What Are You Listening To?

[stlukesguild]

I loved that cartoon so much as a kid that when we got a very blonde dog in my late teens, we named her Brunhilde.

 

[xie-kitchin]

I am always somewhat in two minds about Beethoven, and I think I know why: the man is exhausting, at least from his middle period onward. Thus, when I have the energy, I think he's the greatest musical genius who ever walked this earth. But only when I have the energy.

This is probably why I hardly listen to Beethoven anymore, even though I love Beethoven.

 

[stlukesguild]

"Look out Cleveland!..."

 

[stlukesguild]

Perfect music for an evening with beer and BBQ! ❤

 

[musket]

I know it's sacrilege, but I was never that crazy about the Band and I absolutely detest Up on Cripple Creek (I did consider trading the first guitar I ever made to Maria Muldaur in exchange for Levon Helm's 1949 Hudson Hornet, but the car needed work; Maria left a few weeks later for the west coast with a lame song by my pal David Nichtern under her coat and the rest is history... I consoled myself by saying well, she never plays on stage anyway and so what if David was nominated for a Grammy).

I've been in Big Pink, many moons after the boys were gone. The house was being rented by a woman named Joyce Norden who lived in Englewood, NJ, where I grew up until age ten. Her son Scott was friends with my best friend, future student in guitar repair, and eventual bitterest enemy. Joyce herself was the much older woman of Mike Brown of the Left Banke, who wrote Walk Away Renee.

But I do like Merle Haggard. The Strangers were great, many of them ex-Bob Wills.

 

[brianvds]

I've always found Bach to be the most abstract. I can see why his reputation returned with a vengeance in the 20th century. His music is almost mathematical at times... the musical structures are almost architectural. Listening to one of his fugues I can picture the interior of a Gothic cathedral.

His instrumental music, yes. But a huge part of his output is vocal, and therefore "contaminated" by words which refer to the world.
What I meant was just that Beethoven seemed more at ease with instrumental music. It is of course true that much of it is all passionate and in this sense still refers to the human world, in a way which a Bach fugue perhaps does not.

He was perhaps one of the first composers to understand that orchestration is a thing. When Mozart needed a flute concerto, he had no compunctions about transcribing an oboe concerto for flute. But when Beethoven specifies oboe, you need an oboe.

I agree that he is among the first pointing in this direction... albeit not yet Wagner, Strauss, Ravel, or Rimsky-Korsakov.

No, indeed not, and given his deafness, even if he lived much longer there would perhaps be limits to how far he would have been able to take it.

I am always somewhat in two minds about Beethoven, and I think I know why: the man is exhausting, at least from his middle period onward. Thus, when I have the energy, I think he's the greatest musical genius who ever walked this earth. But only when I have the energy. Nowadays, I mostly listen to his first period works, almost all of which are masterpieces in their own right, but do not carry so heavily on their own weighty message.

But surely you know that Wagner was the greatest musical genius who ever walked this earth.

Could be, but apparently even more exhausting than Beethoven. No wonder I can't keep up.

 

[stlukesguild]

Getting back to work in the studio means I'm also listening to a lot of music. After a late breakfast and a few business phone calls I headed into the studio and listened to these before the temperatures just got seriously oppressive:

While I love the convenience of streaming music through Spotify, I gotta admit, listening to music on CDs through a stereo sounds better.

 

[Artyczar]

When I do listen to music, I listen to the Beatles a lot. I should've not forgotten about that. They've been like the background of my whole life, so maybe it's just an oversight. Growing up, there was a radio station that played a couple hours of them every Sunday, "Sunday morning with the Beatles," and when the station no longer existed, we used to continue the tradition anyway. A lot of people did that in LA after KLOS stopped broadcasting.

 

[stlukesguild]

I listen to the Beatles a lot. I should've not forgotten about that.

Well... we definitely have that in common. ❤

Taking a break from the studio sauna until things cool off later this evening. Time for some mellow Jazz or Classical.

 

[stlukesguild]

No studio time yesterday... or today so far. I had to deal with running my car to the shop and other errands until it was too hot in the afternoon. Today it was running family to doctor appointments, taking care of bills, etc... Hopefully it cools off this evening. It's raining for the first time in nearly 10 days🌧. On the good side... I haven't had to mow the lawn for a while. I've also been able to listen to a good deal of music:

Lush and sophisticated Frederick Delius followed by Country Gospel then the bad boys of rock, etc... Quite a mix as usual.

 

[Artyczar]

Just the birds and bunnies outside. Nothing new here.

 

[stlukesguild]

I would have thought you'd say the "birds & bees"

Bees

 

[stlukesguild]

 

[brianvds]

Hopefully it cools off this evening. It's raining for the first time in nearly 10 days🌧.

Now that little statement, in between all the music, caught my eye: around here, it is not unusual to go for months without any rain, and even in summer, our local rainy season, ten days without, in the midst of a heat wave, is by no means very rare or unheard of.

 

[stlukesguild]

It's not incredibly unusual here either... but until recently I had thought we'd moved to a rain forest. We were getting torrential downpours for days with one or two dry and sunny days a week.

 

[brianvds]

One of those semi-random things YouTube suggested:

Lovely stuff, even though I'm a heathen.

 

[Artyczar]

I would have thought you'd say the "birds & bees"

Bees

AHHH! We are allergic to bees. Aggressive or not. And we might as well be inside the park. Probably closest to Giant Rock. I've never been stung though. Not since I was a child.

 

[stlukesguild]

Again! While taking it easy this afternoon.

I didn't finish all of this great album last night before I finished painting for the evening... so I played the whole thing again.

It's but a slight exaggeration to call Haydn the inventor of two of the major musical forms of classical music: the symphony and the string quartet. Naxos is a bargain-basement classical label... but a great many of their recordings are actually among the finest available... including their recordings of the Kodaly Quartet's performances of Haydn's quartets.

 

[stlukesguild]

Let's continue to round the evening out with Haydn... the piano trios:

These works suggest Haydn likely would have been a marvelous composer of piano concertos... but then again, that would have put him in direct competition with the World Heavyweight Champion of Piano Concertos: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

 

[musket]

Tommy Emmanuel has made an excellent career out of being a showboater superchops one man band, and I've never been crazy about him, but this is really very tasty playing. I hadn't heard of Joscho Stephan but he's a fine guitarist in the Django tradition.