Grey and wet.
More listening going on - another Horn Trio - the Brahms one this time. Also Dag Wiren's second symphony, and now moved on to Reger's hermit playing the violin from the Arnold Bocklin tone poems - good piece, deserves a wider hearing.
**Advertising for the Avison Ensemble playing Avison and Vivaldi at the Bowes Museum on Saturday.** some of the Avison concerto renditions of Scarlatti sonatas.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
feels like November
Sun didn't get above 1 candlepower all day. Constant drizzle.
No musical explorations. Listened to the Mozart horn trio in the car. That man could write tunes, nice sine wavy tunes all balanced. I do wonder what Mozart tunes would be like clothed in the trappings of Brahms, taking away the sequences and the cadential decoration, replacing them with tricks of Brahms' time. Somewhere on the net it theorizes that if Mozart had lived longer he might have burned out but written prolifically, and become another Spohr (who is savagely ignored in my opinion - some cracking clarinet and violin concerti).
Also listened to part of a new Naxos CD of Ferdinand Ries flute quartets. I like Ries. One day last summer I had two management away days near Consett and spent the drives there and back in the company of the Ries symphonies. Unfair to say he's merely Beethoven's imitator even though Beethoven said as much.
Tried to help my niece with Grade 6 Theory - realised I have forgotten much of the theoretical harmonic language shorthand. Never was much of a one for figured bass either. Ah well.
No musical explorations. Listened to the Mozart horn trio in the car. That man could write tunes, nice sine wavy tunes all balanced. I do wonder what Mozart tunes would be like clothed in the trappings of Brahms, taking away the sequences and the cadential decoration, replacing them with tricks of Brahms' time. Somewhere on the net it theorizes that if Mozart had lived longer he might have burned out but written prolifically, and become another Spohr (who is savagely ignored in my opinion - some cracking clarinet and violin concerti).
Also listened to part of a new Naxos CD of Ferdinand Ries flute quartets. I like Ries. One day last summer I had two management away days near Consett and spent the drives there and back in the company of the Ries symphonies. Unfair to say he's merely Beethoven's imitator even though Beethoven said as much.
Tried to help my niece with Grade 6 Theory - realised I have forgotten much of the theoretical harmonic language shorthand. Never was much of a one for figured bass either. Ah well.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
autumnal
A Sunday morning devoid of playing the organ - are we all ready for No Music Day on the 21st?
Instead listened to Bax's 2nd violin sonata - decided that Bax is late autumnal most of the time - flurries of cold darkening skies - the slow movement a wistful remembrance of springs and summers long gone. Are whole genres set in mood? - difficult to exsult with impressionism and English pastoralism.
Thought of yesterday's post around happy music and remembered Granados - Goyescas - the first of which Los Requiebros would be ecstatically happy if I could play it up to speed!
Now the next question, at what point does a particular musical idiom become the signature idiom for a time and a place? why bold open fourths and fifths speaking of the American frontier (and final frontier)? why did typical English pastoralism seem wrong whenever I heard it in the sound track for All Creatures Great and Small - that idiom speaks to me of a spread of England from Gloucestershire to East Anglia (thinking of RVWs In the Fen Country, or the whole Howells/Gurney/Finzi Severn through to Berkshire thing, and cannot be the soundtrack for the northern Yorkshire dales?
Instead listened to Bax's 2nd violin sonata - decided that Bax is late autumnal most of the time - flurries of cold darkening skies - the slow movement a wistful remembrance of springs and summers long gone. Are whole genres set in mood? - difficult to exsult with impressionism and English pastoralism.
Thought of yesterday's post around happy music and remembered Granados - Goyescas - the first of which Los Requiebros would be ecstatically happy if I could play it up to speed!
Now the next question, at what point does a particular musical idiom become the signature idiom for a time and a place? why bold open fourths and fifths speaking of the American frontier (and final frontier)? why did typical English pastoralism seem wrong whenever I heard it in the sound track for All Creatures Great and Small - that idiom speaks to me of a spread of England from Gloucestershire to East Anglia (thinking of RVWs In the Fen Country, or the whole Howells/Gurney/Finzi Severn through to Berkshire thing, and cannot be the soundtrack for the northern Yorkshire dales?
Saturday, November 17, 2007
on the subject of happy music
toying with the theory that D and A, Bb, Eb, Ab for happy music make. Open to agreement or refutation.
OK here's some stuff I call happy
Wagner prelude to act 1 of Meistersinger
Richard Strauss 2nd horn concerto
Glazunov violin concerto (well possibly)
Just drove back to Durham from Newcastle with the Saint-Saens 2nd piano concerto - there's a big happy inconsequential tune!
Symphonies...Parry's English symphony always cheers me up...the Franck d minor has similar silly tunes to the Saint-Saens but happy (?) - witty maybe - like Heseltine aka Warlock's piano duet version of one of the Franck big silly tunes - in "Cod Pieces"
The Gliere horn concerto has its cheerful moments - now there's a thing, have a Google around and see how folk think the Conan the Barbarian style of music is derived from Gliere's idiom. I've noted before the film music lineage and all the Star Wars/Star Trek type stuff (Horner, Williams, Goldsmith et al) derive much from Korngold and Steiner, in turn derived from high romantic Viennese chromatic heights Zemlinsky (and Korngold) after Strauss and Mahler - before Schoenberg, Berg took one direction and Joseph Marx did not. Mahler's 7th nachtmusik - it's all about big sweeping horn tunes and lush strings!
There's the temporary cheerful as well as the mood changers - Queen Seaside Rendezvous - extended jams as well even though self-indulgent - the more elongated versions of Natucket Sleighride or the Allmans in full flow - Elizabeth Reed - or the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band doing their stuff
So I guess happy music is all simple diatonic stuff in major keys with lots of thirds. Ha! especially the trios of marches - Sousa the Diplomat, Filmore's Americans We, Vivian Dunn's Cockleshell Heroes, etc
OK here's some stuff I call happy
Wagner prelude to act 1 of Meistersinger
Richard Strauss 2nd horn concerto
Glazunov violin concerto (well possibly)
Just drove back to Durham from Newcastle with the Saint-Saens 2nd piano concerto - there's a big happy inconsequential tune!
Symphonies...Parry's English symphony always cheers me up...the Franck d minor has similar silly tunes to the Saint-Saens but happy (?) - witty maybe - like Heseltine aka Warlock's piano duet version of one of the Franck big silly tunes - in "Cod Pieces"
The Gliere horn concerto has its cheerful moments - now there's a thing, have a Google around and see how folk think the Conan the Barbarian style of music is derived from Gliere's idiom. I've noted before the film music lineage and all the Star Wars/Star Trek type stuff (Horner, Williams, Goldsmith et al) derive much from Korngold and Steiner, in turn derived from high romantic Viennese chromatic heights Zemlinsky (and Korngold) after Strauss and Mahler - before Schoenberg, Berg took one direction and Joseph Marx did not. Mahler's 7th nachtmusik - it's all about big sweeping horn tunes and lush strings!
There's the temporary cheerful as well as the mood changers - Queen Seaside Rendezvous - extended jams as well even though self-indulgent - the more elongated versions of Natucket Sleighride or the Allmans in full flow - Elizabeth Reed - or the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band doing their stuff
So I guess happy music is all simple diatonic stuff in major keys with lots of thirds. Ha! especially the trios of marches - Sousa the Diplomat, Filmore's Americans We, Vivian Dunn's Cockleshell Heroes, etc
Friday, November 16, 2007
Quiet Friday
Not much explored in the way of music - listened not too closely to Respighi's D major string quartet - pleasant and cheerful - followed on to Il Tramonto - not too sure about quartets with a voice added, well Schoenberg did it, didn't he?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)