I trust everyone noticed that Naxos did a sale recently? Which is to say, the cheapest record label sold oodles of CDs cheaper than they do normally. Which is to say, I bought a gash load of stuff for cheap as chips. Lutoslawski, more Schnittke (evil man), Mahler's 3rd, Bartok's Mikrokosmos, more Hildegard 'Hildy' von Bingen, Mozart's mass in C minor and other things probably.

Mr Noumenal - I have a Naxos version of Turangalila that seems to have been recorded by an idiot. Recommend me a decent recording/ conductor.

Oh, I also heard Kremer doing Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin recently. As I may have mentioned before, Heifetz's version is superlative, but good ole' Giddy does an alright job of it.

Furthermore: bump.

i am taking a course that will get me into the musicology department at hebrew university. so starting october i shall be a musicology student, anybody here study that? any advice?

I think we have the same recording of the Turangalila.... The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra? What can I say, it was cheap. But I've never had a huge problem with the recording. There are only a handful of recordings out there I think.

BBC Music Magazine has an extensive online reviews section and according to them, the best recordings are Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano), Dominique Kim (ondes martenot); Berlin PO/Kent Nagano on Teldec and Jean-Yves Thibaudet (piano), Takashi Harada (ondes martenot); Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Riccardo Chailly on Decca.

Those reviews are usually pretty reliable. Hey.

I'm a music theory student, which is pretty close. No advice really.

Main Entry: pre·ten·tious

 

Pronunciation: pri-'ten(t)-sh&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: French prétentieux, from prétention pretension, from Medieval Latin pretention-, pretentio, from Latin praetendere
1 : characterized by pretension : as a : making usually unjustified or excessive claims (as of value or standing) <the pretentious fraud who assumes a love of culture that is alien to him -- Richard Watts> b : expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature <pretentious language> <pretentious houses>

Why don't you just fuck off? No, really, you can just fuck off. Go and die somewhere you worthless shit.

And besides the above (which is entirely correct) where's all this peace and love and respect for your fellow I & I bollocks? Cunt.

where is all of yours? all I did was state my opinion regarding classical music, i didn't disrespect it, i didn't insult it directly. I honestly feel that classical European music is the webster's definition of pretentious in that it many people make "usually unjustified or excessive claims (as of value or standing)".

sorry. everybody knows that African music invented rock and roll, and thus changed the world, and made classical European music seem boring and yes, pretentious in comparison.

The definition of pretentious, which you so kindly provided, says characterised by pretension. Which is to say that the implication of your post is that either the listeners to classical music are pretentious, or the music itself is pretentious, or most likely both. Which is, in essence, calling the music and its appreciators 'frauds', by the Websters definition. I would take that as a direct insult by inference, and I'm not the most overly sensitive of people.

The assumption that rock n' roll and classical music are somehow mutually exclusive is, frankly, horseshit. That's like saying that rock n' roll dismissed the need for klezmer or jazz or gagaku or something. It's a big world. Just because you don't get classical doesn't mean that it's pretentious. Just because I don't understand what strikes me as a horrible religion doesn't mean I want to slag it off. Although I will say "the pretentious fraud who assumes a love of culture that is alien to him" sounds like a white rasta to me.

I was listening to Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto today.

Sibelius, Quintet in G-minor for me. And Scriabin 'Le Poeme de l'extase'. Fun and or games.

That made me laugh! Racist!

classical music is pretentious. rock and roll and jazz evolved in a vaccuum. and since when did everyone on this board become such experts on Rastafari? it seems that everyone is telling me this and that about what I should and shouldn't do as a part of the Rastafari community. You can call me pretentious if you'd like, you might be right, like I am RE: classical music, but don't call my assimilation into Rastafari and Ethiopian culture a fraud. I don't need to defend my social identity to you, but If you feel that me calling classical music pretentious is insulting your own ability to live in yr own culture, well for that I am also sorry, but please, get off the whole "white rasta" tip, it is funnier then how you all perceive me, seriously.

selama nna wadada,

Excuse me?

pretentious= observation
vaccuum comment = sarcasm.

Fair enough. my bad. although disagree about the classical = pretentious thing. I'm not a massive classical fan, and i'm about as pretentious as they come.

Alright, I don't particularly care, I perceived that you made a cheap and unwarranted dig, I gave back in kind.

Classical music is not pretentious.
I have no more of a problem with Rastafari than I do with any other religion.

Classical music is also an artform that grew out of many social strata of Europe (and, latterly, America and East-Asia). It is no more 'my culture' than it is 'anyone else's culture' to be into classical music, or to make it.

Rock and jazz is not pretentious - have you heard any jazz other than Dixie stuff? Black people can disappear up their own arses to, y'know? Also, unless I'm much mistaken, Rock music does include the like of YES or Queen or Meatloaf.

'Classical music' is an incredibly broad term that covers about 700 years worth of music. Rock/ jazz are likewise incredibly broad terms that cover, at most, 100 years of music. Both are capable of incredibly ridiculous ideas, terrifically haughty notions and, yes, pretention. Sometimes that can be enjoyable (I am, after all, a Wagner fan of sorts). Sometimes less so (I'm not fond of Grateful Dead). The point I'm trying to make is that it doesn't seem very understanding of your fellow man to pass judgement on what he enjoys, hence my cheap dig at yourself. Judge not lest ye be judged yourself indeed.

Anyway, apologies for any injury caused, I don't care to continue this argument anymore, if you still don't get my point, fine, never mind, c'est la vie etc.

And, in the mean time, I heard Gorecki's 3rd the other day and thought it was unmitigated tripe.

What Bach should I get?

i play piano. i despise bartok (burn in hell, bela) & realllllly have been enjoying clementi lately.

i know i'll be rocking the boat with this comment but paganini is fucking awesome. yes, his capricci are shred wankery boredom but his concertos? absolutely amazing, in fact, i'm going to dig my tape with his concertos.

other than him, i haven't really gotten so into classical, i'm actually going backwards from branca, rhys chatham (genius, genius composer), lamonte, tony conrad, charlemagne palestine, cage, stockhausen, terry riley... don't know if all of them count; actually, i don't care, i like their music.

The minimalists and the avant-garde (Cage/ Stockhausen) aren't given much time by the classical 'establishment' but that's no reason to say they're not good. Check out die Valkyre by Wagner if you're into Branca - you might notice that a lot of his ideas are developed out of Wagner's (not to say he stole them, per se). There's plenty of oomph in plenty of more 'acceptable' classical stuff - Karajan's treatment of Beethoven's 5th is brilliantly heavy, I reckon someone like Mahler or Stravinsky should appeal to your taste. I doubt you'd quite go for Elgar or Vivaldi, but Paganini might lead to Rimsky-Korsakov or Szymanowski. I'd even go so far as to recommend fishing out a punchy version of Ravel's Bolero.

Over everything I'd probably recommend Schnittke, he's ridiculously brilliant from about the early 70s to the mid-to-late 80s.

Really? The latter books of Mikrokosmos [sp?] are brilliant; I absolutely hated Bluebeard when I saw it, but his string quartets are probably my favourite quartets I can think of.

yes, wagner influence on branca is almost too abvious.

Bump 'cause that's a good thread.

Mahler's 7th on t'radio t'other night. 'Twere tremendous.

quick list of alltime favorites for me.for some reason, i haven't been listening to classical music for a while. it will come back though.

bach - matthaus passion (esp. the "erbarme dich")
bach - mass in B minor
bach - cello suites
bach - trio sonatas w/ the harpsichord

vivaldi - stabat mater

beethoven - 5th, 7th, quartets 101,105
beethoven - cello sonanatas

mozart, Great mass in c minor
mozart quintet k174

mahler - 9th, 2th, the Lieder that goes "die zwei blauen Augen..."

dvorak - cello concerto

some mendelsohn stuff that's too bittersweet but can;t remember

schoenberg - Verklaerte Nacht

Some of you might be interested to click the link I just provided, as it's a pretty big database of public domain scores. Predominently pre-20th Century, but that's by no means a bad thing.

I'm nowhere near a classical music buff, but I've got the soundtrack from 32 short stories about Glenn Gould, which I find to be really good but it's more like a sampler, really. About 2/3s of the tracks are JS Bach, and is a decent starting point, I'd say.



PS this is a great thread!

Instigator Jukebox 96 - Yo Yo Ma
check it out

Today's terribly exciting news is that I'm listening, for the first time, to some works by Arthur Honegger.

Quite dramatic. Some nice moments. I'm enjoying it.

Is Sibelius worth checking out ?

this was a good thread.
i was listening to paganinis capricis today, and really loved them, unlike EN two years ago.
im listening to arvo part based on an old glice recomendation and loving it.
and on tuesday starts the new semster of history of music. so romantic music, here i come...(although im mildly familiar with a good amount of the composers)

ive been listening to morton feldman a lot lately. there is always this strange mixture of the sublime and the unsettling.

one of the great things about feldman is his stance against the systematic approach of the atonalists. instead of dealing with various intellectual systems to organize sound he would use intuition and sound itself to guide him. there is this great quote from feldman in conversation with stockhausen-

ks- what is your secret morty?

mf- ive found that if you push sounds around too much they tend to push back.

ks- i cant push them around even a little bit?


feldman's a great writer (of words) too.

That collection of Feldman's writing, give my regards to 10th [?] street, is amazing. Writing entirely in black ink. Sorting the chair out first.

Have you heard the last piano pieces? I think it was out on Sub Rosa. Astonishing.

fugazifan - You'll be on the Ernst before you know it. If anyone meets Hahn, tell her I love her.

yeah that book is great! i love how he writes about painters and the influence they have had on his work. and the carpets too.

the chair anecdote is wonderful.

he writes that so many artists have destroyed themselves because the "work" is so difficult. it's not the work that's difficult it's the artist that's difficult. so much of the "work" is really about one's consciousness or attention being dealt with and then dealing with the work. he was a wise man.

I have a boxset of 100 pieces of classical music that I'm slowly going through. I think I enjoy Bach and Beethoven the most. I'm learning Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 Pathetique on piano right now to perform for my HSC.

Also, does anyone know what piece of music is used in this song? (I mean the main riff, I know the Fur Elise part). My music teacher says it's something of Bach's.

the 1st movement to ives' 4th symphony melts my insides its so beautiful

I have a boxset of Strauss that I've been rocking lately. He's utterly maddening - amazing, sometimes, and utter tripe at others.

i know what you mean
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zlE5ipwna8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs3BF...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL16t...eature=related


(i keed)

The other Strauss.

[Ozawa and Rostropovich... crikey].