Winteriesse

George,

When I found out about the Linden tree reference, I thought it was so wonderfully morbid. ;D

I bet you won't approve of 'Strange Fruit' either will you?

Talk about depressing.

THAT subject is frightening and even more depressing especially it happened merely 50 years ago here.

A real Britten/Pears.

Yes.

Wagnerian macho Winterreise.

Originally posted by Kuma

I bet you won't approve of 'Strange Fruit' either will you?

Or  ‘Gloomy Sunday’, which I think the BBC banned during the war for fear of promoting suicides.

Wagnerian macho Winterreise.

Exactly!

Dear George,

Just as the same person (you or I) can be responsible for sensible writing or non-sensical writing so can a composer hit the mark or miss it.  Beyond this though I do not think this is the case here.  My son hates mushrooms yet I doubt he has really ever tried them (with the proper attitude, that is).  All he has to do is see one and then he faints or feigns a choke or a gag reflex.  I say this with all due respect but I see a similarity here with you and romantic period music.  It is arbitrary.  This is entirely your choice and I respect that.  I am not here to change your opinion, however, I would be very happy for you if you did or just chalk it up as something not for you.

There is the matter of taste and style.  These matters are up to the individual to decide and would involve opinion.  

My question is why we put music in a box?  Music is music and when I hear Schubert or Bach or Brahms I hear composers who understood the human condition and had a gift to share it with us.  I don't turn on a radio and adjust it to Baroque station 1 or Classical station 2 or Romantic station 3 etc.  

I cannot think of a composer (a good one, that is) that did not in some way write music based on a whole range of topics including the same topics that you are criticizing poor Schubert for (death, sadness, despair, anger, hurt).  Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Debussy, Prokofiev... you name them and they did contribute to this human element.  

My point is that Bach had happy days and sad days as does every human being.  It is evident in there music if you choose not to ignore it.

My connection to the Schubert Lieder has not exactly been a smooth and easy ride.  I can fully understand where you and the many others here that expressed a disconnect.  Sure, it is not for every one but my turning point was the piano transcription of Franz Schubert.  It was through spending years at the piano and discovering these masterpieces.  Originally, I never really even paid attention to the text as it was clear to me what the songs were about just by the way Schubert and Liszt created the score.  The story is all there without the words.  Now I currently add the knowledge of the words only because I am interested.

Also, this is not and never was music intended for the masses.  It was conceived for one on one time with profound music and one, two, or a handful of individuals and played in homes and living rooms.  You do not have to like them or ever feel the need to pursue them further but there is no need to mock this music because you do not like or understand it.

I do not care for all opera or lieder but I can say from my experience that it is a fine line.  You can go from utter contempt and hatred of the genre and somehow you hear something done right and you are hooked for life and finally see the light.

I wish this for myself and everyone else too who genuinely is interested in music.

Regards,

Doug

Dear Doug,

I find the connection all too real! And all too disturbing. I am certainly not mocking this music, and a reading of my posts in this thread would have already shown that much.

A great and rather early work from Bach is the Actus Tragicus, which is a Funeral Cantata. It covers the issue rather well in just about a quarter of an hour. It is solemn, noble, quite without histrionics, but certainly shows a comprehensive understanding of grief. 

I find it strangely uplifting to come across such a profound piece of music that delves this dark aspect without a hint of self-obsession, or sentimentality. I think that I would struggle to understand the sentimentality - as I see it - in this great Schubert song cycle and actually even some ofhis instrumental music as well. I love the second movement of the E flat Piano Trio, but cannot take the slow movement from the C major String Quintet. Strange really. As you say, hit and miss. What I would never say is that because I personally rather dislike a certain piece of music, that this alters the fact that the music in question is a masterpiece.

I never have the feeling for any music that I quite like it.

I either love a piece of music or tend to avoid it completely, however great it may be.

I have a friend who really enjoys the Saint John Passion, but cannot take the Saint Matthew. I adore both. A reaction to a piece of music tends to be greatest in the music that is the greatest. 

There is no reason for you to doubt that I know the music that is the starting point of this thread. Just as well as the Operas of Wagner, and I avoid them as well!

But I listened to the BBC series over Christmas with the hope that my previous allergy might have subsided, and I found my reaction strnger than before. It is as if with age my sensibilities to detect things I am musically  allergic to have strengthened rather than weakened.

ATB from George

Does anyone share my intense dislike of this music or anything else musical from the nineteenth century?

Sort of George.

After Haydn and until Debussy, most of the 19th Century is a massive black hole to me. Apart from most (but not all) Beethoven and some Strauss stuff, and a tiny bit of Tchaikovsky, I dislike almost all of it - Liszt, Brahms, Wagner (especially), Schumann, Verdi, Paganini, etc etc.

I either find music from the period boring, overblown, incomprehensible, tuneless, tacky or incomprehensible. 15th to 18th, then 20th centuries for me!

And I don't like Die Winterreise either.

Dear Kevin,

I did not think i probably was, but I am glad I am not the only one with some serious black holes in repertoire regarded as being of masterpiece level!

This is not a critique of anyone else who loves what I do not and perhaps dislikes what I do!

ATB from George

Actus Tragicus, or "God's Time Is Best."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc1Ve0TOF4c

Noble and consoling music in time of grief ...

ATB from George

A big thumbs up from me. .

Might help if we take a listen. I have this on vinyl, One of my favourite pieces of music.

BUT, I don't like Beethoven at all.

Last year I was given the 9 symfonie Karajan boxset. Listened to it a couple of times, then stuck it on ebay.

He wrote one good riff, but that's about all.

I had that LP and the EMI Hans Hotter one as well.

Though I did not get rid of the LPs till I shipped all bar about fifty out in 1991, I never aimed to replace one or both on CD.

But I know people who adore this music. Strangely they still like me though they know of my like of this and not that. For example one friend I have loves the Winter Journey, but finds the Great C Major Symphony impossible. I love the Great C Major, but admit that it dies require special concentration in the performance for the music to keep the attention going. A poor performance can sit on its hands somewhat!

ATB from George

Oh dear Kevin.

I almost afraid to ask what you think of Bruckner & Mahler!

No George I have always felt bit of an oddball in this regard, but I just don't get that kind of music.

What I've heard of Bruckner (and please remember, I'm no expert when it comes to classical music, just an enthusiastic amateur!), it doesn't move me really. Mahler is OK in small doses but I find it over-egged and a bit too rich for my tastes.

But I do love Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Handel, Couperin, Purcell, Rameau, Monteverdi... and I adore Debussy and Ravel, and I'm a big fan of 20th Century music, Stravinsky and Messaien particularly.

Dear Kevin,

Funerary music is not a widely appreciated genre. I find almost all of it not exactly favoured voluntary listening to be fair. I got to know the Sinfonia instrumental first part of the Actus from playing it at a memorial concert, and that part has fewer obviously morbid connotations, and because of this I did find the rest somewhat different no normal funeral music ...

I doubt if you are an odd-ball! I would not introduce someone to the High Baroque in music with the Actus Tragicus ...

ATB from George

Dear George and Kevin,

Wow, this thread is taking a very morbid turn. Here are a few more suggestions to , hopefully, cheer you both up,

http://www.mylastsong.com/advi...al-music-at-funerals

Tony

Dear Tony,

I will be cremated, and that means half an hour.

Mine can be done in less time. A few words from the officiating cleric, and then

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkAe0foSEKI

The Toccata, Adagio and Fugue BWV 564.

At 5 minutes 20 the Toccata finishes and the Adagio starts, At this moment the coffin can start rolling down the piste towards the furnace, and be entirely out of sight by the time the glorious Fugue begins at 9 minutes 40 or so! Then after this joyous finale, the congregation can clear the building for a Vodka party at some suitable hostelry! And celebrate variously my demise! All done in twenty minutes, except the party!

My sister in law is aware of this.

Fortunately this recording is out of copyright, and no organist but Helmut Walcha would do. I have a much better transfer than this. It is a 1947 recording on 78s made on wax, and here flattened into oblivion. The master transfer I have on DG Archive is wonderfully vibrant!

I think these things should be planned!

ATB from George

Dear George,

I am glad you have everything planned to the minute detail and surely one must be prepared for the final journey but I don't think you are ready to pop your clogs yet. Cheer old chum!

Tony

Dear Tony,

I take a light hearted view of the transition. When it is time to go then do so with the minimum of fuss! It may be this week or decades to come!

But I intend to have a stream of fun in the interim!

ATB from George

Dear George

Yes, to a large degree. I was grown up with romantic music, but when I was about 15 years old, I discovered Bach, and from that time my interest in romantic music (with a few exceptions) vanished, - romantic music quite simply did not do anything for me  more. I investigated Bach intensely, in the first hand the instrumental music and the passions, and I came relatively late to the cantatas. The more I learned to love Bach universal and human music, the less I liked romantic and late-romantic music, which I found too omphaloscopic.. I began to move backwards in the musical history from the Baroque through the Renaissance and Medieval ages to Perotin and Hildegard von Bingen and found very much to enjoy there. One of the few romantic composers, which still maintains my interest, is Brahms, but while I always am in the potential mood for listening to Bach, I have to be in a certain mood to listen to Brahms, what I only rarely am.

Concerning Beethoven, I had always finished with him, when I was 25  years old, but when my mother died, she left Backhaus´ Beethoven piano sonatas stereo set, and the experience of this subtile set became the start of my long-lasting occupation with his music, and Beethoven is to day the only romantic composer which I listen to regularly. I feel particularly repelled by the music of Wagner and his like as well as by Klavierlieder (Winterreise among them) and romantic opera.

Accordingly my musical library contains music from the Medieval-, Renaissance and Baroque age, Beethoven and a small dose of Brahms. Also some Bartok, Nielsen, Martin and Stravinsky. Like you I part with the music, which does not interest me. "Thanks" to the invention of the CD Box, I often get recordings of music I would not have acquired otherwise.

ATB from

Poul

Reading this I could not suppress a little smile. One imagines the musicians playing the 8.symphony standing as there are no chairs.

Best regards

Poul

Un-furnished is what it used to be called in English Orchestras in harder times after WW II!

I had a friend who was the principle bass in the Covent Garden Orchestra from 1955, and he told me loads of very funny orchestral stories from the time. In 1946 he sailed from Finland to Sweden with the Boyd Neil Orchestra and the basses were too big to put inside the ship so they lay in their big wooden boxes outside on the deck. Unfortunately it was so cold that the two Contrabasses froze and the glue came undone. In Sweden they borrowed two instruments from the Stockholm Philharmonic till their own instruments were glued back together. Hard to imagine such things today!

He played in the Jacques Orchestra [Decca] recording of the Saint Matthew Passion in 1947/8 with Ferrier as alto soloist and the Bach Choir under Reginald Jacques. A different time indeed!

in 1955 he toured the USSR with Adrian Boult as a bass player in the LPO. He was amazed how primitive Russia was, but the orchestra had the best whilst the normal people survived on bread and sausage!

ATB from George

Interesting point of view Kevin, 

You realize that Glenn Gould felt almost exactly the same way and skipped the 19th century with the same contempt so you and others are in good company there.  He was a quirky, eccentric fellow too.  It has been of personal interest to find out why in every single case those against the 19th century music always say the same thing.  I mean, I have never heard anyone every say anything negative about the music on either side of the 19th century.  It certainly isn't 100% across the board great by any means.  I happen to appreciate great music based on it being great music.  What period it comes from is not a criteria for determining taste.  Where are the people like myself who look for and find great music rather than write off an entire century that produced an incredible wealth of music based on ?

I don't want to be disagreeable but I do wonder what you may have ever listened to from the 19th century as it is (in my opinion) quite the opposite of your description [boring, overblown, incomprehensible, tuneless, tacky or incomprehensible].  

I won't defend everything just as I wouldn't from any period but in general you could say this of any period if you need examples.  And if your description of the 19th century doesn't especially point to the 20th century (Stravinsky and Messiaen) I do not know what does.  I mean are you serious?

Oh, I guess it is an automatic shoe in for those in the 20th century simply because these are the well known representatives that spoke negatively against the 19th century and rebelled against tonality and beauty.  Looks like we are all benefitting greatly from these rebels today as we see so much great music being created today and within the last 100 years.

Poul, George and others:

While I am in the 'pro' camp and have no intention of being evangelical about it, the seeming fact that educated persons on this forum are 'repelled' by whole periods or genres of music just sounds silly. 

I can't deny that every time I hear Schubert 'Heideröslein, while I know he subtly changed the text and thought of rejected love, the poem recalls a rape scenario. It is my least favorite Schubert song. But for every dud, the man wrote tens of masterpieces.

I can also see why people are 'repelled' by Wagner as they tie his music to the man's nationalist socialist ideas. Certainly the chorus in Meisersinger - his only comedy, BTW - mentions 'Deutschland' more often than any other work I know, and the scenes between Siegfried and Mime could - could - be seen as a metaphor for racism. If you take a very narrow minded view. And if you forget the context (despite Wotan's plans, Siegfried isn't nearly the pure hero he was meant to be). 

I don't deny your knowledge and experience; but equally I can't completely shake the thought that with your blanket statements (don't like Lieder (sorry: Leider), don't like Wagner, don't like romantic music...) you're also subjecting yourself too much to these wonderful times where you can take a quick dip into youtube or any streaming service, decide in 5 mins that this music isn't your thing, read up on wiki, then post for all others to bear witness to your knowledge and experience. 

Just my 2 cents. Going to listen to Chopin this evening, I think. He was a romantic, had a problem with self confidence, often thought of death and other repelling thoughts, and packaged all that in the most gorgeous music, which nevertheless has a direct lineage to Bach.

EJ