How does one have time to explore?

[71 dB]

About exploring new composers: Ligeti seems interesting. Stockhausen not so interesting (I listened to Kontakte). Xenakis I need to sample. The problem with "post war" composers is that their music sounds very repulsive at first, before you have got into their art. So, it's easier to just ignore them. However, I don't want to take the easy way, at least not always...

Music is my profession.

So, maybe your statement is indicative of problems:  zealotry, a tendency to dogma, an intolerance of those with different viewpoints, a certainty that you have a direct communication line with your deity, a readiness to tell the rest of the world the Truth, in whose inflexibility you are totally invested. 

Yes, in quite a rare display, truly you say well, that music is your "religion."

That is a good post Karl.

[Florestan]

J.S. Bach is my Jesus Christ though. If there is ANYTHING in this world that will make me believe that there is a God, he would be it.

This is an almost exact quote from Emil Cioran. 

[Florestan]

So, maybe your statement is indicative of problems:  zealotry, a tendency to dogma, an intolerance of those with different viewpoints, a certainty that you have a direct communication line with your deity, a readiness to tell the rest of the world the Truth, in whose inflexibility you are totally invested.

Well, this might work a rebours, too. Orthodox Christianity is my (and your) religion, so I guess we both qualify for all of the above. 

[mn dave]

How does one find time to post in music forums when one should be exploring?

[Florestan]

I asked how Brahms etc DID mean more.

It's hard to put it to words without sounding bombastic and sort of James-ish. 

Let's just say that Brahms music touches my soul and intellect in a way that Metalica or any other heavy metal / pop band or singer never did. Ever since I first hear his music (Serenade op. 11 and Piano Quartet op. 25) I felt mesmerized and never stopped exploring his music; each time I hear one of his works, even if it's for the umpteenth time, I feel the opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found  I know it sounds mystical but I can't help it. This is my experience and Ralph Vaughan Williams describes it exactly. I have never ever felt this way while listening to heavy metal or pop music.

EDIT: and please note, I'm not interested in a comparison between different music to state why one is better. [...]. I don't care whether your favourite music is Bach or Schubert or the Beatles or Megadeth. WHATEVER your favourite music is,

Neither am, or do, I. I was careful enopugh to place the appropriate emoticons at the end of my tougher posts.

the question was how your favourite music has greater value beyond the fact that it gives you a high degree of enjoyment.

I specifically said it has greater value for me. This doesn't mean it should also have greater value for you, or for anyone else for that matter.

[Florestan]

This thread has inspired me to listen to some 5-voice counterpoint. We need the finer things in life.

http://youtu.be/e-ux7GMOc6k?t=2m5s

You said you were not interested in comparisons and you were right. One cannot compare the electronically manipulated, non-synchoronous overlapping of five tracks sung by one and the same singer with the synchronously overlapping of five different melodic lines playd on organ or harpsichord.

I listened to this song: pleasant to the ear for 5 minutes. I read the lyrics and I must confess I've seen much worse. Okay, so what next? Do I feel the need to hear it again? Absolutely not. If it weren't for you, I would have never heard it in the first place. Would I have missed something essential? Absolutely not. So there.

[Wakefield]

Two ideas:

This thread was opened on August 17; less than a week after, it counts 7 pages. Apparently, there is a real thing behind this apparently naive question.

This sounds as a very plausible ars vivendi, even if I didn't know its author:

My personal opinion, and I offer it as that only, is that you should find something you like and explore the hell out of it, and damn what anyone else does or has or likes or hates! Also, you should consider some things when you are comparing yourself to others: I don't know how old you are, but I would bet I'm older. I'm 62, I saw the Beatles LIVE on Ed Sullivan in 1964 (I was 13). I was at Woodstock. I was in San Francisco in the late 1970's and saw all sorts of live jazz, I saw Pink Floyd touring when they were releasing their albums, not rehashing them, and my father introduced me to classical on 78's on a turntable and amp he built himself; in short, you can't compare your experiences with mine and you shouldn't do either.

You always seem dissatisfied with what you are doing. Why? No one can do everything, and shouldn't even if it's possible. Way better to choose what you want and go with it, and damn the other stuff. Let someone else do it, meanwhile, you become the most knowledgeable at what YOU do. Don't waste your time worrying. Just since I've known you, I have gone from knowing the Op 76 quartets and some symphonies to knowing nearly as much about Haydn as anyone in the world. Life is short, don't waste it.

[Jay F]

How does one find time to post in music forums when one should be exploring?

You can't listen and type at the same time?

[mn dave]

You can't listen and type at the same time?

I doubt if it makes for good "exploring".

[71 dB]

One cannot compare the electronically manipulated, non-synchoronous overlapping of five tracks sung by one and the same singer with the synchronously overlapping of five different melodic lines playd on organ or harpsichord.

What do you mean non-synchoronous? You mean the five tracks had different tempi causing them to be out of sync?

I doubt if it makes for good "exploring".

Even if you use Internet Explorer?

[mn dave]

Even if you use Internet Explorer?

Oh, especially then.

[Karl Henning]

I doubt if it makes for good "exploring".

+ 1

[Madiel]

You said you were not interested in comparisons and you were right. One cannot compare the electronically manipulated, non-synchoronous overlapping of five tracks sung by one and the same singer with the synchronously overlapping of five different melodic lines playd on organ or harpsichord.

There are 2 vocally overlaid tracks. I said 5-voice counterpoint, but normally when one is talking about 'voices' in counterpoint one does not mean 'sung'.

(EDIT: It's actually arguably 6-voice, but I was playing it safe.)

Nor, when one is talking about 5-voice counterpoint, is one focused on the technical facility of the performer. One is normally focused on the compositional aspect. I certainly was. Why on earth does it matter that the same singer's voice was used 3 times instead of using 3 different singers to perform live? One of the bits of 5-voice counterpoint I'm familiar with is in Mozart's last symphony - is Mozart somehow a poorer composer because of how many players he requires to generate the 5 voices, rather than fitting it all on an organ or harpsichord? Is a Bach cantata inherently inferior in your eyes to the Well-Tempered Clavier?

[EigenUser]

Apart from Ken's request for shortish pieces, a good call!  And (as you disclose) another instance of what might have been a thoroughly commendable piece, spoiled by KS's need to inject arrant goofiness.

I know! I like some silliness in music. I even performed Ligeti's Mysteries of the Macabre as a violin/piano version. The difference there is that the silliness is more or less the reason for the piece. It would be totally different if, for instance, Ligeti had someone start making funny vocal noises in the middle of Lontano.

The other bad case of this in KS's music is Michael's Reise. I would have really liked that piece, but there was too much silliness to ignore it.

[Madiel]

I listened to this song: pleasant to the ear for 5 minutes. I read the lyrics and I must confess I've seen much worse. Okay, so what next? Do I feel the need to hear it again? Absolutely not. If it weren't for you, I would have never heard it in the first place. Would I have missed something essential? Absolutely not. So there.

The very notion that any piece of music is 'essential' to a person is exactly why I'm asking you about how your favourite music has greater value to you than giving you a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction.

I'm very glad indeed that I know my favourite music (including the 70-minute album that that particular song comes from, chronicling an emotional journey from fear and anger to peace and acceptance as a relationship breaks up, which now that I think of it could describe quite a few Romantic-era song cycles - except they have a tendency to end with death because getting over it just isn't Romantic enough), but I'm still having a very difficult time thinking of any of it, of any style - Beethoven, Faure, Holmboe, Tori Amos - that I would describe has having achieved something functionally for me beyond a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction. Listening to it may well be terribly cathartic, but I'd still regard that as essentially a 'pleasure'.

The very notion of "I couldn't live without it" tends to obscure that at some past point you did, in fact, function perfectly well without it.

[Ken B]

Well, this might work a rebours, too. Orthodox Christianity is my (and your) religion, so I guess we both qualify for all of the above. 

I just want to call this out as an impressive comment. 

[Ken B]

How does one find time to post in music forums when one should be exploring?

Thread winner.

[Ken B]

There is a subtle variety, shades of playfulness & humor within KS's work; a clownish aspect to his character that I find  refreshing, and is quite unique to modern music which is often deadly serious at all times, no levity, no humorous moments etc. .. you either "get it" or you don't I suppose, some of it is even pure Vaudeville or slapstick of the Laurel & Hardy variety  .. none of it is unmusical crap though. Everything KS did when you get right down to it was in service of the music he was creating ..

"Barbershop" in Stimmung.

[Madiel]

And who the hell wants to listen to 70 minutes of some performer dwelling on their personal problems .. all I have to say is GET OVER IT.

*Deletes Winterreise from playlist*

[71 dB]

I listened to it too .. nothing worth commenting on and I'm not sure what the point was .. was it to illustrate that when a pop artist dabbles in loftier things (like musical counterpoint) their inadequacies are emphasized even more .. ? And who the hell wants to listen to 70 minutes of some performer dwelling on their personal problems .. all I have to say is GET OVER IT.

There's your "problem". You are seeking things (like musical counterpoint) typical to classical music (or "art music" as you prefer) in pop. It doesn't work like that. Pop has OTHER things (like dwelling on ones personal problems) to offer, things you don't find easily in art music.

The artist in question isn't even pop. She is an indie artist. Pop is just one music group outside "art music".