Originally posted by 3rd Viennese School
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The five masterpieces that changed the course of musical history
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Originally posted by MrGongGong View Post4:33" has caused more or less all music after it to be written differently
by focussing on the act (in an active sense !) of LISTENING as the content Cage created a piece that could be seen to have a content that was entirely about context
4:33" (and Cage's other work) have caused all composers to reconsider the sonic content of music in a profound way
liking it or not matters little to it's significance
Oh and I forgot to add that my "problem" with Gerontius is the text which I find impossible to ignore .........
and your drawings could be music ................. go Xenakis I say
Unlike Gerontius, which is a towering masterpiece of the last century. The fact that you allow the admittedly somewhat dated text to get in the way of your appreciation of the music says more about your manner of listening than about the work itself. When I listen to it, any shortcomings in the text are rendered irrelevant by the magnificence of the music.
If you allow poor text/libretti to influence you to that degree, then I should think that there a very few operas, oratorios, or songs that you could ever bear to hear.Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
Mark Twain.
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John Skelton
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Originally posted by John Skelton View Post
Care to provide a link to an English version?Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
Mark Twain.
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John Skelton
Originally posted by Mr Pee View PostFascinating. Not that I have a clue what it means, or what possible relevance it has to Gerontius........
Originally posted by Mr Pee View PostCare to provide a link to an English version?
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I agree with Mr Pee that Gerontius is a great work but I don't really see how it changed the course of music history, even that of the country in which it was composed. I'm not sure whether John Skelton's trying to suggest that this work is replete with clichés, platitudes and banalities but, if so, I would have to disagree roundly.
As to 4'33", the usual defence put up for it is that it encouraged people to focus on listening with concentration on everything that was going on in a piece would, if accepted literally at face value, represent quite a severe indictment to the ways in which most people had listened to music before it was "written". Did IT change the course of music history? No, I have no evidence to suggest that it did. So, I've now at last discovered what it is that Gerontius and 4'33" have in common, which is that neither changed - nor indeed set out to change - the course of music history and I am indebted to this thread for alerting to this fact which would otherwise almost certainly never had occurred to me.
Anyway, what I find rather more fascinating is that the outburst into C major that ushers in Praise to the Holiest in Gerontius, which bears no small similarity to that which announces Die Sonne in Gurrelieder only a year or two later, is quite remarkably at the opposite end of the spectrum from that for which the two timpanists open the door for the coda of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, which must be one of the most painfully tragic bursts of C major in the entire orchestral repertoire.
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John Skelton
Originally posted by ahinton View PostI'm not sure whether John Skelton's trying to suggest that this work is replete with clichés, platitudes and banalities but, if so, I would have to disagree roundly.
I don't have an opinion about The Dream of Gerontius because I've never heard it.
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Originally posted by John Skelton View Post
I don't have an opinion about The Dream of Gerontius because I've never heard it.it served as a terrible warning to other composers
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
Mark Twain.
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John Skelton
Originally posted by Mr Pee View PostAlthough in an earlier reply, you opined that And yet you've never heard it. Seems a bit odd- given the fact that you've never bothered to listen to the piece.
Unlike you I don't hold forth or get hot under the collar about music I haven't heard.
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Originally posted by ahinton View PostI agree with Mr Pee that Gerontius is a great work but I don't really see how it changed the course of music history, even that of the country in which it was composed.
S-A
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Originally posted by John Skelton View PostIt was a joke, Mr Pee. You have omitted the
Unlike you I don't hold forth or get hot under the collar about music I haven't heard.Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
Mark Twain.
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Originally posted by cloughie View PostWhat's the Dance mix like? - Much the same I would think."...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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