Insights, Snippets, Quotes, Epiphanies & All That Sort of Things

[vandermolen]

I liked this quote, discovered in 'A Joseph Campbell Companion':

'As you proceed through life,
following your own path,
birds will sh*t on you
Don't bother to brush it off.'

[geralmar]

Attributed to an anonymous Egyptian cab driver:

"Remember the good old days when we were staring into the abyss?"

[vandermolen]

Attributed to an anonymous Egyptian cab driver:

"Remember the good old days when we were staring into the abyss?"

I like that. Sounds an appropriate one for Brexit.

[Florestan]

Try as they may, they will not prevent Massenet from shining as one of
the brightest stars in our musical firmament. No composer has enjoyed
the public's favour to the extent he did, apart from Auber—a composer he
didn't like, any more than he did his school, but whom he resembles in a
strange way: they both had facility, huge productivity, wit, grace and suc-
cess, and both produced music that fitted their era; at the same time their
music was totally different from each other's. Both of  them have been ac-
cused  of   flattering  their  listeners;  but  isn't  it  rather  the  case  that  com-
posers and audience had the same tastes, and were in perfect agreement?
--- Camille Saint-Saëns

[drogulus]

     "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." - Lee Harvey Oswald

     

[Florestan]

Which is the greater, Mozart or Beethoven? Idle question! The one is more perfect, the other more colossal. The first gives you the peace of perfect art, beauty at first sight. The second gives you sublimity, terror, pity, a beauty of second impression. The one gives that for which the other rouses a desire. Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean. Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea; and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both. --- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

It is against this graceful composer [Felix Mendelssohn], who is always so appealing for audiences, that Wagner aims his poisoned arrows in his critical writings, reproaching him with particular doggedness for belonging to the Jewish race! Indeed, this highly gifted Jew should have felt so ashamed of himself for having, with such insidious malice, delighted mankind with his instrumental works instead of lulling it to sleep with German conscientiousness, as Wagner has managed to do with his long, difficult, loud and frequently unbearably boring operas! --- Tchaikovsky

[Chopin had] freed music of its German influences, of its propensity for the ugly, the gloomy, the petit-bourgeois, for heaviness and pedantry. --- Nietzsche

[Compared to Chopin, Beethoven is] a semibarbaric nature whose great soul has been badly educated so that it had never learned to distinguish clearly between the sublime and the adventurous, between the simple and what was mediocre and in bad taste. --- Nietzsche

[Ken B]

The modern American concept of liberal arts is worthless, indeed it is anti-education.
It actively discourages and erases genuine education.

An anonymous comment on a blog.

[geralmar]

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

An anonymous comment on a blog.

Whoever wrote it was wise to remain anonymous...

[Florestan]

Everything that Wagner cannot do is bad.
Wagner  could  do  much  more  than  he  does;  but  his  strong principles prevent him.
Everything that Wagner can do, no one will  ever be able to do after him, no one has ever done before him, and no one must ever do after him. Wagner is godly.
These  three  propositions  are  the  quintessence  of  Wagner's writings;—the rest is merely—"literature".

Friedrich Nietzsche --- The Case of Wagner

[Florestan]

The Songs without Words have a Mozartean grace without Mozart's dramatic power, a Schubertian lyricism without Schubert's intensity. If we could be satisfied today with a simple beauty that raises no questions and does not attempt to puzzle us, the short pieces would resume their old place in the. concert repertoire. They charm, but they neither provoke nor astonish. It is not true that they are insipid, but they might as well be.

Charles Rosen - The Romantic Generation

A simple beauty that raises no questions and does not attempt to puzzle us; music that charms but neither provoke nor astonish --- this most felicitous phrases sums up my current musical aesthetics and preferences. And I hasten to add that Mozart and Schubert fits in as well*.

*naturally, I exclude being astonished by their musical genius and craft.

[Ken B]

The Songs without Words have a Mozartean grace without Mozart's dramatic power, a Schubertian lyricism without Schubert's intensity. If we could be satisfied today with a simple beauty that raises no questions and does not attempt to puzzle us, the short pieces would resume their old place in the. concert repertoire. They charm, but they neither provoke nor astonish. It is not true that they are insipid, but they might as well be.

Charles Rosen - The Romantic Generation

A simple beauty that raises no questions and does not attempt to puzzle us; music that charms but neither provoke nor astonish --- this most felicitous phrases sums up my current musical aesthetics and preferences. And I hasten to add that Mozart and Schubert fits in as well*.

*naturally, I exclude being astonished by their musical genius and craft.

Did you learn nothing from Boulez? 



PS I just listened to music by Henshelt this week. Very much your thing I expect.

[Florestan]

Did you learn nothing from Boulez? 

Yes I did: to steer away from his "music". 

PS I just listened to music by Henshelt this week. Very much your thing I expect.

Who is Henshelt? Never heard about him / her.

[Ken B]

Who is Henshelt? Never heard about him / her.

Neither had I, but I have a CD I picked up cheap. German romantic born 1814. Schumendelssohn like.

[Florestan]

Neither had I, but I have a CD I picked up cheap. German romantic born 1814. Schumendelssohn like.

Please post the CD cover. I googled "Henschelt composer" to no avail.

No, wait, do you mean Adolf von Henselt?

[Ken B]

Please post the CD cover. I googled "Henschelt composer" to no avail.

No, wait, do you mean Adolf von Henselt?

Yes I do.
[asin]B000051VHN[/asin]

[Florestan]

Yes I do.
[asin]B000051VHN[/asin]

Have that, and also this:



I like them too, but --- his Piano Concerto, which Schumann praised no end and promoted as an antidote to Henri Herz's concertos, did nothing for me --- it's a typical piece of German heaviness and pedantry, in which bombastic orchestration and piano note-spinning supposedly make for profundity and seriousness.

[Ken B]

Have that, and also this:



I like them too, but --- his Piano Concerto, which Schumann praised no end and promoted as an antidote to Henri Herz's concertos, did nothing for me --- it's a typical piece of German heaviness and pedantry, in which bombastic orchestration and piano note-spinning supposedly make for profundity and seriousness.

I might have those exudes. I bought a cart load of such things from a library a couple years ago, and am not sure exactly what I have! But the cover looks familiar. I am struck by how much really good chamber music there is from the period.

[Florestan]

I might have those exudes. I bought a cart load of such things from a library a couple years ago, and am not sure exactly what I have! But the cover looks familiar. I am struck by how much really good chamber music there is from the period.

You shouldn't be. After all, that was the golden age of chamber music.

[Ken B]

You shouldn't be. After all, that was the golden age of chamber music.

And very much to my taste these days. I'd love a big box of Onslow ...