Musical questions and answers thread

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

In highly chromatic tonal Music, cautionaries are a great help to the performers.

[Alison]

New question: Who wrote the last symphonic poem ?

[EdgeleyRob]

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.

[MrGongGong]

The point about sophisticated instruments wasn't to suggest that some early instruments weren't sometimes extraordinary. A visit here

http://mim.org/?gclid=CJfEpc-m_8ECFeLItAod92UAwg

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

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)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

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 ... ?)

[teamsaint]

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.....

[Alison]

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?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

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.

[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.

[kea]

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.

[cloughie]

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!

[Pabmusic]

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.

[Richard Barrett]

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?"

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

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!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

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.