Composers That Are Linked To Your Soul

[mc ukrneal]

Don't admit it in public!  Does he really feel like a kindred spirit across the ages, whose music you connect with on the deepest level and are completely fascinated by? I'm genuinely surprised at this one!

Your post touches on something that has now floated across several threads these past weeks, so I use your comment as a starting point to address my idea. Many others here have not been so foregiving as you.

Why shouldn't Puccini be a sould mate? Is it only 'deep' music that touches the soul? And just because the music isn't considered deep, does that mean one cannot relate to it? And why should we care if people think it is deep or not? And if it isn't deep, should we ourselves be considered shallow because one doesn't connect with the deepest of composers and connects and 'shallow' composers? What is 'deep' music anyway? Can it be objectively categorized or is it subjective?

Too deep?  

Personally, I love Puccini. I connect with him in a way I do with very few composers. I've never considered the issue of whether he is 'deep' or not, as it just never seemed to matter. He was clearly a master at what he did and produced some incredible music during his career. Why do people seem to like to bash composers that produce great tunes like Puccini or Offenbach?

[jowcol]

Your post touches on something that has now floated across several threads these past weeks, so I use your comment as a starting point to address my idea. Many others here have not been so foregiving as you.

Why shouldn't Puccini be a sould mate? Is it only 'deep' music that touches the soul? And just because the music isn't considered deep, does that mean one cannot relate to it? And why should we care if people think it is deep or not? And if it isn't deep, should we ourselves be considered shallow because one doesn't connect with the deepest of composers and connects and 'shallow' composers? What is 'deep' music anyway? Can it be objectively categorized or is it subjective?

Too deep?  

Personally, I love Puccini. I connect with him in a way I do with very few composers. I've never considered the issue of whether he is 'deep' or not, as it just never seemed to matter. He was clearly a master at what he did and produced some incredible music during his career. Why do people seem to like to bash composers that produce great tunes like Puccini or Offenbach?

In my book, the personal connection and experience is the only thing that matters, as you have said very eloquently here.  I think that most of the contentious threads that occur hear is that others react to the same music differently, and we can't always understand why others can't hear the same voice we do.

For an artist to achieve what he/she sets out to achieve, and to communicate effectively with the audience they wish to reach is "deep" enough for me.

[Bulldog]

I find "classical" music utterly fascinating and captivating.  I'm not sure what the link to my "soul" would be.  The composers that I am drawn to, to the extent that I would want to be familiar with their entire body of work, would be Brahms, Bach, Sibelius, Faure, Beethoven, Mozart.  Going into the Fringes, it may reach to Martinu, Finzi, Janacek, some others, maybe Bax.

I don't believe that wanting to be familiar with a composer's entire body of work has anything to do with a strong link between composer and listener.  You either feel the link when listening to the music or you don't.

[Scarpia]

I don't believe that wanting to be familiar with a composer's entire body of work has anything to do with a strong link between composer and listener.  You either feel the link when listening to the music or you don't.

Wanting to listen isn't a link?

[Bulldog]

Wanting to listen isn't a link?

But to every note the particular composer wrote?

[Scarpia]

But to every note the particular composer wrote?

Not my idea.  See here:

Even Prokofiev? He's so maddeningly inconsistant!

I think the wanting to hear everything by a composer is a very valid criterion for talking about what we're talking about here. There are some composers where I love virtually every piece in their oeuvre, and the ones I don't I still try to get along with, and am fascinated enough to keep trying.

That's the essence of the 'soul-link', I think. You put it very well.

That's the guy who likes Brian, so he must know a lot about "soul."   0:)

[karlhenning]

Well, FWIW:

Stravinsky
Prokofiev
Shostakovich
Berlioz
Schoenberg

. . . in the case of each of these five composers, I do feel a more active interest in hearing, quite possibly, every note they wrote, or every note which they committed to a piece they considered a finished work.

It really amounts to an interest in — or, an intelligently musical curiosity whether it may be possible that I am interested in — hearing whatever it is, they felt they had to say, musically.

[mc ukrneal]

But to every note the particular composer wrote?

I think this is a good sign of a connection if one wants to listen to every piece a composer wrote. That doesn't mean they will all be life altering events. But if one gets something out of it, surely it is worth it?

[karlhenning]

I think this is a good sign of a connection if one wants to listen to every piece a composer wrote. That doesn't mean they will all be life altering events. But if one gets something out of it, surely it is worth it?

Aye, though all kinds of events alter one's life : )

Not every piece is a Monument, nor need it be.  Not every music-lover is going to 'need' to hear Stravinsky's How the Mushrooms Went to War or The Owl and the Pussycat, or Shostakovich's Fables after Krylov. But I am glad to know the pieces, and I do draw value from knowing them.

[Scarpia]

[ Not every music-lover is going to 'need' to hear Stravinsky's How the Mushrooms Went to War or The Owl and the Pussycat

Now I see the wisdom of not putting Stravinsky down on the list.   

[karlhenning]

Well, all right: every music-lover needs to hear The Owl and the Pussycat.

[PaulSC]

I wanted to revisit this before answering.

And now I have.

Yes, even those : )

Thanks for the reply -- and I admire your due diligence. For some reason I just can't take those interludes -- they're so murky and ponderous and "noisy" in contrast to the angular/sculpted instrumental writing. Which may have been exactly the contrast Varèse was going for, but it just doesn't work for me. (I quite like the piece played sans interludes, however.)

[karlhenning]

Thanks for the reply -- and I admire your due diligence. For some reason I just can't take those interludes -- they're so murky and ponderous and "noisy" in contrast to the angular/sculpted instrumental writing. Which may have been exactly the contrast Varèse was going for, but it just doesn't work for me. (I quite like the piece played sans interludes, however.)

Of course, they're very primitive electronic sounds, very much of their time.

I'll give them another listen tomorrow . . . .

[Bulldog]

I think this is a good sign of a connection if one wants to listen to every piece a composer wrote. That doesn't mean they will all be life altering events. But if one gets something out of it, surely it is worth it?

Different strokes and all that.  Bach's my main man, but I've never had a strong urge to listen to every one of his pieces.

[Mirror Image]

You could try to be somewhat selective.

Alright, I will now try.

Ravel, Bartok, Vaughan Williams, Berg, Bruckner, and Villa-Lobos.

[karlhenning]

Different strokes and all that.  Bach's my main man, but I've never had a strong urge to listen to every one of his pieces.

Bach lived in a different era, too.

Not that I could quantify the epochal differences completely . . . .

[some guy]

I first heard some Varèse some time in the early to mid-seventies and was immediately hooked. I must say, I've never thought of the electronic bits of Déserts as being "murky and ponderous" nor as "noisy" except in a good sense, the same sense in which all the instrumental bits of Déserts are noisy. As for what Varèse intended, well best there to give the piece a listen or two. The electronic and instrumental bits are mostly dovetailed quite seamlessly. And each of the instrumental and electronic bits will mimic each other as well.

As for the "primitive" sounds, as Karl put it, I suppose there's a sense in which the recording technology of 1950 is "primitive" in comparison to today's machinery, but the composers themselves weren't "primitive" in any way. (Varèse's Déserts comes quite late in his career.) While they were all beginners, as it were, on the machines of the time, they were all quite ordinarily sophisticated artists--as were those of dozens if not hundreds of years before them. (Primitive/sophisticated is not a simply past/present kinda thing, after all.)

As for the sounds themselves, well I would say that one can probably date an electronic piece from the fifties pretty easily, but no more easily than one can date an orchestral piece from the 1850s....

Interestingly enough, many young composers have been using the "sophisticated" tools of today, Pro Tools or Ableton Live or such like, to mimic that gritty, fifties sound of analog tape recording. So creative people, too, are still finding pleasure in the sounds of earlier technology.

[Lethevich]

Re definition.

I don't think that it's a question of wanting to hear every note either - almost all of my favourite composers have a point in their output where I draw the line and move on to more rewarding music written by other people. I feel that you can enjoy the music of two composers equally, but feel a special connection with one of them, sometimes in spite of clear flaws in their output.

It's something about their compositional ethos, character, or something else intangable. It certainly feels valid to me to feel that there can be distinctions between composers you love listening to and find great depth in their music, and a composer - who you may rank lower in perfection, or even the overall enjoyability of their output - whose music you feel a certain bond with.

[starrynight]

Wanting to hear lots of a composer would seem to be a good way of indicating a close affinity with them.  Some composers, particularly those going back to the baroque and classical periods, have so much music you can practically lose yourself in their world.  And of course you trace their music and how it developed within their life.

That brings up the question is it just the music you feel a close affinity with or some imagined connection to a composer's life and character as well?  The music is the only concrete thing we can easily judge really, but inevitably opinions through the ages of composers will be given some connection to their music.  And some would say someone's character / beliefs might come through their music too.

Maybe a composer may look at things differently too, for them it might be how they feel a connection with another composer and how it has influenced their own music.  Maybe it might be the same for other kinds of artists as well.

Also alot of names mentioned in this thread will no doubt not be modern composers.  In theory we would feel the closest connection with more modern music as it is the music of our time, but this is often not the case even if we like some modern classical music.  Art does transcend boundaries, though some people also sometimes like to build up boundaries along national or other lines.

I wonder as well whether this goes beyond simply having an affinity with an individual composer but also really indicates just as much a liking for a particular musical style or period.  A composer doesn't exist on an island they are part of their environment (both stylistically and ideologically).   

[Guido]

Your post touches on something that has now floated across several threads these past weeks, so I use your comment as a starting point to address my idea. Many others here have not been so foregiving as you.

Why shouldn't Puccini be a sould mate? Is it only 'deep' music that touches the soul? And just because the music isn't considered deep, does that mean one cannot relate to it? And why should we care if people think it is deep or not? And if it isn't deep, should we ourselves be considered shallow because one doesn't connect with the deepest of composers and connects and 'shallow' composers? What is 'deep' music anyway? Can it be objectively categorized or is it subjective?

Too deep?  

Personally, I love Puccini. I connect with him in a way I do with very few composers. I've never considered the issue of whether he is 'deep' or not, as it just never seemed to matter. He was clearly a master at what he did and produced some incredible music during his career. Why do people seem to like to bash composers that produce great tunes like Puccini or Offenbach?

It's not that it's shallow per se, more that it's vulgar, cheap and completely repellent in subject matter. That shallow music can touch us deeply has been noted many times before (e.g. Noel Coward: "Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.") and I don't disagree (I'm quite partial to a bit of Ennio Morricone myself!)

I can understand liking or loving the tunes, but my surprise was registered because I wondered whether Puccini's operas with their horrible plots and terrible dramatic construction could really touch Larry on the deepest level.