Classical Music

So what's your point? I'm sure you can search the web (or your local library) just the same as anybody else...

Just get out there and listen...

Jeeeesssusss! can't ANYONE do anything for themselves anymore? Talk about lazy society!

- Wil

 

Preach it Wil.
A great site I use all the time is www.allmusic.com
It is a great site, the only down side is now that they are linked with CDNow it cost me to much money.


Quick trivia regarding your sig. Wil. Can you name the movie where Marcel Marceau spoke a line?

 

"Silent Movie" by Mel Brooks

 

Shocking. Well I guess that makes two of us that knows those facts.

 

My favourite composer is Mahler and I would recommend any of his symphonies as incredibly inspiring and passionate - I like the 6th best and 4th least, but they're all great.

Stravinsky has written some incredibly inspiring music - Rite of Spring, Firebird etc and was a great inspiration to Ravel.

Shostakovitch has written some of the most passionate and inspiring music I've ever heard and his symphonies are incredible - I like 5, 6,7, 8 and 11 best.

For more Symphonies - how about Sibelius, Nilsson or some of the English composer - like Vaughan Williams, Holst, Elgar. One of my favourite Symphonies of all is Walton's 1st - which is incredibly passionate and has the best ending of any.

For something more challenging - I really like Messiaen's "Turangalila Symphonie" or for something passionate, very moving and incredibly sad - Gorecki's Symphony NO.3 of Sorrowful Songs?

I could go an to about 50 more composer but the above are probably may favourite - so like also Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Rimski-Korsakov, Arnold, Ginaestera, Brian, Bax, Ives, Goldschmidt,....

 

For some bizarre reason, the above comment cracked me up. It just seemed uncharacteristic of WD (not that I know much about his character). I guess I mistakenly assumed Wil was completely benign. It's great to find other sarcastic S.O.B.'s on board. I've had to tone tone down since becoiming a mod, but I'm glad to see the art lives on.

 

Taking Bruce Lindfield's side, I believe that Bruce's thoughtful answer to Relman's harmless question was both informative and sincere.

Yes, Relman could have gone to All Music, as I often do, but getting a personalized response from someone here who has a lot to say on the subject and much worthwhile to contribute seems a far superior way to go, IMHO.

In fact, I feel Relman's question shows respect for the members here because it says tacetly that he expects some members here will have the answer he hopes to find. It says, he believes that some here will have special insights or experiences with or preferences for certain composers that a simple web search might not reveal.

Afterall, what the heck are we here at TalkBass for?Questions asked here day after day could be answered to a certain degree with a web search. However, the difference here is that answers are personalized. Often a single question will elicit numerous responses and various opinions. That's what makes us unique.

I have absolutely no problem with Relman's question, do not feel it reflects laziness on his part in any way, but instead refects a genuine search for knowledge and information from our members and I am very pleased that Bruce was willing to provide him with an informative answer.

Relman, check out both Chopin and George Gershwin for variety. They have nothing much in common with Ravel, but they do have different styles you might enjoy...or not.

 

Lest I be chastised for my previous post, let me clarify that I thought relmans post was perfectly valid and reasonable. It was not my intention to suggest that I agreed with WD (and that is not to say that I think WD meant any harm). My commentary was merely to express my surprise at what I considered an out-of-character post by WD.

As I have nothing to offer relman in terms of a response to his query, I'll drop out of this thread now. Hope you find what you're looking for, relman.

 

OK - by way of explanation... (long post - nod off if you want...)

XavierG was right in his presumption that no harm was meant, but the original post reminded me of a somewhat similar situation I was in, about twenty years ago, while at a Bach recital in Oxford (in the UK where I used to live). I was talking with a friend in the interval, and knowing he was a "Wagner Nut", and not knowing much about Wagner's music myself, I mentioned how sublime JSB's music is, not at all like that awful stuff of RW, and mentioned the G B Shaw quote which goes something like: "...at a Wagner opera, one tends to look at one's watch and it's six-o'clock, and twenty-minutes later, on looking at it again, one finds that it's five-past-six..." - well, that did it! For the next twenty minutes I was subjected to a barrage of reasons why I was being totally stupid, and that RW was a genius and even though his personal life was awful, and he was a bigot, and he was anti-semetic, one cannot criticize his music and his art, which has to be aknowledged as being brilliant etc. etc. Well, to cut a long story short, about a week later, arrived in the post a short-score of RW's "Meistersinger", accompanied by long letter from my friend Peter, apologising about laying into me and please accept this small gift etc. etc. PLUS some of the best advice I've ever had from anyone. He said give the music a chance! Don't dismiss it without first finding out about it. Take this copy of the score, buy yourself a good recording of "Die Meistersinger" and listen to it, and find out what is going on (read along with the score...) and then, come back in six-months and tell me that RW's music is rubbish! What a challenge! OK - so I took him up on it, as he'd been so gracious and all. He was right! Absolutely right! BUT it required effort on my part. I couldn't just sit back an say "Entertain me! I want enteraining NOW! I don't want to make any effort, just entertain me NOW! Anything worth having, is worth working for.

My friend Peter told me later that I was not the first Wagner-neophyte that he'd brought to RW's music, but I was thirty, and he was sixty, and he said that now he felt too old and fed up, to have to "spoon-feed" ignorant people who had the same attitude as I'd had and, to quote his words - "...here's the book, here's the music, the rest is up to you , mate! Good luck, and in thirty years from now, perhaps you'll be doing the same for some other poor ignorant sod!". Well, that was twenty-one years ago, and I lost contact with him after I moved to the USA (he hated America, and could never understand why I wanted to live here) - anyway, a long story which was brought to mind by the original post. So, my apologies if I've offended anyone, but the message is listen to everything - and learn and read and find out what the music is about - you might be surprised...

Oh well, back to mining salt...

- Wil

 

Whoa, WD! That was a reply of literary proportions. I'll print it out as it'll make great reading material for my next trip to the bathroom.


(..no shortage of sarcasm here.)

 

Bite Me.

 

Not as long as you take up some of my recommendations - now how many of Mahler's Symphonies have you listened to, so far!!

 

To Will Davis, that was a very interesting story about your mentor's way of introducing you to Wagner. He was fortunate you took the time to follow up his efforts and that he was able to recruit a new admirer of Wagner.

I've grown to be a little like your friend in my "old age." At 58, I can't count the number of times I tried to "enrich" someone, but they didn't follow through. The old cliche is too often true. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. At least in your case, you did indeed drink of the full, deep Wagnerian waters. Sadly, I wonder how much time your friend wasted trying to get others to do the same, but was rebuffed.

 

Curiously enough, at the time, I thought his remark about "too old and too fed-up..." was a bit "curmudgeonish" to put it mildly, however it's only in recent times that I've come to understand exactly to what he was referring. I suppose it's a sign of advancing age... (sigh...)

- Wil

 

I feel exactly the same - I really like following Orchestral music in miniature score. I have the scores for all of Mahler's Symphonies and it really enhances the experience - you have to really concentrate, but I enjoy this aspect as it seems to heighten the intensity.

I have listened to Mahler's 6th symphony hundreds of times and when I follow the score it seems to go by in a few minutes. The last movement of his 9th symphony is incredibly slow and takes 30 minutes usually, but the score is actually quite short - following it is very easy and it is so logical when folowing the score, that again it only seems like 3 minutes.

My favourite score is for Holst's Planet Suite and I a have a full-size facsimile of Holst's original large form score!!