Howard Goodall on BBC Two

[JFLL]

Amongst quite a few questionable statements last night I particularly enjoyed the reference to Tchaikovsky's symphonism following Brahmsian models. I'm confident Pyotr Il'ych would have said a few choice words to Mr Goodall on that score!

But doesn’t it seem odd now that Brahms was regarded in his day as the very antithesis of Wagner and Bruckner, and that Tchaikovsky was implacably opposed to Brahms, when today we (or most of us, I hope) can happily listen to all of them as great figures of essentially the same age (while recognizing their individual differences, of course)?

[Serial_Apologist]

Oh have we? I started post #196 about 4 hours ago, kept getting distracted... (had to put out a Feuer, for instance )

UPDATE: Can't see a post dealing with the Liszt allegation. Which one were you thinking of mercs?

Were any other of HG's strenuous claims for Liszt bunkum?

PS he did concede that Wagner "wrote much better tunes" I suppose...

Such a jumble of misrelated half-truths the programme was that I'd need to subject myself to a repeat to find out, (I'd rather not), but from what I remember it was stated that Liszt invented the double-augmented scale - the one of alternating tones and semitones - and passed that idea onto Stravinsky. Although a Debussy piano piece also played, purporting to exemplify use of the DA scale, in fact illustrated the whole-tone scale, which from memory wasn't explained. Or was it Rimsky? Oh who cares anyway - I'm just glad I rumbled the presenter with the cheap keyboard and tunic frock coat that makes him resemble a guru from some exegetic cult early on in the series.

[Serial_Apologist]

I am confident one Pyotr Il'ych is spinning in his grave now

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Amongst quite a few questionable statements last night I particularly enjoyed the reference to Tchaikovsky's symphonism following Brahmsian models. I'm confident Pyotr Il'ych would have said a few choice words to Mr Goodall on that score!

So would Johannes JohannJakobsohnn!

[Serial_Apologist]

But that doesn't mean that the only alternative music (singular) is Andre Rieu or Relaxing Classics.

Don't worry Pee - from what one saw of the trail for next week's final programme that is the teleological end-point of musical evolution to which you will happily be guided.

[Thropplenoggin]

Being in France, I'm forced to follow 'Howard Goodall on R3' - his 5 minute interludes of The Story of Music with Suzy Klein. He seems to keep picking the most famous classical music pieces and then be at pains to explain why he choose the piece to exemplify a point, not because it's famous. Thus, recently, Elgar's 'Nimrod' was being used to underline some point about musical nostalgia and a sense of looking back in the pre-modernist age. Or something. It was awfully muddled.

In any case, surely there are lots of less famous pieces that could be used to make the same point.

[MrGongGong]

Don't worry Pee - from what one saw of the trail for next week's final programme that is the teleological end-point of musical evolution to which you will happily be guided.

I think you had better send him a dictionary , he has trouble with words of more than one syllable

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I can remember Hans Keller quoting a section of the final movement of the G Minor Symphony which contains a twelve-tone row.

Yes; 'tho' I think he was quoting Dallapicola.

It's the very start of the Development section, and is actually an 11-note row (he avoids the tonic G of the work): (G) D F A Bb Db C E Ab B Eb F#. The difference here is that the "Row" is a purely melodic/thematic entity: Liszt's row at the start of the Faust Symphony just emerges from the four descending augmented triads. That's probably why HG missed the significance of the Mozart: it's not Harmony - our Howard only hears chords, not lines.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But doesn’t it seem odd now that Brahms was regarded in his day as the very antithesis of Wagner and Bruckner, and that Tchaikovsky was implacably opposed to Brahms, when today we (or most of us, I hope) can happily listen to all of them as great figures of essentially the same age (while recognizing their individual differences, of course)?

Indeed; but this happens a lot - Milton Babbitt and Robert Craft were both regarded as bizarre in the 1940s & '50s for expressing a love of the Music of both Schoenberg and Stravinsky.

[MrGongGong]

- our Howard only hears chords, not lines.

I really much watch this
but I guess that's what you get if you do the church music thang like our Howard

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes; 'tho' I think he was quoting Dallapicola.

Actually, it's subtler than this - it's in Vol1 of the Penguin The Symphony, where Keller quotes Dallapicola and then points out that there's something more interesting than a note-count going on here: as the sense of Tonality crumbles, Mozart stops it from collapsing completely by engaging a set of overlapping motifs of four notes each in a way that uncannily presages Schoenberg's practice.

Now, that's whay I call insight - and it was written for a general (not specialist) readership in the mid-1960s. How perceptions of the receptivity of the general public have plummeted since then if Hans Keller has been replaced by Howard Goodall!

[MrGongGong]

Actually, it's subtler than this - it's in Vol1 of the Penguin The Symphony, where Keller quotes Dallapicola and then points out that there's something more interesting than a note-count going on here: as the sense of Tonality crumbles, Mozart stops it from collapsing completely by engaging a set of overlapping motifs of four notes each in a way that uncannily presages Schoenberg's practice.

Now that
is actually interesting
rather than the crap about how folk don't like Serialism because it's "ugly"or other nonsense

[amateur51]

[QUOTE=ferneyhoughgeliebte;266073]Actually, it's subtler than this - it's in Vol1 of the Penguin The Symphony, where Keller quotes Dallapicola and then points out that there's something more interesting than a note-count going on here: as the sense of Tonality crumbles, Mozart stops it from collapsing completely by engaging a set of overlapping motifs of four notes each in a way that uncannily presages Schoenberg's practice.

Now, that's whay I call insight - and it was written for a general (not specialist) readership in the mid-1960s. How perceptions of the receptivity of the general public have plummeted since then if Hans Keller has been replaced by Howard Goodall![/QUOTE]Goodall and his ruddy Snow Man, say no more!

And that dreadful theme tune for The Vicar of Dribbley or whatever it's called - dreadful 'don't frighten the horses' sit-com pap - cutting edge Ben Elton/Richard Curtis script about a woman vicar (oh my sides, how we laughed)

[MrGongGong]

"The Snowman" was by Howard Blake
wrong Howard

(sadly not F Howerd though ................)

[amateur51]

"The Snowman" was by Howard Blake
wrong Howard

(sadly not F Howerd though ................)

Oooops sorry Howard Goodall - but I still think the Dribbley music is pap