response 108 of 194:

Nov 23 00:33 UTC 1999

'the other CD'?  We are talking vinyl here.  Has anyone ever heard or even
heard of Ritual Fire Dance before?
I have played Songs without Words and like them.

response 110 of 194:

Nov 23 12:01 UTC 1999

Isn't Ritual Fire Dance from Falla's El Amor Brujo?
I'm not familiar with much Falla beyond El Sombrero
de Tres Picos, which I love, so I can't confirm that.

response 112 of 194:

Nov 24 01:22 UTC 1999

Manuel de Falla.  Spanish.  Early 20th century.
Wrote some colorful Spanish-sounding music that
became very popular, including the aforementioned
El Amor Brujo (Love, the Magician) and El Sombrero
de Tres Picos (The Three-Cornered Hat).  The latter
is truly brilliant, in my opinion.  His name 
appeared in a memorable NY Times crossword puzzle
that featured puns on the names of famous composers:
"HANDELWITHCARE," "PUTOUTDEFALLA."

response 114 of 194:

Nov 25 17:43 UTC 1999

Which composers are generally thought of as writing 'light classical'?
(I have recently seen it as Lite).

response 116 of 194:

Dec 4 02:53 UTC 1999

You musn't forget Leroy Anderson, master light classical composer and creator
of such popular works as "Sleigh Ride", "Bugler's Holiday", and "The
Typewriter".

response 118 of 194:

Dec 4 14:14 UTC 1999

Grofe ("Grand Canyon Suite", etc.)

response 120 of 194:

Jan 19 22:25 UTC 2000

Actually most of those composers wrote quite a lot.  Faure, for 
instance, wrote a lot of outstanding chamber music; and Bizet's Symphony 
is a delight.  Borodin's Polovetsian Dances is (are?) an excerpt from a 
whole opera, "Prince Igor", and two other pieces by him show up in pops 
concerts a lot: an infectious tone poem called "In the Steppes of 
Central Asia" and the "Nocturne" arranged from his String Quartet No. 2.

Some other purportedly "one work" composers whose most famous work I 
like a lot -- these are all early 20c -- are Holst's "The Planets", 
Janacek's "Sinfonietta", and Orff's "Carmina Burana".  Turning back to 
the late 19c, I'm suddenly flashing on "The Funeral March of a 
Marionette" by Charles Gounod, now vaguely forgotten but once famous as 
Alfred Hitchcock's tv show theme (I'm told).  And there's a work, once 
hugely popular but now entirely forgotten, "The Rustic Wedding Symphony" 
by Karl Goldmark, who never wrote anything else that I know about.

response 122 of 194:

Jan 19 23:34 UTC 2000

But both Holst and Elgar wrote lotza lotza stuff.  And a lot of it I would
consider good stuff.  Whether it's well known or "hits" is another matter...

response 124 of 194:

Jan 21 18:20 UTC 2000

You forget "School for Scandal"...  (Sammy Barber)

response 126 of 194:

Jan 22 15:18 UTC 2000

Pachelbel wrote some other rather nice stuff - I heard some, all things for
harpsichord (if I recall) some 25 years ago, so I don't recall very well.

The one piece of Bruch's which *I* would pick is the Scottish Fantasy.  The
violin concerto you (keesan) mention has a similar flavor, & is very nice.
I've heard other things of his which I don't like as well.  (Remember, I
mostly don't like anything recognizably 20th-century ...)  I also like Faure's
Requiem enough to think of it as if it were his one major piece, but indeed
he wrote others well worth listening to.

Michael, you forgot Barber's Agnus Dei (heh, heh).

response 128 of 194:

Jan 22 23:04 UTC 2000

He wrote the Adagio when he was twenty-six, as the
slow movement of a string quartet.  (He wrote to
a friend, "It's a knockout," so he knew.)  He then
arranged it for full string orchestra and gave it
to Toscanini, who premiered it.)  There is very 
little of Barber's music that I would consider 
negligible; several works are masterpieces.  

The trouble with his music is that most of it is a 
shade too cultivated to please the masses of people 
who love the Adagio, but way too old-fashioned to have 
pleased the critics and academics who were hung up on 
serialism and minimalism during most of his creative 
life.  Plus, he didn't have a "theory" or "school" or 
"movement" to back his music up with; I think that made 
it inaudible to people who need such things.  "I just 
keep on doing, as they say, my thing," he once remarked; 
"I think that takes a certain courage."  

The trouble with Barber himself seems to be that he was 
an outspoken guy who made enemies of some
very powerful people.  At the height of the Ives craze,
for example, he could've just kept his mouth shut or made 
noncommittal noises to spare the feelings of the various
luminaries who were "discovering" Ives.  But he said what
he thought: Ives was "a clumsy amateur."  He used to taunt
serialist Rene Liebowitz by referring to him as "Maestro
Ztiwobeil," and then ask, "What's the matter?  Don't you 
recognize your own name in retrograde?"  Stuff like that.  
It caught up with him, in spades, when his opera Antony 
and Cleopatra bombed at the opening of the new Met in 1966.  
A *very* high-profile failure.  The critics went into a 
feeding frenzy; Barber sank into a depression from which he 
never fully recovered.

Favorite Barber works of mine:

School for Scandal Overture (wrote it when he was 20)
Music for a Scene from Shelley
First Symphony
Essay #1 and Essay #2
Capricorn Concerto (flute, oboe, trumpet and strings)
Violin Concerto
Cello Concerto
Medea (ballet score)
Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (soprano and orchestra)
Summer Music (woodwind quintet)
Vanessa (opera)
Toccata Festiva (organ and orchestra)
Piano Concerto
The Lovers (oratorio on poems by Pablo Neruda)
Fadograph of a Yestern Scene

I would say his big-ticket masterpieces are probably 
Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Vanessa, and the Piano 
Concerto.

So there you have way more about "Sammy" than you 
probably wanted to know.

response 130 of 194:

Jan 29 00:05 UTC 2000

I didn't know about those snippy comments of Barber's (on Ives and 
Leibowitz, two people I can mostly live without).  I think more highly 
of him for having made them.  Perhaps Ives would not have objected to 
being called a clumsy amateur.  He reveled in being a clumsy amateur.

_The_ Elgar Pomp and Circumstance march, the one everyone knows from 
graduation, is No. 1.  The famous part isn't the first theme, either, so 
don't be alarmed when, at the beginning of the track, you think, "Uh, 
oh, I've got the wrong one."

Under the title, "Land of Hope and Glory," it became a famous British 
hymn, one of two to come from classical compositions of that era, the 
other being "I Vow To Thee My Country" (which some may remember from 
Princess Diana's funeral), which came from Holst's _Planets_ (Jupiter). 
The popularity of these led to an era when conservative British 
composers put wanna-be hymns in most of their compositions ...