Trumpy’s thread about lesser-known rock music resulted in a VERY satisfying trip round the Greenwich Village record shops yesterday evening, so I though it might be similarly educational to ask everyone to drag out their favorite oddball “art” music.
We all know the Three Bs, Mozart, Mahler, Shostakovich, etc. Who else sends them shivers up and down your spine?
I’m personally very fond of late 19th-early 20th century music, and lately I’ve learned about the English composer Sir Arnold Bax…kind of a scumbag in his personal life, avoided service in World War I, cheated on his wife, and so on. But came up with some gorgeous stuff in the Tone Poem arena.
TINTAGEL, evoking King Arthur’s birthplace on the Cornish coast, is as fine a piece of sea-composition as I’ve ever heard. NOVEMBER WOODS is a haunting, haunted depiction of an autumnal landscape, with shadows lurking everywhere…
I’m also big on Charles Tomlinson Griffes, kind of an American version of Debussy, but showing strong influences of the German Romantics as well. His Piano Sonata is superb, and the chamber orchestra work THE KAIRN OF KORIDWEN is fascinating…based on Druid themes. Griffes was a self-loathing pre-Stonewall gay with a fetish for New York policemen’s uniforms; his short and unhappy life ended in 1920.
See, this is the reason I need a computer at home!! All my CD’s are at home and I’ve started trying to buy more classical works, but, being a novice, I can’t remember any of the names!!!
One I do remember (but don’t know if it’s underappreciated) is Camille Saint-Saens (sp) “Gymnopedia” (is that name right?)
John Williams, eh? I’ll take into account your current emotional pain of separation and the work-related stress of getting that big ship underway…<grin>
A few years ago, I attended a performance of John Corigliano’s symphony no. 1, which I very much enjoyed (the powerful opening, and nice opportunities for woodwinds). Also he wrote a violin piece for the movie “The Red Violin” that is delightful.
I have yet to see his opera “The Ghost of Versailles”, hopefully it will come to LA sometime.
I’m ashamed to say my tastes in classical music are pretty run-of-the-mill. I LOVE Baroque, and can listen to Bach (the Brandenburgs!) endlessly. Pretty trite, huh? I adore Vivaldi and Corelli. Not too fond of the loud, crashy Beethoven/Brahams school.
I do have a tape of 19th-century piano music, but I, too, have 'em at home and am a blank.
Where my tastes get weird—my musical tastes, that is!—is in my fondness for late 19th/early 20th-century pop and show music. I have tons (literally!) of 78s, and listen for hours on end to hits like “When Father Laid the Carpet On the Stairs” and “Fido Is a Hot Dog Now.”
Uh, yeah. I think. I was doing an Encarta search one time and found a listing for Saint-Saens and listened to a few of the clips and really enjoyed one I heard and I thought that was the name.
Okay, okay, I know! I am COMPLETELY LAME!!!
I’m trying to become culturally literate - it sure takes a long time!
I really like this CD I bought on the NAXOS label. Frank Bridge , Works for string quartet.
Frank Bridge 1879-1941 was a composer and a violinist. Also very English. ** Benjamin Britten ** (who is also excellent) was once his student.
** Anton Rubinstein 1829-1894 (not Artur) , Cello Sonatas **
Liner notes describe as a Russian Mendelssohn with echos of Schumann.
Anything by Haydn,
I’m not very good at describing music, but they’re great
The Saint-Saens (sp?) piece you may be thinking of is Carnival of the Animals. Saint-Saens had a, shall we say, unique sense of humor and used to think of people he knew as different types of animals. e.g. If my wife were an animal she’d be a swan, my stupid next door neighbor would be a donkey, etc. Anyway, he wrote a number of musical pieces with each person in mind and put them together in Carnival of the Animals. It’s his most famous piece. By the way, Saint-Seans was French and his name isn’t pronounced anything like it’s spelled.
What’s the definition of “classical?” I also like Richard Strauss, and Gilbert & Sullivan. Today, they’d be considered “classical,” but in their day were looked upon with scorn as “pop.”
In 100 years, will the Beatles be considered “classical?”
Technically, that is according to music historians, “classical” refers to a specific period of time. I don’t remember when it began, but it ended in the middle of Beethoven’s career. His first four or five symphonies were “classical” and the later ones were considered to be part of the Romantic period. My boyfriend in college was a music major and he used to go around correcting people who referred to Beethoven’s later works as classical music. He (the boyfriend) was a real jerk.
My knowledge of classical music is pretty mainstream - I was exposed to it through middle school and high school band, after all. I do like just about anything played at me.
Holst’s The Planets doesn’t get played enough for my tastes. “Polka and Fugue” from Schwanda the Bagpiperis another I like. There’s also Appalachian Spring (by Copeland?), and well, just about anything played in a Warner Bros. cartoon.
I dunno. Threads like this tend to make me vaguely uncomfortable. I like what I like, and sometimes I can articulate what and why, but sometimes I can’t, and there usually seems to be a little bit of an “I know more obscure music than you do” snobbery going on.
Oh, hell, I was hoping to be able to avoid this. We actually had a long argument back in August or so about the definition…I only used “classical” in the topic title because that’s what most people use when they talk about symphonic or chamber music.
I prefer “art music,” myself.
Eve: You mean Johann Strauss, Jr., the Waltz King? Richard Strauss, composer of SALOME and ELEKTRA and other light classics (joke) was never a pop star.
Since I’m not at home, I’m not sure of the opus numbers, but I like Laszlo Herrara’s (I’m not sure of the spelling either) concerto for the basson.
He is not exactly obscure, but I like anything by Richard Strauss.
A while back Karl Haas played an excellent piece – Bulganin’s “Variations on a Siberian Rhapsody” played by Nikolai Svednov (a neurosurgeon) on bailailaika and Lucia Negro on piano.
George Gershwin is well-known as a popular songwriter, but do you he wrote a symphony for piano and orchestra in F Major – I have the Baltimore Symphony’s recording.
Oop, you’re right—although I DO like some of Richard Strauss, I meant Johann. How’d you know that? Did you just figure my taste was too birthday-cake-icingy to have meant Richard?
Well, it’s Friday afternoon, a girl can get her Strausses all bolluxed up . . .
My first idea was to start a “How do I get my car started?” thread in GQ, but I didn’t want to get laughed at by all the snobby Gearheads around here.
Then I thought about asking a question about monocotyledons, but the thought of going up against those fucking snob Botanists turned me off.
And I was going to do a MPSIMS about how everyone thought the Cubs would do this year but I was worried about cheesing off all those nose-in-the-air Baseball Fans.
So I decided, “Fuck it, I’ll ask people what kind of music they like so I can sneer at their plebian tastes. Like I really care about hearing about new composers I might enjoy listening to…hah!”
