Hi from John

[JohnH]

Hello everybody! Just registered here, hoping for some cool discussions in the future.

[Que]

Welcome!

And what are your musical tastes, or are you here to discover them?

Q

[ibanezmonster]

"Please like Mahler, please like Mahler!"



(filling in for a certain person's absence)

[Sean]

Hey, John!

[mc ukrneal]

Welcome and enjoy yourself!

[bhodges]

Hi John, and welcome. (Love the drawing in your avatar, by the way.)

--Bruce

[Mirror Image]

Hello everybody! Just registered here, hoping for some cool discussions in the future.

Welcome aboard, John! Who are some of your favorite composers?

[Hollywood]

Hi there John. Greetings from Beethoven and Mozart's Vienna. Welcome to the forum. 

[Lisztianwagner]

Welcome to the forum, John!

[JohnH]

Thank you all for the inquiries about my personal musical tastes and listening habits. I have been fascinated with music since childhood, listening to the great composers and spending hours reading about their lives and work from library books and record sleeves.

I find the most worthwhile music reveals an unpredictable, organic universe, packed with arresting dynamics and subtleties of timbre, wild rhythmic exchanges, bursts of soul-shaking noise, violence as well as surprising innovations of melodic and and harmonic development. It's my belief that a full and enduring appreciation of any piece of music, however simplistic,  must go beyond mere listening, beyond what is immediately pleasing to the ear, into an understanding and embracing of the concepts and processes that were the life's blood of the original composer.

So sit back and listen without prejudice.Reticence is such a precious quality, a sign of humility that bespeaks a sense of our own fleeting insignificance - of the true proportion of human affairs when measured against the rest of existence.

[Sean]

Hi JohnH, indeed in great music the composer is so possessed by their creation that the layers of expressive details in the scoring and wider processes become as important as the overall conception. In recent years I've tried to focus more on exploring interpretation, and the history of recording provides a huge and rich stock of artistic documents.

I can agree that the more information you can absorb about the composer the more interesting the music seems to become- for me this happened with Wagner, Messiaen and Bax.

And that objective mind can be hard to come by...

[Karl Henning]

So sit back and listen without prejudice.Reticence is such a precious quality, a sign of humility that bespeaks a sense of our own fleeting insignificance - of the true proportion of human affairs when measured against the rest of existence.

Excellent advice.

[Wanderer]

Welcome!

[North Star]

Excellent advice.

+1

Welcome, John.

Still, I wouldn't mind it if you named some favourite pieces / composers.

[Mirror Image]

Still, I wouldn't mind it if you named some favourite pieces / composers.

+1

[JohnH]

First, but by no means top of the Liszt 

For me, Franz Liszt was a complete musician in every respect. Composer, conductor, virtuoso, exhibitionist and teacher, a true genius whose visionary harmonies are particularly worthy of further investigation.  His music was truly original and far reaching. In his most popular and advanced works, he is the true Romantic composer. He pioneered the variation technique and use of the leitmotif, largely invented the symphonic poem and, furthermore, ventured into atonality with the Bagatelle sans tonalité ("Bagatelle without Tonality").

One of the works I have been most impressed with recently is the Héroïde funèbre, the first movement of a planned 'Revolutionary' Symphony, expansive and full of tragic grandeur.

[Sean]

You've almost convinced me, maybe it's time for that 100 CD piano music box.

[Mirror Image]

First, but by no means top of the Liszt 

For me, Franz Liszt was a complete musician in every respect. Composer, conductor, virtuoso, exhibitionist and teacher, a true genius whose visionary harmonies are particularly worthy of further investigation.  His music was truly original and far reaching. In his most popular and advanced works, he is the true Romantic composer. He pioneered the variation technique and use of the leitmotif, largely invented the symphonic poem and, furthermore, ventured into atonality with the Bagatelle sans tonalité ("Bagatelle without Tonality").

One of the works I have been most impressed with recently is the Héroïde funèbre, the first movement of a planned 'Revolutionary' Symphony, expansive and full of tragic grandeur.

Liszt was, indeed, an innovative composer. I don't know hardly any of the solo piano works, but have been greatly impressed with the orchestral and chamber works I've heard through the years. The Faust Symphony is perhaps my favorite work of his that I know well.