Is Chronological Order Too Much To Ask For?

[Richard Tarleton]

This is fascinating - and contains a great deal with which I totally concur - but I'm not sure that this is what Bbm was meaning with his comment that he believed that it is "absolutely essential that people understand totally what composers have written chronologically".

S_A's took me 3 or 4 goes - got there in the end - and thank you ferney for flagging up Bruckner/Sechter/Schubert

I'm tryng to think how far back this interest in chronology goes. In an earlier age (pre-Beethoven????) the sort of music the composer churned out had a lot to do with such mundane concerns as to who their employer or patron happened to be at the time, rather than the sort of existential angst [I paraphrase ] that S_A refers to. I'm thinking of Renaissance composers such as Dowland or Monteverdi, and later on Bach..... Hildegard of Bingen....(she could write whatever she liked )

Is this just a post-capitalist thing?

But yes I have an intense interest in chronology and lap up composers' biographies in the hope of understanding the context of their work better....

[vinteuil]

Yes indeed, it would be an extraordinary requirement, especially for music composed in cultures far distanced from ours in which such desiderata would not have counted for much in terms of appreciation. With Mahler we can identify, I think, because we still share the miseries bestowed by capitalism - insecurity, unrealistic unsutainable expectations, social hierarchisation, the divide between rich and poor, exploitation of the "natural order" he so loved as if it were a slave, antisemitism, nationalism, war and militarism - all theorised into a generalised fatalism regarding suffering as part of the "human condition" that is probably as common a viewpoint today as in his time. You start life in an innocence to be corrupted by kicking against the pricks and being kicked by them, and there is a traceable trail of concomitance to follow in how the art developed in the light of insights gained along the path.

.

I'm trying to think how far back this interest in chronology goes. / ... /

Is this just a post-capitalist thing?

....

... I think most of the miseries Serial lists wd have been part of life for most people well before 'capitalism' - those who endured the Thirty Years War - or even the Roman civil wars - would recognize the suffering.

I would see the 'chronology' significance to take off with the Romantic movement rather than as a result of capitalism.

.

[cloughie]

In the non-classical world I like 'Best of' and 'Hits' albums to be chronological and will often burn off in my preferred order.

[Dave2002]

Now there's 'a thing'. No, I don't remember those weekends, fond as I am of each of those composers' work. It's the Messiaen, Ives and Cage weekends which stick in my memory. Oh, and there was an Adams weekend as well, but though I recorded the broadcsasts of all four, that 'Earbox' weekend almost skipped my mind.

Come to think of it, the Messiaen was not a so much a Barbican weekend. Westminster Cathedral was also used.

Were some of those broadcast? I really don't recollect them at all. However, I did go to a George Crumb immersion at the Barbican a number of years ago, and there have been others since - though I didn't quite manage to get to them.

[Bryn]

Just to throw the cat among the pigeons, you understand, but re. "it's absolutely essential that people understand totally what any composer has written chronologically", how many composers write chronologically? Many start off other than at what is to become the begining of the final version of a composition. Can we ever be quite sure what a composer wrote first, and what followed? Again, it might be handy to know that Beethoven wrote his 2nd Piano Concerto before the 1st, or that Bruckner wrote his 1st Symphony before his 0th (or did he?), but is it really that essential to understand such matters?

[Bryn]

Currently listening to the Emerson Quartets otherwise admirable Bartok survey but am annoyed at the sequencing on the discs - 1,3 and 5 on disc one and 2, 4 and 6 on disc two.

Why?

Surely, it's not too much to sequence the quartets in the order in which they were written?

There are a few other guilty parties in this respect - I think Sawallisch's Schumann cycle has the same problem.

A quick question: how do you like your Beethoven Op. 18s, in chronological (3, 1, 2, 5, 4, 6) or numerical order? Most recordings of complete surveys of Op. 18 are ordered numerically. Do you avoid those?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But yes I have an intense interest in chronology and lap up composers' biographies in the hope of understanding the context of their work better....

Oh, so do I - and histories of Music to put a composer's work in a wider context. It was the extreme language of Bbm's post that rather took my breath away.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I would see the 'chronology' significance to take off with the Romantic movement rather than as a result of capitalism.

Ooh! Cause and effect, I'd say: the rise of the Middle Classes in the wake of the Industrial Revolution; Music publishing businesses; the new audiences and consumers of the Arts; Composers emerging from (and writing for) this emergent class ...

[vinteuil]

Ooh! Cause and effect, I'd say: the rise of the Middle Classes in the wake of the Industrial Revolution; Music publishing businesses; the new audiences and consumers of the Arts; Composers emerging from (and writing for) this emergent class ...

... yes, but why did Romanticism sweep across all art forms at that time? The rise of the middle classes didn't necessarily imply that particular direction of a change of sensibility.
.

[Conchis]

I want to listen to the Bartok SQs in sequential order, because I want to listen to the composer's development.

And I want to do this at home, in the comfort of my living room: not listening to my own sequence in the car or via the computer. I want to press 'Play' on the CD player and sit back, only changing midway.

I don't think this is too much to ask.

CD sales are struggling at the moment, so it should all be about pleasing the listener. Making the listener do 'extra work' is not a good idea.

[Pulcinella]

Just started on the EMI/Warner Britten box: will probably dip in rather than work my way numerically through the box, à la teamsaint, though that way has its appeal.
Interesting to see the order in the Sea Interludes and Passacaglia though: Dawn, Sunday morning, Moonlight, Passacaglia (curiously missing in Presto's overall contents listing), Storm.
If order of occurrence in the opera were used, we'd have Dawn, Storm, Sunday morning, Passacaglia, Moonlight.
I might need a little lie down to cope with all this. And that's even without knowing which one he wrote first.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... yes, but why did Romanticism sweep across all art forms at that time? The rise of the middle classes didn't necessarily imply that particular direction of a change of sensibility.

It's a remarkable coincidence if it doesn't. The French, American, and Industrial Revolutions were all Middle-Class affairs - emerging from the scientific discoveries of the previous centuries overthrowing established "knowledge" about how the universe was meant to be. The Enlightenment is a mid-stage - an attempt to create new types of order; Romanticism is the "natural" reaction to this, post Robespierre (and Napoleon). I don't think it could ever have "swept across all the Art forms" under the ways that the Arts and were used (and Artists trained) in pre-Capitalist Europe.

[vinteuil]

It's a remarkable coincidence if it doesn't. The French, American, and Industrial Revolutions were all Middle-Class affairs - emerging from the scientific discoveries of the previous centuries overthrowing established "knowledge" about how the universe was meant to be. The Enlightenment is a mid-stage - an attempt to create new types of order; Romanticism is the "natural" reaction to this, post Robespierre (and Napoleon). I don't think it could ever have "swept across all the Art forms" under the ways that the Arts and were used (and Artists trained) in pre-Capitalist Europe.

... I understand all this. I suppose I don't see 'Romanticism' as at all a 'natural', inevitable result of the societal changes brought in as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. Doubtless bicoz Enlightenment types like me think the whole swerve to a Romantic approach was a disastrous wrong turn....


.

[Sir Velo]

I want to listen to the Bartok SQs in sequential order, because I want to listen to the composer's development.

And I want to do this at home, in the comfort of my living room: not listening to my own sequence in the car or via the computer. I want to press 'Play' on the CD player and sit back, only changing midway.

I don't think this is too much to ask.

CD sales are struggling at the moment, so it should all be about pleasing the listener. Making the listener do 'extra work' is not a good idea.

Every format has its day. The LP replaced the 78, which in turn was supplanted by the CD. CDs have had 30 years or so as the go to medium which is about par for the course. Downloads and (increasingly) streaming are the future of the record industry. Record company executives know this which is why they won't be killing themselves at upsetting a few cranks over the order in which tracks are listed.

[Bryn]

Every format has its day. The LP replaced the 78, which in turn was supplanted by the CD. CDs have had 30 years or so as the go to medium which is about par for the course. Downloads and (increasingly) streaming are the future of the record industry. Record company executives know this which is why they won't be killing themselves . . . over the order in which tracks are listed.

Not to do with chronology, but the disdain for the presentation of their products is epitomised for me in the way so many recordings of Mahler's 3rd Symphony break the work other than between the first and second movements (i.e. between what the composer designated parts 1 and 2). Some even go as far as making the disc change between the fifth and sixth movements (marked Folg ohne Unterbrechung No. 6 in the score. The 'Sony' Bernstein is a case in point. The later DG is not much better, the disc change coming after the 3rd movement.