January 17, 2008
Random Musickal Observation
Regular readers will probably already know that when it comes to musick, my heart is thoroughly in the Baroque. (What does that make me? A Baroquist? A Baroquian? A Nerd?)
This is not to say that I don't like other periods, of course. After all, where would that leave Haydn and Mozart? However, the truth is that most of the time I would much rather listen to a piece of C3 Baroque musick than anything but the best of any other period.
Having said all that, I happened to hear a couple of pieces on the radio this morning - one of Dvorak's Slavonic Dances and the last movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. (Dvorak and Tchaikovsky were almost exact contemporaries, incidentally, born in 1841 and 1840, respectively.) And it occured to me yet again that every time I hear Dvorak's musick I like it more and more, while every time I hear Tchaikovsky's (with the possible exception of some of his ballet musick), I find it all the more tedious.
I throw that out for what it's worth.
UPDATE: Having trouble getting into the comments again, dang it. But following up on JohnL, yes, I definitely need to expand the CD collection in that regard. Speaking of which, I heard a bit of a cello suite last evening by one Georg Mathias Monn, a Viennese composer I'd never heard of who died the same year as Bach (1750). Pleasant and at times interesting, but every now and again a shudder went through the piece that had me scratching my head.
Also, I of course agree with RBJ about 20th Century music as a rule, although I do confess to enjoying certain select bits by Holst, Vaughn Williams and Walton. (With the latter two, it's primarily their treatment of stuff written by other people - like the Tallis Fantasia - or else their English Folk Song settings.) Also, I've recently become more interested in the works of Saint-Saens. Plus I enjoy the snotty things he said about Debussy.
Bear in mind that I'm just talking about what is generally referred to as "Classical" musick here. Certainly, I am very fond of a wide variety of other kinds of musick as well.
Still, either of them beats the pants off anything done in the 20th Century. Especially by Americans.
Posted by: rbj at January 17, 2008 09:59 AMYou may not trust the taste of a man whose musical tastes run equally from heavy metal to jazz to baroque organ music, but I similarly like Dvorak more as I age than Tchaikovsky.
Tchaikovsky's a good drinkable table wine while Dvorak is a bit more complex. I think the musical palate has to learn how to appreciate the "taste" of Dvorak's music.
Next, I can't recall whether I've recommended them to you before, but you might want to take a risk (for 99 cents each on iTunes, you can't go wrong) on Georg Bohm or Johann Jacob Froberger, two of Bach's inspirations (lesser known than Buxtehude). Bohm's Praeludium und Fuge in C for organ sounds like youthful Bach and is a good start.
(Bohm's name actually has an umlaut over the u and should be spelled Boehm, but search engines aren't smart enough to know that Boehm = Bo"hm).
Errr, that should be an umlaut over the o. Duh.
Posted by: JohnL at January 17, 2008 12:20 PMTchaikovsky's depression comes through a lot in his music. He has a lot of downward-spiraling bits to his music (literally speaking, that is, from the notes-in-the-scale perspective). I always think about the Bugs Bunny cartoons and whatnot when someone's climbing up steps, the music goes "up" with each step. I think that's what's so tragically beautiful about the pas de deux at the end of Nutcracker. The context makes it soar, but it could easily double as a tragic piece.
Edmund Burke defined "sublime" as the combination of terror and beauty. That's a bit what Tchaikovsky does for me. But he's definitely a drag quite often.
That comment about wine brings up how I feel about Art in general (talking high art, not popular music, e.g.): good art needs time to age. I don't care for current painting/sculpture/music/literature/photopgraphy, et al. It's almost best if the artist is dead. I dunno, I just like some space between creation and enjoyment of the work.
Posted by: rbj at January 17, 2008 02:48 PMTchaikovsky's chamber music is better than his symphonic music (apart from the ballets). I was on the verge of retiring Mr. T. from the CD rotation completely until I bought a recording of the string quartets and the amazing Souvenir de Florence, and I had to reinstate him on the strength of those two discs.
Dvorak has his tedious moments, but the Slavonic Dances are wonderful--and not hard to play in their 4-hand original either. Copies are easy to come by; unfortunately 4-hand players are not.
Posted by: TAFKAQ at January 17, 2008 07:37 PMDvorak is as underrated as Tchaikovsky is overrated.
T's student Sergi Taneiev is my personal favorite Russian composer (There are lots of variant spellings of his last name: Taneev being probably the most common). His "fourth" symphony, which he caounted as his first, is simply magnificent. I call him the Russian Brahms, because his music sounds to me a lot like Brahms with a Russian accent. He also wrote a lot of amazing chamber music for diverse ensembles.
Posted by: Hucbald at January 18, 2008 03:03 AM
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