What Classical Music Are You Listening To?

[Peter Friedman]

Schumann - String Quartet No.1     and      Mozart - Piano Concerto No.22

[soulpope]

From an outstanding cycle ....

[soulpope]

A beautiful voice on display ....

 

[Referentzhunter]

Claude Debussy - La Mer * Nocturnes * Musiques Pour Le Roi Lear * Prélude À L’après-midi D’un Faune * Marche Écossaise * Berceuse Héroïque * Jeux (Poème Dansé) * Images * Ibéria *  Printemps (Suite Symphonique)

[Peter Friedman]

Mozart - String Quartet K.458 "Hunt"      and       Brahms - Violin Sonata No.2, Op.100

[Peter Friedman]

This Symphony is most highly enjoyable. If you are looking for something you may not have heard previously I highly recommend giving it a listen.

[soulpope]

Thereof Symphony 5 ....

[soulpope]

Sunday morning mass ....

[soulpope]

Thereof Schubert ....

[soulpope]

[Peter Friedman]

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

As well as ripping Earl Grant LPs today, I've ripped this:

It's the only classical LP I've still got, and I LOST it. When you've only got one classical LP left, where do you file it? But I've now only got two feet of unripped LPs, so it was no more than extraordinarily difficult to find it again. 

I kept it for sentimental reasons as my mate and I attended the UK premiere of the Debussy piece in 1968. It was spoken by Mrs Lieberson herself and probably the only reason it was recorded (there are no other versions, I believe) was because her old man ran Columbia Records. It was done very beautifully, however, with half a dozen young lady students from Sussex University wearing shortie nighties dancing around Vera, pretending to be lesbians.

Next up was a Shostokovich nonet, amusingly performed, as each player would stand up when it was his turn to solo for a few seconds. The grand finale during which my friend and I left, bored stiff, was Beethoven's fourth (I think) string quartet.

Really enjoyed it. Not so much the Hindemith, despite the Mallarme.

MG 

 

 

[Peter Friedman]

[soulpope]

[soulpope]

[soulpope]

Thereof Schubert D960 ....

[Peter Friedman]

[Larry Kart]

Willeart -- Cinquecento 

I'm going to keep listening to Renaissance polyphony until I get it. Four or more lines at once seems to be more than I can handle.

[JSngry]

12 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

Willeart -- Cinquecento 

I'm going to keep listening to Renaissance polyphony until I get it. Four or more lines at once seems to be more than I can handle.

Supposedly the brain can only handle two lines at a time. Everything more than that, we process by changing listening points every microsecond or so. And to continuously follow even two takes intense concentration.

That's what they told me in school, anyway. It seems logical though.

[Larry Kart]

6 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Supposedly the brain can only handle two lines at a time. Everything more than that, we process by changing listening points every microsecond or so. And to continuously follow even two takes intense concentration.

That's what they told me in school, anyway. It seems logical though.

What I seem to do is turn the interweaving lines into something that's more or less vertical, with friction around the edges, which can be nice, but that's not the language of the music, no? OTOH, when Willaert sent one of his more complex motets to a Italian nobleman, the story goes that the nobleman's expert vocal ensemble couldn't figure out how to sing it.

[JSngry]

Really, I don't know what they were thinking with that stuff...I sometimes think it was more about the math of it, like we need to do THIS because we're doing THAT...equation music, maybe.

But that was a long time ago, so...who knows, really? Coding, maybe, or maybe just having there heads in a different place than we can be at now.

[Larry Kart]

9 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

What I seem to do is turn the interweaving lines into something that's more or less vertical, with friction around the edges, which can be nice, but that's not the language of the music, no? OTOH, when Willaert sent one of his more complex motets to a Italian nobleman, the story goes that the nobleman's expert vocal ensemble couldn't figure out how to sing it. Maybe the bird knows.

 

[JSngry]

"coding" was not unheard of in that climate...

[Larry Kart]

A post on Amazon ( re Cinquecento's recording of Richefort's  Requiem) from a very knowledgeable guy:

Here's the learning process:
* First listen to any track on the CD and count the separate voices. You will hear six on most tracks; just five 2, 10, & 12; just 4 on 11; but 7 on track 14. You WILL be able to separate them, and that's one of the criteria for considering this performance a paragon of polyphony.
* Now listen to the separate voices and note that each one has its recognizable timbre; you could identify each singer in a blind test, perhaps even over the telephone. Each voice has character and musicality of its own, and that's a second criterion for excellence.
* Now choose one voice, other than the highest (superius) soprano/alto, and follow that one voice through the whole piece of music. You WILL be able to do so with all five or six voices throughout every piece. You'll hear each voice as an emotive statement in itself. You should note that the voices don't "fill in" in the manner of a large choir. The "transparency" of the vocal lines permits you to hear rhythmic and harmonic complexities and interactions. It also allows you to hear the harmonic logic of dissonance resolving to perfect consonance at cadences.
* Now the coup de grace: Listen and try to hear all the voices at once, not as a big whoosh of choral chords, but as a synchronized conversation of voices, each one interesting in itself.

That, my friends, in non-technical terms, is how Renaissance polyphony should sound! 

 

 

[JSngry]

But why did they write it like that to begin with?