The opinion of experts

[Quarky]

May I ask a question please?


Now, something strange has happened.

By pure serendipity, two separate events have occurred which have confused me. I discovered on youtube an extraordinary moment of Caballe holding a 16-second high B at the end of Don Carlo. I know not one single note of this opera, but this two-minute clip was electrifying. Blast! That’s ANOTHER opera to learn. The music score notes only a semibreve not nine semibreves as Ms Caballe sings, but anyway…

Only an hour or so later, I look under Composer and find dear ferneyhoughgeliebte stating that he has problems with Verdi.

Yes, yes, yes I know. Ignore what fhg has to say and listen to Don Carlo. But this man has demonstrated on this forum so many times in the past his huge knowledge of music, and if Verdi doesn’t do it for him, then why should I bother?

It really is difficult to decide what to get to know next – I don’t know all of Beethoven’s works, or all of Mozart’s or all of Bach’s or all of Schubert’s or all of…but you get my point. Should I concentrate on the great giants first?

Of course, I should not be swayed by others’ opinions by can I dare to ignore them?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

Are others swayed one way or the other, and I don’t mean by critics’ views?

Mario

Not a fan of Verdi, but when I want to find out more about a Composer, one of my first recourses is BBC podcasts etc. There is in fact a large number of recorded COTW programmes and podcasts on the subject of Verdi::

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01nrbn9

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p01txxcg

[Alison]

Earlier in the week I was musing on Bernstein calling Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony ‘trash’ while FHG felt it was one of the composers greatest works.

Happily I had already fallen in love with the work before knowing either of these views.

[Serial_Apologist]

Who decided which composers these are/were ?

Of cousre I enjoy listening to Beethoven and Brahms but I am passionately potty about the music of so many neglected or underrated (IMVHO) composers (especially British, Irish and Russian)
A lot of the time I'd certainly rather listen to a symphony by say Lloyd or Hoddinott than those two giants.

As a self-educated listener, and therefore (imho?) as near as dammit to being an amateur expert, having now been listening to "modern music" for the best part of 60 years, I would have to say that the various writers who early on helped form my understandings of the music were pretty well spot on in highlighting Stravinsky and Schoenberg as THE two major influences on the music of the last century - and, with alongside them, if slightly of lesser importance, composers such as Bartok, Berg, Webern, Messiaen, Boulez and Stockhausen.

This is whether or not one equates composers of ones own liking - in my case the English post-Arts & Crafts brotherhood of RVW and Holst, and their sub-acolytes including Howells, Ireland, Bridge and Warlock - with the two aforementioned prime influences or the following. That 1950s/60s generation of critical "experts" were remarkable in their insights at a time when music was advancing more rapidly than most people could follow: it took me years to get to grips with eg Webern and, more recently, Carter and Ferneyhough, and I can only say how worthwhile it proved to be in my case, now that I see that whole European tradition weakened, fragmented, and often sadly trivialised in much so-called "contemporary music".

While we may love eg Rachmaninov's or Delius's music, complexity has to be our guiding light, in reflecting the realities of modern living and understanding, and offering the background blueprint for how we cope, not just practicaly but psychologically and ideologically, in an age now dominated by reductive thinking in so many areas, from politics to religion revived.

[DracoM]

How far beyond Schoenberg and Stravinsky have we got?
Every time I hear S & S I keep thinking this IS still as modern as you get AND exciting and challenging still.

[Serial_Apologist]

How far beyond Schoenberg and Stravinsky have we got?
Every time I hear S & S I keep thinking this IS still as modern as you get AND exciting and challenging still.

Interesting questions! For me personally, listening to Schoenberg's Erwartung and many of the pieces composed around that same time (1909) by Webern, still leaves me astonished that such music was being composed that early. Some of the modernists of the immediate post-Schoenberg, "Darmstadt school" (to grossly oversimplify if I may (not)) sought to carry the implications Stockhausen and Boulez in particular felt had gone by, insufficiently questioned by default in the music of the Second Viennese School, such as the continued use of forms they considered outmoded in the abandonment of tonal-centricity. While their case may have been an overstated one, within the actual practice of extending the principles adduced from taking deductions to their logical conclusions, important insights were reached in terms of control that still have wider implications with regards to humanity's relationship with the rest of the natural world and its processes which have been unfolding now for some time, and only now being treated as more than quirky cultist obsessions: would they have been addressed earlier??!!!

[Cockney Sparrow]

Follow whatever interests you - of course. Mixed, perhaps, with trying works which are seen as standout masterpieces in a category you don't usually explore.

We are free to leave our interest at whatever degree of expertise (or lack of) we wish. And enjoy, free from guilt, what we decide to listen to, and how we do it.

My interest in classical music was activated 6 months after music lessons ceased and I've had no formal music education after that. My exploration was listening to radio - initially programs such as Dessert Island Discs, Your Hundred Best Tunes and quickly moving on to scan the Radio Three pages of the Radio Times and later The Gramophone. Also, fortnightly bus journeys to the excellent Library to borrow LPs and later Cassettes - following up leads from the radio ("If you liked that, you might like this....."). And even later, CDs

Someone starting on a journey today will have the opportunity of using the internet to explore much, much more music - perhaps too much to choose from........

IF you have the internet, then in addition to the services often referred to, you might check if your Library Service offers FREE access to the Naxos Music Library – its has an astonishing range of labels and their recordings with only some labels absent. It also has a lot of resources for learning about music – being initially aimed at Colleges, Universities and schools. Not forgetting a chance of finding PDF booklets for a fair number of recordings although the Behemoth labels tend not to provide them.
More here : http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...-library/page2

[jayne lee wilson]

I may possibly have been something of an 'expert' in the field of patent litigation, but when it comes to music I'm just an enthusiast who's willing and able to share her enthusiasms. I think 'specialist' is a safer and less presumptuous word than 'expert', in the same way that 'intellectual' is seen by some as a less disparaging term than 'academic'.

Well, I'm proud to call myself a former (though, instinctively, lifelong) academic and a liberal-humanist intellectual....

With composers such as Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner; then as SA said, Stravinsky and Schoenberg (I would add Mahler and Debussy): you have to take account of their supreme ability to create new music from and against the centuries-long background of the tradition of complex symphonic, chamber and instrumental music, going back to Bach and beyond; and to do that, with remarkable consistency, in New Musical Artworks of astonishing inspiration and innovation. Like/dislike is fine, whatever-whatevs etc., this is the age of social media, hysterical promotion and dismissive subjectivity. There are many beautiful byways feeding off the highways. But there is a world beyond it that has always been there, and always will be.

BUT - To truly know music, especially the music of the later 20th and 21st Centuries and how it all came about, you have to know these composers, through and through.....

There is nothing trivial about this.
Look at the Political upheavals of the last few years; see the USA today; "those that do not know or understand History are condemned to repeat it"....

[Mario]

I am stunned by the level of expert advice given, and truly humbled. Thank you all.

At the risk of upsetting the, ahem, “modernists”, I thought I would be advised to see where Beethoven had come FROM, rather than where his music went TO.
As such, I thought I would be expected to research the music of his predecessors, in particular, Haydn, who I understand he disowned (sorry if I’m mistaken).

Of his hundred or so symphonies (now you did promise not to laugh, right?), I only know around half a dozen. See what I mean? Get to know dozens and dozens of symphonic music written by the Father of the symphony, or remain blithely unaware and move on to Hoddinott?

Decisions, decisions!

Mario

[jayne lee wilson]

You could take a Haydn Overview: 6-8 (Matin-Midi-Soir) as the (gorgeous!) best of the earlier group; 30s - 50s from the sturm und drang inspirational and dramatic middle (but don't miss No.26. the Lamentation); then the late mature sequences of the Paris and London Symphonies.

This won't cover everything but it would be a good initial orientation..... in fact, there aren't many 20thC innovations (especially symphonic-structural ones) that don't have some forbear or pre-echo in Haydn.... not to mention the beauty and originality of the music itself. Like Mozart, Beethoven learnt much from Haydn and the homage is there in his own creations. I wouldn't worry about any spontaneous disparagements you may have encountered.

(Me? I find I return most often to the concentrated, inspirational intensities of....sturm und drang. It can sometimes feel like the whole of symphonic music is in there, looking back and looking forward...)

So you can never have too much Haydn really, as I recall William Glock once commenting about The Proms.... not that many later Controllers ever paid him much heed.

[Richard Barrett]

I don't believe any expert is ever going to convince me that Britten or Delius are worth listening to, for example, or Verdi for that matter. But on the other hand it's entirely possible that insights from someone whose opinion I respect might change my mind about various other things, and that includes numerous members of this forum, usually by persuading me that there were things in it that I hadn't previously cottoned on to for some reason or another. What's important is to keep as open a mind as possible.

How far beyond Schoenberg and Stravinsky have we got?

I was asked a very similar question at a public event, and replying off the cuff that actually the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky is more of a point of departure than something to "get beyond". Looking at the question another way" in Schoenberg's time it might have been a relevant question to ask whether some piece or other was "tonal" or "atonal". A hundred years later, I was thinking in connection with the newest music I listed in my "best of 2020" recordings, questions like that seem to me to completely miss the point. Which says something about how far beyond Schoenberg and Stravinsky we've got. Of course a lot depends on who "we" are. I remember also as a teenager trying to explain to my late father what I found so compelling about the music of Stockhausen, to which he said "I'm too old for that sort of thing". My response was "but Stockhausen is five years older than you!"

[french frank]

Was going to say before JLW's last, that rather than experts' opinions, I thought their suggestions/recommendations were what you might go by, especially if they know what it is you're after. Personally, I think what composers think or thought about other composers is a dodgy criterion on which to base your own listening Wander around and linger where you're finding interest and reward. Whether you wander or devote yourself to serious listening of one composer depends on your inclination. Wide or deep?

Oops, wrote mine before composer RB had commented - no disrespect!

[Mario]

Wide or deep?

From my own point of view, crucial, truly crucial comment ff.

For me? Deep!

Many thanks,

Mario

[Serial_Apologist]

I don't believe any expert is ever going to convince me that Britten or Delius are worth listening to, for example, or Verdi for that matter. But on the other hand it's entirely possible that insights from someone whose opinion I respect might change my mind about various other things, and that includes numerous members of this forum, usually by persuading me that there were things in it that I hadn't previously cottoned on to for some reason or another. What's important is to keep as open a mind as possible.

I was asked a very similar question at a public event, and replying off the cuff that actually the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky is more of a point of departure than something to "get beyond". Looking at the question another way" in Schoenberg's time it might have been a relevant question to ask whether some piece or other was "tonal" or "atonal". A hundred years later, I was thinking in connection with the newest music I listed in my "best of 2020" recordings, questions like that seem to me to completely miss the point. Which says something about how far beyond Schoenberg and Stravinsky we've got. Of course a lot depends on who "we" are. I remember also as a teenager trying to explain to my late father what I found so compelling about the music of Stockhausen, to which he said "I'm too old for that sort of thing". My response was "but Stockhausen is five years older than you!"

I had similar with my own father, despite his father's great interest in the post-impressionist art his early years were contemporary with (b.1975) and the fact than Nan was herself a fine painter and huge enthusiast for Bonnard. Dad was born the year in which Bartok composed his Bagatelles, Schoenberg his Georgelieder and Elgar his first symphony; yet despite being taken to see Diaglilev's Ballets Russes perform The Firebird and Petruschka at age 11, it was to Elgar and the whole tradition that led up to him that he referenced back, not even progressing beyond the second piano concerto when it came to Rachmaninov. And I regarded my immediate family as being aesthetically (if not politically) relatively sophisticated, thereby proffering me enough rope to hang myself!

[Bryn]

I don't believe any expert is ever going to convince me that Britten or Delius are worth listening to, for example, or Verdi for that matter. But on the other hand it's entirely possible that insights from someone whose opinion I respect might change my mind about various other things, and that includes numerous members of this forum, usually by persuading me that there were things in it that I hadn't previously cottoned on to for some reason or another. What's important is to keep as open a mind as possible.



I was asked a very similar question at a public event, and replying off the cuff that actually the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky is more of a point of departure than something to "get beyond". Looking at the question another way" in Schoenberg's time it might have been a relevant question to ask whether some piece or other was "tonal" or "atonal". A hundred years later, I was thinking in connection with the newest music I listed in my "best of 2020" recordings, questions like that seem to me to completely miss the point. Which says something about how far beyond Schoenberg and Stravinsky we've got. Of course a lot depends on who "we" are. I remember also as a teenager trying to explain to my late father what I found so compelling about the music of Stockhausen, to which he said "I'm too old for that sort of thing". My response was "but Stockhausen is five years older than you!"

Here's an expert to lead you to who is worth listening to among the composers of the 20th Century: https://yesclassicalmusic.com/the-20...est-composers/

[rauschwerk]

At the risk of upsetting the, ahem, “modernists”, I thought I would be advised to see where Beethoven had come FROM, rather than where his music went TO.
As such, I thought I would be expected to research the music of his predecessors, in particular, Haydn, who I understand he disowned (sorry if I’m mistaken).

Mario

Beethoven once declared that he learnt nothing from Haydn's formal tuition, but clearly he could not help learning from Haydn's music. That's the thing!