Beauty is indeed in the ear of the belistener;).
I tend to appreciate advanced harmonic progression, beautiful melody lines, neat orchestration, and slick arrangements. However I must confess I am sometimes a sucker for Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan, (I have even professionally performed Phil Ochs songs, shows my age, doesn’t it:eek:).
Composers in the romantic era, postromantic, or national romantic tradition have created works that are achingly beautiful, when not overwhelmingly bombastic.
Someone earlier in this thread asked for classical music, and since I can, I am happy too oblige.
Chopin, Liszt, Verdi, Poulenc, Bruckner and Satie have all been mentioned. No one has mentioned Wagner yet, I presume for good reasons, and due to his sheer bombasticity I will not either.
There have been examples of Claude Debussy’s music, but I will add the first composition of his that I heard and played.
La valse, La plus que lente. (In this specific recording there is a lot of beauty in this beholders eye)
It is said that Debussy and his good friend Maurice Ravel agreed to to write, each one, a parody of a Viennese waltz, so here is Ravels
Also by Ravel, very beautiful.
Pavane Pour Une Infante Defunte
Just for fun his probably most known piece, please support those musicians so they can afford a few more instruments.
Travelling east we have Sergei Rachmaninov who barely managed to get out of Bolshevik Russia, his piano concerts are famous but here I present
Piano prelude in C sharp minor
Another Russian who didn’t get out but managed a political tightrope act, sometimes prosecuted, sometimes revered and in the forties used by Stalins propaganda, was Dmitri Shostakovich. He did occasionally write music inspired by the Afro-American tradition. This was however shortly before the cold war.
This Waltz no 2 from Jazz Suite No 2 was used in a surrealistic movie, but I can’t for my life remember which one.
For latin national romanticism we have Verdi, with examples earlier in this thread, from Spain I found Joaquín Rodrigo. The second movement of his Concierto de Aranjuez has a lovely theme that’s been borrowed by several serious and not so serious music makers.
Well this is an american board, here comes teh 4:th movement of Antonín Dvorak’s New world symphony, Dvorak was Czech, but worked and lived for a while in New York and was fascinated by America. By the way both Rachmaninov and Stravinsky ended up in the United States.
George Gershwin however was a genuinly american composer, his ambition was to find a true american music and what he found was ragtime, cakewalk, jazz and other Afroamerican kinds of culture, that was unique, and not too influenced by Europeans. It seems that he didn’t have any contact with American Indian culture.
Most known for musicals and popular music he also composed Rhapsody in Blue, three piano preludes and a piano concerto. Porgy and Bess are also considered more of an opera than a musical. Summertime has already been mentioned so I give you:
Piano Concerto in F, 2:nd movement
and
The second prelude is the most devastatingly beatiful (also the only one my hands still allows me to play).
From my own nordic corner:
Sweden
Wilhelm Peterson-Berger: Stemning
Lars-Erik Larsson: Pastoralsvit
Our southwestern neighbours
Carl Nielsen:Taagen letter (Actually a short journey from Denmark to Sweden)
From the oildrenched country to the west (not that far west, I’m talking of Norway)
Edward Grieg Våren
And to Finnish it (so to speak)
Jan Sibelius Rakastava
Sorry to get carried away, but I do like beautiful music.
NOTE: This post is a natural product. The slight variations in spelling and grammar enhance its individual character and beauty and are in no way to be considered flaws or defects
