the Thread about Beethoven's b.day prompts me to list some of my fav composers & selected compositions---

Of Course I don't present these as 'your favorites', just putting them out there for contemplation / comments...

(Please share yours!)

I like both (Bizet, Balanchine) Symphony in C


John Adams- Nixon In China, others

Barber- School for Scandal

Britten- Young People's Guide to the Orchestra

Debussy- Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune

Copland - most of his compositions

Glass- Einstein On The Beach, Orphee (all his)

Grieg-

Mahler- Symphony #2 'Resurrection'

Arvo Part-

Rachmaninoff - PC#2, PC#3

Schoenberg

Sibelius- Finlandia

Smetana- Ma vlast / The Moldau

Stravinsky- Symphony of Psalms, Petrushka, Firebird

Tchaikovsky- 1812, Swan Lake

eta: OMG! I forgot to mention opera pieces!

Puccini: O mio babbino caro / from Gianni Schicchi , + lots from La Boheme LB is my fav opera, btw, I also liked Amelia: Commissioned by Seattle Opera / Daron Hagen-libretto Gardner McFall...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2020 02:30AM by GNPE.

For anybody who's not familiar with the classical canon, there are plenty of "Best 100 Classical Music" lists out there I imagine there's lots of overlap among them.

A classical station in my city had the frequency of "102.5 FM, and posted their "102 Essential Classical Collection," I suggested to one of their radio personalities a way to make their list authentically "102.5 Essential Classical" pieces: add Schubert's 8th, the "Unfinished" -- just two movements!

And whad'ya know, they revised it to the "102.5 Essential..!"

My absolute favorite from the classical canon: Schubert's 9th, "the Great C-Major." Any of you getting the Covid Doldrums, feeling anxious or depressed or whatever, cue up this 9th, so rich in romantic heroic themes, and treat yourself to a powerful dose of aesthetic adrenalin!

Shubert's ninth truly is gorgeous.

My all-time favorite:

"Polonaise in A Flat Major, Op. 53 (the "Heroic")," written in 1842 by Frederic Chopin.

I grew up in a two-story-plus-basement house, and the piano in our house was in the dining room.

My Mom knew this composition by heart (she learned it when she was a teenager, growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma), and when times were tough (and sometimes when times were over-the-top superlatively great!)--whenever she needed ballast, or a major boost, for her soul--she would sit down at the piano and play this composition....and it was like the "swelling" which gradually occurs during this piece would enter, and then interpenetrate, every part of our house, and every atom there, whether those atoms were part of wood, or metal, or air, or flesh.

By the time she had played the last notes, not only would she be renewed or stabilized (whatever she needed at that moment)....so would I.

That's a beautiful story, summer.

What a lousy party.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=r82Ej2702bQ&feature=emb_logo

It's a lesser-known but gorgeous work by Beethoven, The Egmont Overture.

I'm listening to it right now! Can you tell?

The start of the overture defines lugubrious! But it quickly picks up and pleases the aural palette.

I prefer it to Beethoven's other, more well-known overture, The Coriolan. If you don't know either and want to check them out, they are at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GP2VwLLcMc           Egmont

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvn2oGyji8s           Coriolan

Get out of my car

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzRhwTzzbro

Pavane by Fauré. The classical music station played it every night before it went off the air, and now it's off the air for good.

Oh, hey - did anyone see the MTT American Masters program? Very good.

Boner needs to weigh in. He has a huge classical music library plus a ton of knowledge on the subject.

It has a music system you'd sell your soul for.

Dvořák - Symphony No. 9 ("New World")

Prokofiev - Troika from Lieutenant Kijé

Albéniz - Asturias

Orff - Carmina Burana


Bolero
Pictures at an Exhibition
Scheherazade
The Planets
Water Music

and the film score to "Lord of the Rings" (IMO it qualifies. Don't fool yourselves; if Beethoven etc. were alive today they'd be in Hollywood because that's where the money is.)

Great Choices!!

IDK if the Seattle St. Marks Compline service is discontinued or on-air but no audience, it's been on KING FM (streamed also) for ~25 yrs; 9:30 Sunday nites PCT



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2020 02:34AM by GNPE.

I make sure and set aside a Sunday night to play the post-Compline organ recital whenever I'm out there (a local organ builder/friend who sings in the choir organizes those). Such a relaxing service.

Ditto on Dvorak's Symphony No. 9. Add in much of Thomas Tallis, and polyphonic masterpieces like Ave Maria, and Vaughan Williams.....and good rousing bagpipe bands playing the real 'Scotland the Brave'! :-)

Oh, and possibly the most beautiful and haunting melody of all time: the Coventry Carol.

Are you familiar with In the Bleak Mid winter? It is set to music by Boost.

Thank you tablet...that should be composer Holst.

I get to tell a story!

My mother went through a No Devil Music but the classical stuff is okay phase. Practically, that means the local classical music station served as background noise. Not noise in a, "OMG THIS IS CRAP!" sense, but it wasn't something you could sing along with except for the Polovetsian Dances that you can *seriously* scream to. That work I remember. I thought it was "Polyester and Dancers" and *that* bring me to my main point - how on Earth are you expected to know who and what if you're listening to the radio and you're not well versed in this stuff? The sonorous DJ would state, "That was [words and numbers and places] conducted by [some dude]. Before that we heard..." In one ear and out the other.

ETA: I forgot the most important part of the story - the clock radio. I loved my clock radio. Mom and I shared a bedroom for most of my childhood, so she paid close attention to what I was listening to. "Sleepers Awake" at 6am, and Pavane at bedtime.

One day she caught me singing, "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy."

Mom: What was THAT you were singing?

Me: erm... [I was about 12 - didn't know how to lie yet]

Mom: Where did you learn that?

Me: erm...

Mom: WELLLLL?

Me: Dr. Demento

Mom: #@$@#%# *thwack* @#$@

:(

But I remember that song!

________

Who knows this stuff. How do you guys *know* this stuff? If you're not a musician, how the heck do you *know* this stuff?

It's hard for the brain to retain new information if there isn't already something in the gray matter that the new stuff can stick to. <-- that's why analogies are dope pedagogical tools.

I want to be cool like y'all.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2020 11:37PM by Beth.

Listen to the classical stations and simply enjoy. When you hear a piece you especially like, you can usually look it up on the station's website and find out what it was, and who performed it. Some will even provide a link for purchasing the CD or download.

Yes I have fond memories of Dr. Demento. Wolfman Jack, also.

Years ago, the NY Metropolitan Opera had a full-page ad that went something like this:

"Murder! Treachery! Adultery! Treason! Torture! Heresy! Assassination! Seductions! War! Betrayal! Violence!

--Just another night at the Opera."

Just hold a Google device up to the speaker and ask, "Hey, Google, what song is this?"

caffiend Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes I have fond memories of Dr. Demento. Wolfman
> Jack, also.

I still miss Wolfman Jack.

When I was at Ricks in 66 I could pick up The Wolfman on a good from a California station. WUZ cool.

Dr. Demento was my required listening when I was around 13--between Dr. D, Monty Python, Warner Bros. cartoons and and the Marx Brothers, my twisted sense of humor was set.

But to get back on subject: Alexa just played 'Lo How a Rose Ere Blooming' and it is painfully beautiful.

Chicken N. Backpacks Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Dr. Demento was my required listening when I was
> around 13--between Dr. D, Monty Python, Warner
> Bros. cartoons and and the Marx Brothers, my
> twisted sense of humor was set.
>
You chose your mentors wisely. Marx Brothers, especially. I'll guess Mad Magazine is on your list, even if it didn't come to mind at the moment you posted,

The poem according to my faulty memory---

I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.

I'm not under the alcafluence of inklehol even though some thinkle peep I am.

The drunker I stand here, the longer I get.

As much as I enjoy classical music, I have the reverse of an encylopedic knowledge of titles, numbers, composers.

BUT, I can remember this silly poem and many others!

I have enjoyed classical music since I was 12 or 13 years old; no rock and roll for this kid.

My favorites are:

Verdi's Il Trovatore

The opera The Barber of Seville

Les Preludes by Franz Liszt

And of course, my very favorite: Wagner's Die Walkure Ride of the Valkyries.

Washing Machine


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYS0XenM19I

https://youtu.be/f9lB7HhK2Oc

Incidentally, Dave, the washing machine's melody was Schubert's Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 667, "The Trout." Here's 40 minutes of aural beauty you may not have yet experienced. You're more cultured than you realize!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3k81__bwrM

Our front desk baggage guys brought in a boom box for lobby music (my working area, a 2nd rate casino hotel). One of the guys, who also worked at the Peppermill, always had to make sure the radio was on "cool music," which for him was that dreadful mid-'80s Top 40 stuff. At the Peppermill, he was the upscale arranger for cocktail waitress orders while management looked the other way. But he'd set the station and walk off leaving all of us to marinate in Huey Lewis, Michael Jackson, Joe Jackson, Jackson Browne, and Barry Manilow dreck. Bluehairs in stretch polyester leisure suits would choke the lobby playing nickel video poker machines for hours.

When he went home, I'd flip the station to the University radio and the late night program was old Bebop Jazz and Opera on Sundays. Anything that didn't have a metronome monotonous pop drum beat really annoyed the usual couch potatoes. Opera was absolutely MAGICAL cleaning out the Beer & Hotdog crowd. It's just stink them out and annoy them out the door. Bluehairs would agitate right off their padded stools. No one ever said they couldn't stand the stuff.

I've always thought of Bach's ear blasting pipe organ music as the inspiration for Heavy Metal. Nothing says Ozzy Osborne and Black Sabbath as "Tocata & Fugue in D Minor."

Elgar appears to be enjoying some renewed popularity right now. I enjoy Nimrod from his variations and no short piece of music invokes more nostalgia for my birth country than this.

Thank you for making "La Cucaracha" relevant to this thread!

I'm sure there is a knock in there somewhere but the reference evades me.

Sir, it's one of my favorites sources of humor, self-deprecation!

It's easier to get people to laugh at me, versus laughing at themselves.


edited to make it clear: La Cucaracha is a silly song and referencing it to MY heritage as an equivalency to Elgar's connection with your heritage is ... silly! cue laugh track.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2020 01:41PM by elderolddog.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sir, it's one of my favorites sources of humor,
> self-deprecation!
>
Forgive my bragging, Mutt, but I have more to be humble about than you.

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/096ba9f67554bb168c7cf1d1f65ea044a5f982fcbb20777553e85fc0801a06c3.jpg



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2020 02:12PM by caffiend.

Self deprecation is at the heart of most British humor. I have been away too long and am in desperate need of a retread.

Curiosity question, good sir:

Have you read the Lord Peter Wimsey cycle?

No. Not my style. They were done as a TV series many years ago and I think we're shown on Masterpiece Theatre.

Take Five


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT9Eh8wNMkw

I'm still compiling the list of my favorite classical music songs (Ludwig von's "Moonlight Sonata" is definitely on the list), but "Pachelbel' Canon in D" is NOT on the list. Yes, I know the violin and viola parts are pretty, but the cello part sucks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLFggVxb2vY

As a former cellist, I can confirm this account is true.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2020 08:11PM by ookami.

I have made a partial list of classical songs I like:

Tartini's "The Devil's Trill Sonata." Contains one of the most difficult violin parts (the story goes that Tartini came up with it after a dream where he sold his soul to the Devil). Most of the violinists I knew had more ego than talent and any violinist who can play this has the talent to back up the ego.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7rxl5KsPjs

The Finale to Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture." Because what other piece of classical music has a part written for cannons?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHWFwJ23JaU

As mentioned before, the "Moonlight Sonata" by old Ludwig von. I just think it's pretty, okay?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_C6CTs0WhI

ookami Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Tartini's "The Devil's Trill Sonata."

Check out Saint-Saens' "Dance Macabre" for entertaining demonic. Also Bizet's Faust. For over-the-top violin work, Paganini's violin concertos.

what other piece of classical music has a
> part written for cannons?

Tchaikovsky's plans for the premier of the "1812" were to include a 1,000-piece orchestra in Red Square with chorus and two brass bands marching in for the finale. The conductor would detonate canons from the Kremlin walls with switches from the podium, and every bell in the Kremlin would be rung. That extravaganza never came to pass.

I have heard the Boston Pops perform it live on the Charles River Esplanade with 105mm howitzers, fireworks following.

Richard Rogers & Robert Russell Bennett scored gunfire .klaxons, sirens and the like in the music for "Victory At Sea," including 16-inch naval guns which shot from the stereo right soundtrack over to the left.

...and instrumental in Bach's development. When Bach was orphaned, he was sent to live and study with his uncle, who in turn had studied with Pachelbel. Bach's earliest compositional lessons were making manuscript copies of Pachelbel's music.

So, why the hate for Pachelbel, and in particular that piece? Like most Americans, you've probably never heard the original--which is a strict canon (very hard to compose) for three violins:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h78TxRnctog&ab_channel=DaveSmey

It's a shame that people's only experience with it nowadays is the cheap imitation of the original played at weddings.

ookami Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm still compiling the list of my favorite
> classical music songs (Ludwig von's "Moonlight
> Sonata" is definitely on the list), but
> "Pachelbel' Canon in D" is NOT on the list. Yes, I
> know the violin and viola parts are pretty, but
> the cello part sucks.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLFggVxb2vY
>
> As a former cellist, I can confirm this account is
> true.

Orchestral politics is why. As I mentioned, the violins (first, second, and third) and violas got very lovely parts. The cellos got stuck with repeating the same boring notes over and over and over . . .

I used to play the cello. My loyalty to the instrument is why I consider Pachelbel and the crappy cello part in his "Canon in D" overrated.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2020 06:30PM by ookami.

Contrast Bach's own Cello Suites especially as performed by Rostropovich. . .

Cello, schmello. Who needs one when you have an accordion…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3HPPfNeGt8


…or a ukulele?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1exqUKgwkIc

kazoo, mouth harp; "tonette", slide whistle!!

I suggest banjo Orchestras. There's also accordion orchestras, like the Mighty Accordion Band, if you groove to massed accordions playing Count Basie and hot swing jazz.

Bach - Air On G String
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMaSpnUGqu0

Anyone else remember that Michael Ballam (I think? He played Satan in one of the temple movies) talk that was all the rage for a while at the end of the 90s? Extolling the virtues of classical music, painting the Rolling Stones as inspired by the devil and the story about the priesthood holder unable to give a blessing because there was a poster for a rock band hanging in his kid's bedroom that was *gasp* chasing away the Spirit.

If only it were that easy to chase away Mormons.

Meanwhile, I wasn't allowed to play Mendelssohn on the MTC pianos. "We seek after lovely things" my ass.

There seems to be a connection between Bill Gothard's teachings and Michael Ballam about that occult stuff:

"Also, there appears to be a connection between Gothard and Dr. Michael Ballam, a Mormon, whom I have been told is heavily influenced by New Age principles and pop psychology. Some of the stuff that Ballam promoted was occultic themes in "planetary vibration tones" and more . Ballam, apparently, held that Christ was simply a person that could channel power and/or energy in order to do His miracles. The Victorian Era was not that blatant, but basically implied Ballam's stuff via Spiritualism."

From here:

http://victoriantruth.blogspot.com/2008/07/victorian-nonsensibilities-of-bill.html

His publications show up on the IBLP stores listings, too:

https://store.iblp.org/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=SRCH&Store_Code=IBLP&search=IBLP+Publications&searchoffset=192&ProductsPerPage=48&psboost=&psrelevance=&filter_cat=&PowerSearch_Begin_Only=&sort=&range_low=&range_high=

https://store.iblp.org/music-the-mind.html?&search=IBLP+Publications&searchoffset=192&ProductsPerPage=48&psboost=&psrelevance=&filter_cat=&PowerSearch_Begin_Only=&sort=&range_low=&range_high=



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2020 06:37AM by snagglepuss.

Swedish composer Bobbie Ericsson - Song: Outer Archipelago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOBT6yK0Y04

Things I did not know:

1. YouTube has an orchestra
2. SUBTITLES

https://youtu.be/3HhTMJ2bek0

ETA: NM - this version doesn't have subtitles, but someone in the comment has linked to the instruments!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2020 06:57PM by Beth.

Grieg: Peer Gynt
Tchaikovsky: Waltz of the Flowers
Strauss: Blue Danube, Tales From the Vienna Woods
Beethoven: Ninth
Bach: The Brandenburg Concertos
Vivaldi: Four Seasons
Holst: The Planets

Core stuff, for me

Henry Purcell -The Gordian Knot Unty'd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erz3NA4diDU


Tomaso Albinoni - Adagio In G Minor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eLU5W1vc8Y


Destouches - Les Elements
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ws6OyMnNCI


Jean-Baptiste Lully - Alceste Orchestral Suite
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6a23Ba2SnQ


Marin Marais - The Bells of St. Genevieve
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJYKm9dw67o


J.S. Bach - Concerto for two violins in d minor, BWV 1043
https://youtu.be/LZ48G9UziRs


A. Vivaldi - "Il Sospetto," RV 199
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2xwZjqVPio


J.S. Bach - Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C minor, BWV 1060a
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lBdR0UN9Gg


G.F. Handel - Water Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAyiidg25uE


Franz Joseph Haydn - "Surprise" (Symphony no. 94)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF5kr251BRs


Mozart - Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNeirjA65Dk


Beethoven - Symphony No. 7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4788Tmz9Zo


Johannes Brahms - Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1E6FBi-AJw


Franz Liszt - Les Préludes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1E6FBi-AJw


Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK6iAxe0oEc


Johann Strauss II - The Blue Danube Waltz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CTYymbbEL4


Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyT3F0rlhYY


Borodin - In the Steppes of Central Asia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WJWmZzVi_c


Borodin - Polovstian Dances From Prince Igor (a/k/a "Stranger In Paradise")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVURal-QYsA


Dvorak - Symphony No. 9, "From New World"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qut5e3OfCvg


Richard Strauss - Alpine Symphony
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQhpWsRhQGs


Elgar - Symphony No. 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCuSuwDXxUA


Ravel - Daphnis et Chloé
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHrstmOPKBQ


Claude Debussy - La Mer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOCucJw7iT8


Bela Bartók - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz. 106
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf9Yl6VQ_Oo


Ralph Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihx5LCF1yJY


Samuel Barber - Adagio For Strings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3MHeNt6Yjs


Gershwin - An American In Paris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ros66y1aZ-E


Raymond Scott - Powerhouse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xthn6syCvf8


Sergei Prokofiev - Suite From "Alexander Nevsky"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VW7GLe0WnE


Aaron Copland - Appalachian Spring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxd1cmenki8


Moncayo - Huapango
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbgAHpD4W_8


Alan Hovhaness - And God Created Great Whales
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgESUPnCQ5o


Alan Hovhaness - Symphony No. 2, "Mysterious Mountain"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQZBrJmzsrc


Steve Reich - Music For A Large Ensemble
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VM8QpN05H0


Philip Glass - Concerto For Violin And Orchestra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2UlDIw-9GI


John Adams - Short Ride in a Fast Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LoUm_r7It8


Arvo Pärt - Spiegel im Spiegel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81ZMz3I5CNU



Edited 14 time(s). Last edit at 12/20/2020 09:59AM by anybody.

J. H. Roman - Sinfonia in E minor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw3rJIiihFU&list=RDc0QspskQJbQ&index=3

* Bernstein - Chichester Psalms
* Guido Haazen - Missa Luba
* Mussorgsky - Boris Gudonov
* Preisner - Requiem for
* Einojuhani Rautavaara - Cantus Arcticus
* Shostakovich - 5th Symphony aka "a Soviet artist's reply to just criticism" (in tribute to fact checkers. ;) There is no evidence for this post.)
*Wagner - Parsifal

* Requiem for my Friend by Preisner