Unpopular Opinions

[Jo498]

Any love for piano-violin arrangements by e.g. Joachim?

I own a disc of them (whereas I do not have a complete recording of the orchestral version atm) but I cannot say that I am familiar with these versions. Historically they could be closer to the source material or at least to what Brahms might have played with or heard from Remenyi as a very young man. Probably listened to them once or twice and not sure how impressed I was. In either shape it's music I like when I am listening to it but admittedly do not put on that often.
I am very inconsistent about arrangements/alternative versions. I am more open to them with "lighter" music like these dances but I also used to prefer some of Bach's organ pieces for orchestra or piano. This has changed with a deeper appreciation of the organ (still not a really avid fan of the instrument).

[Symphonic Addict]

Sibelius' symphonies 1 and 2 are greater than nos. 3-6.

[kyjo]

Sibelius' symphonies 1 and 2 are greater than nos. 3-6.

I'm tempted to agree though 3 and 6 are very close to my heart as well. 4 remains rather inscrutable for me, but, then again, I don't really care much for dark, depressing music these days. I enjoy 5 but don't think the first two movements are among Sibelius' finest. The finale is, of course, incredible!

[kyjo]

Berlioz's Les nuits d'été is one of the most boring, turgid, lifeless pieces of music I've ever heard. It came on the radio recently while I was driving and I almost fell asleep at the wheel!

[Florestan]

You win.

By a large margin, that is.

[Florestan]

Chopin is the most original, interesting and influential composer of his generation.

Except S1 and S4, Bruckner's symphonies are the epitome of boredom and turgidity.

Beethoven is not the culminating point of Viennese Classicism, but its destroyer. The VC trinity should read Haydn, Boccherini, Mozart (in chronological order).

[Karl Henning]

The Star Wars Extended Universe (now known as Star Wars Legends) is superior to the Disney reboot and sequel trilogy, but not because it's better written/produced (it isn't) or has more interesting ideas or whatever (it doesn't). It's the sheer unbridled chaos of dozens of writers working to tight deadlines and largely unaware of each other's work that makes it charming. I much prefer a canon where the Death Star has at least four separate origin stories, all dashed off by different writers in limited detail thanks to time constraints, to one where it has a single definitive origin within a streamlined and unified canon.

For the same reason, most fanfiction is superior to canonical sequels within blockbuster, mass-market media franchises. Audience fragmentation is actually good.

I enjoyed that, thanks.

[Karl Henning]

This sounds like damning with faint praise. I admit that in the early 2000s during the long wait between Harry Potter vols. 5 and 6? I sunk to reading one or two fanfictions. They were more like Bridget Jones novels (of which I have not read any but back in the 1990s I watched "Singles" and "Sleepless in Seattle" which are a bit like US parallels, I guess) with the HP protagonists young professionals in the 20s and entangled in love polygons. Utter trash!

To me Star Wars seems one of the most overrated things in the last 50 years (and as I admitted above I am not beyond enjoying some fantasy/SF, although I prefer books). I am a bit too young to have seen them in the theaters when they came out (some classmates did see Return of the Jedi, I was in 5th grade or so, but I was not that interested and my parents would not have allowed it anyway). When I saw them on TV/video in the 1990s (then in my mid-20s) I found them mildly entertaining but not special at all. I could not be bothered to watch any of the later films. So first I was too young, then too old. It doesn't feel like a great loss.

I think "mildly entertaining but not special at all" is fair. The first one was quite a cause célèbre on its release, and was arguably of some cinematic importance, but that candle's long burnt out. I watch the first three now and again, partly out of harmless nostalgia (I did see them all in the cinema, when each opened) partly for undemanding fun.

[Karl Henning]

One of my brothers had never seen any Star Wars movie. We watched the first one together maybe two years ago. It did nothing for him.

[Jo498]

Except S1 and S4, Bruckner's symphonies are the epitome of boredom and turgidity.

I still find #4 that used to be the most popular and probably still is in the top three (after 7 and the most overrated Bruckner symphony. I don't dislike Bruckner and the one time I experienced the 8th in live concert it was very impressive but I think that the last 30 year have tended to sanctify Bruckner in a way that was restricted to some hardcore fans in the time before that. It's good to have Bruckner regularly but it was also somewhat justified to put him in a niche

Beethoven is not the culminating point of Viennese Classicism, but its destroyer. The VC trinity should read Haydn, Boccherini, Mozart (in chronological order).

Beethoven was sui generis although still part of Viennese Classicism. In doubt I go with culmination of that style (together with instrumental Schubert) because it seems utterly wrong to see Beethoven's and Schubert's mature works as transitional or as tentative beginnings of a new period.* Probably the main problem here is simplified or any periodization.

*I find Grillparzer in his funeral oration fits well:
"Wie der Behemot die Meere durchstürmt, so durchflog er die Grenzen seiner Kunst. Vom Girren der Taube bis zum Rollen des Donners, von der spitzfindigsten Verwebung eigensinniger Kunstmittel bis zu dem furchtbaren Punkt, wo das Gebildete übergeht in die regellose Willkür streitender Naturgewalten, alles hatte er durchmessen, alles erfaßt. Der nach ihm kommt, wird nicht fortsetzen, er wird anfangen müssen, denn sein Vorgänger hörte nur auf, wo die Kunst aufhört."

"As the Behemoth parts the waves, he flew through the boundaries of his art. From the cooing of the dove to the rolling thunder, from the most intricate weaving of original means of art to the tremendous point where shaped material turns into the unruly caprice of competing forces of nature, he has encompassed everything. Whoever comes after him, cannot continue, he will have to begin anew because his predecessors only finished where the art ends."

[Jo498]

One of my brothers had never seen any Star Wars movie. We watched the first one together maybe two years ago. It did nothing for him.

I think I watched "The return of the Jedi" first when I was studying in the US in 1995/96 and I had admitted to a friend there that I had never seen any star wars, so he insisted this had to be amended. I do not remember why the last (back then) movie was put on as his parents had a whole wall of shelves with videotapes.

[Brian]

My opinion on Bruckner is that he is conducted much too slowly by everyone, and that the 6th symphony should be over in under 50 minutes, the 7th symphony in about 52 (15', 18-19', 7:30ish, and a bit over 10'). The 3rd probably should be much faster in most recordings, but at least we have the Szell recording, which is perfect.

[Florestan]

*I find Grillparzer in his funeral oration fits well:
"Wie der Behemot die Meere durchstürmt, so durchflog er die Grenzen seiner Kunst. Vom Girren der Taube bis zum Rollen des Donners, von der spitzfindigsten Verwebung eigensinniger Kunstmittel bis zu dem furchtbaren Punkt, wo das Gebildete übergeht in die regellose Willkür streitender Naturgewalten, alles hatte er durchmessen, alles erfaßt. Der nach ihm kommt, wird nicht fortsetzen, er wird anfangen müssen, denn sein Vorgänger hörte nur auf, wo die Kunst aufhört."

"As the Behemoth parts the waves, he flew through the boundaries of his art. From the cooing of the dove to the rolling thunder, from the most intricate weaving of original means of art to the tremendous point where shaped material turns into the unruly caprice of competing forces of nature, he has encompassed everything. Whoever comes after him, cannot continue, he will have to begin anew because his predecessors only finished where the art ends."

I don't get the bolded part. Whom does "his" refer to: Beethoven, or "whoever comes after him"? And what does it mean "his predecessors only finished where the art ends"? Makes no sense at all to me, honestly.

[Madiel]

Chopin is the most original, interesting and influential composer of his generation.

Ah well, if this is unpopular, I don't want to conform.

[Jo498]

I don't get the bolded part. Whom does "his" refer to: Beethoven, or "whoever comes after him"? And what does it mean "his predecessors only finished where the art ends"? Makes no sense at all to me, honestly.

Sorry, this was a simple typo. Predecessor [of the ones who come after him] = Beethoven, not plural. Everybody after Beethoven has to be very innovative because Beethoven exhausted the contemporary art of music. I think that this is to some extent corroborated by several composers of the 1830s and 40s. Chopin basically ignored Beethoven. Berlioz, Liszt, Schumann and Mendelssohn could not entirely ignore him but at least the first three have important works that are also "evading" Beethoven. Berlioz took Beethoven's symphonies as point of departure but with lots of opera, choral music and a much stronger programmatic content in his symphonic works, he is also very different. Liszt stuck to piano pieces (mostly not sonatas) for the first part of his career, Schumann also began with "free" piano pieces but then took up the burden of following up Beethovenian symphonies and quartets. Mendelssohn was classicist throughout and wrote some (early) pieces rather close to Beethoven (early string quartets and piano sonatas) but did also some evasion, with e.g. the violin concerto or the Italian symphony being very different from Beethoven and a lot of his stlye is informed more by Bach, Handel, Mozart than Beethoven.

[Irons]

Schubert is boring

That is what the thread should be about. I think a good idea by the way (the thread not Schubert).

[amw]

Sorry, this was a simple typo. Predecessor [of the ones who come after him] = Beethoven, not plural. Everybody after Beethoven has to be very innovative because Beethoven exhausted the contemporary art of music. I think that this is to some extent corroborated by several composers of the 1830s and 40s. Chopin basically ignored Beethoven. Berlioz, Liszt, Schumann and Mendelssohn could not entirely ignore him but at least the first three have important works that are also "evading" Beethoven. Berlioz took Beethoven's symphonies as point of departure but with lots of opera, choral music and a much stronger programmatic content in his symphonic works, he is also very different. Liszt stuck to piano pieces (mostly not sonatas) for the first part of his career, Schumann also began with "free" piano pieces but then took up the burden of following up Beethovenian symphonies and quartets. Mendelssohn was classicist throughout and wrote some (early) pieces rather close to Beethoven (early string quartets and piano sonatas) but did also some evasion, with e.g. the violin concerto or the Italian symphony being very different from Beethoven and a lot of his stlye is informed more by Bach, Handel, Mozart than Beethoven.

Mendelssohn is arguably the only contemporary composer who actually understood and absorbed Beethoven's late works (as displayed in his own early string quartets & sonatas) and thus is the most direct line of influence deriving from Beethoven. He understood Beethoven's late work as neoclassical or "neo-baroque" in a sense, looking back to Mozart/Bach/Handel, as well as the experimentation with cyclical form, and made these the focus of virtually all of his work. After his death, the only subsequent "Beethovenian" in the same sense, in the nineteenth century, was probably Cesar Franck. Everyone else (even Brahms to a great extent) followed the Mozart-Schubert or Mozart-Chopin paths of influence that sidelined Beethoven and his work. Schumann's quartets are not "Beethovenian" for example, although op. 41 no. 3 is "Mendelssohnian" in its first movement and therefore Beethoven-derived. Otherwise they are mostly Schubertian, and the same with his symphonies. Brahms's First makes a conscious attempt to emulate Beethoven without being compositionally anything like Beethoven; it's a Mendelssohn-Schubert hybrid created in an attempt to give the symphonic genre the weight and gravitas Brahms thought it had in Beethoven's day. (Which it did not. It was a festive orchestral showpiece for the public. Even Beethoven's 9th was an essentially popular, "middle-period" work, without most of the musical and technical difficulties of his late quartets etc. The Symphony™ as an elite intellectual genre therefore is essentially Brahms's own invention.)

In the twentieth century the closest we get to a "Beethovenian" would be Béla Bartók, but the materials of music had changed significantly by that point.

Otherwise Beethoven actually had almost no influence on music history, and if he were removed from it, the works of most subsequent composers would be largely unaffected. (The same is true of, e.g., JS Bach, Handel, Scarlatti.) Mozart and CPE Bach on the other hand are keystones, without whom music history post 1800 would make almost no sense, and the same is true of, e.g., Rossini, Chopin, Schubert. And the reception of music would be very different—but probably better—without Beethoven.

[Jo498]

You can hardly deny that the "through night to light" model of Beethoven's 5th and the cyclic recurrence were strong influences. This is admittedly not the deeper nuts and bolts of compositional art but nevertheless quite important. Schumann also has near quotations or clear allusions to Beethoven in many pieces, again not a deep compositional structural aspect but not negligible either.
And I think you make too much of the opposition between "festive orchestral showpiece" and gravitas. I don't think that was exclusionary in Beethoven's time. If one looks at contemporary comments about Haydn's London symphonies both aspects are clearly seen as united. There are phrases like "entertainment of the most sublime grandeur" (or so, I am making this particular one up).

[amw]

You are probably technically right, but this is the Unpopular Opinions thread after all so I feel obliged to disagree.

I think what later composers of symphonies were aiming at was music perceived to have great intellectual rigour and be only comprehensible to an educated elite etc. which was essentially based on how the late Beethoven quartets were received (though these are not a perfect match either). It is true that symphonies by the 1790s or so were seen as sublime and great as well as accessible and popular; these things were not really in opposition at the time. Until the 1830s I don't think there was even much of a conception of a genre of music that was purposefully too "learned" for the general public to understand, but then of course the "general public" itself had only come into existence around 1750 or so, and prior to that there were plenty of learned genres for music lovers (fugue, ricercar etc) as distinct from everything else.

I think the Beethoven aesthetic of darkness to light and so on was a very superficial influence, and one Beethoven himself probably borrowed from opera and oratorio; it would have made its way into instrumental music anyway, with or without him. But in general yes, the romantics liked the aesthetic of Beethoven without having much interest in how Beethoven actually composed.

[Biffo]

One of my brothers had never seen any Star Wars movie. We watched the first one together maybe two years ago. It did nothing for him.

I watched the middle half of Star Wars on a hotel television, probably not the best medium, some 40 years ago. I have never felt drawn to watch any more.