Im trying to get into classical. Do i have to know music theory to be able to understand it and enjoy it properly? Also any flowcharts or essential charts or something?
Austin Powell
>Im trying to get into classical. Do i have to know music theory to be able to understand it and enjoy it properly? It depends, I started just listening classical without knowing any theory. After a time I could indentify the instruments, the structure of the works, the themes and their development, etc.
By hearing you can learn a lot, but the theory is also important, specially if you want to compose or play an instrument.
Isaiah Richardson
there are many ways but starting with bach, mozart, and beethoven is generally a good idea
m.youtube.com/watch?v=cZwsGGkMT5U Can't really listen to this because it's from a fucking anime, but is there anything like this in classical vocal music that doesn't sound like shit (like usually)? Also is it like some hymn/opera/lieder hybrid or what the hell is even going on here?
Adam Carter
Schoemberg Pierrot Lunaire
Carter Long
And just to clear up I listen at this point pretty much exclusively classical and what I meant by classical vocal music sounding like shit usually is that very handful of arias, lieders and such tend to actually have appeal to them in my opinion. Take as an example a Mozart operas which are full of hit or miss-arias that can be average or really satisfying god tier ones and anything in between. These good ones are still far fewer in numbers than the average ones though in my subjective opinion.
All 12-tone listeners really do is keep a track of which note should come next and this makes them feel intellectual.
Levi Long
didn't Boulez ridicule them already in the 60s
Xavier Johnson
youtube.com/watch?v=WMSsCXc8dgw This made me want to get back into Mozart. Hadn't listened to his stuff in a while because thought it was too "fluffy", but damn that chromatic opening hooked me
Joseph Sanchez
It's not necessary to know theory, you just have to get used to listening to something that engages your mind from a different perspective. Part of that is realising you can't just tap play and leave it in the background while you do something else. If you want to understand it, that is. Separate some time to sit down and listen to it, after a while you'll see it's worth the investment. With that you'll start taking notice of the different instruments and the interplay between them, how they act independently and together at the same time. You don't need theory for that, only ears. Keep in mind this "academic model" is very recent, the vast majority of the masters would simply get scores and try to squeeze something out of them. No textbooks and guide manuals. At most a tutor to show them what to look for. As opposed to what most people think, classical is made for the ears, not the eyes or brain. It comes across as intellectual because those listening and performing it were wholly invested in that pursuit, so it might seem "brainy" or even "tiresome" to people who just slap play on pop music as background, which is the majority of people. The more you get to know the music, the more you see it isn't about intellectualism or anything of the sort, that's an academic meme. It's about devotion, both from the listener and the performers.
Nathan Morgan
>I have no sense of aesthetics so I cling to a notion of """progress"" as the ultimate goal in music
>But, for the purposes of education, as I have already said, those modes and melodies should be employed which are ethical, such as the Dorian, as we said before; though we may include any others which are approved by philosophers who have had a musical education. The Socrates of the Republic is wrong in retaining only the Phrygian mode along with the Dorian, and the more so because he rejects the flute; for the Phrygian is to the modes what the flute is to musical instruments- both of them are exciting and emotional. Poetry proves this, for Bacchic frenzy and all similar emotions are most suitably expressed by the flute, and are better set to the Phrygian than to any other mode. The dithyramb, for example, is acknowledged to be Phrygian, a fact of which the connoisseurs of music offer many proofs, saying, among other things, that Philoxenus, having attempted to compose his Mysians as a dithyramb in the Dorian mode, found it impossible, and fell back by the very nature of things into the more appropriate Phrygian. All men agree that the Dorian music is the gravest and manliest. And whereas we say that the extremes should be avoided and the mean followed, and whereas the Dorian is a mean between the other modes, it is evident that our youth should be taught the Dorian music.
Moreover, if Socrates/Plato reject the flute as a valid instrument, in the Republic, what would Mozart have to say about this?
Maybe they should have a dialogue (it's a pun - as in the way leftist morons say we should have a "dialogue" while they bark orders and insults, but also a dialogue in the sense of a Platonic dialogue). Pretty clever, if I can give myself some credit.
Christopher Adams
>caring about the ancients they were much closer to apes
Joseph Sullivan
W-what?
Jeremiah Rodriguez
nobody knows wtf those modes were. the labels are just medieval convention. classic composers care about prosody but mode-independent. socrates played flute, so plato probably made one of those superironic riddles that only leo strauss could decrypt.
also: whats the maximum achieved invertible counterpoint where it still sounds objectively good, 5 themes in mozartÄs jupiter symphony?
Chase Bell
>nobody knows wtf those modes were. Are you saying that what they considered Dorian, Phygian, and so forth, is different from what we moderns do? If so, where are you getting that from?
>socrates played flute, so plato probably made one of those superironic riddles that only leo strauss could decrypt. You know who else played the flute?
>Schopenhauer, though a pessimist, really—played the flute. Every day, after dinner: one should read his biography on that. And incidentally: a pessimist, one who denies God and the world but comes to a stop before morality—who affirms morality and plays the flute—the laede neminem morality—what? is that really—a pessimist?
Gavin Butler
source on that last quote is Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil
Leo Thompson
> Something tells me he makes shitty music on purpose as a dig on hipsters who misinterpreted his original music.
That was about Burial. But who is the classical version of that?
Thomas Evans
see moderns vs ancients debate
Jayden Gomez
And why is it Beethoven?
Colton Bailey
What's the debate? Retards who can't appreciate the ancients vs. people who can and value them? If you write off ancients no one should take you seriously, period.
Zachary James
>where are you getting that from? forgot where i read it, i can barely remember my opinions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_system_of_ancient_Greece#The_oldest_harmoniai_in_three_genera >The superficial resemblance of these octave species with the church modes is misleading. >In contrast to the medieval modal system, these scales and their related tonoi and harmoniai appear to have had no hierarchical relationships amongst the notes that could establish contrasting points of tension and rest, although the mese ("middle note") may have had some sort of gravitational function
Easton Ross
Interesting, I'll have to take a closer look at this topic as I am admittedly ignorant. I thought Aristotle was talking about the same modes that a jazz musician would use for improvisation, or any composer for composition for that matter, today.
If you had to pick one work out of all of classical (and all its iterations - baroque, classical, romantic, etc.), which you would describe as the highest and best achievement (no matter the form - string quartet, symphony, etc.), what would it be?
WTC? Brandenburg Concertos? Art of the Fugue? Beethoven's 9th?
Ayden Young
Requiem in D
Brandon Phillips
36:35 - that tension, like a cat creeping up on a mouse, then 36:50 the sudden leap and attack
No, Prokofiev was a great musician but he ended rejected by the soviet governement. They used Myaskovsky as the example of the soviet composer (with some folk-tune works like his simphonies No.5 and 11) and what every every soviet musician should compose: easy works ,full of easy melodies of russian flavour and with heroic or optimistic mood.
Jace Thomas
It should be called a stalinist composer, not a Soviet composer. Preferences of the soviets shifted more than one time after that - and ultimately, when Shostakovich was the head of the music committee, he tried to get rid of the idiots, starting trials that were meant to expose these composers as good-for-nothings, and promoted different policies regarding folk music.
Thomas Long
>Preferences of the soviets shifted more than one time after that - and ultimately, when Shostakovich was the head of the music committee, he tried to get rid of the idiots, starting trials that were meant to expose these composers as good-for-nothings, and promoted different policies regarding folk music. Sounds fascinating. Source?
Cameron Watson
>It should be called a stalinist composer, not a Soviet composer. Okay, I can accept that statement, but I think we can agree in that Myaskovsky contributed especially to build the identity of the music in the Soviet Union, beyond all the political intromission of Stalin and his forced "statements" on the art.
Nicholas Barnes
>Stalin and his forced "statements" on the art what were these
Oliver Hughes
Actually, he didn't really succeed and abandoned the idea. In the 70s the whole system began to erode and, um, smelled really badly, so he adopted a sardonic attitude. Sources are various accounts and recollections I read during my study
Ok, so the symphony posted you would label as post-romanticism? If so, why not just romanticism? What is the distinction there? Is it only chronological or what?
Michael Diaz
yeah, for a couple of years
John Allen
So we can all agree there is no satisfactory recording of the Ring, right?
>Schoenberg >not aesthetic af Maybe if you were talking about some really dry serialist, but Schoenberg is full of late romantic goodness, even if the specific notes don't prescribe to your tonal system.
which user is responsible for this untalented hack (sorabji) continuously being brought up lately, out of nowhere? he fucking sucks. it's more annoying than the villa lobos spicposter to whomever it may concern please fucking stop thanks
