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So where does inspiration come from? Tonight it came from two pieces of classical music (one by Schá¶nberg, one by Ives), Klimt's 'Judith' and an assist from Oscar Wilde.
I'm 300 words in and it seems to be going swimmingly, though there's a better than fair chance that when I read it back in the morning it's just going to be pretentious b*****s.
Oh well :)
Comments
I think the only inspiration ...
... I'm ever likely to get from Schonberg is to commit suicide. I've tried (honest) to find anything remotely enjoyable in anything he's written and totally failed. I think his music, and that of Pierre Boulez, has done more to turn people off classical music (for want of a better term) than just about any other composer. Perhaps it's my age but I'll stick with Schubert, Schumann, Mahler et al and leave atonal music to the cognoscenti who appear to understand that which I can't. I have been listening with some pleasure to music by Judith Weir this week and that's a new experience. There are actually tunes in her compositions which is rare in contemporary music.
I did once write a very short love story (non TG) called 'A woman's life and love' after the Schumann song cycle, but not actually inspired by it. I really don't think I have a musical or spiritual bone in my body.
Look forward to sampling the results of your creativity.
Geoff
It's not so bad really
I find Schonberg's pre-atonal work (Gurrelieder for example) isn't too far from Mahler and Strauss, and the early atonal stuff isn't so far from Mahler et al's high chromaticism (I claim this corner for the pseuds). I'm not fond of serialism, though I have tried - so much of it just sounds sterile, more about arithmetic than anything else.
I blame Schonberg...
...for things like grunge metal. :)
Actually, some of Schonberg's pieces aren't so bad but I think he's more important for attempting to push the envelope than for what he actually accomplished. Some people took elements Schonberg discovered or pioneered and developed them into new idioms. Can't think of anyone right at the moment, but I'm terrible on the names of composers anyway. Chromaticism and atonality are spices, not main courses -- IMHO.
- Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
I like some of Glass's work
his violin concerto as used in 'The Hours' is quite interesting.
But I tend to go with the herd in liking Beethoven and Mozart et al for the most part, although Vaughan Williams and Holst have some interesting ideas too, particularly the folk based themes. Not into discord etc.
Of more modern stuff, I enjoy film scores particularly John Williams and Hans Zimmer, but also Ron Goodwin who was responsible for 633 Squadron and The Battle of Britain (when Walton couldn't deliver).
Angharad
Angharad
Phillip Glass
Phillip Glass is music-by-the-foot. Deedily-deedily, deedily-deedily, deedily-deedily (repeat 2000 times). Good for ambient, but I couldn't imagine just staring into it. I guess I'm not that zen. He works best when he has structure. Like doing a film score, working a little variety into it. For minimalism I prefer Stephen Reich. Terry Reilly. Old school. Frank Zappa said the real appeal of minimalism was economic. Orchestras didn't need to rehearse it, get paid for all that practice time. LOL.
oh, and I Love Ligetti and Luciano Berio. LAIKA
Was Schoenberg the one who wrote Woczek? "DAS MOND IST BLUT!" and all that? That's some hard listening. Don't know if I like it...
And remember...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLqzLEB3E0
Tonality drove me into the arms of Ozzy Osbourne
Metaphorically that is :) We had no popular music at home just a mixture of light classics, opera, choral and Welsh music, my first exposure to pop was hearing my friend's brother's Black Sabbath albums aged twelve (on the way home from Sunday school as it happens).
I didn't get back to classical until I started performing again in my twenties, and then largely Baroque repertoire until I discovered Mahler. From there I worked my way through twentieth century music picking up favourites along the way (Minimalism among them but some of the whackier avant garde things like Antheil or Varese) but I always end up back in turn of the century Vienna with Mahler, Wolf, Schonberg and such).
Perfect night in? 'Kindertoten Lieder', followed by 'Verklarte Nacht' and then Elgar's 'Cello concerto.
If I bring the '86 Latour...
Can I join you? That programme really attacts me - and would rate in pleasure with my choice of accompanying tipple.
Perhaps you would consider substituting the Violin Concerto for the Cello Concerto. I heard the former played by Cerys Jones a while back and I'd really like to repeat the experience - she was fantastic and it is wonderful score. (BTW, I hadn't thought of Elgar as Viennese school... nah, still can't.)
For me, the dead-spot is about 1960 to 1980. There's some wonderful music written in that period, of course - and whilst I include the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, I am really thinking of Peter Maxwell Davies, Malcolm Arnold, John Tavener - but the serial stuff was dire. (Okay it 'is' dire, in the sense that it may still exist somewhere as a score, but otherwise most of it has sunk without trace, for which I shed no tears.) I well remember one piece by Roberto Gerhard being sniggered at by the Proms audience (of which I was part, tho' not the sniggering). They were diverted by the antics of the percussionist, the only 'pleasure' on offer it seemed; even now, I think they had it right because the piece was just a string of noises.
And isn't a shame that the precepts espoused by Webern (I just don't 'get' Webern, no matter how hard I try) have come crahing into jazz? The music on R3 on a Friday night is now (to my ear) undifferentiated from that in 'Here and Now' on a Sunday; with the latter more interesting of the two.
Xi
Your night in appeals ...
... but for me it's Des Knaben Wunderhorn and die Schone Mullerin for song cycles and any Mahler symphony or Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovitch etc etc etc.
My favourite English composer is a German - GF Handel :) The only pop music that does anything for me at all is stuff from my teen years (1950s) and that only for nostalgic reasons. The Beatles came too late for me.
Aren't we being cultured? lol
Geoff
Honorary Germans
I tend to think of Elgar (and Parry) as honorary Germans... somewhere a Daily Mail reader is taking a contract out on me for saying that.
My musical background is almost wholly vocal so I came to Mahler through the lieder, and then to orchestral music through him - though he's still the only symphonist I know really well. I've been learning to love Schnittke the last year or so, but otherwise my knowledge is fairly fragmented.
Germans?
I think the 'contract' you mention is just as likely to be put out by Kronen Zeitung, for implying that Vienna is in Germany!
Britten, Vaughan Willams, Finzi, Delius, Bridge ... all seem to have an indefinable "English" quality, but early Elgar does sound somewhat like the late romantics, and his later work leans - a little - to Vienna.
I'd never though of it that way. Thank you for the insight.
Xi
I was priviledged…
…to attend the first UK performance of Gruppen by Stochausen in St Andrew's Hall in Glasgow in the early 1960s. My step-father was a horn player in the Scottish National Orchestra (as it then was) when it joined forces with the BBC Scottish Orchestra, to split into 3 orchestras, under 3 conductors to play this amazing piece. The orchestras were sat in the auditorium, and the audience occupied the stage and the balcony. It was an amazing occasion, particularly as the three orchestras all played in different key and time signatures!
Gabi
Gabi.
Wow, You Gals Are So Erudite!
Give me Chuck Berry anytime. You know they included some of his stuff on Mariner 1, and we have had our first message from SETI and it was "Send more Chuck Berry"