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| 7 new of 156 responses total. |
md
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response 150 of 156:
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Apr 20 20:42 UTC 2003 |
Even that short-tempered German reviewer seemed to like Tabula Rasa.
Whatever is in there, I guess I'm just not hearing it.
Hovhaness wore thin for me when I realized what a small bag of tricks
he had. Same thing with William Schuman.
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dbratman
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response 151 of 156:
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Apr 21 07:28 UTC 2003 |
A dismaying number of composers have small bags of tricks. I've even
found Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven to be predictable at times. The
answer is not to spend too much time listening to any one composer.
Also, if you're expecting a composer to surprise you, what do you do
when you listen to a work for the second time? My pleasure in
relistening to a work is not solely dependent on noticing new things
about it I'd previously missed. A work can have nothing new to say to
me at all, and yet still be enjoyable.
As for Hovhaness, his bag may have been small, but he carried different
things in it at different times. More than many lesser composers, his
work of different decades can be distinguished fairly easily on blind
listenings. Perhaps a sense that he had little to say may have come
from too much listening to works of the 1980s and 90s, by which time he
had indeed rather run short on things to say. But his earlier music
retains a freshness.
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md
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response 152 of 156:
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Apr 21 12:28 UTC 2003 |
I seldom get that feeling with Mozart, and never with Bach or
Beethoven. The one indisputably great composer I am sometimes
surprised to find myself getting impatient with is Bartok. "Yeah,
yeah, Bela, we know. Same-old same-old."
Merely inhabiting the same "sound world" or writing in an instantly
recognizable style isn't enough, though. Anyone might want to hear
something other than Beethoven after listening to a couple of
symphonies, but that's not at all the same thing. There has to be a
sense of a failure of inspiration, of the composer repeating the same
tropes and gestures -- William Schuman's scurrying prestissimo
passages, "blue note" dissonance, kettledrum solos and massive brass
chords, or Bartok's ebullient modal folk-dances or umpteenth little
descending minor third figure -- that helped make some earlier work
memorable, only without the same indispensible creative spark, and it
has to be repeated in lots of compositions, not just a few potboilers.
How can you listen to the opening of the Mount St. Helens symphony and
not realize that you're listening to the opening of Mysterious
Mountain, only without the "spark from heaven"?
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dbratman
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response 153 of 156:
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Apr 22 05:31 UTC 2003 |
With a lot of these earlier composers, I can not only "smell" the
cadence coming a mile away, I know exactly how they're going to get
there.
Mozart in particular engaged in some dreadful note-spinning in some of
his lesser works. Be careful what you call "potboilers," lest you wind
up defining it as "those works with predictable characteristics" and
whisk the problem away by tautology.
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md
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response 154 of 156:
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Apr 22 18:58 UTC 2003 |
Okay, I'll be careful. ;-)
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md
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response 155 of 156:
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Jul 10 16:24 UTC 2003 |
Grabbed a buncha Naxoses over the weekend.
John Cage, Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. I've always
liked Cage's prepared piano music. It's the classical counterpart
of "novelty" music. Lots of fun, no deep thought required. I would
say ignore the liner notes chatter about Zen, only "no deep thought
required" *is* Zen.
Arnold Bax, Symphony #6, "Into the Twilight" and "Summer Music." The
6th symphony is very dramatic, and the two tone poems are really
lovely. Bax was a fine orchestrator, but I don't find his music
awfully memorable.
Sheila Silver, Piano Concerto (1996) and "Six preludes pour piano,
d'apres poemes de Baudelaire" (1991). Silver, whom I'd never heard of,
is an American composer born in 1946. The music on this disc is all
very listenable. The Piano Concerto is a strange piece of music.
Silver is apparently going for an eastern European "Jewish" sound in
places, but it comes out sounding a little like Bartok, a little like
Prokofiev, a little like Leonard Bernstein. There are also repeated
figures that sound slightly minimalist. Over-all, I liked it very
much. The six preludes are the stars of the CD, in my opinion. Highly
recommended.
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dbratman
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response 156 of 156:
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Jul 16 04:51 UTC 2003 |
I don't find Bax very memorable either, and have never felt I really
grasped his music. I couldn't tell you if I liked any of his
symphonies better than the others, for instance.
Thanks for the recommendation of Silver.
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