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Joined: July 01 2015
Location: Out East
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Points: 6777
Posted: January 23 2017 at 23:35
Shame that this thread hasn't been more active; I'd appreciate hearing some other forum members' tastes, thoughts, and recommendations. I haven't listened to much classical music in the past aside from the household names, and predominantly just Romantic stuff. However, I just found out that my local library has a ton of classical CDs that I can check out, so I've just recently been getting into a more diverse range of material.
First stop so far has been getting into the nooks and crannies of the output of my favourite composer: Sibelius. Love the guy; his early works paint bold brushstrokes of the untamed Finnish nature, and his treatments of the mythology in the Kalevala are simply awesome. I was just rocking out to Lemminkainen the other night, and have a 3 disc set of all seven of his symphonies queued up for the next few weeks.
when i was a kid a doller was worth ten dollers - now a doller couldnt even buy you fifty cents
Joined: April 05 2006
Location: @ wicker man
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Posted: January 24 2017 at 00:37
To use the classical music term loosely for more modern composers.
I love Xenakis, Penderecki, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Alfred Schnittke, Berio, Nono, Varese, Boulez, Messiaen. Film score composers such as Zbigniew Preisner, and you could include various Ennio Morricone (love Controfase). And I adore Egisto Macchi.
I also like various Arvo Part music.
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Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
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Points: 37575
Posted: January 24 2017 at 03:16
Glass, Ives and Ligeti mainly, thou' I'm not adverse to any of the composers people have listed thus far - I'd probably add Delibes and Spor for no apparent reason other than I like what I've heard.
I'm off to see a screening of Godfrey Reggio's Visitors with Philip Glass score performed live by the BBC Symphony Orchestra on Sunday...
Joined: October 27 2016
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Posted: January 24 2017 at 03:26
Dean wrote:
Glass, Ives and Ligeti mainly, thou' I'm not adverse to any of the composers people have listed thus far - I'd probably add Delibes and Spor for no apparent reason other than I like what I've heard.
I'm off to see a screening of Godfrey Reggio's Visitors with Philip Glass score performed live by the BBC Symphony Orchestra on Sunday...
Ligeti and Ives are amazing, I've never full appreciated Glass though. I've enjoyed certain works like Symphony no 8 and Passages (with Ravi Shankar) but I find his (and Steve Reich's) concepts and techniques fascinating
The movie looks interesting, let us know what it was like?
Classical music isn't dead, it's more alive than it's ever been. It's just not on MTV.
I have quite a few composers I really like. Messiaen, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Riley (yes, I consider him a classical composer), La Monte Young (yes, I consider him a classical composer), Penderecki, Bartok, Tchaikovsky, Moondog (yes, I consider him a classical composer), Hindemith, Stockhausen, Rimsky-Korsakov, Wagner - the music of all of these I really enjoy.
Edited by ALotOfBottle - January 24 2017 at 04:46
Categories strain, crack and sometimes break, under their burden - step out of the space provided.
Joined: January 24 2017
Location: Thailand
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Posted: January 24 2017 at 22:29
and have a 3 disc set of all seven of his symphonies queued up for the next few weeks
The classical music field is vast, especially if you include early composers like Palestrina (and not counting "classical" Carnatic music etc etc). So I'd recommend randomly sampling your local library. I think the key lies in playing the selection(s) over and over - as you imply in your mention of the coming weeks' playlist - until it either annoys you or ravishes you. Ideally, there is no middle ground.
I also think that Prog music should be of the same nature. When I hear "easy-listening" prog I feel very disappointed.
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Posted: January 30 2017 at 02:55
Thatfabulousalien wrote:
The movie looks interesting, let us know what it was like?
The film was overlong, while the soundtrack could have lasted another hour for me. Where I have found previous Reggio/Glass collaborations (Qatsi trillogy and Anima Mundi short film) to have been stunning and captivating this was visually rather dull and inconsequential, and more disconcertingly didn't seem to fit with the music in pace and energy. It was if Glass was trying his best to use the dynamics of the score whip-up drama in a film that had very little, which was an interesting juxtaposition to begin with but soon became distracting thereafter. As my wife remarked on the journey home "Good job the orchestra was there, it gave me something to look at". I too lost interest in the film and just watched the orchestra as they played.
The music however, made me very happy. While this is the third live performance of a Philip Glass piece I've attended (the others being '1000 Airplanes on the Roof' and 'The Perfect American', which are both theatre pieces), this is the first I've seen with a full orchestra and I loved every second. This was also the first time I'd heard the score - I've owned a copy of the soundtrack for almost a year now but deliberately chose not to play it until after I'd seen the film - so had no expectations or preconceptions. Being one of Glass's more recent compositions (2013) it's as lyrical and melodic as all of his later works have been and a far cry from the repetitive minimalism that made his name. As someone who 'constructs' music myself, watching how melodies and rhythmic patterns moved through the sections of the orchestra, ebbing and flowing, building tension and (as I said earlier) drama as it went, was fascinating - to physically 'see' a musical motif evolve and develop from violin to viola to cello to double bass then flit over to the woodwinds before being punctuated with almost percussive notes from the brass section that signalled a change of direction in tempo or melody.
...the harpists tune up while waiting for the rest of the orchestra to arrive...
The BBC Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Michael Riesman, the musical director of the film and of the Philip Glass Ensemble.
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