Hey. I'm not exactly new to classical, although I do lack in formal training, but I figured out I'd post that here.
I really like Mozart's late piano concertos and symphonies. They just seem to make a perfect sense. Every note is inevitable. The melodies are great, of course - but what really makes these compositions so powerful is form. Of course, all great composers are elegant, but Mozart in particular seems the best in this regard, as if his works were a tribute to reason and logic or something.
I suppose very little beats Mozart, but still - are there any other classical (or romantic/classical) composers who write like that? Specific recordings would be preferable, if possible. Thanks :)
Your reaction to Mozart is extremely personal, so who knows if you would react the same way to another composer? If you want to try real masters of form, try baroque composers especially Bach. And if you really, really love complex forms realized elegantly, try Webern. If you simply enjoy the classical style you might want to also try Haydn.
Quote from: Slieep on September 16, 2007, 11:29:14 PM
Every note is inevitable *** as if his works were a tribute to reason and logic or something.
I suppose very little beats Mozart, but still - are there any other classical (or romantic/classical) composers who write like that?
This also applies to Beethoven and Brahms. In fact, it applies 100% to Brahms, where every note is "inevitable" and no notes are superfluous ........ 0:)
There are many major composers whose emotional intensity is matched by their mastery of form. Beethoven and Brahms, of course; but also Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Mahler, even Tchaikovsky in certain pieces (Symphonies #5 and #6, the Piano Trio). In fact, that's one of the marks of a truly great composer.
I would throw Dvorak into that group as well, who learned a lot from Brahms. I think in general the "traditional" Romantics (Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvorak, etc) are some of the best examples of blending emotion with form, as opposed to the radicals (Liszt, Wagner, etc) who did not let traditional forms get in the way of the emotional intent of their music.
Thanks guys! I am very familiar with all the composers here except for Webern, who Ive never tried out (since I don't really enjoy Schoenberg - yet? - and they're supposedly similar), but perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Mozart is just very elegant... he goes from storm to calm within the space of a few notes and it still seems to make a perfect sense. There are tons of repeated themes. It's as if he had the entire composition in his head and then he wrote it down - not in stages. It could be a personal reaction like you say. Oh well. :)
Quote from: Slieep on September 19, 2007, 06:10:26 AM
Thanks guys! I am very familiar with all the composers here except for Webern, who Ive never tried out (since I don't really enjoy Schoenberg - yet? - and they're supposedly similar), but perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Mozart is just very elegant... he goes from storm to calm within the space of a few notes and it still seems to make a perfect sense. There are tons of repeated themes. It's as if he had the entire composition in his head and then he wrote it down - not in stages. It could be a personal reaction like you say. Oh well. :)
I've read that Mozart once described his compositional process much like that; he heard the piece "all at once," and wrote as if he were taking dictation. Beethoven, on the other hand, would write 13, 14, even 16 different versions of a melody before he was satisfied--yet his music in its final form also has that inevitability. It's not a matter of "suppressing" emotion to get at good form; it's more using form to heighten and focus emotion.
I am unceasingly fascinated with how inevitability and notes get associated.
We also note the inevitability ........
Quote from: Slieep on September 19, 2007, 06:10:26 AM
It's as if he had the entire composition in his head and then he wrote it down - not in stages.
Exactly what he did. He would compose music in his head (usually more than one at a time) , then he would write the notes down while talking to his wife Constanze.
Quote from: CK on September 20, 2007, 04:01:14 AM
Exactly what he did. He would compose music in his head (usually more than one at a time) , then he would write the notes down while talking to his wife Constanze.
Or sometimes while shooting pool. ;D
Quote from: jochanaan on September 19, 2007, 12:08:59 PM
I've read that Mozart once described his compositional process much like that; he heard the piece "all at once," and wrote as if he were taking dictation.
And yet, it seems that was not the method involved in (e.g.) the set of 'Haydn' quartets. So there was some threshold of composition even for
Mozart, beneath which the music emerged with 'coasting' effort, and above which . . . not.
Quote from: karlhenning on September 22, 2007, 10:01:17 AM
And yet, it seems that was not the method involved in (e.g.) the set of 'Haydn' quartets. So there was some threshold of composition even for Mozart, beneath which the music emerged with 'coasting' effort, and above which . . . not.
My guess is that there has always been a threshold for Mozart, it just mostly happened in his head thanks to his near perfect mnemonic abilities. The fact he never needed to write things down doesn't mean it wasn't happening, so the Haydn Quartets may not be such an isolated event, he merely felt necessary to use more conventional means in this instance due the considerable need to reformulate his own technique and aesthetic principles.
Quote from: karlhenning on September 22, 2007, 10:01:17 AM
And yet, it seems that was not the method involved in (e.g.) the set of 'Haydn' quartets. So there was some threshold of composition even for Mozart, beneath which the music emerged with 'coasting' effort, and above which . . . not.
So it would appear. And weren't the Haydn quartets the most radical things he'd written up to that time? He apparently tried deliberately to expand his own musical vocabulary with these pieces; that's not easy even for a Mozart.
Quote from: karlhenning on September 19, 2007, 12:14:48 PM
I am unceasingly fascinated with how inevitability and notes get associated.
:D
I would really like to witness this scene : A GMGer meets Monteverdi, Franck or any composer of "non-inevitable notes" type and tells him (about one of his works) : "This, you could have avoided, this note is superfluous, try this instead..." :) >:D
Mendelssohn for sure, and Chopin too.
OLEN TEEMOJENI ORJA (I'm a slave to my themes)- Jean Sibelius
Try Sibelius, especially symphonies 4-7, esp. nr 7 :)
Quote from: Slieep on September 19, 2007, 06:10:26 AM
. Mozart is just very elegant... he goes from storm to calm within the space of a few notes and it still seems to make a perfect sense. There are tons of repeated themes. It's as if he had the entire composition in his head and then he wrote it down - not in stages. It could be a personal reaction like you say. Oh well. :)
It's funny, but I tend to find Bach more inevitable than Mozart. A great artist sounds inevitable-- but not boring.
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on September 19, 2007, 12:14:48 PM
I am unceasingly fascinated with how inevitability and notes get associated.
I found it interesting that Stravinsky (most of his mid-later stuff is "inevitable"), described the composing process as selective perception. (Like a sculptor who just cuts away the marble that does not belong.) Be it was clear that Stravinsky didn't have it all in his mind- but rather a problem he wanted to solve.
Quote from: DavidW on September 17, 2007, 03:52:06 AM
If you simply enjoy the classical style you might want to also try Haydn.
Yes, yes, yes :) Haydn's mastery of form is so effortless that it's sheer joy to hear him moulding it to his own ends.
And, of course, that Beethoven chap knew a thing or two about form, too :)
A third composer - about whom we've been chatting recently on another thread - is Hummel, and his chamber music is a pleasure to listen to... or, if you are a fair-to-middling pianist or violinist, to play through for yourself. Play the music yourself, and you'll be amazed how quickly the composer yields up his secrets on form :)
Quote from: jochanaan on September 17, 2007, 07:57:15 AM
There are many major composers whose emotional intensity is matched by their mastery of form. Beethoven and Brahms, of course; but also Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Mahler, even Tchaikovsky in certain pieces (Symphonies #5 and #6, the Piano Trio). In fact, that's one of the marks of a truly great composer.
Some composers are foundational, or at least elements of listener psychology say so. We tend to hear Beethoven as inevitable and Bruckner as "evitable", largely because of their relative positions against a template Beethoven was largely responsible for. Yet, even this generally objective view has hidden subjective components that mean we're bound to hear these composers in this way. The great majority of music listeners have been educated, formally or otherwise, to hear Beethoven as the default and Bruckner as the departure. Learning new composers involves unlearning the strangeness of "evitabilty" enough to connect the parts but not so much that the differences lose their uniqueness.
Quote from: drogulus on August 16, 2010, 03:52:17 PM
Some composers are foundational, or at least elements of listener psychology say so. We tend to hear Beethoven as inevitable and Bruckner as "evitable"...
Some of us seem to have missed that particular element of our "education." :)
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on September 19, 2007, 12:14:48 PM
I am unceasingly fascinated with how inevitability and notes get associated.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any "inevitability" in music composition unless a work is previously known (like having read the back of the book) or there is enough acquaintance with the style, so as to expect a tonic chord at the end.
ZB
Quote from: jochanaan on August 17, 2010, 09:11:09 AM
Some of us seem to have missed that particular element of our "education." :)
The "narrative" will be different for everyone. Probably most people started their listening experience with one of the big names and branched out. That wasn't true in my case, though. I started with a very odd combination: Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Gabrieli, Hovhaness and Berlioz were the first composers I listened to, followed by Ives and Hindemith. I had to reverse-engineer the foundational aspects of Beethoven, to learn how what he did led to what came after. When I read books about music I picked up some of what I missed by skipping around the way I did.
Quote from: zamyrabyrd on August 18, 2010, 08:25:23 AM
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any "inevitability" in music composition unless a work is previously known (like having read the back of the book) or there is enough acquaintance with the style, so as to expect a tonic chord at the end.
ZB
Some of it is subliminal. I must have picked up some cues from music on the radio or TV before my serious exploration started. That must play a role in deciding what the default is and what departs from it. I do think everyone has such expectations however they may have formed. You might get it like I did or you might receive it from school. In my case part of the influence might have come from long forgotten lectures by Leonard Bernstein. Whenever I see one of these I'm amazed at how much of it is familiar.
Quote from: drogulus on August 18, 2010, 01:12:07 PM
...In my case part of the influence might have come from long forgotten lectures by Leonard Bernstein. Whenever I see one of these I'm amazed at how much of it is familiar.
I think I know at least one of the lectures you're talking about, the one on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Remember, though, that Bernstein did emphasize how much work went into making that symphony sound so "inevitable"--it was hardly inevitable that Beethoven would leave the symphony exactly as it stands today. :)
Like zamyrabyrd, I can appreciate how little true inevitability there is in music.
Quote from: jochanaan on August 19, 2010, 09:17:38 AM
I think I know at least one of the lectures you're talking about, the one on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Remember, though, that Bernstein did emphasize how much work went into making that symphony sound so "inevitable"--it was hardly inevitable that Beethoven would leave the symphony exactly as it stands today. :)
Like zamyrabyrd, I can appreciate how little true inevitability there is in music.
Yes, that's the lecture I was thinking of. My point was that what you think of as "inevitable" has to do with different factors like the place a composer occupies in a line of development in musical style, which causes other composers to react in ways that are heard as noninevitable. We might be reacting to such cues, especially if we process other information about the music derived from various sources.
That would be consistent with your view that there is little intrinsic inevitability in music. But there may be some, in the form of the same predisposition to favor some tonal combinations over others that governs musical choices generally. There's no
tabula rasa in music, it appears. Many designs will work, but not all designs. A composer who founds or substantially alters musical style is at a great advantage versus his descendants. The measure of a composers greatness is how his example prevents us from hearing those who come after as great in the same way. You do something first and it's yours, and if someone else does it it's not as good even if it "really is".
(http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/Smileys/classic/cheesy.gif)
Quote from: jochanaan on August 19, 2010, 09:17:38 AM
I think I know at least one of the lectures you're talking about, the one on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Remember, though, that Bernstein did emphasize how much work went into making that symphony sound so "inevitable"--it was hardly inevitable that Beethoven would leave the symphony exactly as it stands today. :)
Like zamyrabyrd, I can appreciate how little true inevitability there is in music.
I remember that film too and unfortunately have come to the conclusion that Bernstein frequently oversimplified to the point of distortion. I was reviewing some of his videotapes to see if they could be used a course and found the one on Sonata form was way off. (He did a lot to bring classical music to the public though and should be credited for that.) There are some good ideas in his Unanswered Question but mixed in with too many of his mugs and unsubstantiated arguments.
Charles Rosen showed that Sonata is not a simple concept at all. In fact, expression in search of a form might describe its significance in the classical period.
ZB
It may be that music reaches a peak when the wealth of possibilities in the material presented makes inevitability impossible. Don't we relish surprise any more? It seems to me that Beethoven was a composer who was always ready to sacrifice form for expression if the need arose and that is one of the sources of his greatness.
Which composers "sacrifice form to expression?" This is a non-sequitur as far as I am concerned. Form and expression are two completely different things.
I'm not sure what you mean by sacrificing form to expression.
Could this be composers like Bruckner and Mahler, whose symphonies are very long and involved? I don't think they sacrifice form to expression at all,whatever that means.
I suppose what is meant by this is that composers such as Anton and Gustav have often been accused of writing music which is sprawling and incoherent.
But having been intimately familiar with their symphonies for so long,I don't find their symphonies in any way formless or incoherent.
They make perfectly good structual sense on their own terms,and there's no use faulting them for not being as concise as those of Mozart and Haydn,etc.