Classical Music - An Introduction for Explorers

I'll take over the thread as it would be a shame to let it decay again. Thanks @zerodeefex

 

I encourage users to contribute content so that this thread can serve as guidance to classical music on this site. It would compliment the classical snobs and other threads where 'current listening' posts are posted.

Please PM with any ideas you have. I also have a project in mind that needs valid contributions.

If you have a good overview of a particular composer, do write some detail about him including the style, era, notable music and guidance for further listening. Links to wiki and other sites within the post are also useful.

 

@Muse Wanderer and @zerodeefex , May I be a volunteer in this work? I do have some knowledge in classical. Didn’t understand the @l’orfeu thing, but sorry to hear about that. David

 

@Muse Wanderer: Thanks again for your (and L’Moats) efforts in this thread. Classical used to be a genre that seemed completely insurmountable to me. Now it makes up about 50% of what I listen to.

Sibelius is probably my favourite musical ‘discovery’ of the past decade.

 

Can someone give some context or back story? Looks like I missed something.

 

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/x-mas-bans.3564/

 

György Ligeti (1923 - 2006)



György Ligeti is one of the most important and innovative composers of our time writing avante-guarde music up till his death in 2006 that sounded truly original and captured audiences worldwide. Millions of people have heard his music, even though many would not know his name, namely as a result of Stanley Kubrick's use of Ligeti's pieces in the soundtrack for '2001: A Space Odyssey', 'The Shining' and 'Eyes Wide Shut'.

In 1951-3 Ligeti wrote Musica Ricercata, a set of 11 solo piano pieces written when he was seeking his own compositional style. The second piece 'Mesto, rigido e ceremoniale' was used in Kubrick's film 'Eyes Wide Shut' to great effect (video link).



Ligeti's use of micropolyphonic music from the late 1950's onwards, resulted in unique soundscapes that enthralls keen listeners. Micropolyphony adds to the sense of vast undiscovered space in his most famous orchestral masterpiece: Atmosphères. Such atmospheric music was, as Ligeti once put it, ‘in the air at the time’ – not least in the work of Iannis Xenakis which he had yet to hear."




Lontano, a piece used by Kubrick in his horror masterpiece 'The Shining' as well as in '2001 Space Odyssey' starts with a howling wolf sound followed by the most incandescent of music. "The Italian performance instruction ‘lontano’ translating as ‘far away’ or ‘distant’, describes the style in which this work is performed. Ligeti’s music has a distinctive character with an often eerie atmosphere created by layering very quiet sounds that build and eventually merge together. He creates gripping tension that is favoured by film directors: Lontano has been used in films such as The Shining by Stanley Kubrick and Shutter Island by Martin Scorsese."




After 1970, Ligeti started to move away from the sonorous music focused on timbre and micropolyphony and found his second period when rhythm served as foundation to his notation. Ligeti's violin concerto (1989-93), is described by Stephen Johnson on BBC as : "a kind of cornucopia of effects and techniques, a wild collage of atmospheres and colors. Microtonality, rapidly changing textures, comic juxtapositions... Hungarian folk melodies, Bulgarian dance rhythms, references to medieval and Renaissance music and solo violin writing that ranges from the slow-paced and sweet-toned to the angular and fiery." I love it especially when after listening to that crazy energetic first movement, the second utterly beautiful slow movement starts, filled with remnants of folk melodies in a modern taste. (The slow movements starts at 04:42 ...)




The second style of Ligeti is further exemplified by his piano etudes books 1 - 3 (1985-2001), that were unfinished as a result of his untimely death, as well by his piano concerto (1985-88). Ligeti used 'superimposed African rhythms, shifting accents, and changing tempos' that characterise these great avanteguarde pieces.

The 13th Etudes is called 'The Devil's Staircase'! Imagine yourself walking down a staircase that leads to Lucifer's chambers and all you want is to turn back but you can't... here's the video link if you feel like it!

Ligeti's piano concerto is very rhythmic and captures you from the first few seconds (video link)

If you are interested in Ligeti, his entire oeuvre was recorded under supervision of the composer himself in the following highly recommended boxsets: the Ligeti Edition (Sony, 1997) and Ligeti Project (Teldec, 2001).

Tom Service gives an overview of Ligeti's works reflecting the suffering of his age and from his own personal experience living in Hungary behind the iron curtain: "It's music that gives you a glimpse of the heat-death of the universe – and the necessity to keep going, to keep composing, to keep living in the face of that nihilistic fate that awaits us, even if it all, in the end, amounts to nothing. It doesn't, of course … but it's that existential tension that gives Ligeti's music its humanity, and it's one reason his work, I think, will only become more and more central to every performer's repertoire and every music-lover's ears."

I would thus like to conclude with Ligeti's seminal work, 'Requiem' (1963-65), that invites us to listen in the dark, with eyes wide shut and candlelight in reflection of our own consciousness...

 

Ilhelm Richard Wagner,
Composer, conductor, intellectual, political and political activist of German neo-Romanticism, whose work influenced Western music. Wagner was born into a family of artists.

Wagner's parentage is uncertain: He is either the son of police actuary Friedrich Wagner, who died soon after Richard was born, or the son of the man he called his stepfather, the painter, actor and poet Ludwig Geyer (whom his mother married in August 1814).

As a young boy, Wagner attended school in Dresden, Germany. He did not show aptitude in music and, in fact, his teacher said he would "torture the piano in a most abominable fashion." But he was ambitious from a young age. When he was 11 years old, he wrote his first drama. By age 16, he was writing musical compositions. Young Wagner was so confident that some people considered him conceited.
Wagner attended Leipzig University in 1831, and his first symphony was performed in 1833. He was inspired by Ludwig van Beethoven and, in particular, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which Wagner called "that mystic source of my highest ecstasies." The following year, in 1834, Wagner joined the Würzburg Theater as chorus master, and wrote the text and music of his first opera, Die Feen (The Fairies), which was not staged.

He lived for almost three years in Paris, and in 1842, at age 29, he returned to Germany where his opera "Rienzi" was staged.




Named regent of the royal opera, he held this post until 1849. He wrote articles like defending the German Revolution of 1848, which failed. He fled Germany and could not see Liszt's first performance of "Lohengrin" in 1850.




From 1849 to 1852, works of art such as "Revolution", "The Art of the Future", "Communication to my friends", and "Opera and Theater", which outlined a new type of musical style

He conducted concerts of the London Philharmonic in 1855 and lived in Zurich until 1858. Wagner believed in the creation of a national music, based on the German people's myths of origin and the creation of collective identity, capable of educating and training a new man, a new society. Openly anti-Semitic, he denounced a "judaization" of modern art, calling for a "war of liberation." Perhaps he was Hitler's favorite composer.

He was influenced by Schopenhauer's philosophy, "Tristan and Isolde" (1857-59), inspired by his love for Mathilde Wesendonk, who caused his separation from his wife. By a loving affair, he traded Zurich for Venice.



In 1859 he went to Paris, and in 1861, received an amnesty and returned to Germany and then traveled to Vienna, where he had his work as a composer until 1864, when he escaped not to be arrested because of a financial error.

He arrived without money in Stuttgart and who helped him was Ludwig 2nd, A young king of Bavaria, his great admirer, who was called to live in Munich. Wagner was 51 years old and during 6 years he lived there were successfully presented his operas in the Bavarian capital. Wagner got indebted AGAIN, in addition to being involved in the politics of the kingdom and becoming a lover of a married daughter of Liszt, who gave him three children, even before divorcing and marrying him in 1870. The king decides to lodge him in Triebschen, in the lake of Lucerne.

In 1869 Wagner resumed the tetralogy project Der Ring des Nibelungen (O Anel do Nibelungo). Convinced that he would need a special theater to present that work, Wagner conceived the Bayreuth Theatre, in Bavaria, with the king's support. The theater was opened in 1876, with the presentation of the Nibelungos ring.



Wagner remained in Bayreuth, but did trips to concert in London and Italy. During those years he wrote his last job, the parsifal drama, initiated in 1877 rd, presented in 1882, he dictated his autobiography and died in Venice.
The New York Times would later write in its obituary of the famous composer, "In the face of mortifying failures and discouragements, he apparently never lost confidence in himself.

Dom Pedro 2o (King Of Brazil) wished a lot that Carlos Gomes (Brasilian Composer) studied music in Germany with Wagner. The Brazilian emperor was a great admirer of the Wagner work, collaborating, including the construction of the Bayreuth Theatre.

 

Finally Brahms, thank you very much for that. Here is the link when you can find listening guides to almost all Brahms works, as well as a complete list of Brahms on Spotify:
http://kellydeanhansen.com/

Listening guides require a bit of preparation that can be found in the book by Aaron Copland that really opened my mind in terms of understanding the texture and structure of music, and what composers are really doing when they are composing: What to listen for in music.
https://www.amazon.com/What-Listen-...rds=aaron+copland+what+to+listen+for+in+music

Only after reading and rereading Copland I was able to understand the listening guides, but it was worth the effort.

 

I haven't checked out that excellent Brahms' listening guide for ages. Thanks for reminding me of it. I remember listening to Brahms' symphonies and reading the step by step analysis of each theme few years ago.

Copland's book is also an excellent read. He presents easy terminology for people who are not musically trained. Highly recommended.