In case you didn’t realize, this topic is nothing I can speak about from personal experience, nor is it anything I really know much about. It is also an incredibly large, complicated, and even sensitive topic, about a very dark … Continue reading Music in the Soviet Era
In preparation for another third symphony this week, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss for a bit something that struck me recently. I ran it by a few other friends to see if my idea was just kind … Continue reading Beethoven’s Eroica: A Litmus
If you haven’t noticed, I enjoy milestones, even the insignificant ones. We’ve had a few anniversaries here, like the 50th piece I shared, the one-year anniversary (for which was written the About Me post, the one-year-anniversary music post, and the reminiscing post, and we are coming up on the 100th music post, but for now, this is the 200th post in the blog’s history. We’ve had Thoughts posts, resources, the On This Day series, which is soon going to get shaken up a bit, the German(ic) Symphonies Series, which was extremely exciting, as well as concert reviews. There’s also been … Continue reading Post number 200!
As I’ve said before in multiple places here, I have lots of anticipation and ideas and thoughts about Mahler’s ninth that may or may not be accurate, but I have certainly built it up a lot in my head, and I am realizing that it may all be a bit overblown. It doesn’t much matter, because that whole dream image of how I planned to enjoy Mahler’s pinnacle work for the first time is coming to an end much earlier than I’d expected. I read this article that describes Mahler’s ninth as a great symphony. I then sort of ran … Continue reading Thinking about Mahler’s ninth
What happened this week in history that we should know about? Let’s see. June 9 As usual, no events. Births: 1732 – Giuseppe Demachi, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1791) 1810 – Otto Nicolai, German composer and conductor (d. 1849) 1865 – Carl Nielsen, Danish violinist, composer, and conductor (d. 1931) I quite like most of Nielsen’s earlier symphonies (earlier meaning everything except the fifth, which I haven’t really grown to appreciate yet [but still wrote about], and the sixth, which is just kind of… perplexing) 1891 – Cole Porter, American composer (d. 1964) I know I have said some bad things about jazz (or intend to), but Cole Porter … Continue reading On this day: Week of June 9, 2014
I tend to vacillate between the simple, straightforward sonata, and the heavy-hitting, drawn out, intense Romantic-era hour-long symphony in my listening habits. For me, it’s either a huge, monumental work like a 90-minute Mahler symphony (or something slightly less overwhelming like Sibelius or Tchaikovsky) or something pared down, simple, straightforward, an exquisite example of form, structure and style like a piano sonata. Truth be told, I haven’t even gotten much into anything between these two extremes, things like quartets or other instrument sonatas (violin, viola, cello, etc.) that are often accompanied by piano. Part of the reason that the recent … Continue reading Why I love the piano sonata
Fugue for Thought 