Schoenberg's Sheen

Started by karlhenning, April 12, 2007, 07:35:28 AM

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Cato

Thanks to Bruce Hodges for the link above!

At my new Catholic school in Columbus here in Ohio the music teacher happened to see my Schoenberg poster for Pierrot and was thrilled to know that I am something of an expert on the composer.  She decided then to add Schoenberg to this year's list of composers for the higher grades, 6-8, and as a result I will be a guest speaker for the music class.    8)

Next project: spreading the good news about Karl Amadeus Hartmann!!!

"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)

Haffner

Quote from: Cato on August 28, 2007, 09:53:53 AM
Thanks to Bruce Hodges for the link above!

At my new Catholic school in Columbus here in Ohio the music teacher happened to see my Schoenberg poster for Pierrot and was thrilled to know that I am something of an expert on the composer.  She decided then to add Schoenberg to this year's list of composers for the higher grades, 6-8, and as a result I will be a guest speaker for the music class.    8)

Next project: spreading the good news about Karl Amadeus Hartmann!!!







Sounds terrific! I'm originally from Springfield, Ohio. I still miss the gorgeous Autumn weather.

Cato

Quote from: Haffner on August 28, 2007, 01:52:30 PM




Sounds terrific! I'm originally from Springfield, Ohio. I still miss the gorgeous Autumn weather.

Springfield's Frank Lloyd Wright House is now restored and open as a museum.  Highly worthwhile, if you ever return for a visit!

Back to the topic: Schoenberg and Ohio and...Boulez!   :o

Boulez is conducting the Cleveland Orchestra this season in Schoenberg's  Pelleas und Melisande and other things of course.

I hinted to my wife that this could be a kind of Christmas present, even though the concert is in February.  We are 2 hours away in Columbus, so weather is a factor perhaps.
"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)

bhodges

Quote from: Cato on August 30, 2007, 09:26:44 AM
Boulez is conducting the Cleveland Orchestra this season in Schoenberg's  Pelleas und Melisande and other things of course.

I hinted to my wife that this could be a kind of Christmas present, even though the concert is in February.  We are 2 hours away in Columbus, so weather is a factor perhaps.

What a nice gift that would be!  (I would accept a late Christmas present like that any time of year... ;D)

--Bruce

pjme

Anybody visiting Brussels these days? The Klara festival ( Flemish National radio / broadcasting festival) starts with 3 performances of Gurrelieder :

From the website : http://www.klarafestival.be/index.php?id=888&L=2&tx_festival_pi1%5Buid%5D=825

Together with Gurre-Lieder, Verklärte Nacht is, one of the few pieces Schönberg was hugely successful with during his lifetime. Would it be a coincidence that KlaraFestival ends withVerklärte Nacht on 14 September? Gurre is the castle where King Valdemar's ghosts and his followers roam every night after Valdemar's mistress Tove was murdered by his queen. The music is indeed fairly easy to place in a tonal sense, the tonal and atonal worlds merge into each other through chromaticism. The Gurre-Lieder is a summarising work that composers manage to pull off only very rarely. It has the monumental and vocal characteristics of Beethoven on the one hand and the chromatics and even a little bit of the leitmotiv method of Wagner on the other hand. The Gurre-Lieder are the culmination of the entire journey from Bach to Bruckner, which decorate, relax and chromatically carry through functional harmony in such a way that in a harmonic sense there was no longer a leading figure, a hierarchy or a foundation.

Date 04/09/2007
Start 19.00u
Concert venue Bozar - Henry Le Boeuf
City Brussels
Programme A. Schönberg, Gurre-Lieder
Artist(s) Dir. Mark Wigglesworth
In cooperation with La Monnaie
Coproduction De Nederlandse Opera & Bozar Music
Fees 85 / 65 / 55 / 45 / 25 / 10 euro
Tickets online click here

I doubt I'll be able to get there....but will listen to the radiobroadcast.

Peter

bhodges

Thanks so much, Peter!  I think I can listen to the broadcast as well, and this sounds great.  I am a big fan of Wigglesworth, ever since hearing him conduct Shostakovich a few years ago. 

--Bruce

karlhenning

"Wigglesworth" is such a made-up name!  ;D

Bonehelm

Does anyone have some easy Schoenberg to recommend? I'm new to serialsim and atonality and all that, been listening to mainly late-romantic stuff. :) Something with clear ideas and development would be great, thanks :)

greg

Quote from: Bonehelm on September 04, 2007, 12:39:49 AM
Does anyone have some easy Schoenberg to recommend? I'm new to serialsim and atonality and all that, been listening to mainly late-romantic stuff. :) Something with clear ideas and development would be great, thanks :)

this CD right here is a masterpiece:

http://www.amazon.com/Schoenberg-Berg-Webern-Orchestral-Karajan/dp/B000031WYL/ref=pd_bbs_10/104-4305240-7351168?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1188914877&sr=8-10

karlhenning

Quote from: Bonehelm on September 04, 2007, 12:39:49 AM
Does anyone have some easy Schoenberg to recommend? I'm new to serialsim and atonality and all that, been listening to mainly late-romantic stuff. :) Something with clear ideas and development would be great, thanks :)

"Easy" and Schoenberg do not readily inhabit the same sentence :-)

But with that thought, I'd recommend the Serenade Opus 24.

Cato

Some of my high school students found later things like the Piano Concerto and the Violin Concerto of great interest.

Certainly the Five Orchestral Pieces were also of interest.

Pelleas und Melisande will show you why Schoenberg thought he needed a break from tonality, especially in the work's more id-expressive moments.
"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)

greg

Quote from: James on September 04, 2007, 07:58:17 AM
Bonehelm, also worthy mentioning as a good entry point is his String Quartet #2, Op.10. This piece will most likely excite you if you're coming fresh to Schoenberg...the last 2 movements of this amazing work steps over the line into the shifting eerie soundscape of atonality...a move announced by a soprano who sings prophetically "I breathe the air of other planets."
yep, that's the one that at first i didn't think much of but it really grew on me, really amazing stuff
probably the first piece ever to cause a really riot-like premiere (maybe?)

Haffner

 I am torn between String Quartet #2 and Pierrot Lunaire for "good entry points".

I definitely would not reccomend his SQ's #'s 3 and 4 for people starting out with Schoenberg, primarily because those two might actually scare away a novice; I nominate his SQ # 3 (and perhaps Shostakovich's SQ # 7) as perhaps the most horrifying pieces of Heavy Metal ever produced.

karlhenning

What I'm enjoying about this late exchange is, that although Schoenberg seems generally still to labor under an impression of "difficulty," here there is a refreshing variety of 'where to start with Schoenberg' . . . so almost any Schoenberg piece which Listener n1 finds 'difficult', seems to have a corresponding Listener n2 who finds that very piece The Threshold.

Haffner

Quote from: karlhenning on September 10, 2007, 04:38:45 AM
What I'm enjoying about this late exchange is, that although Schoenberg seems generally still to labor under an impression of "difficulty," here there is a refreshing variety of 'where to start with Schoenberg' . . . so almost any Schoenberg piece which Listener n1 finds 'difficult', seems to have a corresponding Listener n2 who finds that very piece The Threshold.





This is an excellent point, and I admit that I was a bit overwhelmed when I first heard Schoenberg pieces like the 4th String Quartet. The 3rd SQ literally frightened me (particularly the brilliant, dense 1st movement). But when I slapped on Pierrot Lunaire, I was immediately enthralled and admiring. As Karl mentioned, that's just me personally. Others might get more of an "accessible" vibe from Schoenbeg's other works.

To this day, I play Pierrot Lunaire and the 2nd SQ more than any of his other works; just my preference.

karlhenning


Mark G. Simon

If someone's not going to get the atonal Schoenberg, they're just not going to get Schoenberg. Might as well start with the most characteristic stuff. My intro to Schoenberg was the Five Pieces for Orchestra op. 16. My small town public library actually had LPs of a lot of modern classical music so I used to go in there when I was a kid and check stuff out. For me, the attraction of Schoenberg was "hey, this music hasn't got any key or nothin'". My only disappointment was that the record didn't have any 12-tone music on it. I wanted to hear what that sounded like.

Haffner


greg

Quote from: Haffner on September 10, 2007, 04:50:11 AM




This is an excellent point, and I admit that I was a bit overwhelmed when I first heard Schoenberg pieces like the 4th String Quartet. The 3rd SQ literally frightened me (particularly the brilliant, dense 1st movement). But when I slapped on Pierrot Lunaire, I was immediately enthralled and admiring. As Karl mentioned, that's just me personally. Others might get more of an "accessible" vibe from Schoenbeg's other works.

To this day, I play Pierrot Lunaire and the 2nd SQ more than any of his other works; just my preference.
isn't that saying a lot when Schoenberg can frighten a heavy metal, ex-street fighting tough guy?  ;D
it's like i always said us classical folk have the most hard core music on the planet  >:D  ;D

anyways, Pierrot Lunaire is one Schoenberg piece that hasn't grown on me yet. Will it eventually? maybe, maybe not. I know i love the very opening where the piano does that arpeggio figure and the singer starts up, it's just so perfectly mysterious! I also like the end, though i can't remember how it goes. The whole middle just might take a while, maybe after a thousand listenings i'll get it  ;D

probably the thing that "first" opened me up to Schoenberg was the five orchestral pieces, the first movement is like an ecstatic death march, the middle movements so thoughtful and pensive, and then the last movements the fury is back! Sounds accessible...


Quote from: Mark G. Simon on September 10, 2007, 05:47:29 AM
If someone's not going to get the atonal Schoenberg, they're just not going to get Schoenberg. Might as well start with the most characteristic stuff. My intro to Schoenberg was the Five Pieces for Orchestra op. 16. My small town public library actually had LPs of a lot of modern classical music so I used to go in there when I was a kid and check stuff out. For me, the attraction of Schoenberg was "hey, this music hasn't got any key or nothin'". My only disappointment was that the record didn't have any 12-tone music on it. I wanted to hear what that sounded like.
i just finished typing my post when you wrote this
i like that "hey, this music hasn't got any key or nothin'" lol! that's the same thing i was thinking
op.16 is definetely a good introduction, especially if you're into heavy, powerful music

the first thing i ever actually "heard" by Schoenberg was these 5 or so bars i typed into Noteworthy Composer that i got from a 12-tone book (and i never heard serial music at that time). It was from a piano piece, still can't remember which, but i thought it was cool.

Cato

Quote from: Haffner on September 10, 2007, 04:50:11 AM

This is an excellent point, and I admit that I was a bit overwhelmed when I first heard Schoenberg pieces like the 4th String Quartet. The 3rd SQ literally frightened me (particularly the brilliant, dense 1st movement).

I still vividly recall a July day many decades ago, and our valiant little plastic stereo is attempting to squeeze forth Schoenberg's Third and Fourth Quartets at high volume (of course!).

My mother comes in fuming: "I've had it with that stuff!  Don't you realize it's hot enough already in here!?!"   

So I had to wait for the weather to cool down...or for my mother to cool down!    0:)
"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)