Good question. You’re not going to hear enough of a variation to keep you from recognizing the piece, certainly, but each conductor is going to have a subtle and different approach to tempo, how long a pause should be, how fortissimo to make a forte, how much to accent a brash attack from the timpani or the trumpets .
They will also play to the strengths of the orchestra. Vienna is famous for the richness of the string section. Chicago has always had a great brass section. So if Ricardo Muti is conducting the Chicago, he might make more use of huge THOOOMBS from the trombones and tuba when he presents Mahler or Bruckner than he would in Austria.
Since you’ve played some music, you might have fun reading along with a score while you listen. This will give you even more insight. I took a great course once where we started off with simpler things like a Haydn string quartet and Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, and worked our way up to Stravinsky’s ballet music for Petruschka and Mahler’s Ninth.
Ukelele Ike’s already answered this, and I suspect others can add things. Beethoven did write down all the notes that were supposed to be played, so the differences between one performance and another of the same piece of classical music are going to be relatively subtle, but there is room for interpretation in things like tempo (how fast the various parts are played), dynamics (how loud), and such. (Think how different performances of the same play can be, even if the actors stick completely to the script.)
One exception that I can think of: In a concerto, which is a composition featuring one (or occasionally more) solo performer (like a pianist or violinist) playing with an orchestra, there will often be one or more sections called cadenzas, which, like a guitar solo in a rock song, are an opportunity for the soloist to play around and show off. In many cases, the composer didn’t write out the cadenza ahead of time, or even if he did, the performer still has the option to use one that she herself or someone else had come up with, or even to do some improvisation.
The good news is, if you like what you find, you’re in for a lifetime of enjoyment and will never run out of stuff to explore.
There isn’t much room for interpretation as to what notes are to be played, but room for interpretation as to how they are played.
Allegro means fast, but how fast, exactly? Just a few beats per minute can change the tone of a movement in nuanced but noticeable ways.
Same with volume, a conductor has quite a bit of leeway when it comes to basically acting as a mixing volume control of the different parts. He may bring up the strings over the winds in a way that another conductor would have featured the winds in a particular part.
You have other little bits of timing too, beethoven’s ninths has the part in the first line with the syncopated note that conductors put in at a slightly different millisecond compared to the measure, and that can put a different feel to that passage.
Solo performances have as much or more interpretation by the artist. They can choose their tempo to change the mood of a piece, or choose to accent particular notes or passages to add depth and emotion that is not written down on the score.
I have heard a score descried as a blue print for a building, but the individual workers and craftsmen leave their own unique touches.
Sometimes, it’s even explicit: a score might indicate, “Variations here.” There’s a particularly lovely Vivaldi piccolo concerto where, in a number of recordings, the soloists indulge themselves in personal variations.
This is one of the reasons I love concertos so much. Also they are a good way to figure out what instruments you like because they have such a singular focus. For example I fell in love with Cello because I heard this piece on the radio.
Made me also rush out and find out who this D’vorshak guy that composed it was too. (turned out its Dvorak). Listen to stuff. You will find your thing.
When Brahms heard this concerto, he said, “If I had known that it was possible to compose such a concerto for the cello, I would have tried it myself!”
No, I don’t think so. When you listen to different performances or recordings of something like a Beethoven symphony, you’re not listening to different arrangements, unless they’re being played on different instruments than the symphony was originally written for (for example, an arrangement for solo piano). I don’t think that’s what Apocalypso was talking about.
Arrangements can be different, but often times they are still all the same notes, just modified slightly in order to add or subtract particular instruments.
They are also used to get around copyright protections, as that Beethoven’s 5th symphony sheet music you have there is copywritten (sp., I know) by the arranger, and all you really have to do is to transcribe it onto a new piece of paper, and viola, you have the copyright on that particular arrangement.
Obviously, music that the original writer still holds the rights to cannot be circumvented this way.
My recommendation is to put WFMT on, and leave it on, for the rest of your life. You will absorb an incredible music education without lifting a finger. WFMT is arguably the best classical music station in the world. The don’t just play the familiar stuff, although they do of course play it. But having listened for almost 30 years I am still frequently surprised by how deep and how wide their programming reaches. Lots of live performances as well, from around the globe.
May I recommend (ETA: a book) “Inside Good Music” by Karl Haas? You can find it as low as $2.00 used on Amazon.
Haas used to host a weekly radio program, “Adventures in Good Music.” I loved that show, and listened to it almost religiously. I learned a lot from him!
ETA again: YouTube has several Karl Haas programs.
One of his most clever programs was titled “The Din of Inequity,” and focused on classical pieces where the balance was off, with some voices or instruments a little too loud, and others a little too soft.
(Peter Schickele alludes to this in a P.D.Q. Bach introduction, noting that when the bagpipes are playing, you can’t hear anything else, whereas the lute is so soft, you can’t hear it if there’s another instrument in the same room with it, whether the other instrument is being played or not!)
By the way, the P.D.Q. Bach albums are also highly educational with regard to classical music…in a truly twisted kind of way. If I were to recommend any single album, it would be “Portrait of P.D.Q. Bach,” featuring the (blasphemous, but appropriately named) “Missa Hilarious.”
Some good advice so far. Just judging by your taste in pop/non-classical music, I’ll just add that you might dig twentieth-century classical stuff, too. (If you don’t already have some.) Two suggestions:
Here’s a cheerful piece of minimalism called *In C * by Terry Riley. https://youtu.be/yNi0bukYRnA If you read the Wiki article about the piece, you’ll see that different recordings of this piece will vary widely:
Composed in 1964.
Here’s the sometimes grim, sometimes bombastic final movement from Shostakovich’s 5th symphony. https://youtu.be/T1h1NJMKtnc They say maybe he was thinking about Stalin when he wrote it in 1937, and what Soviet wouldn’t be thinking about him that year? There is a quote by Shostakovich about this finale, though its authenticity is disputed:
Some years ago the wife and I contributed some text (which the editors promptly chopped into unrecognizability) to the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Guide on Classical Music. It’s the sort of thing that annoys purists but is actually a very good book for people with no background in classical music but want to learn more. You may find it useful.
And as noted above you can find most classical works on YouTube these days, so if anything takes your fancy you can listen to a few renditions before you go out and buy something.
(For the avoidance of doubt, I have no commercial interest in the book anymore - it was strictly a flat fee basis.)
I am checking out the Youtube videos and web site info linked here. Lots of great music, I’ve liked most of what I’ve listened to so far.
The only thing I haven’t liked that much yet was K364’s link to Bach - Concert for two violins. It’s not that it was slow, I’ve listened to and really liked some music that many have said would put them to sleep. The girls playing violing seemed very talented. But for some reason it just didn’t appeal the way the rest of it has, and I’m not sure if I can explain why.
Lots of other great stuff here, been bookmarking the youtube videos and am going to try to transfer them to my phone…
I’m glad I am not not only one to recognize 20th Century composers. Aaron Copeland and George Gershwin wrote some wonderful pieces that most people don’t realize are real pieces of music and not just commercials (“Appalachian Spring” and “Rhapsody in Blue,” respectively.)
And what 20th Century artists have done with classical music can be terrific. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer recorded Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” which is pretty well-known. Wendy Carlos took Bach and transformed his music into something even better (Bach is my all-time favorite) by using 20th Century instrumentation: every voice in the symphony is replaced by synthesizer, and it’s amazing!
I almost included Appalachian Spring as a third recommendation – such a great piece, and so American!
**Apocalypso **mentioned Nick Cave, who did a terrific version of Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song” that switches musical style from verse to verse. nick cave & the bad seeds tower of song - Google Search So fitting for a song about the pleasure and pain of being a working musician.
Put me in mind of Charles Ives’s Central Park in the Dark, from 1906. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=34AqNvhBfVQ Ives tries to recreate the auditory experience of being in the park at night, with various sounds (including a marching band and a fire engine) intruding on the background of “nature sounds.”
Ives is a great example of why 20th century classical music can be so much fun to learn about: we often have decent bigraphical info on these composers; they often wrote explicitly about why they made the musical experiments they did; and we can relate to their historical context more easily than the old guys’. (I can imagine myself in Central Park at the turn of the 20th century much more easily than I can imagine myself in 18th-century Vienna or Salzburg or whatever. Similarly, if I’m listening to Olivier Messaien, I can easily imagine myself in a WWII POW camp…)
Shostakovich really is a great 20th century composer. I really love his stuff. And people who are into metal seem to universally love Eric Satie. Holst, in particular The Planets gets a ton of love too, but isn’t my cup of tea.
Sadly I don’t know of too much music that has been written post 1960 that isn’t opera. Phillip Glass I suppose. Though if you like Opera I kind of dig the crap out of John Adams. I don’t quite like Britten as much as I am told I should. Maybe he had just been imitated too often by Hollywood by the time I got around to listening to him, but his tuff always sounds silly to me. Peter Grimes is probably the opera to try though? Maybe Billy Budd?
20th century: Prokofiev is wonderful. Start with his “Classical Symphony” and the “Lt. Kije Suite.” Those are very approachable.
(By the time of, say, his sixth symphony, he’s created a world of his own, which you might or might not like, but Lt. Kije is fun for nearly everyone.)
Carl Orff is interesting. The “Carmina Burana” is justly famous for its opening sequence, but the whole of the suite is good. The “Catulli Carmina” is also fun. Our local classical music DJ once said, “If ancient Roman music didn’t sound like this…it should have!”
