Are you a lover of Stravinsky?
Posted by: mikeeschman on 08 September 2009
How many others on the forum consider Stravinsky to be among the greatest, or even the very greatest, composer of the 20th century?
I think he may be without equal.
I think he may be without equal.
quote:Originally posted by GFFJ:quote:Bach's St. Matthews Passion is a monument to music in service to story;
Did you put that for me?
ATB from George
I write and write about Stravinsky and George is nowhere to be found. What bait is savory enough to change this. St. Matthews Passion :-)
Actually you mentioned this Passion a few weeks back and I haven't been able to get it off my mind. When I take a break from the WTC, it is next up:
So now I have broken my promise to not go off topic. But in this case I think it's just a little sin ...
mikeeschman and others, thanks for one of the most rewarding
forum-threads I've come across. I am regrettably not well versed in
the landscape of classical music. Albeit, perhaps equally regrettably,
knowledgeable enough to suspect that I may have been missing out. Even
though I am a newcomer to these forums and hoping that I am not out of
place explaining how I've come to appreciate this thread. Should I
have misjudged and be closer to hijacking or other forms of
misbehaviour, I apologise. It also turned out rather lengthy, but it
is only a sign of my enthusiasm.
Anybody with functioning hearing and who has has been to a western
world supermarket, or department store, is bound to have been
subjected to Vivaldi's compositions. And I guess in a way such venues
are well-suited as hoardings for his music. His compositions seems to
have the ability to convey, in a bare minimum of beats, very
explicitly and instantly, some of the sonic potential in a creature
such as a classical orchestra. And if you're sufficiently curious, and
perhaps at the same time inexperienced, hearing it on a stereo-system
may add oxygen for the smoulder to keep its colour.
To many, though, Vivaldi's music does not seem to be woven in such ways
as to easily maintain a lasting and self-supporting interest by its
own. A curiosity was awoken though. But for someone mostly familiar
with the much more 2-dimensional landscape of rock- and pop-music, the
challenges are great. It has been a motley path visiting Bach, Dvorak,
Rimsky-Korsakov, Mahler, Shostakovitch, Liszt, Orff, Grieg, and many,
many others. I like many of them; some more than others, and for
various reasons. But I can not recall any of them causing a
eureka-moment; not in the sense that I can have with music within said
rock- and pop-genre. Nor can I, by far, claim to understand all these
compositions, so in the end it is nothing but a personal niggle.
Nonetheless, my view of classical music has been resting on top of
these experiences, at more or less a stand-still . Until I saw this
thread and decided to give the Ebony-concerto a spin. I think that I
shall describe the experience by resorting to some of the vocabulary
that is often used in discussing Naim-systems; presumably its
semantics is well understood here. It was like a veil was lifted, not
from the speakers, but from the mind. Obviously this is to be
interpreted light-heatedly as it means nothing but that I've
discovered a new way of making the foot tap and face smile. It feels
spot on though, as the compositions of Stravinsky enables the
orchestra(s) to sound like I subconsciously (and retrospectively)
always wanted them. In the words of another analogy, one might rank
the experience as a two-step upgrade on my personal musical ladder. I
look forward to exploring more of his music as the CD's I have on
order start to arrive and I as I learn, I hope to return here with
more thoughts.
These ramblings are probably useless, except that they are giving this
wonderful thread a well-deserved bump!
Thanks for reading (if you made it this far),
Bjørn
Postscript: I still occasionally play a tune or two by Vivaldi, and
the thing he does, which is the thing that attracted me in the first
place, is still a thing he does very very well
forum-threads I've come across. I am regrettably not well versed in
the landscape of classical music. Albeit, perhaps equally regrettably,
knowledgeable enough to suspect that I may have been missing out. Even
though I am a newcomer to these forums and hoping that I am not out of
place explaining how I've come to appreciate this thread. Should I
have misjudged and be closer to hijacking or other forms of
misbehaviour, I apologise. It also turned out rather lengthy, but it
is only a sign of my enthusiasm.
Anybody with functioning hearing and who has has been to a western
world supermarket, or department store, is bound to have been
subjected to Vivaldi's compositions. And I guess in a way such venues
are well-suited as hoardings for his music. His compositions seems to
have the ability to convey, in a bare minimum of beats, very
explicitly and instantly, some of the sonic potential in a creature
such as a classical orchestra. And if you're sufficiently curious, and
perhaps at the same time inexperienced, hearing it on a stereo-system
may add oxygen for the smoulder to keep its colour.
To many, though, Vivaldi's music does not seem to be woven in such ways
as to easily maintain a lasting and self-supporting interest by its
own. A curiosity was awoken though. But for someone mostly familiar
with the much more 2-dimensional landscape of rock- and pop-music, the
challenges are great. It has been a motley path visiting Bach, Dvorak,
Rimsky-Korsakov, Mahler, Shostakovitch, Liszt, Orff, Grieg, and many,
many others. I like many of them; some more than others, and for
various reasons. But I can not recall any of them causing a
eureka-moment; not in the sense that I can have with music within said
rock- and pop-genre. Nor can I, by far, claim to understand all these
compositions, so in the end it is nothing but a personal niggle.
Nonetheless, my view of classical music has been resting on top of
these experiences, at more or less a stand-still . Until I saw this
thread and decided to give the Ebony-concerto a spin. I think that I
shall describe the experience by resorting to some of the vocabulary
that is often used in discussing Naim-systems; presumably its
semantics is well understood here. It was like a veil was lifted, not
from the speakers, but from the mind. Obviously this is to be
interpreted light-heatedly as it means nothing but that I've
discovered a new way of making the foot tap and face smile. It feels
spot on though, as the compositions of Stravinsky enables the
orchestra(s) to sound like I subconsciously (and retrospectively)
always wanted them. In the words of another analogy, one might rank
the experience as a two-step upgrade on my personal musical ladder. I
look forward to exploring more of his music as the CD's I have on
order start to arrive and I as I learn, I hope to return here with
more thoughts.
These ramblings are probably useless, except that they are giving this
wonderful thread a well-deserved bump!
Thanks for reading (if you made it this far),
Bjørn
Postscript: I still occasionally play a tune or two by Vivaldi, and
the thing he does, which is the thing that attracted me in the first
place, is still a thing he does very very well