Non-repertory music to recommend a long-time long-suffering listener

[Cato]

Then why in heavens would you even bother asking for non-repertory music recommendations (or even interested in such) if you believe this?

The rest, is noise. 

We have come to the sad realization that the only consistency to be found here is a constant state of unwitting self-satire.   0:)

[DaveF]

I'm not saying modality and its related polyphonic homogeneity, contrasting with counterpoint with favoured lines to parallel the favoured scales, is entirely unintelligible...

So when you said

pre-tonal music inevitably becomes a pleasant diversion regardless of how complex it is since nobody can understand it.

you didn't mean to suggest it was entirely unintelligible??

And yes, I did mean that the so-called Lydian mode (on F) was one that composers pre-1600 didn't use (along with the Locrian on B, of course) - because the B natural makes a tritone above the tonic.

DF

[Sean]

DaveF, modal music is largely unintelligible, in contrast to later music. I'm afraid I have to point out that this is a very basic observation to make.

If you can tell your Obrecht from your Palestrina like you can tell your Mozart from your Dvorak separated by similar timespans you're a better man than me. But I wouldn't believe you. Best wishes, S

Chamber, well though you get a diminishing return there may have been a few corners I've missed that are worth a look on a rainy day.

[some guy]

But I wouldn't believe you.

Well, there's the problem right there!

though you get a diminishing return there may have been a few corners I've missed that are worth a look on a rainy day.

Oh, wait. Two problems.

Or wait--two manifestations of the same problem?

[Sean]

There are plenty of problems in the world and I see art as a reflection of them and their potential resolution... But it's just that some music encourages that critical aesthetic quality of mind better than others.

[DaveF]

If you can tell your Obrecht from your Palestrina like you can tell your Mozart from your Dvorak separated by similar timespans you're a better man than me. But I wouldn't believe you. Best wishes, S

I can't see what it's got to do with anything, but of course I can tell Obrecht from Palestrina.  If you'd wanted to choose a real head-scratcher, you might have asked me to distinguish Obrecht from Josquin, or Power from Dunstable (as opposed to two later contemporaries, such as Vaughan Williams and Schoenberg).

But I've won the insertion of that word largely, i.e.

modal music is largely unintelligible

so I'll quit while I'm ahead.  But just briefly to return to the subject of the thread: yeah, John Browne - The Sixteen are good on their Eton Choirbook discs, but best to my ears are the Taverner Consort - the original coupling of Carver and Taverner now oop, but turning up on this compilation:

[asin]B000002SRC[/asin]

DF

[Karl Henning]

Well, we've confirmed what was hitherto a strong suspicion: music is largely unintelligible to Sean.

[Cato]

DaveF, modal music is largely unintelligible, in contrast to later music. I'm afraid I have to point out that this is a very basic observation to make.

If you can tell your Obrecht from your Palestrina like you can tell your Mozart from your Dvorak separated by similar timespans you're a better man than me. But I wouldn't believe you. Best wishes, S

Correction I: "DaveF, modal music is largely unintelligible, TO ME."

Correction II: "But I wouldn't believe you because of all kinds of personal baggage!"

[some guy]

Coupla very insightful (and incisive) posts there from Karl and Cato.

Now if only....

[Karl Henning]

"... And here is the water to which we led that horse...."

[DaveF]

And to return one last time to amplify a point: if modal music is only largely, and not totally, across-the-board unintelligible - i.e. if there are some modal works that are intelligible (or even only one), then intelligibility has nothing to do with modality per se.  Must be to do with something else...

DF

[some guy]

Interesting little tag, there, Dave:

"Just because I like something, it doesn't mean it's any good."

I must say, I think that because you like something that does mean it's good, for you.

Which, ultimately, is all that matters.

This, on the other hand, I do agree with: "Just because I dislike something, it doesn't mean that it's bad."

But that's just to identify the difference between a negative statement and a positive one.

[DaveF]

Well, it's so long since I added that tag that I'd almost forgotten it was there.  I suppose the original thought was that no-one should claim that their taste is perfect (notwithstanding some comments made in this very thread) nor feel any qualms about owning up to liking things, for whatever reason, that they know are not actually very good... such as the football club whose badge is my current avatar.  Likewise (or contrariwise), as you say, to condemn something just because we don't like it - well, no-one on GMG would do that, would they?  Another corollary, of course, is that there is actually some objective standard of aesthetic "goodness" - a belief I still more-or-less cling to, despite the difficulties it leads one into.  Isn't the B minor Mass "better" than Kanye West's latest album - or does that comment immediately put me somewhere to the right of Hitler?   Any more than this belongs in another thread.

DF

[Sean]

     

Unintelligible was a somewhat rhetorical statement- even in Stockhausen's early Klavierstucks you can find faint traces of musicality. But if some modal works are more intelligible it's because they're more tonal.

Dunstable and Desprez have marginally more distinct voices but the movement to the real rebirth of common sense from the 1590s was pretty tangled and some trends of Renaissance polyphony sound earlier than they are, such as Isaac and Busnois and others like Binchois sound later, while Fayrfax in the middle of the period sounds almost like Rutter at times. By the end of the 16th century polyphony had become more homogeneous but even then there were exceptions- the whole modal theoretical system was going nowhere fast, regardless of its technical deviousness.

I'm presently listening to the Browne Stabat Mater dolorosa in which I detect a degree of English naivety; the choppy medieval rhythmic legacy places it in the 15th century.

http://cdn.naxos.com/SharedFiles/images/cds/others/8.572840.gif

DaveF, you're right about objective artistic standard of course, but we've all been round that bush two dozen times.

[Sean]

By the way the Browne has considerable weight and grandeur, and a latent tonal teleology; some parallels with the likes of Spem in alium, and the Allegri piece.

[Sean]

Moving onto the Stabat Iuxta Christi Crucem, perhaps more archaic with sparer textures

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd98pYbK_VU

[some guy]

a latent tonal teleology

And here just yesterday I was struggling to laugh.

Funniest noun phrase ever!!

[DaveF]

Moving onto the Stabat Iuxta Christi Crucem, perhaps more archaic with sparer textures

...but likewise gorgeous stuff.  I like what the Tallis Scholars do on that recording to make the texture of 6 low voices sound almost miraculously clear (partly by bumping the pitch up a minor 3rd) although The Sixteen impart more sheer mystery and beauty, for my money.  (I've no idea where the YouTube poster got the dates from, since we scarcely know who Browne was - and if, as thought, Stabat juxta was written in memory of Arthur Tudor, then he was still alive in 1502).

By the way the Browne has considerable weight and grandeur...

Do you ever give your students As, Sean?   

DF

[Karl Henning]

And here just yesterday I was struggling to laugh.

Funniest noun phrase ever!!

Right up there, sho' 'nuff.

[Sean]

Hi DaveF, I too was confused about the dates and did a little research on the net; I'll go with your thought that those specific ones are spurious. The Scholars have cultivated a uniquely blended sound for 16th century repertory and though beautiful I remember thinking how much better the clearer lines of Pro Antiqua Cantione were...

A's? (you could use an apostrophe there...). Yes I'm ready to give them the top possible mark, for sure. I'm posting some pictures on the Symbols of the USA thread if you like.