Florestan´s Romantic Salon

Started by Florestan, May 05, 2016, 02:30:40 AM

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kishnevi

Siegfried Idyll is not really programmatic.

Karl Henning

Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on May 23, 2017, 09:47:01 AM
Siegfried Idyll is not really programmatic.

I think there is an argument to be made there, even though the piece seems originally to have been titled Triebschen Idyll with Fidi's birdsong and the orange sunrise, as symphonic birthday greeting.  Good Lord, even this compact piece could suffer from his characteristic verbal incontinence  ;)
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Parsifal

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on May 23, 2017, 09:41:52 AM
And while Berlioz wrote no absolute music, he was a master of, erm, "absolute forms."

Rêverie et caprice for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 8?


Karl Henning

Quote from: Scarpia on May 23, 2017, 09:58:43 AM
Rêverie et caprice for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 8?

My statement was incorrectly absolute  :)  Andrei did point out that very work.  Is a Rêverie "absolute music"?  Feels borderline to me. Part of me wants simply to allow a caprice as "absolute music," part of me leans towards calling the Op.8 a pair of contrasting character pieces.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Jo498

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on May 23, 2017, 09:36:08 AM
When I am in Devil's Advocate mode, I rather wonder if Wagner's dependence on extra-musical stuff was not an inherent compositional weakness.
As he wrote about the most symphonic (="absolute") operas, bleeding chunks of which work quite well as isolated "quasi tone poems" I think this was only an "external" dependence.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Florestan

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on May 23, 2017, 10:02:39 AM
Is a Rêverie "absolute music"?  Feels borderline to me. Part of me wants simply to allow a caprice as "absolute music," part of me leans towards calling the Op.8 a pair of contrasting character pieces.

Given we talk about Berlioz, I doubt there is no programmatic underpinning.

Et voilà: http://www.hberlioz.com/Scores/sreverie.htm
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Gurn Blanston

This would be a great addition to the Romantic Salon, am I right?   0:)

8)
Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

Florestan

Quote from: Gurn Blanston on May 23, 2017, 11:18:47 AM
This would be a great addition to the Romantic Salon, am I right?   0:)

8)

AFAIC, you can take all necessary actions.  :)
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

millionrainbows

Just listened to Samuel Barber's Symphony No. 1 and his Piano Concerto. I listen these days in terms of verticality vs. horizontal, and the vertical definitely won. Thus, I see him as very much a modernist, as well as his usual label as a Romantic. Some very exotic sonorities in the Piano Concerto.

Cato

Quote from: millionrainbows on July 31, 2017, 09:04:25 AM
Just listened to Samuel Barber's Symphony No. 1 and his Piano Concerto. I listen these days in terms of verticality vs. horizontal, and the vertical definitely won. Thus, I see him as very much a modernist, as well as his usual label as a Romantic. Some very exotic sonorities in the Piano Concerto.

The terms are not exclusive!

Quote from: Scarpia on May 23, 2017, 09:58:43 AM
Rêverie et caprice for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 8?



Speaking of the term Reverie...

https://www.youtube.com/v/Zl6fhv3pyao



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

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

millionrainbows

The more I listen to Beethoven, the less I think he's a Romantic. He's a modernist.

John Copeland

Quote from: millionrainbows on August 16, 2017, 01:29:40 PM
The more I listen to Beethoven, the less I think he's a Romantic. He's a modernist.
Yep.  How he would love the sororities and dynamic range of a big modern orchestra in a big custom built hall.  Oh lordy, what would he have written for THAT (with unimpaired hearing)?  He certainly was a modernist, by about 200 years!   :)

Wanderer

Speaking of music prone to devastate romantic salons, here's Alkan's cadenza for Mozart's Piano Concerto No.20:

https://youtu.be/1kXjcYVJVCI



PS. Andrei, your inbox is full!

zamyrabyrd

Quote from: Wanderer on October 15, 2017, 01:16:20 AM
Speaking of music prone to devastate romantic salons, here's Alkan's cadenza for Mozart's Piano Concerto No.20:
https://youtu.be/1kXjcYVJVCI

Alkan's cadenza is interesting. However, Brahms' is less of a loosely strung together potpourri, more consistent in style, I'd say:

https://www.youtube.com/v/Izv0S1Et6kA
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one."

― Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

vandermolen

#154
Quote from: Florestan on May 09, 2016, 12:57:33 AM
Scion and Karlo, thanks for your posts. Indeed, Friedrich and Turner are among my favorite painters.




Coming very late to this thread. Friedrich is one of my very favourite artists, more so than Turner actually. His art has a dream-like and poetic quality to it. It is no surprise that he influenced the Surrealists.

In the top painting Friedrich and his young wife Caroline sail hand-in-hand towards a celestial city.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Florestan

Although "Romanticism" in the 19th century was mostly a German or German-influenced affair, during the whole 20th century "romanticism" was carried on mostly by Russian and English composers. Discuss. (not that I expect anyone to --- it's just a thought I've been ruminating on for quite a long time).

Please note: "R" for the former, "r" for the latter.  ;D



Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Jo498

If one takes the first half of the 20th century as a time when late (sometimes too late or overripe ;)) romanticism was still alive, I think the impression is somewhat skewed. With the Russians it seems obvious that "modernists" and "romantics" (both very rough and clicheed terms) existed in parallel, sometimes (like Prokofieff) in one person. Among the German/Austrian composers it seems mainly that the big names overshadow the others. But Korngold, Schmidt, Schreker, Joseph Marx, Hausegger and others did exist and they would probably be as well known as some of the British composers if there had not been Mahler, Strauss, Schönberg etc. To put it somewhat malignantly, if there is no first tier in a region, it is obvious that the second tier will be more famous than someone else's second tier.

Another point could of be that the German/Austrian composers of the late 19th century had "exhausted" romanticism to such an extent that more of their immediate successors looked for new, sometimes more extravagant ways of composition. Russian music had a much shorter history but it was also rich enough to produce its "own brand" of both modernism and late/postromanticism (similarly probably for the Czech). But British music was really dormant between ca. 1700 and the late 19th century. (The most important "British" composers between Purcell and Elgar were Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn...)
There was far more "space" for Elgar and the somewhat younger composers like RVW to do their own particular version of later romantic or also modern music than for a German/Austrian born in ca. 1870.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Irons

Quote from: Florestan on December 16, 2018, 12:16:29 PM
Although "Romanticism" in the 19th century was mostly a German or German-influenced affair, during the whole 20th century "romanticism" was carried on mostly by Russian and English composers. Discuss. (not that I expect anyone to --- it's just a thought I've been ruminating on for quite a long time).

Please note: "R" for the former, "r" for the latter.  ;D

In the case of Soviet Russia their composers had no choice. The Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) proclaimed "extension of the hegemony of the proletariat to the music field". In other words conform or end up in Siberia or worse!
You must have a very good opinion of yourself to write a symphony - John Ireland.

I opened the door people rushed through and I was left holding the knob - Bo Diddley.

Florestan

Quote from: Irons on December 17, 2018, 07:46:10 AM
In the case of Soviet Russia their composers had no choice. The Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) proclaimed "extension of the hegemony of the proletariat to the music field". In other words conform or end up in Siberia or worse!

Just what has "hegemony of the proletariat" got to do with Romanticism / romanticism? And what do you make of the firmly anti-Bolshevik yet unabashedly romantic Russian émigrés Rachmaninoff, Medtner and Bortkiewicz?
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Florestan

Quote from: Jo498 on December 17, 2018, 12:23:32 AM
If one takes the first half of the 20th century as a time when late (sometimes too late or overripe ;)) romanticism was still alive, I think the impression is somewhat skewed. With the Russians it seems obvious that "modernists" and "romantics" (both very rough and clicheed terms) existed in parallel, sometimes (like Prokofieff) in one person. Among the German/Austrian composers it seems mainly that the big names overshadow the others. But Korngold, Schmidt, Schreker, Joseph Marx, Hausegger and others did exist and they would probably be as well known as some of the British composers if there had not been Mahler, Strauss, Schönberg etc. To put it somewhat malignantly, if there is no first tier in a region, it is obvious that the second tier will be more famous than someone else's second tier.

Another point could of be that the German/Austrian composers of the late 19th century had "exhausted" romanticism to such an extent that more of their immediate successors looked for new, sometimes more extravagant ways of composition. Russian music had a much shorter history but it was also rich enough to produce its "own brand" of both modernism and late/postromanticism (similarly probably for the Czech). But British music was really dormant between ca. 1700 and the late 19th century. (The most important "British" composers between Purcell and Elgar were Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn...)
There was far more "space" for Elgar and the somewhat younger composers like RVW to do their own particular version of later romantic or also modern music than for a German/Austrian born in ca. 1870.

Some interesting food for thought here.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini