The five masterpieces that changed the course of musical history

[Bryn]

Cardew.

Looks like a bowling game gone wrong.

3VS

I wondered how long it would be before someone took the bait? Give that man a banana.

[Mr Pee]

4:33" 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

More or less all music has been written differently since 4"33? Come on, Mr. GG. I wouldn't even go so far as to say that "more or less all music" has been written differently since Tristan, but that work certainly had greater influence than 4"33, which is a minor footnote to musical history in comparison. Not that there's anything musical about it in the first place, of course.

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.

[John Skelton]

Happy to oblige, Panjandrum! In what way did The Dream of Gerontius change musical history ?

It served as a terrible warning to other composers?

[John Skelton]

a towering masterpiece

http://jb.guinot.pagesperso-orange.fr/pages/CadreIR.html

[Mr Pee]

http://jb.guinot.pagesperso-orange.f...s/CadreIR.html

Fascinating. Not that I have a clue what it means, or what possible relevance it has to Gerontius........

Care to provide a link to an English version?

[John Skelton]

Fascinating. Not that I have a clue what it means, or what possible relevance it has to Gerontius........

It's a dictionary of clichés, platitudes and banalities, in language and ideas, compiled by François Denys Bartholomée Bouvard and Juste Romain Cyrille Pécuchet (the heroes of Flaubert's unfinished yet towering masterpiece Bouvard et Pécuchet). Prefacing masterpiece with the inevitable "towering" would fit the scheme nicely. Of course, neither thinks it's a dictionary of clichés, platitudes and banalities: they think everything in it is of profound significance.

Care to provide a link to an English version?

No.

[ahinton]

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.

[John Skelton]

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.

No. I was referring to Mr Pee prefacing the word "masterpiece" with "towering" -

I don't have an opinion about The Dream of Gerontius because I've never heard it.

[Stunsworth]

A great list up to the Riley which I'm afraid I don't know

It's on Spotify - and since there are only a couple of tracks the ads shouldn't be a problem for those that object to them.

[Mr Pee]

I don't have an opinion about The Dream of Gerontius because I've never heard it.

Although in an earlier reply, you opined that

it served as a terrible warning to other composers

And yet you've never heard it. Seems a bit odd- given the fact that you've never bothered to listen to the piece.

[John Skelton]

Although 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.

It 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.

[Serial_Apologist]

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.

Vaughan Williams did say that Gerontius influenced parts of his "Sea Symphony" - the beginning of the last movement iirc. To claim that this amounted to an influence on subsequent British music, let alone that of any other land, would be exaggerative; I'd imagine even RVW would have been loath to make any such claims, either upon it or the "Sea Symphony".

S-A

[Mr Pee]

It 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.

Oh, I've heard 4"33 loads of times. Why, it was on my CD player earlier today when I accidentally pressed the Pause button for precisely 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

[cloughie]

Oh, I've heard 4"33 loads of times. Why, it was on my CD player earlier today when I accidentally pressed the Pause button for precisely 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

What's the Dance mix like? - Much the same I would think.

[Nick Armstrong]

What's the Dance mix like? - Much the same I would think.

Yes but everything's so overamplified these days....