Classical music that is not dull.

Discuss any questions in English. Practise your writing skills.

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#26

Сообщение Zlatko_Berrin »

Easy-Breezy English пишет: 24 янв 2020, 11:15 So very true. And I feel like Beethoven should be given his dues here, too.
Well, in this piece, Beethoven uses a pattern that sounds very Bach-like:

I don't remember where exactly I heard it, but when I find a similar pattern, I'll provide you with the link.
By the way, almost at the end of the piece, there is a fugato (it's like a fugue but it is a part of a composition, not a self-sufficient piece of music, so to speak):
Easy-Breezy English пишет: 24 янв 2020, 11:15 BTW, I always love your music recommendations. :-)
Thanks) If I hear something interesting, I'll post the link to that on the forum so you'll know.
Easy-Breezy English пишет: 24 янв 2020, 11:15 Don't write modern classical music off, though. It might grow on you.
I don't deny it. But for now...)
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#27

Сообщение Zlatko_Berrin »

gavenkoa пишет: 24 янв 2020, 14:56 if it is the same at each point I lose interest
And if I jump around a new piece of music and find its parts very different, I don't understand what thought its composer put in it. Maybe, there is only chaos in some composers' minds, who knows?))
garans пишет: 27 янв 2020, 19:11 I always feel awe while listening to Mozart.
Where this fear comes from?

Requiem supposed to give us rest and peace
Why fear?
Maybe, this is what we call страх Божий?)

You know, listening to the Requiem, I 'see' His glory. 1 percent of it. I don't think I'm capable of seeing more.
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#28

Сообщение gavenkoa »

Zlatko_Berrin пишет: 29 янв 2020, 00:48 And if I jump around a new piece of music and find its parts very different, I don't understand what thought its composer put in it. Maybe, there is only chaos in some composers' minds, who knows?))
I probably know why I accustomed to drastic changes in music. It is because of medley (jointless mix of different song).

The only cassette I had in my early adolescent was:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_on_45_(song)

Every 10 sec the theme is changing into something else:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musical_medleys
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#29

Сообщение Easy-Breezy English »

Zlatko_Berrin пишет: 29 янв 2020, 00:33 Well, in this piece, Beethoven uses a pattern that sounds very Bach-like:
I was thinking the exact same thing. In fact, when I was trying to find that piece, I originally searched for Bach. :-)
By the way, almost at the end of the piece, there is a fugato (it's like a fugue but it is a part of a composition, not a self-sufficient piece of music, so to speak)
Absolutely loved the graphic score idea. It enriches the auditory experience in a very interesting way. It's like you can follow the composer's thought - which I can't so easily do if I'm just listening.
Easy-Breezy English пишет: 24 янв 2020, 11:15 Don't write modern classical music off, though. It might grow on you.
I don't deny it. But for now...)
I think the preference for either more consonant or dissonant music has something to do with the personality type. However, even if I don't share someone's tastes, it's always incredibly fun to try to understand what others might see in something that I don't get.
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#30

Сообщение gavenkoa »

Easy-Breezy English пишет: 29 янв 2020, 11:14 However, even if I don't share someone's tastes, it's always incredibly fun to try to understand what others might see in something that I don't get.
I couldn't accept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_song (романс). This form of art is out of my understanding.

I don't like poetry too as it concentrates on word play and emotional constituent comes from form not from meaning... It is alien to me.
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#31

Сообщение Easy-Breezy English »

gavenkoa пишет: 29 янв 2020, 17:10 I don't like poetry too as it concentrates on word play and emotional constituent comes from form not from meaning... It is alien to me.
Ok, how about something a bit more whimsical? This is fairly simplistic, but cute nonetheless.
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#32

Сообщение gavenkoa »

Easy-Breezy English пишет: 29 янв 2020, 20:31 Ok, how about something a bit more
Found another:
A palindrome is a word or a phrase which is the same when read from the start or the end, for example the word wow or racecar.
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/ ... -poem.html
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#33

Сообщение Mary May »

Sorry for flooding, but it happens once in a lifetime...
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Once in a lifetime? Oh no, once in (almost) a thousand years!
palindrome
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51349158
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/02/worl ... index.html
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#34

Сообщение Mary May »

A bit more flooding )
Yesterday I went to a concert and... it was a kind of ordeal. I mean, I was absolutely unprepared to what I had to listen to.
It was Olivier Messiaen's 90-minute symphony with a Sanskrit title (can't pronounce it, but it can be easily found as it's the maestro's only symphony). The length itself was not a problem, as I usually easily (and happily!) survive Mahler's large-scale opuses. It was the music per se. Before, I'd only happened to listen to some piano pieces from his Birds cycle - gracious and short. But now, it was a 10-part symphony, which is far more "fractional" than symphonies usually are. And - just imagine - as I learned today, googling for some key to understand what on earth it was - its real finale might be not part 10, but part 8, after which... what follows?.. At least, that seemed to be the interpretation the conductor of yesterday's performance inclined to - the idea spoken out on the orchestra's website.
Nevertheless. it was an interesting experience I no way regret. Though unable to grasp the whole picture, I enjoyed some parts of it now and then. The Ekaterinburg orchestra and the soloists from France were great. Besides, it was a unique chance to see a musical instrument I hadn't even heard of before - волны кого-то там...
Again: unlike you, I'm the one with little to no expertise in music, so - forgive me my ignorance )
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#35

Сообщение gavenkoa »

Mary May пишет: 02 фев 2020, 23:58 but it happens once in a lifetime...
You can't imaging what is happening in Civil registration services. Young couples fight to get married that day.
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#36

Сообщение gavenkoa »

Mary May пишет: 03 фев 2020, 00:10 Olivier Messiaen
It is something rather unusual:


Mary May пишет: 03 фев 2020, 00:10 Yesterday I went to a concert
I found the site of local Philharmonic Hall. Really curious what it can be, what kind of experience it may give.

Again the price is like to eat one pizza. That was elite a hundred years ago now is available for the masses.
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#37

Сообщение Егор »

garans пишет:I always feel awe while listening to Mozart.
Ever heard Mozart in German? I have:) And boy was it hurtful – I had a literally traumatic experience with it. It was my 20th birthday when I first got to Berlin, and someone I really-really loved (my one and only true love lol) thought it would be a good idea to go see "The Magic Flute" by Mozart as my birthday treat. Yes, because I'm sooo into opera, people. (facepalm)

You know sometimes it's crazy how people you so much love and care about can be so super unobservant of things you actually do not like. It can go both ways of course, I did mess lots of things up myself and I wasn't a perfect boyfriend either, so kind of hypocritical of me to complain. Anyway back to Mozart.

I don't like Mozart or opera or classical music for that matter. Well, it's not even like I hate it, it's just the family I was raised in, it wasn't very classy or refined and none of us ever thought of classical music as something one could possibly enjoy, so this whole opera birthday surprise secretly planned by my lovely crush and getting told last minute – well it all annoyed the hell out of me, but we were still in that awkward-ish romantic phase of our relationship where I just couldn't say no. I just tried to calm myself down by thinking, "Just go already, don't be disrespectful! Pretend to be interested in whatever happens on the stage. It's only Mozart. This can't be too bad. This can't take too long, and then your free and then there's the birthday dinner and most probably there's something else."

With tickets in our pockets and with totally different visions of a perfect evening in our minds, off we went to the opera. It started out well actually. The music was so soothing and calm that I felt peaceful and relaxed, and I was absolutely impressed by the interiors of the opera house. I had never ever been in my entire life to a place as grand and classy as that.

I looked up at the ceiling or whatever you call it in theaters and the pure majesty of it just made my head go spinning with all those flickering lights and quaint ceiling carvings of various shapes and size. They all were gleaming in all incredible shades of gold and other humanly indiscernible colors and seemed to be forming into this fascinating and yet unknown to me miraculous harmony of lights, so similar and yet amazingly diverse. And suddenly I really felt out of place, because for a moment I thought I heard every little detail and every little thing in that building screaming and hissing at me, "Hey, village boy! You don't belong here! Who the hell let you in?" That was really confusing. And then the opera singers showed up and the singing started. In GERMAN! Oh dear God --

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#38

Сообщение tourist »

Егор,
feel for you,mate )
it was a very stupid thing for you to do
as she repeatedly affirms at
0:29
0:36
1:18
and so on... )
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#39

Сообщение Егор »

tourist пишет:it was a very stupid thing for you to do
Like I had a choice, mate:)
In ideal world, where operas do not exit, believe me my party would've been like this:)
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#40

Сообщение Mary May »

Егор пишет: 25 мар 2020, 03:48 In the ideal world, where operas do not exist...
Far from being ideal, my today's world is filled and fueled with watching the Met and Staatsoper's performances online )
I wish it were different.
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#41

Сообщение Егор »

Mary May пишет: 29 мар 2020, 11:08 Far from being ideal, my today's world is filled and fueled with watching the Met and Staatsoper's performances online )
I wish it were different.
Hey chin up:) No chance of travelling to fancy countries to see your favorite ballet -- it's a terrible time to be alive, I know I know:)

Anyway we still have the Internet, so we can watch whatever we want even in these horrible dark times. We're actually very lucky we're not like our great grandparents, who in troubled times used to have the "Swan Lake" ballet on all tv channels, and when I say "on all tv channels" I mean all two of them.
Not that much of a choice, if you ask me:)

On a serious note though, all this quarantine thing, I really want all this to end. As soon as possible. Although I do realize that on the day this happens, we all will wake up in the world we never knew before, and I hate to admit it to myself, but it's obvious -- this new world is not going to be pretty.

Hey I'm getting off-topic. To make my post a bit more opera-related, I think I'm gonna go ahead and post this traditional Chinese Opera video. I know it’s Chinese, but it’s still opera, right?
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#42

Сообщение gavenkoa »

Егор пишет: 29 мар 2020, 23:06 traditional Chinese Opera video
A nice case to demonstrate ignorance to unaccustomed form of arts!
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#43

Сообщение Егор »

gavenkoa пишет: 30 мар 2020, 09:08 A nice case to demonstrate ignorance to unaccustomed form of arts!
You mean I'm ignorant, because I posted that to have a laugh? Yes, I did, because it's a comedy opera for crying out loud. In traditional Chinese opera there's this special type of performances called "Xiang Sheng", where two people (usually a husband and a wife) are having a very intense and sometimes really aggressive conversation.

Making funny faces and purposefully using audibly ugly sounds and intonation is the main part of Xiang Sheng. It's supposed to make people laugh. Operas like that are seriously NOT MEANT to be taken seriously. It's sort of like "Stand-up Comedy" of the olden days.

I used to have a Chinese roommate and when she was bored or drunk or both, she would always put Xiang Sheng on big screen TV and we were laughing our guts out at those videos. It's funny for Chinese people, because it was meant to be so.
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#44

Сообщение gavenkoa »

Егор пишет: 30 мар 2020, 12:09 You mean I'm ignorant
Why so selfish? We are ignorant of anything out of our customs ))

Just put such "opera" in front of the opera proponent and you win!
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#45

Сообщение Егор »

gavenkoa пишет: 31 мар 2020, 09:05 Why so selfish? We are ignorant of anything out of our customs ))

Just put such "opera" in front of the opera proponent and you win!
Is that what you meant?? lol It's crazy, I seriously thought you complained about me being ignorant cheap trash, who can't appreciate things beautiful. Now idk why but it did come across as super rude and inconsiderate of you, hence my overreaction in the previous post. Sorry about that -- I mean the CAPs and "crying out loud" thing. I'm glad things sorted out nicely lol
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#46

Сообщение Dragon27 »

Егор пишет: 29 мар 2020, 23:06 I know it’s Chinese, but it’s still opera, right?
Егор пишет: 30 мар 2020, 12:09 In traditional Chinese opera there's this special type of performances called "Xiang Sheng"
Isn't it more like a comical performance, rather than an opera? After all, its main feature is the crosstalk dialogue (sometimes monologue or polylogue), not musical/theatrical performance/dancing and stuff like that.
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#47

Сообщение Егор »

Dragon27

My friend used to always call those videos like that, so that's pretty much how I've always remembered it. I can't be sure on the actual use of terminology though, I was too young and "inappropriate" back then - doing a research on Chinese operas was the last thing on my mind.
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