Wagner!!!!

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Karsa Orlong

My favourite band Elend, whilst being a lot less accessible than probably any classical music I've heard (this is very dark stuff), were heavily influenced by both Penderecki and Ligeti on their album The Umbersun. Whilst I don't necessarily expect most people to enjoy it, I can't help but recommend it highly anyhow - it's certainly an experience if nothing else.

Sounds like something I'd probably like... I'll see if I can track it down; thanks for the recommendation.

[Karsa Orlong]

No probs. Even if The Umbersun isn't your cup of tea, the albums Winds Devouring Men and Sunwar the Dead are also worth giving a try, they're both quite different.

[Delvo]

I've liked some indivudal pieces by Wagner, like the intro to the Rheingold, but overall I'm not an opera fan and he was too much of an opera writer instead of just a music writer. Operas have some great pieces buried in them, but the full things tend to drag out too much and have too little sense of phrasing or direction in the long, meandering, aimless stretches of singing just to get the characters' lines out between one real "song" or "event" and the next (conversational lines that would be spoken in a musical). And I prefer instrumental music to singing anyway. Plus, they're almost always in the wrong language for me anyway, which takes away any involvement I could feel with the story.

I get a bit bugged whenever I see people talk about "Classical" music when the music they're talking about isn't from the Classical Era and is thus not Classical but something else, like Baroque or Romantic... but if I want to point out the differences to anybody, then I have to explain that "Romantic" doesn't mean "romantic". It's annoying, especially because the "Romantic" pieces are my favorites. I find true "Classical" music too trapped in conventional form and structure to have the freedom it needs in order to be really expressive. I say this even of guys that people usually talk about in terms of how emotional and expressive their music was, like Beethoven; the music has its moments, but then it keeps repeating without enough variation or switching back to completely neutral noise with those moments only scattered between long stretches of bland nothingness that has to be there in order to fill out the formal, constraining definition of the type of piece he was working within. I can hear the musical "phrases" and "statements" but they really say nothing, they just fill time. (It often sounds like it could have been written for a harpsichord, a rather unexpressive instrument, so I tend to call the style "plinkidink music" in my mind because it reminds me of harpsichords even if it isn't played on one.)

The pieces I love, and would find more of if I could, are the ones that are ALL ABOUT expressing or representing something, and shaped by only that goal, not hampered by arbitrary traditions about the form of a formal "concerto" or "symphony" or whatever as dictated by stuffy aristocrats from centuries past... things like "The Planets", "Carmina Burana", "Pictures At An Exhibition", and some movie soundtracks like "Dances with Wolves". You don't need to take music theory classes and listen to lectures about them in order to prepare for the conceptual and auditory quest of hunting for the meaning and impact they're supposed to have; it's just right there in your face.

Ever since quitting playing in the symphonic band during college, I've had a lot less exposure to new pieces, so my collection hasn't grown much. In the last year or two, I started going to concerts of my local symphony orchestra, hoping when they play something that's new to me that it might be my next "Rite Of Spring--Sacrificial Dance" or "Sampson & Delilah--Air & Dance Bacchanale" or something like that. But they seem to prefer to more often play Mozartish fare with one each piece plinkidinking along practically indistinguishably from the rest. (And then they bewilderingly talk about what deeply emotional pieces those were.)

If I've made my personal distinction between "good classical" and "bad classical" clear enough, does anybody have any recommendations for me?

[Curt Chiarelli]

Wagner is truly sui generis! There is nothing quite like beginning your morning with a strong cup of coffee and blasting the scene from the Rings tetrology where Siegfried re-forges his sword, Nothung. Brass-heavy and majestic, such stirring stuff propels you into your day! The music of heroes, it delivers - like the rest of Wagner's masterpieces - a genuine frisson. Nothing approaches the experience, except perhaps Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or any number of Jerry Goldsmith's utterly brilliant sountrack scores.

Great thread topic, by the way!

[Allegra]

Originally Posted by Curt Chiarelli

Wagner is truly sui generis! There is nothing quite like beginning your morning with a strong cup of coffee and blasting the scene from the Rings tetrology where Siegfried re-forges his sword, Nothung.

LOL for me Beethoven's piano concerto No. 5 often do well with morning coffee - put me in a mood of jubilation even in a rainy day. Yeah Wagner's music is grand, heroic and highly dramatic. However sometimes it gets a bit too masculine to my taste. I like Stravinsky's especially his piano works very much (think about the fireworks of his Petrouchka 3 movemnts!) and in my opinion he's very much underrated.

[Curt Chiarelli]

Originally Posted by Allegra

LOL for me Beethoven's piano concerto No. 5 often do well with morning coffee - put me in a mood of jubilation even in a rainy day. Yeah Wagner's music is grand, heroic and highly dramatic. However sometimes it gets a bit too masculine to my taste. I like Stravinsky's especially his piano works very much (think about the fireworks of his Petrouchka 3 movemnts!) and in my opinion he's very much underrated.

You have excellent taste! I just prefer that morning push to have 6 gravs worth of force behind it as opposed to the gentle nudge you're proposing! And yes, poor old Stravinsky is much undervalued - but not by us!

[Allegra]

Originally Posted by Delvo

I get a bit bugged whenever I see people talk about "Classical" music when the music they're talking about isn't from the Classical Era and is thus not Classical but something else, like Baroque or Romantic...

When most people talk about 'classical music', they are talking about the genre, not about 'the music of classical era'. For more detailed definitions: Classical music - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Curt Chiarelli]

If one wished to be pedantic, one should use the correct nomenclature. The period being referrenced isn't the Classical Period (which is the Graeco-Roman Era of antiquity), but the Neo-Classical Period (of the 18th century).

And Allegra is correct: "classical music" is a legitimate, but generic, term encompassing the entirety of that music genre.

[Delvo]

The problem is that there's no one "genre". To lump it all together as one genre like that is the equivalent of lumping country, rock, heavy metal, rap, techno, and R&B or hiphop together as "electric" music because they all use instruments that run on electricity.

Since what most people normally mean by "classical" just refers to the classical instrumentation and could include other styles/genres aside from just the classical style/genre (given the fact that if you play something like Baroque or Romantic for them they'll identify it as "classical"), I just tell people I like "full orchestra music". Although it's not very precise, it is accurate, unlike "classical", and immediately understood by anyone, unlike "Romantic". I don't know what I'd do if I were also into smaller-scale music like trios and quintets.

[jackokent]

The Welsh National Opera are doing Triastian and Isolde this Saturday in Liverpool and I have spent all evenning umming and ahhing about whether to go. My friend plays cello with them. It's almost 6 hours long and will entail a 3 hour drive home at about midnight for me. But it'll be worth it if I can be bothered.

What should I do?

[Allegra]

Ok just done the duty of walking my dog. Now I had a better look at the posts.

Originally Posted by Curt Chiarelli

I just prefer that morning push to have 6 gravs worth of force behind it as opposed to the gentle nudge you're proposing!

Gentle nudge? Indeed! When you are on the 2nd movement of 'Emperor' you just wish to melt in your coffee and forget about all the earthy thingies such as goiong to work etc.

Delvo, about what you said "good classical" and "bad classical", I don't believe there's such thing as good or bad classical music. Music is very, very personal. There's no account for taste. You either get it/like it or you don't, and it's nothing wrong if you don't.

[Allegra]

Originally Posted by jackokent

The Welsh National Opera are doing Triastian and Isolde this Saturday in Liverpool and I have spent all evenning umming and ahhing about whether to go. My friend plays cello with them. It's almost 6 hours long and will entail a 3 hour drive home at about midnight for me. But it'll be worth it if I can be bothered.

What should I do?

If you like opera, why not? Just make sure don't fall asleep while you are driving home!

[Curt Chiarelli]

Originally Posted by Allegra

Ok just done the duty of walking my dog. Now I had a better look at the posts.

Gentle nudge? Indeed! When you are on the 2nd movement of 'Emperor' you just wish to melt in your coffee and forget about all the earthy thingies such as goiong to work etc.

All things being relative, of course!

[jackokent]

Originally Posted by Allegra

If you like opera, why not? Just make sure don't fall asleep while you are driving home!

I'm more worried about falling asleep in a 6 hour opera It's certainly the longest I've ever gone to. It's fine listennig to it in your car but a different matter when you have to sit there for so long. However I am a Wagner fan and this is one I've not seen live.

Good points everyone earlier by the way about the use of the word classical and the genre. But it does raise a point. I play classical guitar, is that always classical music, I'd say not.

[Curt Chiarelli]

Originally Posted by jackokent

The Welsh National Opera are doing Triastian and Isolde this Saturday in Liverpool and I have spent all evenning umming and ahhing about whether to go. My friend plays cello with them. It's almost 6 hours long and will entail a 3 hour drive home at about midnight for me. But it'll be worth it if I can be bothered.

What should I do?

By all means go! First, to show your support for your friend and, secondly, to drink in the heady chromaticism and rich, hypnotic melodies of Wagner's masterpiece!

Falling asleep behind the wheel driving home should not be a concern. The experience will electrify you and, if anything, will keep you up all night! Actually, I'd be more concerned with the suppleness of my bladder during the performance rather than dozing off en route afterwards!