Your musical homeland

[jayne lee wilson]

We seek security in uncertain times…..

Like many here, I roam wide in my listening…. Max to Monteverdi, Bach to Birtwistle etc…

But sooner or later I find myself back somewhere in the mid-20th Century, broadly the 30s to the 60s, with - Roussel, Honegger, Dutilleux; Skalkottas, Gerhard, Szymanowski, Lutosławski …. or of course Bartok, the later Stravinsky…..

It seems to be where my musical heart is….but why, I wonder…? Possibly some early experiences from Radio 3, a local record library, that excitement of discovery, of music no-one had told me about……even some vivid LP covers like the LSO/Solti Bartok Concerto for Orchestra….or is it some mysterious link from sound to individual physiology…?

Where do others feel that sense of homecoming…. which era, style, genre do you identify with most?
Is it associated with a spiritus loci, or a festival?
Perhaps one single work closest to your heart...?
And do you know why?

[verismissimo]

Like you, Jayne, there's so much to love. And I keep being surprised by discovering whole new chapters. Most recently Porpora and his contemporaries.

But I do always love those Czechs: Smetana, Dvorak, Janacek, Martinu ... Mahler … Not so much Suk.

[DracoM]

Wagner Parsifal / Solti / Kollo et al.

[cloughie]

Yes loads to love - I could go for Mahler, R Strauss, Elgar but also I like the Russian music of the late 19th and early 20th Century - Tchikovsky, the Five and through to Stravinsky but other than a dislike of Bolero, the music of Ravel and Debussy never ceases to thrill me - whether orchestral or piano works, chamber or vocal and add to these Faure and a couple of works by Florent Schmitt. So French music mainly then - but i know I could not live without Vaughan Williams - listen to his Symphonies, Job and orchestral works and having a go at singing some of his songs, along with Butterworth’s Shropshire Lad and Summer on Bredon.

[Joseph K]

We seek security in uncertain times…..

Like many here, I roam wide in my listening…. Max to Monteverdi, Bach to Birtwistle etc…

But sooner or later I find myself back somewhere in the mid-20th Century, broadly the 30s to the 60s, with - Roussel, Honegger, Dutilleux; Skalkottas, Gerhard, Szymanowski, Lutosławski …. or of course Bartok, the later Stravinsky…..

It seems to be where my musical heart is….but why, I wonder…? Possibly some early experiences from Radio 3, a local record library, that excitement of discovery, of music no-one had told me about……even some vivid LP covers like the LSO/Solti Bartok Concerto for Orchestra….or is it some mysterious link from sound to individual physiology…?

Where do others feel that sense of homecoming…. which era, style, genre do you identify with most?
Is it associated with a spiritus loci, or a festival?
Perhaps one single work closest to your heart...?
And do you know why?

For me, I guess it would have to be Jazz records from roughly 1965-1970, and by 'Jazz' I mean to include subgenres like Post-Bop, Fusion and Free Jazz. I first started getting curious about this music, as well as various kinds of classical music, in my early teens, and once I was in high school and had a paper-round (for a year or two) I would check out the jazz and classical sections of HMV. Radiohead also piqued my curiosity in this music, since they named Miles Davis and Messiaen as influences. Plus there were/are persuasively-written blurbs on the back of Miles Davis's albums for Columbia, his main label.

I guess I am attracted to things like colourfulness and psychedelia - as for the latter, I regard composers such as Scriabin to possess this quality, certainly in his late piano sonatas, even though he predates the invention of that term; also quite a bit of Boulez's music possesses this quality, in its dazzling, opulent and convulsive textures; also Tristan Murail's oceanic Gondwana and his incredible Desintegrations, which runs the gamut from imperious alien-spaceship music to iridescent kaleidoscopes etc. and obviously much of Messiaen's oeuvre.

I would say I have a few favourite albums, which you could think of in classical terms as being like suites... I have mentioned them on this forum quite a bit, so I won't say all of them. One piece is 'Pharaoh's Dance' from Miles Davis's album Bitches Brew, though it was written by Joe Zawinul and edited together by Teo Macero with Miles's approval. All things being well, this never fails to evoke a profound and mysterious feeling, convulsive, delirious, overwhelming and magical. It is simultaneously heavy, dense, sort of opaque and oceanic but also light, ephemeral and cool... impressionist and expressionist, surrealist nonpareil. Indeed it seems to transcend these things, which I state in my poetic tribute to it:

The ominous approach of the impending
horizon; binary duality
dissolves into absurd conundrums blending
each sense, perceiving no disparity
between the enigmatic forms of gnosis
revealed in plumes of dreamscape sound which capture
eternal mysteries’ apotheosis
and the bizarre illimitable rapture
of riffs revolving round symbols transcending
all earthly knowledge. Awesome cosmic dance
that speaks of numinous life, never ending
wondrous firmament, induce this trance,
to contemplate its facets’ endless bliss
the absolute and fathomless abyss.

It also helps in some way that I associate this piece, and also the whole album, but mainly this piece, which is the first and I think the best of the album, with my last year of university in Bangor, and smoking weed and listening to this piece which was perfect to listen on my CD Walkman for the walk to my friends' house since they lived 20 minutes' away. Without fail it would induce a great euphoria, relaxing and stimulating.

...

[Edgy 2]

Vaughan Williams is the be all and end all for me and I just cannot tear myself away from those neglected Brits.
Russian and Polish music of the 20th Century too.

[LMcD]

Elgar and Vaughan Williams. For me, they represent what we've already lost or are in the process of losing.

[Petrushka]

Bruckner. I love so much music but Bruckner is the composer whose work now means more to me than any other. Not that long ago I would have said Mahler but as I've got older it is Bruckner who has taken his place. I seem to have developed an obsession recently with the 7th and 9th symphonies over the others and play them often.

In the challenging times we face right now, Bruckner is a calming and reassuring presence.

[Quarky]

For me, there is not a gravitational pull to a single homecoming.

I do roam wide in my tastes, but as I continue rambling along, there are centres of attraction which pull me in various directions, resulting in a very winding path. May be it started at University, which I approached with a strong interest in Jazz, Miles Davis second quintet and Ornette Coleman being the major items, but was easily converted to Classical music, Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy. String quartets of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven.
The path continued with rock music, dance music, before coming to rest for many years in Bach, Mozart and Schubert lieder. These days I'm mainly interested in Improvisation, Early Music, and lately Minimalism.

Like to think I'm getting a deeper appreciation of music in all its forms. That's the way I'll probably continue.

[jayne lee wilson]

For me, I guess it would have to be Jazz records from roughly 1965-1970, and by 'Jazz' I mean to include subgenres like Post-Bop, Fusion and Free Jazz. I first started getting curious about this music, as well as various kinds of classical music, in my early teens, and once I was in high school and had a paper-round (for a year or two) I would check out the jazz and classical sections of HMV. Radiohead also piqued my curiosity in this music, since they named Miles Davis and Messiaen as influences. Plus there were/are persuasively-written blurbs on the back of Miles Davis's albums for Columbia, his main label.

I guess I am attracted to things like colourfulness and psychedelia - as for the latter, I regard composers such as Scriabin to possess this quality, certainly in his late piano sonatas, even though he predates the invention of that term; also quite a bit of Boulez's music possesses this quality, in its dazzling, opulent and convulsive textures; also Tristan Murail's oceanic Gondwana and his incredible Desintegrations, which runs the gamut from imperious alien-spaceship music to iridescent kaleidoscopes etc. and obviously much of Messiaen's oeuvre.

I would say I have a few favourite albums, which you could think of in classical terms as being like suites... I have mentioned them on this forum quite a bit, so I won't say all of them. One piece is 'Pharaoh's Dance' from Miles Davis's album Bitches Brew, though it was written by Joe Zawinul and edited together by Teo Macero with Miles's approval. All things being well, this never fails to evoke a profound and mysterious feeling, convulsive, delirious, overwhelming and magical. It is simultaneously heavy, dense, sort of opaque and oceanic but also light, ephemeral and cool... impressionist and expressionist, surrealist nonpareil. Indeed it seems to transcend these things, which I state in my poetic tribute to it:

The ominous approach of the impending
horizon; binary duality
dissolves into absurd conundrums blending
each sense, perceiving no disparity
between the enigmatic forms of gnosis
revealed in plumes of dreamscape sound which capture
eternal mysteries’ apotheosis
and the bizarre illimitable rapture
of riffs revolving round symbols transcending
all earthly knowledge. Awesome cosmic dance
that speaks of numinous life, never ending
wondrous firmament, induce this trance,
to contemplate its facets’ endless bliss
the absolute and fathomless abyss.

It also helps in some way that I associate this piece, and also the whole album, but mainly this piece, which is the first and I think the best of the album, with my last year of university in Bangor, and smoking weed and listening to this piece which was perfect to listen on my CD Walkman for the walk to my friends' house since they lived 20 minutes' away. Without fail it would induce a great euphoria, relaxing and stimulating.

...

A remarkable, extraordinarily moving and candid commentary, JK.... thank you so much for it....

That Murail album with Gondwana and Désintégrations was among the first of that composer I bought; marvellous start to another voyage of discovery...
"Imperious alien-spaceship music".....

[Joseph K]

A remarkable, extraordinarily moving and candid commentary, JK.... thank you so much for it....

That Murail album with Gondwana and Désintégrations was among the first of that composer I bought; marvellous start to another voyage of discovery...
"Imperious alien-spaceship music".....

You're welcome, Jayne.

Incidentally, I owe thanks to a lady from the (now non-existent) forum r3ok; after I was divested of the Murail CD among many others by burglars, she offered to sell hers to me - from the Netherlands - in return for an amazon gift. At the time, it was only going for silly prices online...

[silvestrione]

For me, I guess it would have to be Jazz records from roughly 1965-1970, and by 'Jazz' I mean to include subgenres like Post-Bop, Fusion and Free Jazz. I first started getting curious about this music, as well as various kinds of classical music, in my early teens, and once I was in high school and had a paper-round (for a year or two) I would check out the jazz and classical sections of HMV. Radiohead also piqued my curiosity in this music, since they named Miles Davis and Messiaen as influences. Plus there were/are persuasively-written blurbs on the back of Miles Davis's albums for Columbia, his main label.

I guess I am attracted to things like colourfulness and psychedelia - as for the latter, I regard composers such as Scriabin to possess this quality, certainly in his late piano sonatas, even though he predates the invention of that term; also quite a bit of Boulez's music possesses this quality, in its dazzling, opulent and convulsive textures; also Tristan Murail's oceanic Gondwana and his incredible Desintegrations, which runs the gamut from imperious alien-spaceship music to iridescent kaleidoscopes etc. and obviously much of Messiaen's oeuvre.

I would say I have a few favourite albums, which you could think of in classical terms as being like suites... I have mentioned them on this forum quite a bit, so I won't say all of them. One piece is 'Pharaoh's Dance' from Miles Davis's album Bitches Brew, though it was written by Joe Zawinul and edited together by Teo Macero with Miles's approval. All things being well, this never fails to evoke a profound and mysterious feeling, convulsive, delirious, overwhelming and magical. It is simultaneously heavy, dense, sort of opaque and oceanic but also light, ephemeral and cool... impressionist and expressionist, surrealist nonpareil. Indeed it seems to transcend these things, which I state in my poetic tribute to it:

The ominous approach of the impending
horizon; binary duality
dissolves into absurd conundrums blending
each sense, perceiving no disparity
between the enigmatic forms of gnosis
revealed in plumes of dreamscape sound which capture
eternal mysteries’ apotheosis
and the bizarre illimitable rapture
of riffs revolving round symbols transcending
all earthly knowledge. Awesome cosmic dance
that speaks of numinous life, never ending
wondrous firmament, induce this trance,
to contemplate its facets’ endless bliss
the absolute and fathomless abyss.

It also helps in some way that I associate this piece, and also the whole album, but mainly this piece, which is the first and I think the best of the album, with my last year of university in Bangor, and smoking weed and listening to this piece which was perfect to listen on my CD Walkman for the walk to my friends' house since they lived 20 minutes' away. Without fail it would induce a great euphoria, relaxing and stimulating.

...

I can imagine Jon Anderson of Yes chant-singing that poem as an opening to some mysterious 20 minute prog piece! But for me, the prose account just before says it all, a wonderful bit of writing that makes me want to go straight to the music...

[silvestrione]

For me, just at the moment, somewhat to my surprise, I seem to be turning to William Lawes viol fantasias, particularly those on the Phantasm disc, though why oh why did I ever give away my vinyl versions of The Consorte of Music in this repertoire (never made it on to CD as far as I can see).

[Joseph K]

Thank you very much, silvestrione.

I too love the Lawes Fantasias... my copy is by Les Voix Humaine, however.

[ardcarp]

Try also Phantasm's CD of Purcell's In Nomines, Fantasias, etc. Heartwarming that Purcell should have deliberately paid homage to this earlier age.