OK, I have been listening to a bit of classical music while I am at work in the library. The more I listen to, the more I realise I like some of it, but know so little.
All I do at the moment is take a CD from the classical section (which is very limited), and it's kind of hit or miss as to whether or not it works for me.
I want some advice on composers and pieces to start with. I find when I am learning about a new subject I'm quite methodical, but I almost need someone to guide me through the first steps. Maybe Ritz and Colin and others could help me here.
I was reluctant to post on this at first, because it obviously shows just how ignorant I am on the subject. But I realise that if I don't ask, all that will happen is that I'll continue to listen to the same pieces over and over, and not take the chance on discovering anything new. Who knows, maybe there are others here too that have wanted to listen to more classical stuff but wonder where to start? Thanks, dg
The obvious place to start is with one of the great many compilation albums.These usually consist of short extracts from longer works. So you might get 'Jupiter' from Holst's Planet Suite or the first movement of Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' or the second movement of Mozart's piano concerto No 21 [ popularly known as the theme from the film 'Elvira Madigan' ] or just one movement from Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' and so on. There may be twenty or thirty tracks from different composers in such a collection. The virtue of this is that you get pieces that have proved enduringly popular with the public at large whilst getting some idea of what the different composers did and what their style is.
Given that as a start you can investigate further. That's easy enough to do: if you like a particular composer then just go to Amazon and click on to the name and perhaps the type of music e.g Beethoven or Mozart 'symphony' or 'piano' and see what comes up as the most often listed. That will be the most popular piece and a good place to start to hear the whole thing. Mostly you won't go wrong this way.
This is a rough guide. In the case of some, very few, composers their most popular work is not typical. Sibelius is a good example. Under Sibelius you'll find Finlandia and the Karelia suite or the haunting 'Swan of Tuonela'. These are fine pieces but Sibelius lovers and classical music fans know him for his symphonies. If you went to a Sibelius symphony expecting Karelia again you'd be surprised ! [That said, if you are feeling in the mood for something rather dark but moving and ultimately uplifting then immerse yourself in Sibelius' 7th symphony. It runs only 20 minutes or so in all, as one continuous developing piece.You won't come away from it being able to sing a 'tune' from it, because it doesn't work like that: it just develops themes in one seamless movement.]
Yes, I have listened to the compilation albums and I'm familiar with things like the Planets Suite and The Four Seasons, but that's about as far as my knowledge goes. The compilation albums seem, to me, to be all very much the same, in that they repeat the popular classics. I need to know what to move on to from there.
You see, I find I like Bach, Mozart and Vivaldi, but I can't find anything that is as easy to listen to as their popular pieces; the ones I would find on the compilations.
I will follow your suggestion and look at Amazon and take it from there. I am unfamiliar with Sibelius, so there's another composer I can look for. Thanks again.
This deserves an answer of several thousand words, dance girl, and i feel unqualified to provide it. But you ask how you can move on from where you are, so let me offer a few suggestions. It’s meant as genuine advice, I’m not being pedantic or patronising – you know me!! Newcomers to ‘classical’ music often arrive with a prior knowledge of rock and/or jazz and/or pop and/or rap, and so on, yet strangely tend to approach their new find as if it were one amorphous mass within which they discover certain bits that appeal and so go on to state “know what I like”. But the classical genre is more than that. It has a tradition that goes back centuries, and in order to be in a position to approach it fairly, you need to take just a little time (a couple of hours will do) to stand back and consider. After all, we divide pop into periods and styles and output and genre, and its classical cousin has a longer pedigree than pop (Look, I’m sorry, this is already sounding like a lecture and: I don’t mean it to – honest!) Consider a Shakespeare play. Watching something like that for the first time is extraordinarily difficult for me, but if I find out even a little about the story line and the vocabulary he’s using, then I can see what he’s getting at, and all those references to indecision and guilt, to motherhood and children in Macbeth (or whatever) don’t go over my head. Classical music is like good literature, for it too is a centuries long art-form with its divergence of styles over the years, its quirks of grammar and its shifting vocabulary (i.e. structure and melody). If you can look up the difference between a symphony and a concerto and identify the kind of piece you’re listening to (stoic, fanciful; majestic, light-hearted; lyrical, etc.) you’ll find you’ve made a great leap forward, and when you come across a piece you enjoy, you’ll know what to look out for. Clearly there are differences between the output of the composers as well. Some covered a plethora of sytles in their career, while others concentrated on a shallower field in terms of diversity of output, if not quantity. But so did Hank Williams and Sinatra and Dylan and the Beatles and Jerry Lee Lewis and Mario Lanza and Abba and Leonard Cohen, and we never lump those names together. Find out about the Baroque period and the Romantics, the Classical period and the Moderns, and list a few of the typical composers of each. This will give you a broad overview of where they fit into the big picture, and that way you’ll know whether Vivaldi comes before Bach and whether Sibelius pre-dates Mozart (you’ll know this already, so forgive me ! - I said it sounds like a lecture!) Next, identify the sections of a symphony orchestra and find out what instruments are in the brass section, the strings, and so on, and what they sound like. And, finally, look up a few of the major musical terms such as cadenza and allegro and diminuendo, cantata, topic and theme. But please don’t overdo this at first. A couple of hours will suffice to grasp the above, because what you really want to get to grips with is the music. But please devote the two hours or so and I promise it will pay dividends. Two hours on then, and you’re ready to follow Fred’s advice. Get hold of a sampler or two and listen to the pieces a couple of times. What type of music is it? What is the composer is trying to achieve (make me feel patriotic, sad, happy, frivolous?. Is the piece happy and if so, how is this effect being achieved? When was it written? What is it about? Are there any clues in the title – why is the piece called “The Pastoral Symphony” or “Finlandia” or whatever? Is the melody you first hear subsequently picked up by the woodwind section, for instance? What does this suggest, if anything? Which instruments are playing and which are dominant? And above all, for a beginner, why do you like it or dislike it? Resist the temptation to say “I don’t know about classical music but I know what I like”. Instead, say “I don’t (yet) know much about classical music but I like (or don’t like) this piece, BECAUSE… Get this far and you’ll be hooked for life!
Posts: 830 | Location: Paris | Registered: 04-28-03
Thanks so much for all the time you took to answer my question. No, I didn't find your answer lecturing or patronising at all. Indeed, quite the opposite; it was exactly the information and reassurance that I was looking for.
I love just about all genres of music, so I understand what you are saying about rock and jazz etc.
I am, as I said, quite a methodical person in my appraoch to any new subject, so your suggestions will work well for me, I'm sure.
It's difficult for me to appreciate any piece of music, without first knowing something of it's background. I have to know a little about the artist, and in the case of a classical piece, the composer too.
I found this site when I was looking at jazz performers last week ( another really interesting genre of music I am only just discovering), and I thought to go back to it, and look at the classical link.
It might help me with that first couple of hours prep' work that you advised, and the beauty of it is that I can listen while I read.
You will probably smile when you open this link, because I'm sure you are quite familiar with it. But believe me, as a beginner, I only just found it, and saved it before posting here. If you can recommend any other sites, that would be good too.
Cadenza?Isn't that a piece of French furniture, like a sideboard? Adagio married Marilyn Monroe, didn't he? And Con Fuoco was an Irish-Italian who was a lover of Clara Schumann. Not sure about the first two but I'm certain about the last: it sounds so right !
Please don't be too studious. It's music, not physics. Study a bit of the history, the mechanics and the terms of music, if you will.But it can't really matter whether you know what musical terms mean.Just enjoy the stuff! By Jove, such ignorance never did me any harm, as you may see ( The tympani are your ear drums not kettle drums, by the way ).
I've heard a learned musicologist analyse the development of the music of Paul McCartney. All very good and it was fascinating to learn that he'd been influenced in early days by a form found everyday only in the C15 but which did survive in church music (where, no doubt, he'd encountered it) or that he had used an inverted form of a theme but somehow these discoveries did not make any of his music any more or less effective to me. Perhaps I needed a professor of English literature to trace the influences on his words, metre and scansion for me, to give me full enjoyment ? (I doubt it)
In the end, why not be like the English (according to the plain-speaking conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham )? " The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the sound it makes" (He also described the harpsichord as sounding "Like two skeletons copulating on a tin roof". No idea what he thought of the virginals !)
Here's a "playlist" to start with
Program(me) music. Not music where you have to buy an overpriced booklet of adverts from the sponsors, with a list of the works hidden somewhere inside, before you sit down but music which either tells a story or portrays something real but in sound. These can be good fun or even serious but they do show what a composer can do with noise:
Mussorgsky (orchestrated by Ravel): Pictures at an Exhibition. A set of pieces describing some pictures painted by his (recently deceased) friend.He puts a joining section in between to describe his walking from one picture to the next. He had a sense of humour: the 'walk' is in a most ungainly, lumbering, rhythm because he was no sylph. The pieces vary e.g. the playful (children scampering about), the humorous ( a wheedling beggar trying, and failing, to get something from a rich merchant), the finely descriptive ( an oxcart labouring slowly towards you then passing you and fading into the distance), the macabre ( skulls) and the grandiose ( a procession before a great gate at Kiev)
Saint-Saens: Carnival of the Animals. Describes animals (including pianists ), sometimes comically sometimes seriously , but more than that. He made some fun of performers, composers and fashions of his day and so carefully directed that none of the pieces was to be performed in his lifetime, save The Swan (which later, with his consent,was used as the music for the ballet solo 'The Dying Swan')
Other stuff:
Chamber music for strings: Mozart : Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
Concertos (concerti). Solo instrument with orchestra:
For Clarinet: Mozart: Clarinet concerto
For Piano : Beethoven 4th : Beethoven 5th : Grieg : Schumann : Rachmaninov 2nd (me, I'd start with the Grieg and Schumann, then the Rachmaninov then Beethoven 4th and 5th, but that's probably only because it's the order I first encountered them in )
For Violin: Tchaikovsky : Mendlessohn : Sibelius
For several instruments together: Bach Brandenburg Concertos (all:there are six of these)
Symphonies: Tchaikovsky 6th ('Pathetique') Beethoven 5th Beethoven 9th (well, the choral bit at the end is great anyway!) Sibelius 7th (and when and if you get accustomed to that then try his 5th)
Solo piano: Chopin: Nocturnes (take a pause between each if your recording rushes from one to the next.It must be the recording company saving money, or something, but they often do cut pauses between pieces or movements etc. Angela Hewitt's recording has such proper, reflective, pauses between them that you'd think your CD player had stopped. Quite right too!)
Chopin: Waltzes (it's very surprising to find that so much can be done with the waltzes. Some are very poignant, some sad, others quite breezy )
Beethoven: the Moonlight (Sonata no 14) : the Appassionata (Sonata no 23 : the Pathetique (Sonata no 8)
Chopin: the 4 Ballades
That's a start! Others might suggest Bruch's violin concerto too (popular but for some too schmalzy in the 'best' bit and otherwise indistinguished)That's part of the fun of all this, trying stuff for yourself. There's loads out there.
If buying you'll find low price labels such as Hyperion good value. Some 'big labels' like DG ( Deutsche Grammophon) have a low or reduced price range of older recordings by good artists too.DG is a safe choice if you don't know the artist because anyone on their books is good (or the performer wouldn't be there) Please don't buy anything hyped. The latest recording from some big company isn't the best ever performance: it's just the one they have to sell that week and the one they've invested the most in (and, of course, it's the most expensive to buy). If the performance is truly great it will be on their books to sell for years: that's why older recordings by good artists are still on sale.
Well! Colin & Fred, what on earth can I add to such eloquent, comprehensive and compelling reasoning? Before launching into my suggestions I would just first of all like to say that your ideas are first class. A couple of points... I agree more with Colin than with Fred that some knowledge of music theory/history/style/period is invaluable. Are you a librarian, with access to musical works of reference?
You may find these two books helpful, if you can get hold of them: 'How to Appreciate Music', by Sydney Harrison (Elm Tree Books, EMI Music Publishing) and 'Listening to Music', by Roy Bennett (Longman Group Ltd)
Try the overtures of Weber. 'Oberon' is a great favourite of mine. Antonin Dvořák wrote lovely melodies. You probably know his 9th symphony which he wrote after an extended period in the US (New World). Fred mentions the Brandenburg Concerti of Bach, which are masterpieces. Also try the orchestral suites.
Mozart: Piano Concerto no. in A, the aria "Queen of the Night" from 'The Magic Flute' Mendelssohn: Hebrides Overture
Schubert: String Quintet in C major...
...as I type this I am aware of how easy it is to give someone a catalogue of music which will take years to wade through & listen to! Maybe Fred's Idea of a compilation album is the best, after all. Then when you find you like something, pursue that composer in greater depth.
Fred, I think that your allusion to McCartney might involve Howard Goodall...?...
Dance Girl, I hope that we have been of some help. Please never feel embarrassed about asking for information. That is why we are all here. If there is anything about which you require information or clarification in this thread, however trite it may appear to you, do please put your hand up. There is little enough movement in this forum, considering that it spans a period of 1500 years, so we are delighted to be able to contribute. Cheers! Ritz
Posts: 3456 | Location: Marple Cheshire UK | Registered: 06-04-02
Originally posted by FredPuli: Cadenza?Isn't that a piece of French furniture, like a sideboard? Adagio married Marilyn Monroe, didn't he? And Con Fuoco was an Irish-Italian who was a lover of Clara Schumann. Not sure about the first two but I'm certain about the last: it sounds so right !
Fred you are so funny! But your post reminds me not to get too uptight about the whole thing. You are a gem, thanks for all the ideas..this is what I needed. I know music is a personal thing, and everyone likes something different, but this is a great start; having someone say, "Here try this, and see what you think." I won't get worked up over the whole thing, but I will make a hard copy of your list to keep handy..there are some good ideas here. Thanks for the time you took to list these suggestions.
quote:
Originally posted by Ritzmar: some knowledge of music theory/history/style/period is invaluable. Are you a librarian, with access to musical works of reference?
You may find these two books helpful, if you can get hold of them: 'How to Appreciate Music', by Sydney Harrison (Elm Tree Books, EMI Music Publishing) and 'Listening to Music', by Roy Bennett (Longman Group Ltd)
Yes Ritz, I'm a librarian, and I will order the two you suggested through work. Thank you too for your list of pieces to listen to. I was interested in the Mendelsson. As soon as I read "Hebrides Overture," I was reminded of a visit to the Hebrides as a student. We went to the island of Staffa and saw Fingel's cave. I remembered the guide talking about Mendelsson. So I have a special reason to look for this one.
Thank you all again...you have been most helpful. dg
Dancegirl, in my list I've inadvertently omitted the most famous piano concerto ever written !
Please include it. In fact you might care to try it before the other piano concertos.
It's Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No 1.It was always going to be good from the moment that young Tchaikovsky played it for his mentor and tutor, Rubinstein, who listened politely and then declared it rubbish! The composer was both saddened but defiant and would not change it.
Mendlessohn wrote Fingal's Cave (Hebrides Overture) when he was 20 years old . (He would have written it at about 20 months old, like he did some other good stuff, but had been too young to travel ). The main event in that trip was that he was violently seasick. How some composers suffer in their art Some of us ordinary folk would have had thoughts far removed from being inspired to write a piece of music in consequence.
The lives and characters of some of the composers are as interesting as the music. Mussorgsky was successful but died of drink. Sibelius was another alcoholic but somehow contrived to live until 90 or so.He had a neat view of critics. When some young composer complained that his own works were being panned by the critics the old man replied "Young man,there are two statues of me in Finland. Nobody ever put up a statue to a critic" Beethoven was so restless that he lived in about sixty different addresses in the course of his life... and so on. [All much more interesting than knowing that Beethoven's sonata "Appassionata" has a first movement sonata-allegro, with no repeats, in 12/8 time ]
The reason I put the Mussorgsky 'Pictures at an Exhibition ' first in the list was that this work serves as a good introduction to the orchestra. In fact, it's traditionally one of the first pieces of proper classical music that British youngsters are exposed to.( 'First...proper' = When someone decides they are, at long last, now too old for 'Peter and the Wolf' !)Thanks to the genius of Ravel in orchestration ( it was written for solo piano) we get to hear what the instruments can do, how they can be combined, what effects can be achieved and lots more. Ravel was an exceptional user of the orchestra (it takes real skill to make 'Bolero' into anything more than a long, boring, crescendo )and not afraid of novelty, either: he includes a saxophone, an unlikely instrument to hear in an orchestral piece, in one section (where it serves to illustrate a troubadour singing outside a castle).
Fred, your comment about Sibelius reminds me of a similar one from Kenneth Tynan: "A critic is someone who knows the way, but can't drive the car."
Now it takes all sorts, as we know, and you can't please all of the people all of the time, as Saddam Hussein once was heard to mutter sadly to himself. Personally I think that the first four minutes or so, and the last four minutes (or so!) of the Tchaikowksy which you mention are terrific. The rest does nothing for me, and I agree wholeheartedly, otherwise with Nicholas Rubinstein who declared that it rambled, lost its way, and was/is (?) overblown (but what are the two of us, Nick & I, against so many...?...Madonna is revered far more than Amelita Galli-Curci, ergo...[!])
I also think that Beethoven's 3rd concerto (C minor) is up there with nos 4 & 5, we could discuss all night.
OK. Beethoven was so contemptuous of the arrogant and self-aggrandising Steibelt that he took a copy of one of Steibelt's own compositions at a gathering of people including Steibelt, turned it upside down, proceeded to play the inverted copy 'backwards' and improvised a brilliantly satirical musical representation of a thunderstorm in the style of Steibelt, much to the amazement and amusement of all present (Steibelt most definitely excepted). Yes, more fun than knowing that the 1st movement of op 57 is in 12/8 time, I agree (come and see me, by the way, when you can play the last movement up to speed... This is not to say that knowing something about the construction of music is irrelevant. You of all people know damned well that deconstruction & analysis are vital activities in the acquisition of real knowledge.
The more you study, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you understand. So often I have said to a student something along the lines of, "You do realise that this theme is the same as that earlier one, but in a minor key, and inverted?" "No! I would not have spotted that, but I felt it, somehow, belonged," or something along similar lines. For those students who are genuinely interested this can be a revelation and a joy.
Notice that I have not suggested to Dance Girl that she buys 'A Short History of World Music' by Curt Sachs, or 'The Study of Counterpoint', by JJ Fux (sounds more like he ought to be reviewing 'The Perfumed Garden', but perhaps we should move on quickly to more salubrious areas...)
The books which I have recommended are fairly easy reading, but informative, accessible and very useful, I believe. My impression is that Dance Girl wants more than just a list of things to listen to, valuable as that is. She is asking for guidance and reasons for that guidance.
Incidentally, Fred, if all you are interested in doing is listening to music without any intellectual or analytical input, how did you know that it is the first movement of the Appassionata and not the second or third which is in 12/8...did a little bird tell you...? PS At college I learned Moussorgsky's 'Pictures', and 'The Hut of Baba Yaga' always gave me a few problems. Nevertheless I think he got some things right. Undoubted masterpiece as the Ravel transcription is (and it is stunning) I still prefer the piano version; well, I would, would I not? And Moussorgsky's choice of the manner of his death has much to recommend it. Another large Lagavulin...? Cheers!!! !!!
Posts: 3456 | Location: Marple Cheshire UK | Registered: 06-04-02
Originally posted by Ritzmar: Incidentally, Fred, if all you are interested in doing is listening to music without any intellectual or analytical input, how did you know that it is the first movement of the Appassionata and not the second or third which is in 12/8...did a little bird tell you...?
All right:It could be the same 'little bird' that tells me that the 'promenade' linking the pictures in 'Pictures at an Exhibition' starts in 11/4 time ( I think). But listen to it through: the promenade changes later on and alternates beteen 5/4 and 6/4 . Seemed easier, and as well, to say that the promenade tells us that Mussorgsky was no sylph. Could have added that the alternations between 5/4 and 6/4 time suggest he was unsteady on his feet, as well His portrait [your link] indicates why
You get a brownie point, Fred. The opening bars alternate 5/4 with 6/4 (he must have inadvertently sobered up when he wrote that bit!)
PS The last 13 bars of that first page are all in 6/4 (had to go back to the score to check that, 40 years can play havoc with the old neurological fuses...
Posts: 3456 | Location: Marple Cheshire UK | Registered: 06-04-02
Interesting to watch this discussion unfold. It strikes me, Ritz and Fred, that you both have an enviable knowledge of the classical arena (your eloquence (pace Fred, for I'm stealing your word here)I mention not - cela va sans dire. It appears from this last post though, Fred,
...the 'promenade' linking the pictures in 'Pictures at an Exhibition' starts in 11/4 time ( I think). But listen to it through: the promenade changes later on and alternates beteen 5/4 and 6/4 . Seemed easier, and as well, to say that the promenade tells us that Mussorgsky was no sylph. Could have added that the alternations between 5/4 and 6/4 time suggest he was unsteady on his feet, as well
that, like Ritzmar and me, you draw your appreciation of classical music precisely from the fact that you so clearly understand the nuts and bolts of composition and impact - notwithstanding your first post under this topic. Obviously the music IS the thing, yes, but one cannot get to grips with the depth of classical music without grasping a bit of the components. 3/4 time, cadences, and so on have their place, and so does where the composer is coming from.
Placing in time matters too. I got a ticket to see Tchaikovsky's Fourth a few years ago and listened to it on CD before I went. I'm glad I did. But when I got to the concert hall and read the notes in the programme I learned so much more about the work and the time and the tone of that fantastic last few bars. And when the orchestra performed it I appreciated what I was hearing.
But the important thing, surely, is to answer dance girl: that's what we're here, and I stand by my original post where I said, dance girl, that if you devote two hours to the nuts and bolts, you'll be hooked for life. Don't spend years on the nuts and bolts, for this is no A level or university course, but to know that you like a concerto or a symphony, or that you love anything that features a cor anglais, or that you dislike anything from the Impressionist composers (yes, we had them in music too) will allow you to see what you like and to know why you like it. It will let you comprehend your own personal rationale, for without the groundwork and background, you'll be stuck in the easier approach to the more limited field (though I refuse to decry it, as my many postings elsewhere will show) of pop-rock and the rest. If you don't, then you'll forever claim that Agatha Christie (I love her novels) is as good as Shakespeare "because i know what I like".
Posts: 830 | Location: Paris | Registered: 04-28-03
Oh, Colin, I was so in tune with you (pardon the pun) until you said you like the abominable Agatha Christie! Ruth Rendell blows her out of the water ( Enid Blyton blows her out of the water; only the appalling 'Midsomer Murders' is her equal, in character & plot development) But I agree absolutely about the rest. You know what Fred is like, he needs to let his hair down when he is not trying to get some low-life off in court, scot free (... ...) and can't resist being a bit of a needle. Whatever he says, he knows we are correct, and secretly agrees.
Your Tchaikowsky story is right on the nose. All knowledge increases understanding, and that is a perfect example of the fact.
Cheers! Ritz.
Posts: 3456 | Location: Marple Cheshire UK | Registered: 06-04-02
Just as a taster, Dance Girl, when you have the time to sit down, try this
scroll down to Beethoven Piano Concerto no 4 in G and have a listen to Charles Hazlewood's excellent analysis of it with the pianist, Ronald Brautigam. See what you think.
Posts: 3456 | Location: Marple Cheshire UK | Registered: 06-04-02
( The tympani are your ear drums not kettle drums, by the way 
).
(I doubt it) 
)