Some Classical Music Fan Here ?

Asyte2c00 wrote: I do not want to appear ignorant or arrogant, but classical music is openly pretentious and hackneyed.  Ive listened to Shubert, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart and it seems staid and dull.

dude, there was no rock and roll in the 17/1800's. Pretentious is certainly arguable, but seriously what the hell are you talking about? We're on a progrock forum. As far as rock&roll gets, you don't get more pretentious than progrock. Hey I love it, but it's a kind of mediocre term to throw around on a prog forum I'd say. Oh yeah, and hackneyed my ass.

I do not want to appear ignorant or arrogant, but classical music is openly pretentious and hackneyed.  Ive listened to Shubert, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart and it seems staid and dull. 

The closest thing I can listen that resembles classical music is the prog group Renaissance. 

arnold stirrup wrote: BaldFriede wrote: The German word "Klavier" (older spellings "Claver") means "piano" and not "keyboard" (the German word for "keyboard" is "Klaviatur"). It may be true though that at the time of Bach the word just referred to the manual of the instrument. The first piano (full name "pianoforte") was built 1726 by Bartolomeo Francesco de Cristofori. They were definitely around already when Bach composed. Gottfried Silbermann (famous for his organs) built the first piano in Germany. I thinks Bach's intention with the WTC was to write a work for "keyboard", and not specifically a piano. He wanted to create a universal means of tuning a keyboard instrument, which, in fact, he did. He may certainly have had the pianoforte in mind as one of the purposes of composing WTC. The vast majority of Bach's keyboard works were written for either organ or harpsichord. WTC was initially written for and performed on harpsichord, but was meant to be applied to any keyboard instrument.

I'm sorry you guys have it almost all wrong, thought you're completely right about well tempered. Before then, there was no consistent tuning system where like say half steps were equal. It was based on arbitrary things or the overtone series.

BUT, the Klavier is actually an instrument independent of Organ, Piano, or Harpsichord, but in english it's called a Clavichord (sp?). It was Bach's personal favorite as far as keyboards were concerned because it was fairly flexible. I'm not exactly sure how it worked, but I think it was something similar to tapping a guitar, hammers would push down the strings. As you can imagine it really wasn't loud enough at all to play with any other instruments really, but many of he composers loved it for composing.

BaldFriede wrote: FuzzyDude wrote: BaldFriede wrote: FuzzyDude wrote: arnold stirrup wrote: FuzzyDude wrote: I hate classical. I'm a jazz man all the way through. Many notable jazz composers/performers (Mingus, Monk, Ornette Coleman, Coltrane, to name a few) were influenced by and appreciated the likes of Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Bartok. Maybe you should give 'em a try! True. Let me refine my statement. I hate pre-Romantic era classical music. And as much as I admire Ravel and Bartok, I dislike a genre where there are so few composers and so many re-enactments. The classical vibe makes me sick. In jazz, every musician is a composer in his own right. Classical music isn't an art, it's a cold and calculating science. You seem to know very little about classical music. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or Liszt (to name but a few) were renowned to be great improvisors. What you seem to overlook is that there were no recording devices at that time. Actually, I am very much aware of that. The problem is that we have no idea what they sounded like. I see no reason to admire someone's abilities if I've never actually HEARD them play. For all I know, they were awful and people merely admired them because of how DIFFICULT it was back thejust to improvise. P.S. Bach (and I assume you mean Johann Sebastian) wasn't known for his improvisation skills at all. You see, he was a very uptight fellow, which is why he devopled fugues. Besides, he hated pianos. You are VERY wrong about Johann Sebastian Bach; he was very famous for his improvisation skills. He once improvised a 6-voiced fugue for Friedrich the Great. He could definitely NOT have composed it, because Friedrich had composed the theme himself, and Friedrich gave it to him and asked him to improvise a fugue for him, based on the theme. At another time he was challenged for a contest by another harpsichord player (French virtuoso Louis Marchand), who decided to take a leave and not attend the contest at all when he heard Bach improvise. And to say Bach hated the piano is also totally off the target; one of the most famous works of Bach is his "Well-Tempered Piano", 24 preludes and fugues for piano, one in every minor and major key. From an online-encyclopedia entry about J.S. Bach: Bach, and many other composers of his time, were experts at improvisation, composing musical pieces at instantly, on the spot - similar to jazz players today. It was not considered rude to add whatever the player desired into the written context of the composer himself. Thus, early music was very free and flexible to play. Unfortunately, because Bach improvised so much, most of his pieces were not contained on paper. Some people consider that most of Bach's works that are on paper are not worth saving anyway, since music written for one occasion (in Bach's case, church) should be discarded anyhow. But all people have a certain level of curiosity, to hear what Bach had to say with the language of music. More than a thousand of Bach's works have been saved, but it is mind-boggling to think of how many more - and how much greater - his other thousand or so compositions could be.

Yes, well... uhm... he was still uptight!!

BaldFriede wrote: FuzzyDude wrote: arnold stirrup wrote: FuzzyDude wrote: I hate classical. I'm a jazz man all the way through. Many notable jazz composers/performers (Mingus, Monk, Ornette Coleman, Coltrane, to name a few) were influenced by and appreciated the likes of Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Bartok. Maybe you should give 'em a try! True. Let me refine my statement. I hate pre-Romantic era classical music. And as much as I admire Ravel and Bartok, I dislike a genre where there are so few composers and so many re-enactments. The classical vibe makes me sick. In jazz, every musician is a composer in his own right. Classical music isn't an art, it's a cold and calculating science. You seem to know very little about classical music. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or Liszt (to name but a few) were renowned to be great improvisors. What you seem to overlook is that there were no recording devices at that time.

Actually, I am very much aware of that. The problem is that we have no idea what they sounded like. I see no reason to admire someone's abilities if I've never actually HEARD them play. For all I know, they were awful and people merely admired them because of how DIFFICULT it was back thejust to improvise.

P.S. Bach (and I assume you mean Johann Sebastian) wasn't known for his improvisation skills at all. You see, he was a very uptight fellow, which is why he devopled fugues. Besides, he hated pianos.

Here's my list:

1.  Johann Sebastian Bach

2.  Franz Liszt

3.  Claude Debussy

4.  Frederic Chopin

5.  Igor Stravinsky

6.  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

7.  Gustav Holst

8.  Hector Berlioz

9.  Bela Bartok

10.  Modest Mussorgsky

By the way, as a side note, Jazz fans should listen to Debussy, Stravinsky, Gershwin or Scott Joplin since among classical composers they seem to have an affinity towards Jazz.  It's worth mentioning that composers such as Chopin compose music by improvising first, much like Jazz musicians.  It's also worth noting that Baroque music is closest to Jazz in concept since it gives a lot of room for improvisation (basso continuo etc.); it's not a very popular idea since most classically-trained musicians/performers tend to play note for note (what a sad fact ).