listened to more of them on youtube.
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