Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
You have excellent taste in music.
I love Russian composers. Mussorgsky, however, while working in Petrograd, was Polish.
The favourite classical music and opera thread
- Thread starter angeleyes
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You have excellent taste in music.
I love Russian composers. Mussorgsky, however, while working in Petrograd, was Polish.
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Currently listening to a Heifetz CD of "miniatures", including stuff by Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Schumann, Krein, Prokofiev, Debussy, do Vale, Grasse, Saint Saens, Aguirre, Burleigh, Brahms, Godowsky, Dvorak, Ravel, Shostakovich, Gluck, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rossini
I have been listening to Beethoven's Piano Concerto #3, 2nd movement for weeks on end. I find it absolutely sublime, which is funny because a few years ago it would have probably put me to sleep. But I awoke and saw the light.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGH5yR4o9I
Some Wagner, another beautiful piece...amazing build and richness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgTK-U96k5Q
P.S. Fitty, what say ye:
Kant=Bach
Hegel/Romantics=Beethoven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGH5yR4o9I
Some Wagner, another beautiful piece...amazing build and richness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgTK-U96k5Q
P.S. Fitty, what say ye:
Kant=Bach
Hegel/Romantics=Beethoven
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It depends on whether we're making this comparison on the basis of greatness, or style. Style-wise, I'd say yes, although I feel like Bach has some Leibniz in him. Greatness-wise, its probably like:
Bach = Aristotle/Kant/Plato
Beethoven/Mozart = Aquinas/Leibniz/Hume
Well I know less about this than you, but I meant in terms of German(ic) dudes in the 1700s/1800s, Kant and Bach were both temporal and conceptual contemporaries, likewise for Beethoven and Hegel and the German Idealists. Really interesting how much so...
Hume in Beethoven, though? He seems way too affable and clear-headed...I would peg him on some lighter fare, perhaps a sort of cheery English dance...
Fifty
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I wasn't saying Beethoven is stylistically similar to Hume, just that their greatness in their field is comparable. That is, Bach is the greatest composer, comparable to the greatest philosophers (aristotle/plato/kant). Beethoven and Mozart are super awesome composers, comparable with super awesome philosophers that don't quite have the breadth and depth of the greatest of the greatest.
Oh, gotcha. Yeah I was just thinking of the feelings evoked when reading/listening to those respective pairs. The incessant do-di-do-do do-di-do-do of Bach just makes me think of Kant, while Beethoven has this sweeping anguish to him that makes me contemplate beauty and tragedy wrapped into some spiritual whole.
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, gotcha. Yeah I was just thinking of the feelings evoked when reading/listening to those respective pairs. The incessant do-di-do-do do-di-do-do of Bach just makes me think of Kant, while Beethoven has this sweeping anguish to him that makes me contemplate beauty and tragedy wrapped into some spiritual whole.
Bach is really mathy to me, which is what made me think of Leibniz, with some sort of Enlightenment type Kantian business. Some of the Masses make me think of Augustine.
Beethoven makes me think of Nietzsche.
Come to think of it, Mozart kinda makes me think of Hume.
Yeah, actually...nice one. Great fit stylistically and both in the same century as well...
Jan H
Prince
Some things I've been listening to recently:
Shostakovich' Leningrad symphony:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtjAmaG7jjA
from Verdi's requiem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDFFHaz9GsY
Since I try to play a bit of cornet myself: a "theme and variations" by Jean-Baptiste Arban - played by Hakan Hardanberger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4EOTpmE2YE
Haydn's trumpet concertin Eb (part III) - played by Wynton Marsalis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emUOjj5o4J0
For those who like choral music, a beautiful piece by Gregorio Allegri:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDRoL7ziDP4
and one by John Rutter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFyNvOdKPRM
Shostakovich' Leningrad symphony:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtjAmaG7jjA
from Verdi's requiem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDFFHaz9GsY
Since I try to play a bit of cornet myself: a "theme and variations" by Jean-Baptiste Arban - played by Hakan Hardanberger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4EOTpmE2YE
Haydn's trumpet concertin Eb (part III) - played by Wynton Marsalis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emUOjj5o4J0
For those who like choral music, a beautiful piece by Gregorio Allegri:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDRoL7ziDP4
and one by John Rutter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFyNvOdKPRM
I want to don my chain mail, shield, and go kneel on my sword in a cathedral now.
Really though, stunning piece.
West 36
Can count up to 4
I feel like an idiot but I feel like asking: How do those musicians make you think of those philosophers?
I'm not saying why those, I'm wondering what there is that gives that you that connection.
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I feel like an idiot but I feel like asking: How do those musicians make you think of those philosophers?
Bach connects to Kant because of the enlightenment spirit of his music... I feel like his music is extremely learned and scholarly. Bach connects to Augustine because Bach's masses are an awesome (in the original sense of the word) tribute to God. Bach connects to Leibniz because Leibniz was a very mathy philosopher (he co-invented Calculus, after all) and I feel like some of Bach (in particular the fugues, well-tempered clavier, etc.) seem very mathematical in their careful precision and nuanced repetition.
EDIT: Another good Bach/Kant connection is that neither of they both marked a synthesis of the best of what came before them. Bach in his day was considered a rather conservative, old-fashioned composer, but what he really did was achieve the peak of what the forms available at the time (e.g. counterpoint) could do. Similarly, Kant in many ways achieved the best of what the Rationalist and Empiricist projects were aiming towards.
I connect Beethoven to Nietzsche because they both seem rather wild and untamed, they both seem to consider the literary or aesthetic giant to be superior to more worldly figures like kings and queens, etc. A third figure that obviously connects to both of these is Goethe.
Mozart reminds me of Hume because Mozart's music seems very lovely and worldy, not overly abstract. Simple, but not unsophisticated.
I feel like an idiot but I feel like asking: How do those musicians make you think of those philosophers?
To give you an example, Kant is reason, obligation, morality, reason, obligation, reason, reason, reason, obligation, morality. He always harps on using disinterested reason as the foundation of a universal morality, and basically divorces our passions from our duties. In the same time frame, you have Bach, who writes very mechanical, intricate works that have very strong tonality (basically a very scale-based way of writing step-wise melodies around a clearly defined "tonic" tone)...so the two are strikingly similar. Kant is basically reams and reams of intricate logical constructions around a set of very simple principles, as Bach is pages and pages of noodling around very firmly grounded tonal bases. Other composers are a lot less ornate, more fluid, more amorphous with the tonality, etc. that inspire more romantic connections. Some composers/philosophers are more optimistic, some tragic, etc.
Bach doesn't seem optimistic or tragic. He seems like he has a very strict notion of duty and penance in his music. Check out his presentation of his masterful Brandenberg Concerti:
"As I had the good fortune a few years ago to be heard by Your Royal Highness, at Your Highness's commands, and as I noticed then that Your Highness took some pleasure in the little talents which Heaven has given me for Music, and as in taking Leave of Your Royal Highness, Your Highness deigned to honour me with the command to send Your Highness some pieces of my Composition: I have in accordance with Your Highness's most gracious orders taken the liberty of rendering my most humble duty to Your Royal Highness with the present Concertos, which I have adapted to several instruments; begging Your Highness most humbly not to judge their imperfection with the rigor of that discriminating and sensitive taste, which everyone knows Him to have for musical works, but rather to take into benign Consideration the profound respect and the most humble obedience which I thus attempt to show Him."
Kinda humble there...just like Kant's attempt to humble us about the limits of our reason, the absolute nature of our duty, and our obligation to strive towards a pefectly good will (compared to the imperfect, lowly one we have now).
I was never a big fan of 'classical' classical music. With a few notable exceptions I find most of it too sterile, and unexceptional. I play the piano myself, but stay away from classical composers as well. That type of music simply doesn't touch me the way classical soundtracks do (film or video game). Sure classical snobs look down on composers like Hans Zimmer, James Horner or Nobuo Uematsu - but for me they are the true masters. I can't stand listening to mediocre pieces that don't make me feel anything. 'My' classical music must evoke emotions. I have hundreds, if not thousands of classical soundtracks in my collection, with Zimmer being my favorite composer. I also have a pretty strong bias towards choral pieces. If someone asked me, what's my favorite track ever - I'd point them to this one:
Turn up the base, and volume:
Passion of the Christ - Resurrection
Ironically, I'm an atheist, and don't believe in Christian Mythology, but this particular piece of music is outstanding.
Turn up the base, and volume:
Passion of the Christ - Resurrection
Ironically, I'm an atheist, and don't believe in Christian Mythology, but this particular piece of music is outstanding.
You have excellent taste in music.
Mussorgsky was born in Karevo, Russia in the province of Pskov, 400 kilometres south-south-east of Saint Petersburg. His wealthy and land-owning family, the noble family of Mussorgsky, is reputedly descended from the first Ruthenian ruler, Rurik, through the sovereign princes of Smolensk.
If you've ever experienced Das wohltemperiertes Klavier it's easy to see how mathematical (and methodical) Bach really is. There is no connection to Kant though, who knew nothing of mathematics and, despite his image, wasn't methodical at all.
Beethoven and Nietzsche weren't contemporaries at all; Nietzsche and Wagner were.
I don't really see how the Protestant composer Bach connects to the secular Enlightenment at all, nor with the epitomy of Catholicism, Augustine, who was quite the bon-vivant - in his youth, that is.
Obviously a dedication "to His Royal Highness" would be humble; even in Beethoven's, yea Shostakovich days composers were dependent on the powers that be. There's no connection at all with Kant's morality, by which he did not live himself by the way, given his predilection for beverages alcoholic, of which Bach certainly would disapprove, being a devout family man.
I prefer Mozart's Requiem (in its entirety) myself.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Hmm. I could have sworn he was Polish.
He was one of 'The Mighty Handful'.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Yes I know. Doesn't mean he had to be Russian, just that he was in Petrograd.
But they were nationalistic composers, yes? I wouldn't have thought that a Polish composer would write Russian nationalistic music, given the situation between the two.
