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  • Eine Alpensinfonie
    Host
    • Nov 2010
    • 20570

    Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post
    In highly chromatic tonal Music, cautionaries are a great help to the performers.

    Comment

    • Alison
      Full Member
      • Nov 2010
      • 6455

      New question: Who wrote the last symphonic poem ?

      Comment

      • EdgeleyRob
        Guest
        • Nov 2010
        • 12180

        Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post
        These are called "cautionaries", Edgey, and usually appear when a pitch has been modified recently. For example, if a composer uses a G# in a bar, they'll put a natural sign in brackets next to a G in the next bar just to make clear that it's gone back to what it used to be. They're sometimes found in blues-type chords where, say, there's an A and an Ab in the same chord: if the key signature has an Ab in it the composer will put an Ab cautionary next to the note just to confirm that this A isn't "naturalized" like the other A in the same chord.

        In highly chromatic tonal Music, cautionaries are a great help to the performers.
        Brilliant Ferney,thanks.
        Thanks to everyone for your replies to what must be a meat and drink question for you.

        Comment

        • MrGongGong
          Full Member
          • Nov 2010
          • 18357

          Originally posted by teamsaint View Post
          The point about sophisticated instruments wasn't to suggest that some early instruments weren't sometimes extraordinary. A visit here


          will confirm, and I suggest a visit to anybody who finds themselves in Brussels or thereabouts. Brilliant.

          ( I think MrGG probably lives in a techno suite in the basement......)
          Absolutely
          one of my favourite places and a great cafe on the roof

          Originally posted by cloughie View Post
          I find double sharps and flats annoying when reading for singing, also tied crotchets instead of a minim.
          yew downt loike spilling then ?

          (XC and D aren't the same "note" even though on some instruments they might be the same button, key or fingering)

          Comment

          • ferneyhoughgeliebte
            Gone fishin'
            • Sep 2011
            • 30163

            Originally posted by Alison View Post
            New question: Who wrote the last symphonic poem ?
            That's stumped me! They're still being written, aren't they? (James MacMillan's entire orchestral output, for example ... David Sawer's Birnham Wood ... Christopher Rouse ... David Del Tredici ... ?)
            [FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]

            Comment

            • teamsaint
              Full Member
              • Nov 2010
              • 25195

              Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post
              That's stumped me! They're still being written, aren't they? (James MacMillan's entire orchestral output, for example ... David Sawer's Birnham Wood ... Christopher Rouse ... David Del Tredici ... ?)
              Supplementary....when is anybody going to get round to recording Rouse 3 and 4? Drumming fingers smiley.....
              Last edited by teamsaint; 16-11-14, 22:38.
              I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.

              I am not a number, I am a free man.

              Comment

              • Alison
                Full Member
                • Nov 2010
                • 6455

                Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post
                That's stumped me! They're still being written, aren't they? (James MacMillan's entire orchestral output, for example ... David Sawer's Birnham Wood ... Christopher Rouse ... David Del Tredici ... ?)
                How interesting - and are they all tone poems for good measure?

                Comment

                • ferneyhoughgeliebte
                  Gone fishin'
                  • Sep 2011
                  • 30163

                  Not sure what you mean, Alison; they tend to last about twenty minutes-ish? I don't know if the works are described by their composers as "Symphonic/Tone Poem"s, but ideas about abstract/programme Music dichotomies are as present in them just as much as they are in Liszt, Strauss or whoever.
                  [FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]

                  Comment

                  • Richard Barrett

                    Alison, I wonder what you think the term "symphonic/tone-poem" actually means... I would say it means something whose structure is determined or at least influenced by a narrative and/or illustrative idea from outside music. As such it could be used to describe a great deal of contemporary orchestral music even if the composer hasn't specified that it belongs to this genre (more often than not because of not wishing their music to appear as indebted to 19th century models as it actually is!). Would it also include explicitly programmatic symphonies such as Shostakovich's 11th and 12th? Like most musical genres it's not very clearly defined.

                    Comment

                    • kea
                      Full Member
                      • Dec 2013
                      • 749

                      I just go along with whatever the composer says. Eine Alpensinfonie is a symphonic poem because Strauss labeled it as one, The Year 1905 is a symphony because that's what Shostakovich called it. Joseph Bloggs's ...remembrance of silver canticles in darklight II... (after Hölderlin) commissioned by the BBCSSO with funding from Goldman-Sachs and Marlboro would only be a symphonic poem, or what have you, if Joseph Bloggs specified it as one in the subtitle or programme note.

                      Otherwise we may as well go the other way and call Vanity a symphony, Nacht und träume a cello sonata, CONSTRUCTION a cantata etc, ignoring the composer's wishes where possible in the interests of consistency.

                      Comment

                      • cloughie
                        Full Member
                        • Dec 2011
                        • 22115

                        Originally posted by kea View Post
                        I just go along with whatever the composer says. Eine Alpensinfonie is a symphonic poem because Strauss labeled it as one, The Year 1905 is a symphony because that's what Shostakovich called it. Joseph Bloggs's ...remembrance of silver canticles in darklight II... (after Hölderlin) commissioned by the BBCSSO with funding from Goldman-Sachs and Marlboro would only be a symphonic poem, or what have you, if Joseph Bloggs specified it as one in the subtitle or programme note.

                        Otherwise we may as well go the other way and call Vanity a symphony, Nacht und träume a cello sonata, CONSTRUCTION a cantata etc, ignoring the composer's wishes where possible in the interests of consistency.
                        For many years I thought of Antar as a Symphonic Suite like Scheherazade. Now it seems to be billed as Symphony No2!

                        Comment

                        • Pabmusic
                          Full Member
                          • May 2011
                          • 5537

                          Originally posted by cloughie View Post
                          For many years I thought of Antar as a Symphonic Suite like Scheherazade. Now it seems to be billed as Symphony No2!
                          I like Antar very much, and it has always been Symph. 2. The original published score (Bessel & Cie.) has "'Antar' - Suite Symphonique (2me Symphonie)" on its title page.

                          Comment

                          • Richard Barrett

                            Originally posted by kea View Post
                            Otherwise we may as well go the other way
                            When I was at a school reunion a few years ago someone I'd hardly known at school came up and said "are you still writing those symphonies then?"

                            Comment

                            • Eine Alpensinfonie
                              Host
                              • Nov 2010
                              • 20570

                              When I was teaching O-level music in the 1970s, I read an examiners' report on candidates' answers to questions in the previous session.

                              One question required the candidate to choose a tone poem and write about it. The examiners hardly covered themselves with glory when they disallowed Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, saying it wasn't a tone poem, but programme music. How petty and mean!

                              Comment

                              • ferneyhoughgeliebte
                                Gone fishin'
                                • Sep 2011
                                • 30163

                                Petty, mean and inaccurate, Alpie. Vltava would have been "allowed", I presume, yet it is much more "programmatic" than 1812, in that the Music of the latter doesn't follow "the story" - the narrative gets mucked around for the sake of the Musical structure.
                                [FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]

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