Go.
I'll just say one thing (for now at least ;) ) :
Mahler
should be rather self explanatory after that! :)
Berg, Lulu, Act III scene 2...when you want to contemplate becoming a serial killer.
Sarge
Nothing better than Wagner, since his fundamental peculiarity is the representation of the drama like element of introspection; it is especially visible in the late operas, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal :)
Debussy Piano Music - Images, Arabesques, etc. There is a great disc with Zoltan Kocsis (now in a box of some sort I think).
Mostly anything Nono composed after 1979-80, from Fragmente-Stille onwards.
Thank you to all. Even Sarge. ;)
Quote from: mc ukrneal on November 01, 2011, 01:10:54 PM
Debussy Piano Music - Images, Arabesques, etc. There is a great disc with Zoltan Kocsis (now in a box of some sort I think).
Have
Images on now.
My contemplation music tends to be either Feldman (Crippled Symmetries, Five Pianos, Triadic Memories, e.g.) or Cage (Cheap Imitation). Can also go with some Satie and Messiaen (the Louanges from the Quatuor, e.g.)
Personally, I cannot see Mahler (for instance) as contemplation music . . . nor (to name a composer I like yet better than Mahler) Berlioz. Where the music is by design dramatic, it engages the intellect in ways which defeat the purpose of contemplation.
YMMV, of course.
Quote from: karlhenning on November 02, 2011, 04:44:30 AM
Where the music is by design dramatic, it engages the intellect in ways which defeat the purpose of contemplation.[/font]
Exactly.
Quote from: Mn Dave on November 01, 2011, 05:09:13 PM
Thank you to all. Even Sarge. ;)
Have Images on now.
And? Score? Or a big fat zero? Just curious - the same music can affect us all differently...
Quote from: mc ukrneal on November 02, 2011, 04:50:54 AM
And? Score? Or a big fat zero? Just curious - the same music can affect us all differently...
Some parts were more fitting than others but overall it was a postive experience. Thanks.
I can't get contemplative with any of this stuff. (Well, maybe with Satie.) Too any notes! Too much action, adventure, conversation and dance! George Winston, on the other hand, stuffs me securely between my own ears. Depressing that.
Quote from: Mn Dave on November 02, 2011, 04:53:02 AM
Some parts were more fitting than others but overall it was a postive experience. Thanks.
Well, it's great music, so I wasn't worried on that point. I don't know why, but I tend to find French music more geared towards this experience. The second piece that came to mind was Faure's Requiem. Maybe it's the impressionistic style that some French composers had. Not sure.
George Winston - I like some of it and it soothes, but does not put me in a contemplative mood. I wonder why...
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on November 01, 2011, 12:45:53 PM
Berg, Lulu, Act III scene 2...when you want to contemplate becoming a serial killer.
Sarge
Post of the year! ROTFL :D :D :D ROTFL
Quote from: chasmaniac on November 02, 2011, 04:56:05 AM
I can't get contemplative with any of this stuff. (Well, maybe with Satie.) Too any notes! Too much action, adventure, conversation and dance!
All we are saying is give Morty (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,19527.msg573516.html#msg573516) a chance!
Well, silence is probably best, but is it possible that music can help?
Quote from: Mn Dave on November 02, 2011, 05:02:16 AM
Well, silence is probably best, but is it possible that music can help?
I find it so, though again, it's music made in certain ways. Not that there's anything musically wrong with the other ways, bien sûr que non!
Quote from: karlhenning on November 02, 2011, 05:00:29 AM
All we are saying is give Morty (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,19527.msg573516.html#msg573516) a chance!
Hey Karl, you might just be talkin' turkey! Wikied your man Mo and found this bit intriguing:
QuoteLater, he began to produce his very long works, often in one continuous movement, rarely shorter than half an hour in length and often much longer. These works include Violin and String Quartet (1985, around 2 hours), For Philip Guston (1984, around four hours) and, most extreme, the String Quartet II (1983, which is over six hours long without a break.) Typically, these pieces maintain a very slow developmental pace (if not static) and tend to be made up of mostly very quiet sounds. Feldman said himself that quiet sounds had begun to be the only ones that interested him. In a 1982 lecture, Feldman noted: "Do we have anything in music for example that really wipes everything out? That just cleans everything away?"
http://www.youtube.com/v/J3xCsRLJ7Wo
Quote from: Marc on November 02, 2011, 11:19:03 AM
http://www.youtube.com/v/J3xCsRLJ7Wo
Don't know about contemplation, but I sure enjoyed that!
Well, when I listen to BWV 682 on my headphones, early morning in the train, eyes closed .... 'nuff said. 0:)
Yes, though not quite to the degree of (e.g.) Feldman . . . there's large stretches of Baroque keyboard lit which brings me close to The Zone.
Quote from: karlhenning on November 02, 2011, 11:55:56 AM
Yes, though not quite to the degree of (e.g.) Feldman . . . there's large stretches of Baroque keyboard lit which brings me close to The Zone.
Feldman????
(http://i40.tinypic.com/23jjsxd.jpg)
Quote from: chasmaniac on November 02, 2011, 05:20:37 AM
Hey Karl, you might just be talkin' turkey! Wikied your man Mo and found this bit intriguing:
Quote from: karlhenning on November 02, 2011, 04:44:30 AM
Personally, I cannot see Mahler (for instance) as contemplation music . . . nor (to name a composer I like yet better than Mahler) Berlioz. Where the music is by design dramatic, it engages the intellect in ways which defeat the purpose of contemplation.
YMMV, of course.
Hi Karl,
:( Surely there are some parts of Mahler that actually touch you, instead of just give you engagement for the mind...
I really find Mahler helps me through all my troubles! :) Thank goodness for Mahler!
You want music for contemplation? That's simple, listen to Koechlin. 8) His music soothes the soul after a long day of work.
Quote from: mc ukrneal on November 01, 2011, 01:10:54 PM
Debussy Piano Music - Images, Arabesques, etc. There is a great disc with Zoltan Kocsis (now in a box of some sort I think).
I have a playlist on my MP3 player that shuffles choice Debussy piano works (such as some of the Preludes) along with similar stuff by Ravel, Satie and Koechlin that is very good for getting contemplative. I also toss in the solo piano version of the Berceause from Stravinsky's Firebird, and the most bad-assed second piano prelude by Gershwin.
The middle movement of Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit always puts me in a Trance. After a bad day I'll go home, turn out the lights, and listen to that several times.
Bach Organ music has always done that for me.
A nice long slow movement can do that as well. First Movement of Bartok's music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste. The first movement of Shostakovitch's 10th. Rubbra's 4th.
I love a lot of modal music-- the Alap (free meter) section that opens an Indian Raga is very contemplative.
Also, in the world of Jazz, the most contemplative piece I know is a gorgeous McCoy Tyner piece called, duh, Contemplation. The cymbal work by Elvin Jones simply kills me. The solo versions he's done are also fine.
http://www.youtube.com/v/xafJW_VtA8w
Forgot to add the last Movement of Vaughan WIlliam's Sixth, and a lot of the 9th.
Quote from: madaboutmahler on November 01, 2011, 12:45:12 PM
I'll just say one thing (for now at least ;) ) :
Mahler
Quote from: chasmaniac on November 02, 2011, 04:56:05 AM
I can't get contemplative with any of this stuff. (Well, maybe with Satie.) Too any notes! Too much action, adventure, conversation and dance!
I agree with that. There's just too much going on to contemplate anything but the music itself, and, in the case of Mahler, the images the music conjures up. Satie works for me though. In fact I wrote my magnum opus under the influence of the
Gnossiennes--and a good bottle of Irish whiskey ;D
Sarge
Really seems that four composers are dominating this conversation (or regularly appearing): Faure, Debussy, Ravel, and Satie. All French....
Pärt - Tabula Rasa, second movement
Feldman - The Viola in My Life, Piano and String Quartet, Coptic Light, Rothko Chapel, Why Patterns?, etc. etc.
Schoenberg - Farben from Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16
This breathtaking piece by Stravinsky can take me into different ways .... into reflection and contemplation about almost anything in life AND/OR into questioning what's the point of all this reflection and contemplation .... which eventually leads me into contemplation about the plain fact that alle Menschen müssen sterben.
http://www.youtube.com/v/q4pGbFwC1s0
Played on a viola pomposa:
http://www.youtube.com/v/qKALHJzrewQ
Ligeti's textural pieces - Atmospheres, Lontano, etc
Quote from: Marc on November 03, 2011, 09:31:32 AM
This breathtaking piece by Stravinsky can take me into different ways .... into reflection and contemplation about almost anything in life AND/OR into questioning what's the point of all this reflection and contemplation .... which eventually leads me into contemplation about the plain fact that alle Menschen müssen sterben.
http://www.youtube.com/v/q4pGbFwC1s0
Played on a viola pomposa:
http://www.youtube.com/v/qKALHJzrewQ
Very nice, especially in modo pomposo.
Quote from: mc ukrneal on November 03, 2011, 03:03:34 AM
Really seems that four composers are dominating this conversation (or regularly appearing): Faure, Debussy, Ravel, and Satie. All French....
Certainly agree with all those four! :)
Certainly agree that all four are French ; )
French contemplation = barbe à papa to me. :P
(http://i40.tinypic.com/m7ue78.jpg)
Oh no!
Mes sincères excuses pour les Français!
I forgot about this one:
http://www.youtube.com/v/sIif84bmvXI
(A-capellakoor Bragi is an amateur choir of young students in Groningen, NL. Its occupation of singers varies each year. I think that Rein de Vries is the conductor for already a couple of centuries now. ;D)
My guess is that nowadays this is one of the most popular contemplation tunes:
http://www.youtube.com/v/MZIGplm4y4k
(Not for me, though.)
Purcell - Fantazias for the viols
J S BACH, The Art of the Fugue.
des Prez, Feldman, Bryars'
Sinking of the Titanic..
Quote from: Coco on December 23, 2011, 05:35:43 PM
Purcell - Fantazias for the viols
+1 and another +1 for the
Tabula Rasa suggestion. Pärt's music I find contemplative in its very nature but the second movement of
TR is the musical equivalent of diving deeper & deeper into one's own mind until everything superficial is shed.