Unpopular Opinions

[71 dB]

This has been attempted! Unfortunately...I kind of like it.

The Most Unwanted Song came about when they surveyed listeners and identified things people hate (needlessly long songs, children singing holiday carols, advertisement jingles, bagpipes, jarring transitions, etc.) and then put them all in one song.

https://www.youtube.com/v/-gPuH1yeZ08

I listened to this about 15 years ago when it was fresh I believe. It's "interesting". 

[Florestan]

Of course, dear fellow.  And it would be only one data point, not necessarily the most important question, but I wonder (that is, I do not have my scores to hand) whether Tchaikovsky inscribed metronome markings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._5_(Tchaikovsky)

Scroll down to 1st Movement and from there on.

[Karl Henning]

Karl, sometimes your affectation for writing in Cyrillic gets the better of you.

Honestly, it has began to get on my nerves.   

I doubt that in Russian books this or that composer is referred to only by his name and patronimic.

Of course, I am not writing a book here.  I accept that it is an artifice, but of course since you perceive it as an affectation, to continue with my eccentricity would reflect poorly on me.

Of course, dear fellow.  And it would be only one data point, not necessarily the most important question, but I wonder (that is, I do not have my scores to hand) whether Tchaikovsky inscribed metronome markings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._5_(Tchaikovsky)

Scroll down to 1st Movement and from there on.

Thanks.  The secondary point stands, and particularly in the case of the Romantic orchestral repertoire which is meant to be played by large forces in substantial spaces.  A single metronome marking will not serve for all spaces.  Please, please, do not take my word for it.

[Brian]

Yet, I am not saying that a fairly uniform reaction is always the acse. Do you remember how heavily we diverged in our interpretation of (if I'm not mistaken) Sibelius' Sixth? 

I do!! That is one of several works where my view is a happy outlier.

Another example: Richard Strauss allegedly said, in his old age or shortly before his death, that it felt just like he had written in Tod und Verklärung. When my mother heard that work in concert, having read the program notes, she said, "He shouldn't have attached a program to it! It doesn't sound like that at all. I want my imagination to wander freely without someone telling me what it is!"

[Karl Henning]

Another interpretation of the Tchaikovsky Fifth:

Of the Fifth Tchaikovsky Symphony one hardly knows what to say.  It is less untamed in spirit than the composer's B-flat minor Concerto, less recklessly harsh in its polyphonic writing, less indicative of the composer's disposition to swear a theme's way through a stone wall.  In the Finale we have all the untamed fury of the Cossack, whetting itself for deeds of atrocity, against all the sterility of the Russian steppes.  The furious peroration sounds like nothing so much as a horde of demons struggling in a torrent of brandy, the music growing drunker and drunker.  Pandemonium, delirium tremens, raving, and above all, noise worse confounded!

Boston Evening Transcript, 24 Oct 1892

[amw]

Add me to the camp that doesn't see Pjotr Iljič Čajkovskij's Fifth as a struggle against fate. I wouldn't describe any piece of music that way actually (obviously excepting operas where that is the theme, such as Pelleas)

Also gotta say I have come across lots of people who hear Schubert's C major quintet as an unproblematic lyric idyl, or as a boring and overly long and repetitive sequence of disconnected tunes with no substance. I do not subscribe to those views myself obviously.

[Sergeant Rock]

Add me to the camp that doesn't see Pjotr Iljič Čajkovskij's Fifth as a struggle against fate. I wouldn't describe any piece of music that way actually

Not even Mahler 6?

Sarge

[amw]

Not really. I honestly see the point of Mahler 6 as being that fate doesn't exist, that things could easily go differently (andante moderato with minor chords turning to major instead of the other way round, etc) and that the eventual tragedy is totally evitable. The symphony could easily have ended in A major if it hadn't made one particular, avoidable decision that disrupts the flow of the coda and expends all the pent-up energy of the piece... I think part of the point is that a calm, transfigured A major coda fading to pianissimo would be totally possible, and then after that is ruled out a noble, dignified A minor coda fading to pianissimo would be totally possible... and indeed almost does happen. I feel like Mahler creates this effect with the additive structure of the finale, which takes a sonata form and bolts on more and more extra pieces that aren't strictly necessary but do change the emotional balance of the piece. And a lot of these are based on the same or similar ideas, so one gets a feeling more of obsession, being unable to move on, etc.

That's just one weirdo's interpretation though.

[Florestan]

Another interpretation of the Tchaikovsky Fifth:

Boston Evening Transcript, 24 Oct 1892

Add this to what you already quoted from a Boston newspaper that Carmen has no melody, and it becomes clear to me that back then the Boston critics had no effing idea what they were talking about. I don't know if things have changed much since, you migh be able to illuminate the matter.   

[Florestan]

Pjotr Iljič Čajkovskij

Talk about affectation... 

[Parsifal]

Another interpretation of the Tchaikovsky Fifth:

Of the Fifth Tchaikovsky Symphony one hardly knows what to say.  It is less untamed in spirit than the composer's B-flat minor Concerto, less recklessly harsh in its polyphonic writing, less indicative of the composer's disposition to swear a theme's way through a stone wall.  In the Finale we have all the untamed fury of the Cossack, whetting itself for deeds of atrocity, against all the sterility of the Russian steppes.  The furious peroration sounds like nothing so much as a horde of demons struggling in a torrent of brandy, the music growing drunker and drunker.  Pandemonium, delirium tremens, raving, and above all, noise worse confounded!

Boston Evening Transcript, 24 Oct 1892

Seems fairly accurate.

[DaveF]

Pjotr Iljič Čajkovskij

Since we've decided that spelling his name in Cyrillic (the only truly accurate way, as far as phonetics go) is affected, it seems harsh to have a go at someone for spelling it in what is presumably his native orthography.  In the bilingual programme notes we get at BBC concerts in Cardiff, he's Tsieicofsci (in the Welsh half, obviously).

And why all this discussion of his symphonies?  The suites are much better.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

There is nothing too extreme in music, name ANYTHING.

Everything will incredibly become monotonous or mundane if there isn't enough variety (dynamic structure) and dynamic structure often takes the extremities away if not handled very precisely, but if handled to precisely it looses it's edge, so there!

Does music have to fit your idea of 'extreme' to be enjoyable to you???

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Of course not but it is something I have always been drawn too, you know; adrenaline rushes, energy, heaviness, percussiveness, stuff that is primal and elemental, takes on this raw energy. (there's also another description I can't think of)

I love Enya, folk music, soul music etc, the answer should be obvious to you.


....unless that was a rhetorical question? 

Well it just seems to me you are looking for something in music which you love but no longer seems to satisfy you! Compose something like that if you like kind of thing.

[TheGSMoeller]

I love Enya...

I got my 7-year old son into Enya, listens to her every night when he's going to bed.

[TheGSMoeller]

0:)

Hopefully not early Enya? 

So you're not a fan of late-Romantic Enya? You prefer her twelve-tone period? 

[Monsieur Croche]

Well it just seems to me you are looking for something in music which you love but no longer seems to satisfy you! Compose something like that if you like kind of thing.

That could be a possibility 

Sounds to me like you're trying to restore your musical virginity, and that you are waxing sentimental/nostastalgic about that first awareness and experiences of a sensationalism that hit you so strongly between the eyes, which is -- sorry to be the old fart who pops that bubble -- completely irretrievable.

Of course it is a pretty terrible, though temporary, place to be in, longing for those first spectacular sensations and impressions which were spectacular and sensational because you had never experienced them before.  I assure you it is 'a phase' and it will pass soon enough.

The proclivity for having a taste more tuned to the (more or less) sensational, the 'mind-blowing' is parallel with 'youth,' and you are 'a youth,' lol.

What shifts over time (in my experience) is an interest in what is also quietly virtuosic, subtle, restrained, and the very profound and full effect really well-made art of that sort can have.  (The time-line of first the sensational morphing to the subtle, understated and restrained is quite common in most artists from their initial works through to their late works, which should tell you something right there:-)  In effect, what you seem to be doing to yourself is setting up some expectations based upon past experience, which if you think on that for one moment is kinda limiting ;-)

Don't think of where you're at now as having lost something or that you are now missing something.  There is more to come, and what is to come that satisfies may not be in the same areas of sensation or taste you have had to this moment.

So, "Dont' worry, be happy."  Besides, you've got a ton of studies, larnin, songs in one genre and music in another to write.  Being seriously engaged in what you are doing is a kind of satisfaction very few people are lucky to find or have.  Be busy with your business, and don't worry about (for what is but a mere moment on the time line of your whole life) what seems like a loss -- because though it may seem like it now, it is not a loss at all.

O.K.  You're all fixed and set to go for quite a while now 


Best regards.

[71 dB]

I find Janacek's Glagolitic Mass weak. I don't get why people praise it. I bought the Naxos dics of the work a few years ago after reading all the glory hallelujah for it on this forum. I expected to hear something really epic! Did I? No! I heard a mediocre at best choral work without any epic feel. It's like the second best choral work of a third-rate composer. I have revisited the work several times to hear what I have been missing, but nothing happens. The work simply doesn't resonate with my mind. 

Inspired by the atonal thread, it is my firm opinion is that there are at 12 Stravinsky pieces at minimum that are are better than the Rite of Spring 

Stravinsky is a composer I haven't explored much, but I'd say that's possible. Rite of Spring is a good work, but perhaps a bit overrated for the shock-value it had.

[Ken B]

Inspired by the atonal thread, it is my firm opinion is that there are at 12 Stravinsky pieces at minimum that are are better than the Rite of Spring 

We had a thread of favorite Stravinsky pieces. ROS did not make my list, causing some comment. So I agree. I bet we disagree on what those 12 are though! 

[DaveF]

Inspired by the atonal thread, it is my firm opinion is that there are at 12 Stravinsky pieces at minimum that are are better than the Rite of Spring 

Well, I'm going to delve deeper into unpopularity by listing them:

Symphonies of wind instruments
Les noces
Symphony of Psalms
Symphony in 3 movements
Scènes de ballet
Mass
Cantata
Oedipus Rex
Agon
Canticum sacrum
Threni
Requiem Canticles