Where is everyone?

[Ian]

Part of the problem here is a lack of shared experience to comment on....many gave up on Gramophone during the Inverne years, and of those who take IRR not many comment on it regularly... these things could be monthly points of contact...

I think this is very true. I wonder if anyone would be interested in participating in a 'record club' - to be run a bit like a book club? All it would take is a group of people to agree to buy/listen to a (new) recording, and discuss it at time when everyone has had a chance to get to know the music and form a view. The Norgard/VPO release would be a perfect choice. I know this is probably a non-starter because in theory this could be done with any R3 concert, but I wonder if concerts on the radio are just too ephemeral and don't always provide sufficient motivation to really get to know an unfamiliar/new piece compared to personally investing in it?

[jayne lee wilson]

[/B]

Why? does it matter?

Our man in the brass section, encouraged me a while ago to post my views on music, (so its YOUR fault Horny !) regardless of how competent I felt, and on a board where there is so much expertise.

And I find I learn a lot,and listen better when I am trying to formulate my thoughts for an audience, even if that audience is imaginary and more knowledgeable than me, and even if the real audience could even me on ignore !!

Listening well, to the Roehre level of discipline, isn't always easy to do, so I tend to see it as an aspiration, rather than a rule.

Absolutely TS, about "trying to formulate..." The act of writing stimulates thought... as EM Forster said (unimprovably!) "How do I know what I think till I see what I say?"

[Serial_Apologist]

Being able to memorise quite long pieces of music from an early age probably helped me understand some of the intricacies of musical form. Johann Strauss waltzes were commonplace on the late 1940s wireless I heard prior to attending my first school aged 4 in 1949. Through them, in particular, I discovered cyclical musical forms that returned to Theme 1 probably before finding out about ABA song forms, because the themes were so easily memorable as almost to become earworms. From knowing the Schumann piano concerto by heart in my head from age 7, by age 13 it was no problem learning about sonata form; I already knew about canon through singing exercises on "Three Blind Mice" at school, and from there it was but a short distance to fugue and counterpoint in general. From there onwards, the business of finding melody in, say, Messiaen's "Chronochromie", or suggesting that there might even be a tenuous connection between the section where instruments enter staccato one by one to build up the massed fractured texture that culminates in chorale chords being flung between the three orchestras of "Gruppen" and any Bach chorale which culminates in the theme proclaimed in fully harmonised triumph, is something that even I, with my near-zero sight reading skills, feel undaunted to bring into the hopefully intelligent kind of discussion it is as nice to find on this forum occasionally as in chatting to strangers in a Proms interval.


The point I'm trying to make to french frank and others who feel they are unable to communicate purely musical experience verbally beyond saying what they like or dislike, is that what is to be said is all there after the listening, and a bit of background stuff on compositional techniques. There ain't that much to our elite, really!

[Serial_Apologist]

Incidentally, your mentioning Hans Keller's non-verbal analysis (of which I've forgotten the name - "Functional Analysis"? Seems un-Kellerian: how can analysis be dysfunctional?) is exactly the sort of thing I believe Roehre is talking. It's what Wagner's leitmotifs thrive on - and he* would have claimed that it has its origins in those late Beethoven Quartets.

* = Wagner, not Roehre.

Nevertheless, I have a cassette of a live performance of the Schoenberg second string quartet from around 1985, whose announcement wass prefixed by a lengthy quote from Hans Keller commenting of the composer's "plung into the boiling mud" or words to that effect, and his description of the work's eventual return to its initial E flat, and how at the very end this reversion to the major takes us right back to Monteverdi and the birth pangs of diatonic tonality, is about as wonderful in its reassurance of the strength of continuity in the context of where AS's music was going at the time as anything I've ever heard written or spoken about music.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... of the work's eventual return to its initial E flat, and how at the very end this reversion to the major

Erm ... did HK say this? (Should be F# minor/major.)

But yes - Music can be spoken about as eloquently as any of the Arts and Ideas; Keller did so frequently, as have Robert Simpson, Tovey, Anthony Payne, Michael Hall, Paul Griffiths ... and not a few contributors to this Forum.

Great #78, by the way

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Being able to memorise quite long pieces of music from an early age ...

Is there a green-with-envy emoticon anywhere?

[Serial_Apologist]

Is there a green-with-envy emoticon anywhere?

Listen to any piece with which you already have some familiarity. My guess is that as it proceeds you can probably anticipate what is coming next. You are well on the way to storing it in your memory. Try it!

John Ireland once said that the problem with the Classics for him was more-or-less being able to predict accurately what was coming next, whether nor not one had heard the specific work beforehand. One of the things I like about "modern music" is this feeling of not quite knowing always, which starts, probably, with Debussy. There are points in his music when I think, "My goodness, he's really worked his way into a corner now - how on earth is he going to get out of it?" then marvelling at some melodic turn or operation of an harmonic sleight-of-hand that allows the music to carry on. You could say this is why I like jazz so much, too.

[teamsaint]

Listen to any piece with which you already have some familiarity. My guess is that as it proceeds you can probably anticipate what is coming next. You are well on the way to storing it in your memory. Try it!

John Ireland once said that the problem with the Classics for him was more-or-less being able to predict accurately what was coming next, whether nor not one had heard the specific work beforehand. One of the things I like about "modern music" is this feeling of not quite knowing always, which starts, probably, with Debussy. There are points in his music when I think, "My goodness, he's really worked his way into a corner now - how on earth is he going to get out of it?" then marvelling at some melodic turn or operation of an harmonic sleight-of-hand that allows the music to carry on. You could say this is why I like jazz so much, too.

Hmmmm....interesting.... EDIT: ....no, better than interesting.....

I was listening to Schubert D960 last night and thinking much the same...(about unexpected things happening....)

[Roehre]

Being able to memorise quite long pieces of music from an early age probably helped me understand some of the intricacies of musical form. Johann Strauss waltzes were commonplace on the late 1940s wireless I heard prior to attending my first school aged 4 in 1949. Through them, in particular, I discovered cyclical musical forms that returned to Theme 1 probably before finding out about ABA song forms, because the themes were so easily memorable as almost to become earworms. From knowing the Schumann piano concerto by heart in my head from age 7, by age 13 it was no problem learning about sonata form; I already knew about canon through singing exercises on "Three Blind Mice" at school, and from there it was but a short distance to fugue and counterpoint in general. From there onwards, the business of finding melody in, say, Messiaen's "Chronochromie", or suggesting that there might even be a tenuous connection between the section where instruments enter staccato one by one to build up the massed fractured texture that culminates in chorale chords being flung between the three orchestras of "Gruppen" and any Bach chorale which culminates in the theme proclaimed in fully harmonised triumph, is something that even I, with my near-zero sight reading skills, feel undaunted to bring into the hopefully intelligent kind of discussion it is as nice to find on this forum occasionally as in chatting to strangers in a Proms interval.


The point I'm trying to make to french frank and others who feel they are unable to communicate purely musical experience verbally beyond saying what they like or dislike, is that what is to be said is all there after the listening, and a bit of background stuff on compositional techniques. There ain't that much to our elite, really!

I had to discover "classical" music all by myself - as my parents were completely not interested and my peers even less.
Only one hour of music a week in my grammar school for one year, and reading and listening as much as I could, developed my own and therefore completely independent musical thinking.

I still recall one of my earliest LPs, Holliger playing Fiala, Hummel and JCBach oboe+orchestra works. I was flabbergasted by the diffference in sound between those works, though it was the same orchestra and the same oboe-player (and they even made a mistake in the sleeve text: it was JSBach, not JCBach, wasn't it?).
That was the beginning of a voyage of discovery [which started with Beethoven 2 and Leonore 3] which hasn't ended yet, now 43 years later.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Listen to any piece with which you already have some familiarity. My guess is that as it proceeds you can probably anticipate what is coming next. You are well on the way to storing it in your memory. Try it!

John Ireland once said that the problem with the Classics for him was more-or-less being able to predict accurately what was coming next, whether nor not one had heard the specific work beforehand. One of the things I like about "modern music" is this feeling of not quite knowing always, which starts, probably, with Debussy. There are points in his music when I think, "My goodness, he's really worked his way into a corner now - how on earth is he going to get out of it?" then marvelling at some melodic turn or operation of an harmonic sleight-of-hand that allows the music to carry on. You could say this is why I like jazz so much, too.

My problem is trying to play or sing from memory.

[Richard Tarleton]

My problem is trying to play or sing from memory.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if my (strictly amateur) playing career had started earlier, or not had a gap of some years in the middle. As it is, my brain seems to have a current hard disc capacity of about 15-20 pieces which I know by heart, to the point where if I learn a new one (a longer and longer process these days) something drops off the other end. I also seem to have a size limit - bear in mind this is the classical guitar - a piece of 3 pages, or 100 bars or so, seems to be the limit. Though as I love early music and Dowland in particular, this is not a huge problem. And I can sit down and play 9-10 pieces to an audience (we're talking village halls here - joint gigs) from memory.

[french frank]

But you recognised the piano piece, even if you couldn't identify it. Similarly, if the bits you recognised had reappeared in another work, wouldn't you have recognised (if not identified) that the same phrase/melody was being re-used?

But I would probably have thought they were the same piece ...

Now, off to listen to Op 131.

[Flosshilde]

But you recognised the piano piece, even if you couldn't identify it. Similarly, if the bits you recognised had reappeared in another work, wouldn't you have recognised (if not identified) that the same phrase/melody was being re-used?

Well, no, not in my case. I might have recognised some bit of the piece, thought 'Is that Mozart?', & then, if I heard the phrase/melody in another piece might have thought I was hearing the same piece, & then got confused if it didn't carry on as I expected.

[Serial_Apologist]

One of my listening problems is overfamiliarity, and I am beginning to wonder whether those such as Flossie, french frank and Eine Alpensinfonie, who have difficulties with memorising and contextualising recognisable bits have a slight advantage!

[french frank]

One of my listening problems is overfamiliarity, and I am beginning to wonder whether those such as Flossie, french frank and Eine Alpensinfonie, who have difficulties with memorising and contextualising recognisable bits have a slight advantage!

And now I've got the CD out, I realise it was Op 132 - I should have said the A minor.

I have a vague memory that someone called Burpless got shot to it in that novel by Aldous Huxley (I have an awful memory for novels too ).