I've REALLY, REALLY tried, but ......

[oddoneout]

I find the late Beethoven quartets difficult and challenging BUT I've never yet failed to listen all the way through, and I will listen to them again because I want to, and believe I will, understand more each time and thus derive more enjoyment from listening to them. I find the Bartok quartets rather forbidding, and, despite my best efforts, I derive no pleasure whatever from listening to then and my mind wanders after a while.

This is where I've got to, and have decided that it isn't necessary for me to like and/or listen to them. I grew up listening to several Bartok works that my parents liked, and love them, but also became aware that many musically minded and/or knowledgeable people I encountered over the years either didn't know or didn't like those works.
I heard the Tues lunchtime concert with Debussy and Bartok's 1st SQ, and didn't feel the need to turn it off, but it wouldn't be a preferred listening choice(and neither was the Debussy). Wednesday I missed but today's I heard - or more accurately I listened to the Folk Dances and the Haydn and left the radio so SQ3 was playing but I couldn't get on with it, and I know that the later ones defeat me completely. I have tried and I think that's the main thing; I certainly don't agree with a family member who said that if he didn't enjoy something on first listening he would never bother to revisit it.

[LMcD]

This is where I've got to, and have decided that it isn't necessary for me to like and/or listen to them. I grew up listening to several Bartok works that my parents liked, and love them, but also became aware that many musically minded and/or knowledgeable people I encountered over the years either didn't know or didn't like those works.
I heard the Tues lunchtime concert with Debussy and Bartok's 1st SQ, and didn't feel the need to turn it off, but it wouldn't be a preferred listening choice(and neither was the Debussy). Wednesday I missed but today's I heard - or more accurately I listened to the Folk Dances and the Haydn and left the radio so SQ3 was playing but I couldn't get on with it, and I know that the later ones defeat me completely. I have tried and I think that's the main thing; I certainly don't agree with a family member who said that if he didn't enjoy something on first listening he would never bother to revisit it.

My experience exactly!

[kernelbogey]

This week's series seems to go only as far as SQ4...?

Bartok Quartets 5 and 6 tonight 1930 on Radio Three.

(Thanks to Petroc.)

[Richard Barrett]

For reasons which aren't clear to me, it took me a long time to get into Bartók's quartets, although I did get there in the end. I guess the problem for many is the somewhat harsh and dissonant textures, although obviously that wasn't an issue for me, and nor was Bartók's idiom in general since there are many of his works I feel very close to.

There are quite a few composers whose work I've found difficult to cope with until I find, or until someone provides me with, a "key" that unlocks it after which it all suddenly makes sense. With Shostakovich it was the two-note fugue in the third movement of his Fourth Symphony; with RVW it was the epilogue to his Sixth; with Schumann it was the slow movement of his Second; with Prokofiev it was the scherzo of his Third.

I have REALLY REALLY tried with Schoenberg's quartets but I fear I'm never going to appreciate them, while others like Elgar and Britten are so far beyond the pale for me that I'll probably not even get that far. Someone once challenged me to listen to the whole of Peter Grimes in the hope that it would lead to enlightenment, but I couldn't get any purchase on it at all.

[ahinton]

For reasons which aren't clear to me, it took me a long time to get into Bartók's quartets, although I did get there in the end. I guess the problem for many is the somewhat harsh and dissonant textures, although obviously that wasn't an issue for me, and nor was Bartók's idiom in general since there are many of his works I feel very close to.

That's an interesting take on it; aren't most of those "somewhat harsh and dissonant textures" in the middle two quartets and far less in evidence in 1, 2, 5 & 6?

As to Schönberg, I've struggled to get my head around 3 & 4 but couldn't live without 1 or 2...

[Pulcinella]

...
Someone once challenged me to listen to the whole of Peter Grimes in the hope that it would lead to enlightenment, but I couldn't get any purchase on it at all.

Maybe try a bleeding chunk that's not a Sea Interlude: the Passacaglia?
You'd need a heart of stone not to be moved by Ellen's 'Embroidery' aria, surely?

[ahinton]

Maybe try a bleeding chunk that's not a Sea Interlude: the Passacaglia?
You'd need a heart of stone not to be moved by Ellen's 'Embroidery' aria, surely?

Not necessarily, methinks; I have to confess that much of Britten leaves me cold as well, for all that I admire and respect his immense facility for what it was, although a handful of his works I would rather not have to liive without.

[Flay]

Maybe try a bleeding chunk that's not a Sea Interlude: the Passacaglia?
You'd need a heart of stone not to be moved by Ellen's 'Embroidery' aria, surely?

Try this, the BBC live performance with Britten conducting and Pears as Grimes

Listen to the quartet at about 1 hour 20. The lynch mob scene 2 hours in is terrific too.

Blow it, its all excellent!

[jayne lee wilson]

It can go in reverse.
After the Barbican Weekend in the early 90s, I was mad keen on Henze; it seemed to be 2nd Viennese and then some; I bought all the later symphonies as they appeared, I was especially obsessed with the 7th. I would often lose myself among the vast gloomy explorations of the 2nd Piano Concerto.
Latterly it sounds like 2nd Viennese only less so, and often too long. I wouldn't touch it now.

Perhaps that is a stylistic weariness. But I think aversion is often to do with the mythos of a given sound world; so as I've often said, I hear the power, colour and fluidities of Bax's music, but the imaginative and emotional evocations push me away....
There's a close parallel in my response to Elgar too, which has only intensified with age. There are a few exceptions - November Woods, the Introduction and Allegro for Strings...I'm still not sure why (apart from brevity.... I do like concision these days.).

It was lucky I bought the beautifully-patterned LP Boxset of the Hungarian Quartet's Bartok early on, probably after a Gramophone recommendation; integral part of my life ever since, without exception or preference. With Schoenberg, I'm good up to No.3, which draws me in through its spinning, moto-perpep-style first movement. 4 still seems dark and difficult and mysteriously opaque.

Musical connection can be bafflingly selective; so Holmboe's Symphonies and Concertos are very important to me, but the Quartets tend to leave me wondering what am I missing here.........

[Richard Barrett]

Thanks for the tips but I think the chances of my ever appreciating anything by Britten are approximately zero. I'm always a bit suspicious of any 20th century composer who sees fit to ignore the expansion of musical possibilities taking place during their lifetime (something one couldn't say about Tippett for example, let alone others of their generation like Carter or Messiaen), but apart from that, I just find everything I ever hear by Britten threadbare, perfunctory, lacking in vision, I could go on but no doubt you'll get the picture even if you might disagree strongly!

[Richard Barrett]

I would often lose myself among the vast gloomy explorations of the 2nd Piano Concerto. Latterly it sounds like 2nd Viennese only less so, and often too long.

Actually though it's more like Second Viennese School plus Stravinsky (sometimes more, sometimes less) plus whatever else happened to catch his fancy from music of his own generation, although that might make it seem too eclectic, which indeed plenty of Henze's work is, though not the 2nd Concerto, which I find one of the most emotionally searing works of its time, I've known it since my teenage years and return to it regularly. Henze is a counterexample to this thread topic as far as I'm concerned - a composer whose work I immediately took to, and which has remained an important companion through the decades.

[Pulcinella]

...
(apart from brevity.... I do like concision these days.).

Concision?
Bruckner?

[ahinton]

Thanks for the tips but I think the chances of my ever appreciating anything by Britten are approximately zero. I'm always a bit suspicious of any 20th century composer who sees fit to ignore the expansion of musical possibilities taking place during their lifetime (something one couldn't say about Tippett for example, let alone others of their generation like Carter or Messiaen), but apart from that, I just find everything I ever hear by Britten threadbare, perfunctory, lacking in vision, I could go on but no doubt you'll get the picture even if you might disagree strongly!

Fair comment. I don't go as far as you do in that the Bridge Variations, Cello Symphony, Sinfonia da Requiem and War Requiem grab and largely hold my attention - and I find Grimes to be the best of his stage works - but, these apart, what bothers me about my response to most of Britten is that I want to be moved but so rarely am. Whether, how or to what extent Britten saw fit specifically to ignore that expansion of musical possibilities I cannot say, although his music suggests at least that, if he didn't, he perhaps came to find himself at odds with many of them; I don't necessarily find that problematic per se but that does nothing to help me to appreciate his work.

[LMcD]

Not necessarily, methinks; I have to confess that much of Britten leaves me cold as well, for all that I admire and respect his immense facility for what it was, although a handful of his works I would rather not have to liive without.

I really think that my life would be impoverished if I weren't allowed to hear the Serenade or the War Requiem again. On the other hand, I would object pretty violently if I were required to listen to more than about 1 minute and 18 seconds of any of Bruckner's (very, very) slow movements.

[Pulcinella]

Fair comment. I don't go as far as you do in that the Bridge Variations, Cello Symphony, Sinfonia da Requiem and War Requiem grab and largely hold my attention - and I find Grimes to be the best of his stage works - but, these apart, what bothers me about my response to most of Britten is that I want to be moved but so rarely am. Whether, how or to what extent Britten saw fit specifically to ignore that expansion of musical possibilities I cannot say, although his music suggests at least that, if he didn't, he perhaps came to find himself at odds with many of them; I don't necessarily find that problematic per se but that does nothing to help me to appreciate his work.

He invented the curlew symbol, didn't he?
Mind you, I'm not sure what it signifies.


PS: I do now:

https://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095654148