Are you intrigued by music that disturbs and/or challenges?

[Grazioso]

The most difficult period of music for me to get into is Renaissance vocal music (pre-Josquin).

And the funny thing is, you don't see people around here agitating about Medieval or Renaissance music like they do more mainstream music (20th-century modernism, Bach, Classical era, etc.).

I will, openly admit, that the music that I have the hardest time listening to is from the classical period. Namely, the symphonies of Mozart and Haydn (although I like Mack-a-rack's renditions).

I would recommend trying some other genres from that period (chamber, opera, concerto, etc.) and some other composers beside the big two: Boccherini, Rosetti, Vanhal, Kraus, etc.

[Florestan]

I would recommend trying some other genres from that period (chamber, opera, concerto, etc.) and some other composers beside the big two: Boccherini, Rosetti, Vanhal, Kraus, etc.

Seconded. I'd suggest Spontini's Li puntigli delle donne, a delicious opera buffa with a libretto by Goldoni. Great fun and some of the most beautiful tunes I've ever heard.

[DavidW]

I enjoy a lot of the pre-c20th music - from composers of the Renaissance onwards. I even go to concerts where this music is played - eg. saw Mozart's Clarinet Quintet (twice!) & Great Mass in C live last year. Of course, I avoid composers I don't like like the plague, but it has nothing to do with what century they were born in or active in. Today I just bought a secondhand cd of highlights of Bizet's Carmen of all things. So I'm definitely not welded on to listening just to music of the past 50-100 years. I'm a musical omnivore and a true eclectic, I like variety (it's the "spice of life" as they say  )...

After reading on the modern thread (on the other forum) that you just started your modern exploration a year go, I think "oops" sorry I had you pegged wrong.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Seconded. I'd suggest Spontini's Li puntigli delle donne, a delicious opera buffa with a libretto by Goldoni. Great fun and some of the most beautiful tunes I've ever heard.

Thanks, though it doesn't sound like something that disturbs and/or challenges. But Spontini is (IMO) a very much neglected composer whose operas ought to be heard more. La Vestale is still well enough known, but even the cut and translated version of Agnes von Hohenstaufen under Vittorio Gui reveals a very powerful composer.

[jochanaan]

I'm shocked by the poll result i must admit (at least one person was honest) ... so i guess we'll have everyone diggin' on Berio, Boulez, Stockhausen, Xenakis etc, eventually.

Two comments, and this (for once) is not a slam on James.

1. GMG forum-goers are hardly representative of the whole population.  We're here because we are fascinated by and care deeply about music that's quite a ways outside most people's mainstream; we are the sort who tend to enjoy artistic challenges.  (I'd venture that many of us have more than a passing acquaintance with Shakespeare and Michelangelo too. )

2. Different musics challenge different people.  The comments about Mozart remind me that many folks still find his music challenging, although in different ways than that of Varèse or Boulez.  (Remember the comment about Mozart attributed to Stravinsky: "Too easy for amateurs, too hard for professionals." )  Same with Medieval and Renaissance music.  (Grazioso, there are several folks here, including the esteemed zamyrabyrd, who favor and promote early music.  I love it myself; if I weren't doing so many other musical things, I'd love to join an EM consort. )

[Grazioso]

2. Different musics challenge different people.  The comments about Mozart remind me that many folks still find his music challenging, although in different ways than that of Varèse or Boulez.  (Remember the comment about Mozart attributed to Stravinsky: "Too easy for amateurs, too hard for professionals." )  Same with Medieval and Renaissance music.

It took me many years to come to appreciate Mozart and Co. When I first came to classical music, big, bold, tuneful Romantics like Bruckner, Mahler, and Wagner were what I took to immediately. Thank goodness I came around to appreciating--nay, deeply loving--the Classical aesthetic.

(Grazioso, there are several folks here, including the esteemed zamyrabyrd, who favor and promote early music.  I love it myself; if I weren't doing so many other musical things, I'd love to join an EM consort. )

I know some here dig it; my point was rather that it doesn't seem to generate the same intensity of debate--or level of acrimony. "You will like this mass, or I will start killing the bunny rabbits..."

[jochanaan]

Really? Well .. i suppose i could believe that if they were jumping into it from nothing or pop,jazz,rock music .. but it's about as safe & polite as you can get.

To our ears, that's true--and that's exactly what's challenging to many!  They hear only the "safe, polite" main melodies and completely miss, say, the subtle yet considerable dissonances in the famous Adagio from Piano Concerto #21 (the "Elvira Madigan" movement), the threatening trombones in Don Giovanni's climactic scene, the very remote key shifts in Symphony #40's first and last movements, or the dense counterpoint in Symphony #41's legendary finale.  Or if they hear them, they forget just how radical they were compared to what other composers, even Joseph Haydn, were doing at the time.  (Haydn recognized this, and said to Wolfgang's father Leopold something like "Before God and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer I know!"  Wolfgang returned the compliment by dedicating some of his most advanced music, the "Haydn" quartets, to him.)

[Mirror Image]

How about Haydn's symphonies and string quartets?

But honestly you puzzle me here. Granted, there are differences in Mozart's and Haydn's styles, but also many points in common. What about Haydn appeals to you where Mozart does not? And have you in fact ever heard a Mozart opera?

Quite honestly, I'm not really a fan of either, although Haydn's VCs I have enjoyed recently. I'm not that interested in the symphonies or any of his music. In regard to Mozart, I have not heard one of his operas, but, then again, I never bothered nor cared to hear one of them. I don't like the Classical era that much. For me, there's just not much to latch onto. I have enjoyed some Baroque, but, as I will mention again, I'm a late-Romantic/20th Century guy all the way.

[Luke]

The comments about Mozart remind me that many folks still find his music challenging

Really? Well .. i suppose i could believe that if they were jumping into it from nothing or pop,jazz,rock music .. but it's about as safe & polite as you can get.

But the fact that all you can hear in Mozart is safeness and politeness just hints at deficiencies in your own listening, James. Everyone knows what you are referring to, it's bloody obvious that Mozart's music has an elegant, cultured and 'safe' musical surface, and to point it out doesn't exactly make you the musicological equivalent of the small boy in The Emperor's New Clothes. It's particularly ironic, given your frequent injunctions to others to listen harder, think more carefully etc., and especially in the light of your recent lambasting of Grazioso over the issue of 'profundity', that you fail to hear any deeper in Mozart than this, that you can't get beyond the surface prettiness. The people that jochanaan was talking about have done that - they've listened into Mozart and found him disturbing not because they are more limited listeners than you (as you imply, pfff, they must have just come from pop or rock or something) but because they hear more deeply and sensitively. In context, James, the sort of things that jochanaan outlined in his last post are profoundly disturbing; another example I'd give is a gliding, graceful dissonance in the second subject of the last piano concerto which goes by almost unnoticed - the musical surface remains immaculate - but which sets up deep, disturbing tremors, hints at darker, hidden places, to any listener prepared to listen. It's a beautiful, shocking moment, but so subtly done, like all the finest effects in which Mozart abounds.

And actually, that kind of subtle, artful disturbance, concealed within a sheen of elegant phrasing and conventional formulae, intruiges me (to refer to your OP) just as much if not more as many a more obvious bit of 'disturbing music'

[(poco) Sforzando]

Quite honestly, I'm not really a fan of either, although Haydn's VCs I have enjoyed recently. I'm not that interested in the symphonies or any of his music. In regard to Mozart, I have not heard one of his operas, but, then again, I never bothered nor cared to hear one of them. I don't like the Classical era that much. For me, there's just not much to latch onto. I have enjoyed some Baroque, but, as I will mention again, I'm a late-Romantic/20th Century guy all the way.

Then I would point you to the responses by Luke and Jochanaan as a start. Trust me, I'm not being any kind of "PC police" in trying to "force" you to like music you don't like. Yet by your own admission you don't know the music you claim you dislike, which leads me to believe you have simply absorbed a cliché about this music and have not encountered it for itself. Bernstein, for instance, in his The Unanswered Question lectures, compared some of Mozart's procedures in the second-act finale of Don Giovanni to 12-tone practice. Stravinsky, whom you quote in your signature, called Beethoven's quartets "the highest articles of his musical faith" and in particular referred to the Great Fugue as "this absolutely contemporary piece that will remain contemporary forever" - meaning that Beethoven's procedures in this work not only anticipate the 20th century but are far more radical than some supposedly 20th-century music.

I'm bringing this up to you solely because I think there's a chance that perhaps you might be somewhat more open to reversing your prejudices than someone like our late friend Iago, who made his rabid hatred towards Mozart and Bach perhaps the dominant claim to fame of his existence, or our current friend James, who is somewhat better informed but also a lost cause, at least as far as Mozart and Beethoven are concerned. Your purported dislike, and theirs, of Mozart or Bach has nothing to do with the merits of Mozart or Bach, both of whose survival in the musical culture has been validated by generations of musicians great and small. It's your choice which way you want to go.

[(poco) Sforzando]

doesn't change things.

Exactly.

(and who cares what Bernstein says, he wasn't much of a composer himself so what insights does he really have?)

Righto. I suspect you're not much of a composer either. And I'll take Brahms's and Stravinsky's insights over yours any day.

[jochanaan]

...But the fact that all you can hear in Mozart is safeness and politeness just hints at deficiencies in your own listening, James. Everyone knows what you are referring to, it's bloody obvious that Mozart's music has an elegant, cultured and 'safe' musical surface, and to point it out doesn't exactly make you the musicological equivalent of the small boy in The Emperor's New Clothes. It's particularly ironic, given your frequent injunctions to others to listen harder, think more carefully etc., and especially in the light of your recent lambasting of Grazioso over the issue of 'profundity', that you fail to hear any deeper in Mozart than this, that you can't get beyond the surface prettiness. The people that jochanaan was talking about have done that - they've listened into Mozart and found him disturbing not because they are more limited listeners than you (as you imply, pfff, they must have just come from pop or rock or something) but because they hear more deeply and sensitively. In context, James, the sort of things that jochanaan outlined in his last post are profoundly disturbing; another example I'd give is a gliding, graceful dissonance in the second subject of the last piano concerto which goes by almost unnoticed - the musical surface remains immaculate - but which sets up deep, disturbing tremors, hints at darker, hidden places, to any listener prepared to listen. It's a beautiful, shocking moment, but so subtly done, like all the finest effects in which Mozart abounds.

And actually, that kind of subtle, artful disturbance, concealed within a sheen of elegant phrasing and conventional formulae, intruiges me (to refer to your OP) just as much if not more as many a more obvious bit of 'disturbing music'

Obviously, Luke, I'm with you.  Yes, Mozart is anything but a "safe" composer!   But with all respect, I was actually pointing out what many if not most listeners fail to hear.

[jochanaan]

Give it a rest.  .. I don't fail to hear that crap, I don't find it 'challenging' to absorb, understand & listen to at all .. nope not a bit. It's about as safe, tame, soft, polite and pleasing as you can get. (little glittery cutesy supposedly 'great challenging' subtleties notwithstanding)

Then I pity you.

[bhodges]

Gents (and you know who you are) let's keep it civil. After all, it's Easter.  0:)

--Bruce

[(poco) Sforzando]

Gents (and you know who you are) let's keep it civil. After all, it's Easter.  0:)

--Bruce

Then I pity him civilly.

[CD]

I don't see why the mods don't simply ban him instead of asking him to be civil, as they've been doing as long as I've been here, and which he's never done, and instead continues to poison every thread he posts on.

[Philoctetes]

I don't see why the mods don't simply ban him instead of asking him to be civil, as they've been doing as long as I've been here, and which he's never done, and instead continues to poison every thread he posts on.

There are posters way more troublesome than James, and one of the reasons I enjoy this forum so much, is the latitude they give, in such a graceful fashion.

[Mirror Image]

Then I would point you to the responses by Luke and Jochanaan as a start. Trust me, I'm not being any kind of "PC police" in trying to "force" you to like music you don't like. Yet by your own admission you don't know the music you claim you dislike, which leads me to believe you have simply absorbed a cliché about this music and have not encountered it for itself. Bernstein, for instance, in his The Unanswered Question lectures, compared some of Mozart's procedures in the second-act finale of Don Giovanni to 12-tone practice. Stravinsky, whom you quote in your signature, called Beethoven's quartets "the highest articles of his musical faith" and in particular referred to the Great Fugue as "this absolutely contemporary piece that will remain contemporary forever" - meaning that Beethoven's procedures in this work not only anticipate the 20th century but are far more radical than some supposedly 20th-century music.

I'm bringing this up to you solely because I think there's a chance that perhaps you might be somewhat more open to reversing your prejudices than someone like our late friend Iago, who made his rabid hatred towards Mozart and Bach perhaps the dominant claim to fame of his existence, or our current friend James, who is somewhat better informed but also a lost cause, at least as far as Mozart and Beethoven are concerned. Your purported dislike, and theirs, of Mozart or Bach has nothing to do with the merits of Mozart or Bach, both of whose survival in the musical culture has been validated by generations of musicians great and small. It's your choice which way you want to go.

You don't know anything about me nor do you know what I've heard/haven't heard. I think it's pretty presumptuous on your part to assume that I haven't put in the work that's necessary for anyone to form their opinion. I have said this many times, and I'll say it again, I do not like the Classical era. The music, itself, doesn't interest me. It's not Haydn's or Mozart's fault that I dislike their music and I accept that, but there's nothing wrong with my ears nor is there anything wrong with my opinion. You simply can accept it or not. Whatever you choose to do, my opinion will remain the same, so let's try to find more common ground and go from there.

[(poco) Sforzando]

You don't know anything about me nor do you know what I've heard/haven't heard.

"In regard to Mozart, I have not heard one of his operas" — which are, by general consent, among his very greatest works. QED. But if you don't want to listen to Mozart, don't listen to Mozart. One can only do so much. 

[Mirror Image]

"In regard to Mozart, I have not heard one of his operas." QED. You don't want to listen to Mozart, don't listen to Mozart. 

And if you knew me, you would know that I don't like opera, so obviously I wouldn't bother listening to Mozart's.