For me, the prime example would be Bach's organ music - took about 10 years, then it all clicked when I acquired Rogg's boxset on Harmonia Mundi. Now, I couldn't live well without them.
Chopin probably. But with Arrau's nocturnes, it all "clicked" into place. 0:)
Beethoven "Hammerklavier" Sonata -- the "clicker": Peter Serkin playing a Graf fortepiano
Quote from: Don on April 02, 2008, 02:40:27 PM
For me, the prime example would be Bach's organ music - took about 10 years, then it all clicked when I acquired Rogg's boxset on Harmonia Mundi. Now, I couldn't live well without them.
Bach's organ music for me as well, and organ music in general.
Q
Quote from: Que on April 02, 2008, 09:39:10 PM
Bach's organ music for me as well, and organ music in general.
Q
Same here. For long I ignored organ music.
The rite of spring took a few years to sink in.Also Bach's 48 which I now love with a passion.
Classical Music in general! As it's been less than 4 years.
I would say Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker
Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata for violin and piano
Schubert's Trout Quintet
All works that I love tremendously now.
Quote from: Don on April 02, 2008, 02:40:27 PM
For me, the prime example would be Bach's organ music - took about 10 years, then it all clicked when I acquired Rogg's boxset on Harmonia Mundi. Now, I couldn't live well without them.
Quite the opposite with me. Bach´s organ- (and harpsichord) music (and LvB´s symphonies) was from first the stuff which led me to classical music.
Chopin, hmm...and Bartok! Because it smells of folklore.
But of some reason I got into Shostakovich and Copland immediately! Very vierd. ::)
I took many years to appreciate the Brahms symphonies, even though I connected with the concerti and chamber music quickly.
I was also stuck with the Diabelli Variations for many years. It didn't start to unlock for me till I heard Rosen, and then Schnabel and Richter improved my understanding further.
I still struggle with some of the classical and romantic repertoire: much of Mozart and Schumann leaves me cold.
Bruckner. I tried some of the symphonies off and on for decades, finding most of them interminable, labored, elephantine productions. Somehow about ten years ago the 8th symphony just made sense, and the rest fell into place. (Still mostly interested in 6-9, and I can live without the masses.)
Quote from: Sforzando on April 03, 2008, 08:09:27 AM
Bruckner. I tried some of the symphonies off and on for decades, finding most of them interminable, labored, elephantine productions. Somehow about ten years ago the 8th symphony just made sense, and the rest fell into place. (Still mostly interested in 6-9, and I can live without the masses.)
I'm still put off by Bruckner. Tried a few times. No go. Major sections of yawn.
Quote from: Sforzando on April 03, 2008, 08:09:27 AM
Bruckner. I tried some of the symphonies off and on for decades, finding most of them interminable, labored, elephantine productions. Somehow about ten years ago the 8th symphony just made sense, and the rest fell into place. (Still mostly interested in 6-9, and I can live without the masses.)
I've taken to the Masses first. Still haven't grooved to any the of the symphonies . . . .
Quote from: premont on April 03, 2008, 07:49:33 AM
Quite the opposite with me. Bach´s organ- (and harpsichord) music (and LvB´s symphonies) was from first the stuff which led me to classical music.
Vivaldi led me back to classical music. Now I avoid him like the plague.
Quote from: karlhenning on April 03, 2008, 08:15:17 AM
I've taken to the Masses first. Still haven't grooved to any the of the symphonies . . . .
I do love the Te Deum.
Quote from: Sforzando on April 03, 2008, 08:23:36 AM
I do love the Te Deum.
Maybe I'll try that...some day.
My favorite example is Verdi's Falstaff. About 20 years ago I walked out of a concert performance of it at intermission. I wasn't enjoying the score and as far as I could tell, no one onstage really was, either. The woman I was with said, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" and I said, "Yes, it's time for a margarita." ;D
Now it's one of my favorite operas. Lots of lessons to be learned from paying attention to music that you don't care for, that's for sure.
--Bruce
Quote from: bhodges on April 03, 2008, 12:07:27 PM
Lots of lessons to be learned from paying attention to music that you don't care for, that's for sure.
Yes, and reading about them helps a lot too. Chausson, whose songs I might have heard here and there did not interest me at all -until I did some reading about them before a concert where they were performed. Knowing beforehand what points to pay attention to as well as his musical language gave me an instant appreciation once I heard them live.
So true...
--Bruce
Boulez's Second Sonata... And I still don't appreciate it.
Brahms symphonies
Much chamber music
George Crumb: Ancient Voices of Children
It took me years and years to finish listening to this, but then one day it all came together.
Basically the entire classical period. I liked Beethoven's Fifth and a few piano pieces (Moonlight, Pathétique, Für Elise) but not much else; I didn't appreciate Haydn or Mozart either. As I said on another thread recently, Charles Rosen's book The Classical Style opened my ears.
Bruckner too was a hard sell. It wasn't an adolescent lack of patience (I took to Wagner and Mahler immediately) but something in the music just didn't appeal to my teenage self. But I came to love Bruckner far quicker than the music of the classical period.
Sarge
Well, if I ever do come to appreciate it, no telling yet, then the symphonies of Mahler will have taken years to reach that point. Strangely, in reading over the previous posts, Bruckner was not nearly a problem for me, at least 3-9. But with Mahler, I'm lost by the 8th bar... :-\
8)
----------------
Listening to:
Haydn Baryton Octett 2 - Ricercar Consort - FJH Octet #4 in G for Baryton, Winds & Strings H10:4 1st mvmt
Quote from: Sforzando on April 03, 2008, 08:23:36 AM
I do love the Te Deum.
It sounds like a rock opera to me.
:) Maybe that's why I took to it immediately.
Classical period music for me (not Beethoven). There are very very few pieces that I can listen to all the way through from the classical period. (I still don't appreciate it really then...)
Sibelius & RVW. I came of age in the '60s. Mahler, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Stockhausen, all fit right in with Jimmy, the Velvets, and Moby Grape. I had to grow up, satiate the thrill-seeking ego, and rediscover the quiet spiritual center within before I could really hear Sibelius,RVW, and others who pursued their own timeless muses instead of following the herd desperately seeking status among the self-anointed avant garde.
I've only begun to appreciate Bruckner over the past couple of years. I do have to be in a particularly patient frame of mind, however, and cannot be even a little bit sleepy.
I'm still working on Wagner, trying to hear what a significant (though far from universal) opinion regards as musical greatness. I hear moments of brilliance, dashed to mediocrity by inteminably boring and pompous self-indulgence.
Shostakovich's orchestral music (except his 5th and maybe 10th). It's so chaotic, maybe 100 times more so than Mahler, I don't know what the hell is going on, and more importantly WHY there is so much action!
Quote from: DavidRoss on April 06, 2008, 08:27:06 AM
Sibelius & RVW. I came of age in the '60s. Mahler, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Stockhausen, all fit right in with Jimmy, the Velvets, and Moby Grape. I had to grow up, satiate the thrill-seeking ego, and rediscover the quiet spiritual center within before I could really hear Sibelius, RVW, and others who pursued their own timeless muses instead of following the herd desperately seeking status among the self-anointed avant garde.
Interestingly, for me it's exactly the other way around. I grew up, musically speaking, in the late 1970s, on a strict diet of mostly British and Scandinavian music, from RVW to Nielsen. For many years, the likes of Holst, Berkeley, Tippett, Englund, Madetoja or Tubin meant much more to me than Brahms or Mahler, or any of the other leading members of the dominant Central European school. So, only after more than 20 years of musical discoveries did I really try to apprehend e.g. Brucker, or Mahler, or indeed Schubert or Brahms. And I was only led in that direction via a rather late re-appraisal of Shostakovich. So, the nut of the Teutonic romantic and post-romantic mainstream was one of the hardest to crack for me - much more so than much modernist music from elsewhere.
Quote from: drogulus on April 05, 2008, 07:46:01 AM
It sounds like a rock opera to me. :)
Maybe that's why I took to it immediately.
The only more humorous descriptions of Bruckner I know are when a poster on another forum once referred to the scherzo of #7 as a sea shanty (this from a composer with lived his whole life in landlocked Austria) and when a writer who se name I can't recall described the scherzo of #8 as "the mountains dancing" (which is a positively brilliant metaphor).
Sfozando, yes nice metaphor.
I feel I'm such a genius I got it right with almost everything I ever heard (or ever heard repeatedly). If I can admit to one mistake many years ago it was with Pelleas et Melisande, which I played and played but didn't really connect with. I then went to a very fine production, was properly dragged into the music I'd got to know and realized what an amazing thing it is.
It's good to return to music you've persevered with at a later time ie not just say 5-6 times in a week and then nothing: I find that there's perhaps 3500-4000 hours of thoroughly worthwhile works (I know about 3300)...
Mahler, still don't get it at all. It took awhile for Bruckner to get to me but when i got it, it was like a revelation. It might just take a miracle for me to get Mahler.
Quote from: DavidRoss on April 06, 2008, 08:27:06 AM
I'm still working on Wagner, trying to hear what a significant (though far from universal) opinion regards as musical greatness. I hear moments of brilliance, dashed to mediocrity by inteminably boring and pompous self-indulgence.
DavidRoss Wagner is an opera composer and even more so. He is a music drama theater composer. To truly appreciate Wagner's genius and he's got it in spades you have to get into the story, the characters, the whole drama of his works. It was never Wagner's intention to write "pretty" melodies, arias and ensembles a la Mozart nor was it his intention to appeal to the first time listener with infectious melodies you can hum on first hearing like Bizet's Carmen or Verdi's Rigoletto. Lord knows he is more than capable of doing that just listen to the Prize song from Die Meistersinger. The best way to appreciate Wagner's artwork is through DVD recordings. It won't be easy at first I grant you that but after repeated listening and viewing you
might come to the conclusion I came to: That Wagner and mediocrity do
NOT go hand in hand!
PS: but then again it is perfectly acceptably and understandable not to like Wagner, just ask Karl he'll tell you all about it :(.
marvin
Quote from: marvinbrown on April 08, 2008, 04:00:55 AM
DavidRoss Wagner is an opera composer and even more so. He is a music drama theater composer. To truly appreciate Wagner's genius and he's got it in spades you have to get into the story, the characters, the whole drama of his works. It was never Wagner's intention to write "pretty" melodies, arias and ensembles a la Mozart nor was it his intention to appeal to the first time listener with infectious melodies you can hum on first hearing like Bizet's Carmen or Verdi's Rigoletto. Lord knows he is more than capable of doing that just listen to the Prize song from Die Meistersinger. The best way to appreciate Wagner's artwork is through DVD recordings. It won't be easy at first I grant you that but after repeated listening and viewing you might come to the conclusion I came to: That Wagner and mediocrity do NOT go hand in hand!
My primary issue with Wagner's "music dramas" is that they fail on both counts. Musically, I find them tediously repetitive and self-indulgent--though, as I said earlier, with moments of brilliance. Dramatically, they're utter disasters, the dramatic effect sabotaged by absurd self-importance and a complete failure to understand the nature of dramatic action or to create characters who are anything more than one-dimensional archetypes.
Rather than via DVD, I should think it better to experience these works in the theatre, in which quasi-sacred space the audience is far more ready to suspend disbelief and enter into a compact with the performance. Certainly Wagner himself recognized the mystico-religious nature of his works and the importance of the correct atmosphere in seducing would-be converts to the personality cult he created.
That, I think, is where his true genius lay, as evidenced by the number of acolytes who still worship at his altar. He was like the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of his place and time.
All that said, I am still willing to have lightning strike one day and to grovel on the road to Damascus (or Bayreuth). It hasn't happened yet, but I keep trying. ;)
Quote from: DavidRoss on April 08, 2008, 05:33:27 AM
My primary issue with Wagner's "music dramas" is that they fail on both counts. Musically, I find them tediously repetitive and self-indulgent--though, as I said earlier, with moments of brilliance. Dramatically, they're utter disasters, the dramatic effect sabotaged by absurd self-importance and a complete failure to understand the nature of dramatic action or to create characters who are anything more than one-dimensional archetypes.
Oh dear you find
Wotan, King of Gods who goes from a power hungry deity to a lustfull Wanderer and ends up in the deepest abyss of despair waiting for his end to come a one dimensional archetype?? Or action where Siegfried, the fool born from an incestuous love affair between a brother and sister, defeats a monstrous dragon, falls in love with a fallen Valkyrie then gets murdered by a gang of hooligans lacking in dramatic effect??
The conductor Solti once said of Wagner's Ring that it is a very violent piece in Solti's words "murder, incest, everything that is evil is in there!!"" Wagner is a master in creating the ultimate "dramatic effect".
marvin
I wonder if we're all ready for a wee bit conclusion on this thread...
...that liking or disliking something at first hearing doesn't mean a thing.
Why, I liked Carter almost immediately (1972), but didn't like Boulez (like as in enjoy, not as in admire--I've always admired Boulez) until just last December (2007).
Indeed, I think I'm ready for another conclusion. Hope ya like it:
That liking or disliking a piece says nothing, necessarily, about the piece itself. Liking or disliking says something about where you are in your listening, or perhaps who you are in your prejudices; that's about all.
Quote from: some guy on April 08, 2008, 09:04:37 AM
That liking or disliking a piece says nothing, necessarily, about the piece itself. Liking or disliking says something about where you are in your listening, or perhaps who you are in your prejudices; that's about all.
I would generally agree with you here.
--Bruce
Quote from: bhodges on April 08, 2008, 09:11:49 AM
I would generally agree with you here.
--Bruce
Me too. Events, music etc. are neutral! Our feelings (liking/disliking) are governed by our thoughts..... nothing more! Cognitive Therapy anyone??
marvin
How about "Music that took beers to appreciate?" ;D
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on April 05, 2008, 06:50:19 AM
Basically the entire classical period. I liked Beethoven's Fifth and a few piano pieces (Moonlight, Pathétique, Für Elise) but not much else; I didn't appreciate Haydn or Mozart either. As I said on another thread recently, Charles Rosen's book The Classical Style opened my ears.
Bruckner too was a hard sell. It wasn't an adolescent lack of patience (I took to Wagner and Mahler immediately) but something in the music just didn't appeal to my teenage self. But I came to love Bruckner far quicker than the music of the classical period.
Sarge
It's really interesting, how Wagner and Mahler you took to right off, but Haydn and Mozart, not. I was the reverse. Mahler especially took some concentrated listenings. Actually, it's strange, but it seems like once I "got" Mahler's style, the other symphonies are alot easier to digest at one or two sittings. Almost like you have to set your ear for them. The 9th Symphony took me at least 3 listens. The 7th (my most recent discovery) took exactly one. Maybe "getting" the Mahler helped me get set for Bruckner as well, since I am having no problem with AB's 2nd, 3rd, 8th, and 9ths.
Quote from: MN Dave on April 08, 2008, 09:16:55 AM
How about "Music that took beers to appreciate?" ;D
Hear hear!!
Quote from: marvinbrown on April 08, 2008, 07:06:27 AM
Oh dear you find Wotan, King of Gods who goes from a power hungry deity to a lustfull Wanderer and ends up in the deepest abyss of despair waiting for his end to come a one dimensional archetype?? Or action where Siegfried, the fool born from an incestuous love affair between a brother and sister, defeats a monstrous dragon, falls in love with a fallen Valkyrie then gets murdered by a gang of hooligans lacking in dramatic effect??
The conductor Solti once said of Wagner's Ring that it is a very violent piece in Solti's words "murder, incest, everything that is evil is in there!!"
It's not the plot elements, but the execution that makes Wagner such an abysmal failure as a dramatist...though I must admit it takes a perverse sort of genius to turn such thrilling and timeless material into a tedious snoozefest.
Quote from: DavidRoss on April 08, 2008, 05:26:48 PM
It's not the plot elements, but the execution that makes Wagner such an abysmal failure as a dramatist...though I must admit it takes a perverse sort of genius to turn such thrilling and timeless material into a tedious snoozefest.
"an abysmal failure as a dramatist", "tedious snoozefest"
Gee, doesn't sound (
or feel) that way to me!
laughing like a hyena
Quote from: Haffner on April 09, 2008, 05:00:22 AM
"an abysmal failure as a dramatist", "tedious snoozefest"
Gee, doesn't sound (or feel) that way to me!
laughing like a hyena
And thank God for the differences! Imagine if we all had the same psychological makeup, same education, same life experience, and were all at the same point on the path!
Quote from: DavidRoss on April 09, 2008, 05:24:44 AM
And thank God for the differences! Imagine if we all had the same psychological makeup, same education, same life experience, and were all at the same point on the path!
Post of the day.
Quote from: Haffner on April 08, 2008, 10:05:05 AM
It's really interesting, how Wagner and Mahler you took to right off, but Haydn and Mozart, not. I was the reverse. Mahler especially took some concentrated listenings. Actually, it's strange, but it seems like once I "got" Mahler's style, the other symphonies are alot easier to digest at one or two sittings. Almost like you have to set your ear for them. The 9th Symphony took me at least 3 listens. The 7th (my most recent discovery) took exactly one. Maybe "getting" the Mahler helped me get set for Bruckner as well, since I am having no problem with AB's 2nd, 3rd, 8th, and 9ths.
Interesting...... the 9th symphony took several listens for me, too.
The way I started listening was that I started by playing a certain area in Final Fantasy VII, some isolated forest where I had to fight these gnome creatures again and again to level up so I could get some treasure, I forgot what it was. I can't even remember what I thought the first few times, but I did that, literally 4 or 5 days in a row. It took awhile just to understand this really big symphony.
The 8th and the 4th I "got" immediately....... although I don't like the 8th any more now than i did before, since there's so much in there that sounds like a bunch of notes that don't really mean much, although he's trying. The 4th is just amazing, really.... it's not something to go to at night, but more like something good to hear in the morning when you wake up and have nothing on your mind.
It took me some time to be able to appreciate the classical period. I even got Baroque first.
Quote from: Sforzando on April 07, 2008, 05:55:29 AM
The only more humorous descriptions of Bruckner I know are when a poster on another forum once referred to the scherzo of #7 as a sea shanty (this from a composer with lived his whole life in landlocked Austria) and when a writer who se name I can't recall described the scherzo of #8 as "the mountains dancing" (which is a positively brilliant metaphor).
I think the scherzo from Bruckner's 9th sounds like elephants hopping from foot to foot.
BTW, Bruckner was present for the inauguration of the organ at Albert Hall (along with Saint Saens), so he must have seen the sea at least twice in his life.
Quote from: DavidRoss on April 09, 2008, 05:24:44 AM
And thank God for the differences! Imagine if we all had the same psychological makeup, same education, same life experience, and were all at the same point on the path!
That path would be really crowded.
The Duparc songs were another few pieces of great music I had to return to...
Quote from: eyeresist on April 09, 2008, 07:18:01 PM
I think the scherzo from Bruckner's 9th sounds like elephants hopping from foot to foot.
;D
Pretty good description!
Quote from: Wanderer on April 09, 2008, 11:14:15 PM
That path would be really crowded.
So is it an aversion to crowds that has us on the path less traveled? ;)
Quote from: DavidRoss on April 10, 2008, 04:42:58 AM
So is it an aversion to crowds that has us on the path less traveled? ;)
If you happen to come across Robert Frost (metaphorically speaking), please send him my best wishes!
marvin
Quote from: eyeresist on April 09, 2008, 07:18:01 PM
I think the scherzo from Bruckner's 9th sounds like elephants hopping from foot to foot.
BTW, Bruckner was present for the inauguration of the organ at Albert Hall (along with Saint Saens), so he must have seen the sea at least twice in his life.
He didn't fly Austrian Airlines?
Beethoven - Symphony No. 8 in F major
In the beginning and for quite some time, I thought this seemed like the "odd" symphony Beethoven composed, I just couldn't stand it at first.
Through repeated listenings and being exposed to it more often by a certain internet radio host for whom this symphony was her favorite (and she played it very often), I came to really love it! It has a great deal of energy.
Now, I certainly consider it a worthy masterpiece along with the other 8.
Quote from: ChamberNut on April 03, 2008, 05:21:42 AM
Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata for violin and piano
Schubert's Trout Quintet
Really? ???
The Trout, in particular, is probably one of the most accessible pieces of classical music ever written.
I still haven't fully gotten Bartok's quartets ... 0:)
Quote from: helios on April 12, 2008, 11:08:43 AM
Really? ???
The Trout, in particular, is probably one of the most accessible pieces of classical music ever written.
I found it a little annoying and trite at first.
Beethoven and Brahms!
Mahler and Bruckner, maybe a year or less to get into once I made an effort, but Beethoven and Brahms I have listened to on and off throughout much of my musical life - I knew for years this was amazing music and writing but that there was so much I just wasn't getting about it.
Now after years it's coming together, Brahms is taking the longest though. He and Beethoven, that music is just not...simple. Emotionally to me, it is so complex and mysterious and subtle. Well, it's also very dramatic at times, but subtle in details and construction.
Bruckner is those things too, but is a little easier to grasp, his repetitions and ways he builds on his motifs were a way in for me, and Mahler I feel is so very specific and vivid in his emotions, that while it's chaotic music, his message is clear.
Sibelius I think is not hard to appreciate on a superficial level, it's gorgeous music, but to deeply get to know and understand - I think I may not even in years. Much akin to Brahms and Beethoven.
Might as well throw the other B in as well. Bach. It's taken me a really long time to understand and appreciate what is going on in his music, even though it's often studied in form and theory class, to appreciate the natural logical beauty of melody, rhythm and construction on a larger scale took many years.
Good one there Greta.
I had to give Mahler's 6th several listens, the last of the several being with a towel over my eyes. I had to completely shut out the world when I listened to it. The payoff was quite formidable, I still find it fascinating and brilliant.
Quote from: Haffner on April 13, 2008, 04:16:22 PM
I had to give Mahler's 6th several listens, the last of the several being with a towel over my eyes. I had to completely shut out the world when I listened to it. The payoff was quite formidable, I still find it fascinating and brilliant.
Did it have the 3 hammer blows in it? It's very important to leave them in. 8)
Wagner Operas
Don't think I'll ever get myself to appreciate them.
Quote from: op.110 on April 14, 2008, 08:58:56 AM
Wagner Operas
Don't think I'll ever get myself to appreciate them.
Now
that is a real loss.
Outside of Finlandia and Symphony No. 2, the music of Sibelius. It took me until I lived over twenty years in Northern Michigan to "warm" up to it, then its appeal became obvious -- go figure.