Duds of Genius

[snyprrr]

For small-scale dud LvB, the Serioso Quartet (Op. 95) is my choice. One of those experimental-sounding things that doesn't quite hang together.

hrrmph!

[Bulldog]

I had a version on Hanssler, I forget the exact forces involved. More recently, I got Konstantin Lifschitz's piano version on Orfeo.

I don't wish to knock the work too hard, it contains some good bits as one would expect with Bach. But as a whole it feels like a bunch of disconnected parts which creates a rather dry academic impression.

Yes, well put. Ironic, eh?

Agree with this as well. Not a bad piece, but kind of uninspired. For small-scale dud LvB, the Serioso Quartet (Op. 95) is my choice. One of those experimental-sounding things that doesn't quite hang together.

First you dump on Bach's Musical Offering.  Now you add Beethoven's Violin Concerto and his Op. 95 Quartet to the mix.  I'm getting the feeling that you're getting a charge out of doing this.  I'd like to suggest that the problem is you, not Bach or Beethoven.

[Bulldog]

And when I just listen on cd, I get nothing out of recitatives in a language that I don't understand, it doesn't add anything if you don't get it.  So they just don't really work for me in either situation.

But don't you usually have access to the English translations?

[DavidW]

But don't you usually have access to the English translations?

At home yes, and then yup I have them out.  But I also like to listen at work and sometimes in the car, and those times I'm at a loss.  And if I were to just go strictly home listening for operas, then I would prefer dvds to watch over cds since I'm home anyway, might as well watch it.

[(poco) Sforzando]

For small-scale dud LvB, the Serioso Quartet (Op. 95) is my choice. One of those experimental-sounding things that doesn't quite hang together.

And we were doing so well. I think 95 an absolute masterpiece from first note to last, and I emphatically include the coda to the finale.

[(poco) Sforzando]

First you dump on Bach's Musical Offering.  Now you add Beethoven's Violin Concerto and his Op. 95 Quartet to the mix.  I'm getting the feeling that you're getting a charge out of doing this.  I'd like to suggest that the problem is you, not Bach or Beethoven.

Hey, I dumped on the Violin Concerto first.

[Scarpia]

And we were doing so well. I think 95 an absolute masterpiece from first note to last, and I emphatically include the coda to the finale.

And apparently Mahler agreed, since he prepared a version for string orchestra that makes an interesting contrast to the proper quartet version.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I'll come back later with a few of my duds. But right now, I need to say that IMHO Bach's Musical Offering is one of his greatest works. Perhaps you need a better version. I would recommend the one by Mariner/Academy SMF.

My feeling is that the MO is more like an album or collection than a unified work. I do think the Ricercare a 6 one of Bach's most fascinating fugues, and of course so did Webern, who managed to make it sound at least as much like Webern as like Bach.

[some guy]

First you dump on Bach's Musical Offering. Now you add Beethoven's Violin Concerto and his Op. 95 Quartet to the mix. I'm getting the feeling that you're getting a charge out of doing this. I'd like to suggest that the problem is you, not Bach or Beethoven.

This was my feeling from the start. I was castigated on another board (which will remain anonymous, but its letters are CMG) for putting it this way, but all this seems like consumerism to me. The attitudes often expressed about music on all the boards I've ever strolled through are those of consumers--I'm spending my hard earned money on this music, and it had better satisfy me. If it doesn't, something's wrong with it. This is most noticable when people are talking about musics of the past hundred years (I'm cancelling my symphony subscription if they don't stop shoving all this modern crap down my throat), but, as this thread illustrates, it's an attitude that applies about all music everywhere.

And what's really wrong with it is not the disrespect to great artists whose shoe laces we're not worthy and et cetera, though that's certainly part of the wrongness! It's that it kills what should be a dynamic relationship. It's the composer's/performer's/music's job to entertain me. All I have to do is sit here passively and point my thumb majestically up or down. Whatever happened to listening, active, sympathetic listening that pulls us out of ourselves and makes us better people? To the kind of engaged receptivity that makes the whole business worthwhile?

Too philosophical?

[DavidW]

I think that the OP has been misread by a few here.  His actual wording suggests that he is looking for brilliant, but flawed works.  Hardly a binary thumbs up/down nor a call to trash great works that you happen to not like.  And I don't really think this has anything to do with consumerism.

Here let me give my own example to reply to Spitvalve's post (Wellington's Victory was just a cheap shot): Schubert's 9th is one of my favorite symphonies, and it has many spectacular moments and an architecture that only his genius could have written, but at the same time it's simply not enough it is too massive for such a limited number of themes to develop.

[eyeresist]

Balderdash, and intellectually lazy balderdash at that.

Hey, you'll have to take it up with Sergei. Myself, I agree with him. Prok 2 is on balance a triumph of technique over musicality.

[Chaszz]

My feeling is that the MO is more like an album or collection than a unified work. I do think the Ricercare a 6 one of Bach's most fascinating fugues, and of course so did Webern, who managed to make it sound at least as much like Webern as like Bach.

I understand the feeling that the Musical Offering is not unified, in terms of form. However, I feel the theme unifies it, and is a very effective motif, though provided by Frederick the Great rather than Bach. Its rising then descending chromatic nature is very evocative to me (of something definite but unnameable), and Bach puts it through its paces, wringing every possible refined emotion and harmonic change out of it. So though there is a trio sonata here, canons there, and a ricercare elsewhere, at the end I feel like I've seen a large and beautiful complex jewel from every angle and facet. And in the final ricercare, I feel the master ascending to a new plateau of wisdom, akin to Beethoven's late quartets or Strauss' Four Last Songs.

[(poco) Sforzando]

This was my feeling from the start. I was castigated on another board (which will remain anonymous, but its letters are CMG) for putting it this way, but all this seems like consumerism to me. The attitudes often expressed about music on all the boards I've ever strolled through are those of consumers--I'm spending my hard earned money on this music, and it had better satisfy me. If it doesn't, something's wrong with it. This is most noticable when people are talking about musics of the past hundred years (I'm cancelling my symphony subscription if they don't stop shoving all this modern crap down my throat), but, as this thread illustrates, it's an attitude that applies about all music everywhere.

And what's really wrong with it is not the disrespect to great artists whose shoe laces we're not worthy and et cetera, though that's certainly part of the wrongness! It's that it kills what should be a dynamic relationship. It's the composer's/performer's/music's job to entertain me. All I have to do is sit here passively and point my thumb majestically up or down. Whatever happened to listening, active, sympathetic listening that pulls us out of ourselves and makes us better people? To the kind of engaged receptivity that makes the whole business worthwhile?

Too philosophical?

I would disagree with some of this. I've spent the past 50 years playing and listening to classical music, and it is no disrespect to some very great composers to believe that they are not always at the top of their game. If I have problems with the LvB Violin Concerto, it has nothing to do with consumerism, or my hard-earned money, or any of this, but rather with the sense I have that many of its phrase structures are characterized by a kind of predictable symmetry that strikes me as ultimately pedestrian. The antecedent goes up, the consequent goes down. Two bars of a phrase are heard in the treble, then two in the bass, back and forth, monkey-see monkey-do. And then the phrases often fall apart rather than coming to firm cadences. It seems to me that B. was attempting a kind of almost neutral lyricism in this work, but that he hadn't found a way to reconcile lyricism with sonata form in the way he did in the 4th piano concerto or still later in sonatas like op 110 or the quartet op 127.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Hey Sforzando ... just curious, what's your opinion of LvB's 1st, 2nd & 3rd Piano Concertos or even his Triple Concerto?

The Triple - an interesting experiment that doesn't quite come off. The opening movement is well-constructed but somewhat neutral in character, and I wish he had developed a complete slow movement rather than just an intro to the concluding polacca. Piano 1+2 for me are both attractive early works, with #1 being somewhat prolix as LvB tended to be in his early period. I think #3 one of the best of them all, a well-constructed and inventive piece in B's Sturm und Drang C-minor style, with a great slow movement.

[Scarpia]

I think #3 one of the best of them all, a well-constructed and inventive piece in B's Sturm und Drang C-minor style, with a great slow movement.

#3 is my clear favorite among the Beethoven Piano Concerti, with 5 a close second.  The early works don't interest me as much and I have never understood the 4th.

[some guy]

Sforzando, I don't think we disagree. I didn't, after all, say that all posts exemplify the consumer attitude. (And money, certainly, is not the most important element of the attitude.)

Of course, any of us who have studied and played and loved music as long as we have (your dates and mine correspond) will have opinions about different works. Your post about Beethoven's violin concerto (which is not one of his stronger works, it's true) is not in line with what I've called consumerism.

I'm talking only about the attitude that assumes that it's the piece's job, the composer's job, to please us. Period. The energy only flows one way. Our only job is to sit back and take it in. If it pleases us, the thumb goes up. If it doesn't, the thumb goes down. That is not the attitude you have brought to this discussion. You bring the real sense of engagement with the music that I miss in many of our colleague's posts.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I think that the OP has been misread by a few here.  His actual wording suggests that he is looking for brilliant, but flawed works.  Hardly a binary thumbs up/down nor a call to trash great works that you happen to not like.  And I don't really think this has anything to do with consumerism.

Wow, somebody actually read and understood my opening post. A rare thing on a message board. Thanks David 

As for the rest of you 

First you dump on Bach's Musical Offering.  Now you add Beethoven's Violin Concerto and his Op. 95 Quartet to the mix.  I'm getting the feeling that you're getting a charge out of doing this.  I'd like to suggest that the problem is you, not Bach or Beethoven.

LOL. I guess the fact that I like almost everything else I've heard from Bach and Beethoven doesn't matter? Once again, the topic is Duds of Genius, not Duds of Duds.

This was my feeling from the start. I was castigated on another board [snipped: lots of irrelevant stuff about "consumerism", etc.]...

Since you misunderstood my earlier point about Schoenberg and serialism, it doesn't surprise me that you misunderstand the point of this thread as a whole.

My feeling is that the MO is more like an album or collection than a unified work. I do think the Ricercare a 6 one of Bach's most fascinating fugues, and of course so did Webern, who managed to make it sound at least as much like Webern as like Bach.

I agree with this. It's the "album aspect" that makes it difficult to listen to straight through. I have a similar problem with The Art of Fugue, but at least that feels more unified throughout.

[some guy]

Since you misunderstood my earlier point about Schoenberg and serialism, it doesn't surprise me that you misunderstand the point of this thread as a whole.

Well, since none of my comments so far have been about the point of this thread, it's rather humorous to hear this accusation.

You've made two points about Schoenberg and serialism, one before my very first comment on this thread and one after.

Here's the first: "I'm tempted to think that Schoenberg's serial technique is the kind of misstep only a genius could make. While I like certain products of it (like the Op. 31 Variations), on the whole I think he made a wrong turn when he went this way."

And the second, abridged: "I don't have any trouble with serialism.... Rather, I don't like the serial pieces Schoenberg wrote nearly as much as I like the late Romantic and free atonal pieces that he wrote earlier. ... He was a great composer, but the serial period does not reflect him at his best."

You are welcome to believe that everyone will think that your two points do not contradict each other in any way.

[The new erato]

It's the composer's/performer's/music's job to entertain me.

But well, also to enlighten you. That's why music that doesn't sound very convincing or entertaining after some years suddenly may click! One of the joys of systematic listening IMO.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

You are welcome to believe that everyone will think that your two points do not contradict each other in any way.

Where's the contradiction? In any case, Sfz and James seem to have the same problem as I do:

Serialism did not IMO inhibit Berg or Webern, but for Schoenberg himself, the inventor of the system, I think it proved a dead end.

Schoenberg was a genius but he (& Berg) did seem to struggle & wrestle with the serial technique, much more-so than say Anton Webern who used it best. At least to my ears.

I disagree with James about Berg, though.