Dumb newbie question - length of a work?

[Palmetto]

Hi.  Either I've gotten bored with Pop / Top 40 or it's left me behind.  I can't listen fast enough to make out the lyrics any more, especially when they're stepped on by assorted syntho-sounds, and I never liked 'dance music' to begin with.  I'm not even sure if music is still relevant in my life; I listen to so few of my CDs any more, and little on the radio outside NPR.  I've decided to stick a toe into some different waters to see if there's any thrill left for me.

After spending a couple of hours browsing this and other sites for advice, I've randomly chosen the Brandenburg Concertos as a starting place.  (One of my criteria was a piece I hopefully am completely unfamiliar with; I don't want to bring any baggage to the learning process.)  Googling it obviously yielded a multitude of returns, but one thing puzzles me.  (Okay, probably more than one, but this is the one I'm focused on at this hour.)  I'm seeing a wide range of times or durations for what appears to be the same piece, depending on the site returned by the search results.  I'm not talking about a couple of seconds, either; I've found times for recordings of the first concerto ranging from a couple of minutes to over 17!

Can anyone shed some light on what I'm not seeing?

[Scarpia]

Tempo (how fast it's played) can vary from performance to performance, and some works have sections that are marked to be repeated, which some conductors observe while others ignore.  But those factors can result in timings that differ by a factor of two, at most.  However, the Brandenburg concerto No 1 consists of four distinct movements, and if you are seeing timings of a couple of minutes, that might correspond to one of the movements, or to an excerpt.  The first three movements of Brandenburg #1 are about four minutes each, and the final movement consists of a sequence of dance tunes that add up to about 7 minutes.  17 minutes is about right for the entire thing.

Incidentally, a handy way to get basic information about any well known piece of classical music is to look it up on Wikipedia.  For instance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_concertos

One of the wonderful things about the Brandenburg concertos is how diverse the instruments are.  Brandenburg #1 uses "corni da caccia" (hunting horns).  Later they became standard (referred to as "horns" or "french horns") but at the time they were not considered "polite" instruments and Bach has them playing stylized hunting calls as the "proper" ensemble plays more "sophisticated" music.

[Brian]

Welcome, Palmetto!

I'm not sure I know how anyone could play a Brandenburg concerto in "a couple" minutes  , but playing times do differ pretty widely based on who's performing it. Classical artists do have (or award themselves) a lot of leeway in how fast or how slow to perform things, and in addition, for most music before, say, 1860-80, there are optional repeated sections which can be included or left out depending on how they feel.

So for example I have one recording of Beethoven's Symphony No 6 that lasts for 35 minutes 50 seconds (Berlin Philharmonic, conductor Herbert von Karajan) and one recording of the exact same symphony that lasts for 44:46 (Staatskapelle Berlin, conductor Daniel Barenboim) - or 9 minutes' difference! Karajan and his orchestra play a heck of a lot faster and leave out two big repeated sections.

Of course, it's always possible that iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic, or whatever websites you're looking at have accidentally labelled part of the piece as if it was the entire piece. And some record companies do "Best of..." compilations or pop versions where it'll just say "Some Famous Person Plays Brahms' Hungarian Dance", even though Brahms wrote 21 Hungarian dances.  (EDIT: I see Karl and Scarpia have addressed the just-an-excerpt possibility while I was typing...)

I really do wish it were less confusing!    But hey... after a while, we all secretly grew to love it. I hope you do too. Stick around; it's worth it! 

P.S. Classical music can serve up spiritual and emotional experiences and connections pop or 'dance' music can't even touch. I'm not sure there's another genre where you can listen to a complete work and feel like it understands you. Glad you're exploring.

[Palmetto]

You mean like the TV ads to "Get 487 of the World's Greatest Symphonies on two CDs!", where you get about 30 seconds of each?  Those reminded me of the aural equivalent of Cliff's Notes, or a DVD of "Shakespeare's Greatest Plays!" that has just the R&J balcony scene and Hamlet's soliloquy.

Leaving out the repeatable parts?  I've listened to most of Jim Steinman's work (songwriter for Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, others; very operatic and bombastic; reminds me of what little Wagner I've heard) and I hate it when the additional choruses get cut for radio play.  It strikes me that the composer put them in there for a reason, but I'm new at this and am trying to avoid letting my pop music background color the experience.

On further checking, 'a couple of minutes' may have been an exaggeration.  I'm seeing times mostly clustered around the 3:45, 4:00,  7:00, and 17:45 minute marks.  That would seem to coincide with Scarpia's breakdown for 'movements'.  Which leads to ...

What's a 'movement'?  (Insert your bowel joke here.  There, now that we have that out of the way, we can return to the newbie's dumb question.)

[Scarpia]

What's a 'movement'?

Well, most pieces in classical music have multiple movements, individual pieces of music that make up the whole work.  You can think of them like chapters in a book.  Different types of works have different schemes.  A concerto often has 3, a fast movement, a slow movement, and a very fast movement.  Bach's Brandenburg 1 follows the standard concerto layout, with an 'extra' set of dances at the end.  Brandenburg 2 follows the standard concerto layout.  A "suite" is typically a prelude followed by a sequence of dances.  A symphony typically has four movements, a fast movement, a slow movement, a dance movement or interlude, then a very fast movement.   Other types of music, sonatas for solo instrument, for example, often follow the scheme for a concerto or for a symphony.

In earlier music, the movements were often more or less independent, perhaps like songs in an album, but in later works they can build on each other (like in Sargent Pepper).  For instance Beethoven's 5th symphony is a progression from gloomy fate (first movement) to triumph (finale).

There are also single movement pieces in classical music, often for solo piano.  Chopin, for instance, wrote single movement polonaises, ballades, waltzes, scherzos.   The closest thing to what in pop music is called a "song" would be an aria, melodie, or lieder (that's song in Italian, French and German). 

Probably the most important thing to recognize in classical music is that it is not structured like a popular song.  In a popular song you have the same melody, more or less repeated several times with different words, and often with an alternation of verse and chorus.  In classical music there is a lot of repetition, but most of the time they are not repeated verbatim, and the interesting thing is how the composer takes the same melody and presents it a different way when it reappears, in a different harmony, played on a different instrument, in a different tempo, in a different key, or combined with other melodies.  A piece of classical music tells a dramatic story purely in sound.

[Palmetto]

Can I assume this would be a piece suitable for the dance steps popular at the time the work was composed?  Obviously not to be confused with disco.

I never really got 'Sgt. Pepper'.  I like many of the tracks individually, and I'm aware there's supposed to be some sort of overlying theme or concept, but I've never been able to pick up on it.  The tracks don't seem to have any connection to each other, excluding that abominable film adaptation in the '70s.

[Scarpia]

Can I assume this would be a piece suitable for the dance steps popular at the time the work was composed?  Obviously not to be confused with disco.

Yes, they were based on dances of the time.  Some pieces may have been intended literally for dancing, but in many cases a particular type of "dance" movement is not literally for dancing, but signals that it will have a certain type of rhythm.  A Sarabande is a slow dance, a Gigue is fast, an Menuetto or Allemande is somewhere in between.  Each has a typical rhythm and character.
 

[karlhenning]

No, there's no real "concept" to Sgt Pepper, aside from the title track which sets up an "alter band ego," and its brisk reprise at the near-end of the album, serving as bookmarks.

[Scarpia]

No, there's no real "concept" to Sgt Pepper, aside from the title track which sets up an "alter band ego," and its brisk reprise at the near-end of the album, serving as bookmarks.

Well, there is no thematic link with regard to lyrics or themes of the songs, but they were sequenced and connected together to make the album play as something more than individual, unrelated tracks.   But we are getting a bit off topic.

[Palmetto]

Excuse the noob.  I don't frequent many forums, and the one I'm on most often we not only excuse OT but actually encourage it.  My apologies for violating the local customs.

Now to see if I can find these as downloadable .MP3s without dropping too much change.  My only previous downloading experience is with 'Car Talk' and other radio podcasts.

Thanks for the answers.

[Scarpia]

Excuse the noob.  I don't frequent many forums, and the one I'm on most often we not only excuse OT but actually encourage it.  My apologies for violating the local customs.

Now to see if I can find these as downloadable .MP3s without dropping too much change.  My only previous downloading experience is with 'Car Talk' and other radio podcasts.

Thanks for the answers.

Sorry, I'm the one guilty of getting off topic, not you.  I hope you'll come back here often.  There is lots of material for new listeners, as well as for fanatics.

[bhodges]

Excuse the noob.  I don't frequent many forums, and the one I'm on most often we not only excuse OT but actually encourage it.  My apologies for violating the local customs.

Now to see if I can find these as downloadable .MP3s without dropping too much change.  My only previous downloading experience is with 'Car Talk' and other radio podcasts.

Thanks for the answers.

Welcome, Palmetto. No apology needed. If you like, please feel free to say a little about yourself in the "Introductions" section of the board. You will find a number of people here whose experience with classical music is similar to yours.

And there is a lot of music available online to listen to for free (e.g., on YouTube) so you can try out different composers and pieces to see what appeals to you.

--Bruce

[karlhenning]

Aye, welcome Palmetto! And as it is an interesting question (I think), I took the off-topic tangent here.

[jochanaan]

Welcome!  The Brandenburg Concertos are an excellent place to begin exploring "our" music; they were my first great musical loves, and I still, after nearly forty years, enjoy them greatly every time.

Be sure you know what you're getting when you look through collections.  Some are priceless, with complete long works in world-class performances; but many are merely snippets that give you little idea of the original music's depth and power.

Once you're hooked on Brandenburgs, there are plenty of other concertos to explore.  Try Vivaldi's The Seasons; or, for a style change, some of the Mozart concertos...

[Scarpia]

Once you're hooked on Brandenburgs, there are plenty of other concertos to explore.  Try Vivaldi's The Seasons; or, for a style change, some of the Mozart concertos...

Here's another fun thing to try.  The Brandenburg Concertos were written in about 1720.  In 1937, Igor Stravinsky wrote a concerto which he described as his version of a "Brandenburg Concerto."  It uses a similar ensemble, but is a lot more modern in harmony and melody. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQszFzbxwbM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8_XpOcmB8I

[Bogey]

Welcome!  The Brandenburg Concertos are an excellent place to begin exploring "our" music; they were my first great musical loves, and I still, after nearly forty years, enjoy them greatly every time.

Be sure you know what you're getting when you look through collections.  Some are priceless, with complete long works in world-class performances; but many are merely snippets that give you little idea of the original music's depth and power.

Once you're hooked on Brandenburgs, there are plenty of other concertos to explore.  Try Vivaldi's The Seasons; or, for a style change, some of the Mozart concertos...

Great advice, John.  Hope you are staying warm.

[RebLem]

Wecome, Palmetto!

So far in this thread, no one has gotten to the question of which set of Brandenburgs to get, so I think I'll start there, as I own six sets of them.  I have sets conducted by Benjamin Britten, Neville Marriner, Helmuth Rilling, and Trevor Pinnock, and then two others by conductorless ensembles--Akademie fur Alte Musik, Berlin, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.  My personal favorite is the one by Neville Marriner--a modern instruments recording which otherwise, however, adheres to the latest scholarship on how they are to be performed.  I would not, however, recommend it as anyone's first or only recording.  Marriner uses a horn instead of a trumpet in the second concerto.  To my ears, it does sound more persuasive and natural than those with a trumpet, but the fact is that recordings with trumpet are the usual way of doing it.  For that, I would recommend either the Akademie fur Alte Musik, Berlin, or the Trevor Pinnock set.

I do agree that concerti are, generally, a good way to begin branching off into other repertoire.  The Marsalis recording of the Haydn Trumpet Concerto is good, then there are Mozart piano concerti--there, I would recommend anything by pianist Clifford Curzon, and the Casadesus/Szell/Clevland Orchestra recordings of some of them.  Then the Grumiaux/Galeira recording of the Beethoven violin concerto, the Fleisher/Szell/Cleveland recording of the Beethoven piano concerti, the Szerying/Monteux recording of the Brahms Concerto, the 1951 Rostropovich/Talich/Czech Philharmonic recording of the Dvorak Cello Concerto.  Lots of others, too, but Mendelssohn, Schumann, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Bruich, Sibelius, and myriad other composers of concerti can wait.  By the time you get with these recordings I have recommended, you will be eager to branch out on your own in other directions as well as continuing to explore concerti.

[Palmetto]

Well, so far I'm not making much progress.  This is starting to feel more like an academic exercise than an enjoyable form of entertainment.

Perhaps I'm placing too much emphasis on repeated listening to a piece before forming an opinion.  Perhaps I'm just trying to hard to get something out of Brandenburg I at the expense of moving on and trying something else.   I listened to four different YouTube postings several times a week since my original post, then let it alone for a week until running through all four again today.  I like some performances better than others and I'm not displeased by any of them, but there's no 'bang' there; no imagery, no emotions inspired or conveyed.  I know I'm not going to like EVERYTHING any more than I would with any other genre of music, and maybe I started with something I may never actively like.  I'm not ready to give up but it's obviously time to move on to another work, either B II or something else.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far.

[Scarpia]

Not everyone likes Bach (or likes it immediately).  If you are interested in something with more dramatic impact, I'd try something by Beethoven (maybe 5th or 7th symphony) or perhaps Tchaikovsky (4th symphony or 5th symphony).  Something more modern would be Bartok (Concerto for Orchestra) Shostakovich 5th Symphony, or Stravinsky, (Rite of Spring, original title Le Sacre du Printemps).

[bhodges]

Perhaps I'm just trying to hard to get something out of Brandenburg I at the expense of moving on and trying something else...I'm not ready to give up but it's obviously time to move on to another work, either B II or something else.

My two cents (without knowing much about you or your listening habits): maybe the Brandenburgs just aren't what you're looking for at the moment? I'd set them aside and try them again later.

How about Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring? YouTube has a fine performance--that you can watch, as well as listen to--by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, starting here.

Just saw Scarpia's post, with more excellent ideas. 

--Bruce