Puccini is a musical genius... I understand your amazement because i feel it too...
Music that has a hold of me beyond understanding
I just took a musical bath. I listened, for the umpteenth time, to Puccini's La Boheme. I can't begin to understand how someone could ever create such a thing of beauty. There are many 'songs' that compete in their individual beauty, but no other opera, play, or body of singing that even comes close, for me. You?
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The most beautiful woman and the most powerful surreal voice of this century for me is Marian Anderson able to sing anything to more than just perfection ...
She can sing Bach, Verdi, Shubert or Schumann or any spirituals and would had sing jazz over any other female singer... Toscanini said of her that there is only one voice like her by century, and Sibelius say to her that she was too great to enter his house and he spoke truth from his musician heart not light words from his lips... She was victim of racism which is incredible after listening her one minute... She has the most beautiful voice with AT THE SAME TIME the tender emotion of a children praying and the power of an armed archangel... Unbelievable... There exist some few voice as beautiful as her contralto,Kathleen Ferrier, Aafje Heynes for example , but none with at the same times this sheer pure power .... And how many voice can sing lied, opera, Bach or Handel and negro spiritual on a level so high no one else compare ? listen to his "ave Maria"... The best deeper moving prayer put on a cd... Here in his younger years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GksRp42s3S8 Here in his last years : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsqPTuottp0 Listen "crucifixion"....I think Billie Holiday "strange fruit" take his minimalistic interpretation and his inspiration directly from her... After all it was known by all that the greatest voice in America ever among white or black is her... No one else compete even today... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-EsGNikJU4
One of the best if not the best Brahms song : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ep3h9A1SNk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hMULR80aQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pnNtbZj4zg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuzYE3E0Nfk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E7zjNiz2ZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GksRp42s3S8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiFEOhZ8Jb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3pvIBhbkfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sruWF2Uoo4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPGEiWAPm1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m49NK-xUUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sri2pJu7SJQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XOHOW1zYNI&list=OLAK5uy_n-tCWrrE4Gde_YWbQQPyeb04DdCTzqRZc&index=8 |
More than a great choice indeed... The allegretto directed by Kleiber is the most stunning piece of orchestral music i ever heard... Not the more beautiful... The most powerful cure to ressusciate the dead... It describe for me, not a mere emotion but a real force behind all emotions, the growing seed in the spring awakened and rythmically directed to light ,displacing rocks slowly and emerging IRRESISTIBLY to the surface... Listen to it with this image in your head... I always "see" music and sound more than a feeling but as an objective force... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDpDwZZA248 Perfect too performed on piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjdY5-cRyh4
Music is not so much mathemathical, it is the opposite in fact ; thanks to Alain Connes, we now know that it is the mathematics core which is musical...
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@newbee Thank you for this post. Yes. I've wondered all my life what it is about music that has such incredible power over us. Music defined the course of my life and gives me energy when nearly everything else takes. @jeffrey125 The Requiem! Le Grande Macabre! The violin concerto! |
I must confess that I heard Lennon’s Let it Be in my early, pre-cynical teens. It is deeply held, close to my heart. That is mostly lyrics, for music, Angela Hewitt playing the Goldberg variations in one continuous sitting at Herbst theater, and the SF Symphony and chorus performing the B Minor Mass were the most transporting experiences, if I discount the Dead in the 70’s where Lysergic Acid Diethlymide and sympathetic audiences had something to do with it. |
A matter of taste, surely. How many Jazz fans enjoy Jazz sung with a classical vibrato? Sarah Vaughan is perhaps the most "operatic" of Jazz singers but she still doesn’t sound like an opera singer. I’ve never enjoyed Joan Baez or more recently, Rhiannon Giddens, precisely due to their vibrato. Giddens trained as an opera singer -- not sure where Baez acquired it, but to my ear, at least, it sounds very out of place in the Folk genre. Perhaps I’m biased towards preserving a certain integrity when it comes to musical genres. No doubt, there are others who are all for breaking down the characteristics that traditionally define genres and fusing them into something new. I can’t imagine classical guitar played with a Blues-style vibrato, for example but perhaps there are those who would find it appealing. More to the OP’s point, as music is a language that operates on multiple levels, simultaneously, I don’t find it surprising that we may be strongly affected by a certain piece without necessarily being able to discern why or, that we may not be able to even name the particular/combination of emotions, it evokes. A composer (presumably) is intimately familiar with how various factors such as time signature, key, intervals, timbre, dissonance/consonance, density, etc. are likely to impact a listener. As to why-- well, that’s a more difficult question. |
All of what you say made sense for me... But listen Anderson singing " deep river"or any other spirituals... And dont say to me that she will not be able to sing anything if she wanted to...😊 And i love Joan Baez for the same reason you reject it... in any genre i listen the artist specific voice not the genre ... I dont listen many folk singer...But Baez among few others i did because she add something unique...As for Dylan... But most actual folk singers dont appeal much to me... Some do as Dylan and Baez for example... I prefer 19 and 18 century English folk music ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bytFrsL4_4&list=PLXa3P16r0_ytEKZJJzXxmNCV_vuQ4TiHg English 19 century folk music ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrXCVJOwil8
I like Russian folk music too ...As much as i like Cohen the Canadian poet brother of Dylan : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYHPEz-9sCM&list=OLAK5uy_l9_lnnIMYoEqt0XXjoHw6E4t1XAtDcsXY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktGgPkmW-A0&list=OLAK5uy_l9_lnnIMYoEqt0XXjoHw6E4t1XAtDcsXY&index=2 But it is always a specific singer i listen to not to a genre or to some culture... I listen even to some specific Thibetan folk singer 😊 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyutcSi0Rx8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvEXnSpQ220 But i dont listen folk genre in general as a genre... Each singer is unique...That is what matter for me...
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It is normal that each one of us differ in our innate taste...Acquired taste as Marian Anderson is for me or for you are more challenging to appreciate...( i never like opera as an innate taste, i prefer sacred music and choral one ) Try this :compare his two versions of the Ave maria of Schubert, the younger one in his prime and the latest one when she was way older , compare the two version to all other versions by most known singers on youtube... And meditate on that comparison... Just a game... 😊 Dont feel the obligation to like her , just compare her with other singer to measure his singing soul... She really gives us the impression that she pray way more than a mere singing but the singing is perfect anyway... This is why she is my perfect singer... With few others...She pray when she must pray and not mere only sing a tune ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GksRp42s3S8 The negro spiritual "crucifixion" is so powerful that we can disperse a crowd if we put it on speakers... Try it, we dont lack crowd to disperse and dispense with these days... 😉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiFEOhZ8Jb4
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....it used to confuse friends, co-workers, and the sudden stranger how spouse and I could go to the symphony on one weekend/evening....then the next excursion go to see and listen to 'something entirely Different', 180 out on any of the 4 planes. One weekday, I 'cused self from work an hour early so we could 'go to dinner, and then go to a downtown concert for the evening... "Sure, we're jealous already! Who're you going to see tonight?" "Garbage, really looking forward to it...." Response? Muted and somewhat confused....this office played a lot of Enya, and that of a similar style... (...I actually enjoy a bit of Enya, but the steady diet....not so much. Was looking forward to a 'hit' of loud in a smaller venue...) "Garbage? Uhh, who's....." "They're a great group, we're fans....'Paranoid', 'Stupid Girl'....fun loudness...*G* See y'all in the AM, and thanks!" ( A couple of the younger workers were jealous, the owners....a bit confused. Likely still are....) ....I mean, what's Not to like....*smirk* I Think I'm Paranoid, revisited remix.... 25 years ago, after that? I likely wouldn't have come back to work....Call In Dead, via a stranger....*LOL* ;) |
In popular music i can listen Bob Dylan and Baez for a day....Or Elena Frolova... There is poetry in their songs... When music is simple i need poetry to go to ectasy... ( when there is poetry in a song i can even "understand" Russian otherwise i dont understand even english nor french ) Understanding is not what we think it is... It is not always "catching" it is often "resonating" ... |
RE: Tibetan singer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyutcSi0Rx8 This I like every much. . . I can definitely feel it "resonating" ! In fact, because I do not understand the language, the music bypasses the mind and acts directly, on a purely vibrational level. Ironically, in the West, "to be "out of one’s mind" is regarded as a tragedy.
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Any understanding begin and end with ectasy.... For William Blake, the unknown genius because he was too deep for the average reader or listener , any perception is an ectasy precisely for this reason... Perceiving is already an understanding and no understanding exist which is not a perception ... As for Leonardo Da Vinci or Goethe or Archimedes methods, which three methods in different fields are all related with one another by the creative perceptive imagination way ...I could have put Aristotle with them or Faraday seeing of the electrical and magnetical field before his mathematization by Maxwell ... The rest out of this perceptive ectasy is a sleeping mechanism habit or industry ( not craftmanship nor art ) ... Then your observation is very true...
I can prove it with a simple example... This is an article about the stability and time enduring stability of bike throwed on a road and the geometrical figure representation of their trajectories , which by the way reproduce an image related to the prime numbers distribution ... Then understanding that relation and why this is so is opening a door toward ectasy...
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.88.3781&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://twitter.com/anirbanbandyo/status/1700663719930544420
Small room acoustic experiments were also an ectasy for me...Not only music listening... As was an ectasy the only book i read really describing what is mammals forms...Here you read it and realize that you had never really seen a dog or a cat in all your life , you had merely only recognize them as a robot do... https://www.amazon.ca/Understanding-Mammals-Threefoldness-and-Diversity/dp/0932776639 It is IMPOSSIBLE to study grammar without stumbling into an ectasy...Try Gustave Guillaume books...One of the most enduring ectasy of my life... Someone who listen the art of the fugue of Bach without going into ectasy had not listen to it really yet...It is why i own 15 versions perhaps... 😊 Ectasy is related to real perception not to "tastes" or "habits"... Etc...
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I always worked 4-12 in the ER. I would often listen to KXTR classical radio on the drive in. The DJ was the greatest. Played an eclectic bunch of music. One day he played some Django Reinhardt. I actually pulled off the road to listen. Still grabs me. Opened up a whole different area of music to me. |
There is so much music that has this effect on me. Music that has a hold on me, transports me, alters my mental state, on different levels, for differing reasons, describes the vast majority of my music collection. If it didn’t, I would not have much reason to listen to it. All the music I listen to, even though they are from different genes, has more in common than differences, at least in the way I look at music. Those things that the vast majority of music I like have in common, in no particular order are: very high levels of musicianship, complexity, deep and broad emotional and/or intellectual content, (usually) long form, (usually) does not follow verse>chorus>bridge song format, no need or desire for catchy hooks or even singable melodies. Although, not all of these have to be present, but the more that are, the better chance it will have the effect on me, The 3 main genres that most often have most or all of the above attributes are, and has a hold on me: Prog and most of its subgenres (classic, Zeuhl, avant-prog, Canterbury, prog-metal). Classic -Yes, King Crimson, Anglagard, PFM, Deus ex Machina, Genesis, etc. Zeuhl - Magma, Setna, Eskaton, Corima, Zao. etc. Avant-prog - Henry Cow, Thinking Plague, Univers Zero, Art Zoyd, Yugen, etc. Canterbury - National Health, Hatfield and the North, MannaMirage, Zopp, etc. Jazz (post-bop, spiritual jazz, fusion, chamber-jazz, avant-garde): Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Steve Coleman, Oregon, Eberhard Weber. Allan Holdsworth, Anthony Braxton, Miles, McCoy Tyner, many more. Classical (avant-garde, serial, modernism, spectralism, atonal): Elliott Carter, Luciano Berio, Charles Wuorinen, Rebecca Saunders, George Perle, Alban Berg, Stefan Wolpe, Gyorgy Ligeti, Jon Tower, Per Norgard, and many more. Almost all of my huge classical collection, is from post 1950. I have tried many times to get into earlier eras of classical music, and for me, they do nothing. No other genre that I have found, has that effect on me besides these genres. Although, I have been slowly getting into Indian classical music, and it may have this ability for me. But my exploration is very new. |
“Chi il bel sogno di Doretta” from La Rondine* Wonderful that the OP started out with Puccini. I suggested that a friend take a listen to a few arias I particularly like. “I hate opera” said my buddy, politely yet firmly refusing my offer. OK, understood. What if it’s not opera, asked I? What if it’s just beautiful women singing beautiful songs in Italian? To his credit, he paused and had no reply. Fast forward: We’re hanging out, tunes are on, listening to ones he digs. “Man, this sounds amazing!” said he. “Thanks. Would you mind listening to one of my faves”, asked I. “Of course not” was the reply. Streaming Doretta’s song from Tidal. Wide-eyed, his only comment was “Goosebumps”. His only question was “Would you mind playing that again”? He still hates opera. And now he loves beautiful women singing beautiful songs in Italian. Sure, it’s about the gear. But mostly it’s about the goosebumps. * The descending bass line that foreshadows the soaring vocals. How is it possible that human beings are capable of this? La vita e bella. Renditions by: Renee Fleming, Sara Brightman, Kiri Te Kanawa, Elizabeth Jenkins, Jackie Evanko et al. +1 for Bill Frisell. |
