What are you listening to now?

[North Star]

The title piece (not sure what I had been expecting!) is delightfully clangorous.  The whole disc is terrific, but I may like the exquisite Stabat Mater best of all.

Just as I expected. The Stabat Mater is undoubtedly the main dish on that disc, but the appetizers are equally tasty.

[Wakefield]

"Serene " and "celebratory" are affekts, I think. They're the affekts that seem to be the predominant ones in this middle period of Leonhardt's career. It needn't be about expressing seven types of tears. But it's complicated and I don't really understand it. I don't much care for that quote from The End of Early Music, I find it very confusing. Was rhetorical music supposed to be ubiquitous? I've seen rhetorical analyses of some Buxtehude Toccatas and some music by Ge Muffat, but was Louis Couperin writing rhetorically, with the sort of argument structure that Aristotle wrote about? And Scarlatti? The Goldberg Variations? The first Partita? It's not obvious, a priori. Someone has to put in the work.

Froberger, by the way, sometimes wrote music which was derived from "an extreme experience of the artist-composer" And I believe that JSB wrote music which was derived from his response, his emotional and intellectual response,  to Christian teaching -- a response no doubt influenced by his reading of Luther but still, his response nevertheless. I'm thinking of CU3.

Do you know a book titled "Ideas Have Consequences"? If you don't know it, it doesn't matter because I just need the title: ideas have consequences and, therefore, when you use an idea such as "affect" ("affekt" in German) to write about Baroque music, implicitly you're accepting a whole tradition behind this notion.

That being said, if you talk about "affects", I guess you're referring the "doctrine of the affections" (Affektenlehre); then, when you say in the same breath that you don't care at all about Rhetoric, it's quite surprising to me (almost a nonsense), as the aforementioned "doctrine" is essentially rhetorical knowledge. I think Bruce Haynes explains all of this very well, in a way that I'm not able to do.

So, "affects" are a Rhetoric knowledge; a sort of objective information and form to encapsule certain human emotions and to "persuade" the listener when needed. It would be a plain error to think about them as Romantic "emotions", individual, and freely expressed by the composer or the performer.

This Wikipedia article provides some tools to begin a study about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_the_affections

[Mandryka]

Do you know a book titled "Ideas Have Consequences"? If you don't know it, it doesn't matter because I just need the title: ideas have consequences and, therefore, when you use an idea such as "affect" ("affekt" in German) to write about Baroque music, implicitly you're accepting a whole tradition behind this notion.

That being said, if you talk about "affects", I guess you're referring the "doctrine of the affections" (Affektenlehre); then, when you say in the same breath that you don't care at all about Rhetoric, it's quite surprising to me (almost a nonsense), as the aforementioned "doctrine" is essentially rhetorical knowledge. I think Bruce Haynes explains all of this very well, in a way that I'm not able to do.

So, "affects" are a Rhetoric knowledge; a sort of objective information and form to encapsule certain human emotions and to "persuade" the listener when needed. It would be a plain error to think about them as Romantic "emotions", individual, and freely expressed by the composer or the performer.

This Wikipedia article provides some tools to begin a study about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_the_affections

"Care for" means "like", it's different from "care about."  I was saying I don't like, approve of,  that particular quote because I find it confused. It confuses, or rather glosses over, rhetoric as argument, a certain type of argument structure which Greek and Roman philosphers talked about, and the idea that early music express something called affekts, which are related in some complex yet to be defined way to emotional states. But yes, I'm sure "pursuasion" is a useful idea here.

Some people think that some baroque music was "rhetorical". And what they mean is that it has the structure of a classical argument, with colosure, points of view expressed and confounded, reslutions etc. I think it has to be argued on a case by case basis, I have no doubt it was true for some Buxtehude toccatas for example, I doubt it was true for a suite by D'Anglebert.

But maybe I'm wrong, maybe someone has done the slog and shown that D'Anglebert or Louis Couperin or Scarlatti or Purcell or Gibbons were writing rhetorical music. If you have a citation, let me know.

[Ken B]

I greatly admire her performance, and to dismiss it as nonsense is not good sense 

I won't deny this.

[SonicMan46]

Krommer, Franz (1759-1831) - some more windy music from a master of the genre - performers listed below; the Flute Quartets a 'used' CD which arrived today - Dave

 

[Que]

New Acquisition, recommended on GMG by many.

http://walboi.blogspot.nl/2015/02/new-acquisition-zarlino-gioseffo-1517.html?spref=tw

High praise, and well deserved IMO!

Q

[Karl Henning]

Maiden-Listen Mondays!

[Mandryka]

Kenneth Gilbert plays Lully/D'Anglebert. The music is outstanding, some of the best that D'Anglebert wrote. And this CD could well be the best performance by Gilbert on record, it positively glows with vibrancy and good will, it's full of emotion, and it captures something which I feel is very much at the heart of baroque French music - a sort of pardoxical synthesis of earthiness and elegance. For example the way he plays the Chaconne from Phaeton is really life-enhancing, for the joyful gleeful forward motion of it, stuff for the desert island. Outstanding recording and an instrument which is as clear as crystal - not much ressonance, so excellent for style luthé. But the harpsichord he uses is a bit sour, especially in the high notes, and that's maybe unfortunate, I don't know.

[Wakefield]

"Care for" means "like", it's different from "care about."  I was saying I don't like, approve of,  that particular quote because I find it confused. It confuses, or rather glosses over, rhetoric as argument, a certain type of argument structure which Greek and Roman philosphers talked about, and the idea that early music express something called affekts, which are related in some complex yet to be defined way to emotional states. But yes, I'm sure "pursuasion" is a useful idea here.

Some people think that some baroque music was "rhetorical". And what they mean is that it has the structure of a classical argument, with colosure, points of view expressed and confounded, reslutions etc. I think it has to be argued on a case by case basis, I have no doubt it was true for some Buxtehude toccatas for example, I doubt it was true for a suite by D'Anglebert.

But maybe I'm wrong, maybe someone has done the slog and shown that D'Anglebert or Louis Couperin or Scarlatti or Purcell or Gibbons were writing rhetorical music. If you have a citation, let me know.

I'm a little tired of this discussion, but I guess if you write those names, plus "rhetoric" or "rhetorical" on Google, you will get several hits, including liner notes, books. Obviously, you need to understand that Rhetoric was for centuries until before 1800, a part of the education of the day, a common background among learned people, a sort of environment not always expressly mentioned.

Bruce Haynes (The End of Early Music) and Harnoncourt (Music as Speech) provide excellent general explanations about all of this.

[Ken B]

John Luther Adams
Clouds of ...

Hmmm. Cannot quite recall what the clouds were. Or maybe I just never knew.

[Karl Henning]

Sibelius
Aallottaret (The Oceanides), Op.73 (1914)
Helsinki Phil
Segerstam

[asin]B00000DMKY[/asin]

[Pat B]

That gives me an idea ....

Was your idea to write "Van̈ska?" Because that's the idea it gave me (with due credit to Christopher Guest).

TD: Strauss: Ein Heldenleben (LSO, Barbirolli). I had intended to play the coupled Mahler 6, but this came on first, and I just let it play.

[Karl Henning]

No surprise:

Sibelius
Öinen ratsastus ja auringonnousu (Nightride & Sunrise), Op.55 (1909)
Helsinki Phil
Segerstam

[asin]B00000DMKY[/asin]

[aligreto]

[asin]B004Z0PWJK[/asin]

That one is on my "to buy" list for some time now; I must get around to purchasing it!

[aligreto]

Three Mozart concertos that I really like, especially the clarinet concerto. I think that this version of the flute and harp concerto is beautifully played and paced.

[71 dB]

Really good playing! 
[asin]B000MRP1Q4[/asin]

[Moonfish]

Florilegium Musicale: Works by Vivaldi/Marcello/Quantz/JC Bach/Fasch         Camerata Köln

[asin] B000024U9I[/asin]

[Mirror Image]

Now:



A new acquisition. Listening to Four Last Songs. Popp sings marvelously well. Just beautiful. I also love Tennstedt's brooding accompaniment.

[Moonfish]

Now:



A new acquisition. Listening to Four Last Songs. Popp sings marvelously well. Just beautiful. I also love Tennstedt's brooding accompaniment.

You remind me that there are so many great version of Vier letzte Lieder. More time please....

[Moonfish]

Bruckner: Symphony No 4           Wiener Philharmoniker/Böhm

Outstanding performance in rich and vivid sound!

[asin] B00000JXZA[/asin]