Here's another one for you to try on your journey into classical music. "Nights in the Garden of Spain" by perhaps the most famous Spanish composer, Manuel de Falla. Like many composers in the early 20th century he wrote music that was tied to his countries identity. Sibelius did so in Finland. Dvorak in whatever the Czech Republic was called then. Aaron Copland in America. Anyway, this is a lovely piece. I chose a selection with Martha Argerich, one of the greatest living pianists.
Let's talk music, no genre boundaries
This is an offshoot of the jazz thread. I and others found that we could not talk about jazz without discussing other musical genres, as well as the philosophy of music. So, this is a thread in which people can suggest good music of all genres, and spout off your feelings about music itself.
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When I was studying poetry with Gary Snyder back in the mid-sixties, we had a discussion about why poets no longer wrote in rhyme and meter. He talked about artists tapping into the music of their society. He quoted an Arab saying, "When a music of a society dies, the society dies." The implication is that the music of the society is the foundation of the society. As an artist, one needs to understand their society's music and tap into it. I read about Rachmaninoff being upset that he was writing Romantic music in the twentieth century alongside "modern" composers like Stravinsky. Rachmaninoff was a great composer, I think, and I have read music critics say that he did incorporate modern elements into his music. The same story with Sibelius who is one of my favorite composers, despite the fact that he wrote in the late Romantic style while Stravinsky and other modern composers were changing the structure of music. Here is an absolutely beautiful piece of music by Sibelius |
Thanks for recommending Martha Argerich. I'm sorry -- should have stated earler that I've never been a fan of the orchestra. Perhaps if I had a dedicated room and a system that could present such recordings more realistically, I'd grow to appreciate the sound. Nevertheless, I do enjoy solo Classical piano, so I will seek out Argerich in that context. |
Argerich has a numerous solo piano albums. She is known for Chopin and Schumann, among others. Schumann is a hard composer to cozy up to. He died in a mental institution at 35 of manic depression, I think. His long piano works will move from absolutely beautiful melodies to dark, cacophonous passages. His wife, Clara, was a composer in her own right and an extremely popular concert pianist. She introduced a number of his works. You might look for Argerich playing "kinderszenen." It is about the phases of childhood, if I remember correctly. The early passages are lovely, then he descends into a kind of madness, but pulls out of it. It must be so hard for a pianist to express his soul as @mahgister says. |
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