Mozart really is the best.

[Connemara]

Listening to the SACD of Harnoncourt's recording of the Requiem. Ho-lee ****. Transcends time and space, this does.

 

[bach]

Originally Posted by Connemara

Listening to the SACD of Harnoncourt's recording of the Requiem. Ho-lee ****. Transcends time and space, this does.

I'm not the biggest Mozart fan but I might have to check out this interpretation if it's as good as you say it is...

 

[JetBlast]

Originally Posted by bach

I'm not the biggest Mozart fan but I might have to check out this interpretation if it's as good as you say it is...

Seeing your username I was expecting some kind of witty retort

 

[robin]

Stop posting.

 

[bach]

Originally Posted by JetBlast

witty retort
If we're talking about literally transcending time and space then Bach clearly has Mozart beat- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager...n_Record#Music How's that?

 

[Connemara]

Originally Posted by robin

Stop posting.
Anything for you big daddy

 

[Sherman90]

Harnoncourt makes the Requiem too intellectual, too scary and sparse. SACD is nice, but try Karajan from 1975. http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Requiem...071014&sr=8-31 P.S. Mozart is certainly a Master - and the Requiem is certainly a masterpiece - but he remains Beethoven's pupil.

 

[SField]

Karajan for Mozart? Are you serious?

 

[hypersonic]

Love Bach and Mozart very much ....but I can not possibly ever say who is best -- what about composers like Cherubini and Pergolesi? -- there are many geniuses who have faded into the background of history.

Beethoven's Emperor Concerto is one of the most uplifting I can think of ......and there have been several geniuses in the 20th century who I would also rate among the greatest too.

 

[Albern]

Originally Posted by hypersonic

.....and there have been several geniuses in the 20th century who I would also rate among the greatest too.

Can you please name a few that I can look up? (serious request)

 

[Sherman90]

Originally Posted by SField

Karajan for Mozart? Are you serious?

Very. Have you heard that particular recording? Who are your choice conductors for Mozart?

 

[hypersonic]

Originally Posted by Albern

Can you please name a few that I can look up? (serious request)

Sure, a few 20th Century composers I would rate among the greatest of all time are:

Gustav Mahler
Claude Debussy (he was to music what Paul CÃ

zanne was to painting )
Giacomo Puccini
Alban Berg (his Violin Concerto is a Modern masterpiece)
Igor Stravinsky
BÃ

la Bartók
Sergei Prokofiev (the more you listen to it the more you're hooked)
George Gershwin (A true genius if ever there was one)
Jean Sibelius
Dmitri Shostakovich
Benjamin Britten
Alfred Schnittke

 

[Albern]

Originally Posted by hypersonic

Sure, a few 20th Century composers I would rate among the greatest of all time are:

Gustav Mahler
Claude Debussy (he was to music what Paul CÃ

zanne was to painting )
Giacomo Puccini
Alban Berg (his Violin Concerto is a Modern masterpiece)
Igor Stravinsky
BÃ

la Bartók
Sergei Prokofiev (the more you listen to it the more you're hooked)
George Gershwin (A true genius if ever there was one)
Jean Sibelius
Dmitri Shostakovich
Benjamin Britten
Alfred Schnittke

Thank you!! Now I have some learning to do.

 

[StephenHero]

Don't forget Rachmaninov.

 

[hypersonic]

Originally Posted by Albern

Thank you!! Now I have some learning to do.
Are you familiar with any of them?

20th century music, like fine art and politics, went through radical changes -- lots of new ideas.


Arnold Schoenberg invented 'twelve-tone' music, which attemptd to order musical composition so that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale were played before one could be repeated -- the resulting music sounds anything but ordered -- it sounds 'atonal' (without melody).

Arnold Schoenberg. Suite for Piano Op. 25 - Part II
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The brilliant American composer Charles Ives experimented with 'polytonality' -- he was often inspired by the band music he grew up with in Danbury, Connecticut.

Charles Ives' first and most influential teacher was his father, George, a Civil War band leader, who introduced him to the concepts of polytonality and multiple meters. Young Charles grew up listening to his father's bands marching up and down Danbury's Main Street and was greatly influenced by his father's frequent musical experiments. One popular anecdote recounts the occasion when several of George's bands marched to Elmwood Park from different directions simultaneously playing marches in different meters and keys. Another tells of George's experiments with quarter tones, which were inspired by the out-of-tune church bells of the First Congressional Church next to his home.

Charles Ives. The Unanswered Question
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Igor Stravinsky's 'The Rite of Spring' (Le Sacre du Printemps) ballet music is famous for causing a riot at its premiere in Paris in 1913 -- a true case of "the shock of the new"

The audience was shocked by the dissonance and violence of the music -- but also by the aggressive movements of Sergei Diaghilev's ballet dances who had their feet tuned in.

From Wikipedia
The complex music and violent dance steps depicting fertility rites first drew catcalls and whistles from the crowd. At the start with the opening bassoon solo, the audience began to boo loudly due to the slight discord in the background notes behind the bassoon's opening melody. There were loud arguments in the audience between supporters and opponents of the work. These were soon followed by shouts and fistfights in the aisles. The unrest in the audience eventually degenerated into a riot. The Paris police arrived by intermission, but they restored only limited order. Chaos reigned for the remainder of the performance, and Stravinsky himself was so upset on account of its reception that he fled the theater in mid-scene, reportedly crying. Fellow composer Camille Saint-Saëns famously stormed out of the première (though Stravinsky later said "I do not know who invented the story that he was present at, but soon walked out of, the premiere.") allegedly infuriated over the misuse of the bassoon in the ballet's opening bars.

Stravinsky ran backstage, where Diaghilev was turning the lights on and off in an attempt to try to calm the audience. Nijinsky stood on a chair, leaned out (far enough that Stravinsky had to grab his coat-tail), and shouted counts to the dancers, who were unable to hear the orchestra (this was challenging because Russian numbers are polysyllabic above ten, such as seventeen: semnadsat vs. eighteen: vosemnadsat).

Although Nijinsky and Stravinsky were despondent, Diaghilev (a Russian art critic as well as the ballet's impresario) commented that the scandal was "just what I wanted".

Igor Stravinsky. 'The Rite of Spring', First movement, L'adoration de la Terre (The adoration of the earth)
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