What Are You Listening To?

[stlukesguild]

Haydn and Handel are perhaps the most underrated composers outside of those who dig deep into Classical Music.

 

[stlukesguild]

Eleanor Steber was one of the first sopranos trained and based in the U.S. to gain success and recognition. She was a regular on The Voice of Firestone & The Bell Telephone Hour. The selections of this disc are all from live recordings dating from 1953-1970.

 

[stlukesguild]

Listening to Symphony no. 5… which I must admit is the least familiar to me of Mahler’s 9 symphonies.

 

[brianvds]

My visit to the local farmer's market, reported here: https://creativespark.art/threads/what-are-you-up-to.5822/post-138817

made me think of this; for some reason, I always associate this piece with the crazy activity of a flea market rather than "festivities" as such:

 

[Hermes2020]

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19th century French songs or mélodie by one of my favorite singers, Véronique Gens.

Véronique Gens reminds me of Arleen Auger.

 

[stlukesguild]

 

[stlukesguild]

 

[brianvds]

Not music as such, but music-related: the time Beethoven got thrown into a prison cell. It's both funny and a bit tragic...

 

[stlukesguild]

My wife is on the phone with the younger daughter again… she calls her every other day. The girl spends most of the time spouting crazy conspiracy theories that she gets from the extremist podcasts she listens to all the time. This seemed like the perfect music to drown out their conversation.

 

[stlukesguild]

Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater is not only a beautiful work but also a fascinating creation historically… one of those “what if?” moments. At the height of the Baroque Pergolesi’s work points toward the greater simplicity and clarity of the Classical Era well before Haydn and Mozart. The Stabat Mater was composed in the final weeks of Pergolesi’s tragically short life (died at age 26). Many have pondered what Pergolesi might have achieved had he lived longer. Might he have become one of the major composers of Classical Era along with Mozart and Haydn?

 

[stlukesguild]

Honestly, Schumann… and Mendelssohn were never among my favorites. I prefer the earlier Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert… and later composers such as Wagner, Mahler, and Richard Strauss. Nevertheless, I quite like this disc.

 

[stlukesguild]

Listening to Mahler’s 2nd Symphony “The Resurrection”. I must say this album cover strikes me as a bit arrogant… placing the name of the conductor as more prominent than of the composer.

 

[stlukesguild]

Arguably the finest jazz album ever. Nearly everyone who played on this album was a major artist in their own right: Cannonball Adderly, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, etc…

 

[stlukesguild]

I’ve got this set playing on Spotify on random while my little puppy is sleeping on the chair next to me.

 

[Hermes2020]

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Arguably the finest jazz album ever. Nearly everyone who played on this album was a major artist in their own right: Cannonball Adderly, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, etc…

I know I am probably missing much by practically never listening to jazz. Rather than the raw, original works, I am only able to appreciate jazz second hand, filtered through the ears of composers like Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein, or Ravel. The only jazz I have ever really enjoyed has been from my few exposures to Thelonious Monk.

 

[stlukesguild]

 

[stlukesguild]

I know I am probably missing much by practically never listening to jazz. Rather than the raw, original works, I am only able to appreciate jazz second hand, filtered through the ears of composers like Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein, or Ravel. The only jazz I have ever really enjoyed has been from my few exposures to Thelonious Monk.

Jazz is arguably the American “classical music”. The roots of the music are multi-faceted. It really starts in New Orleans with Cajun music as well as various African influences. New Orleans… prior to the Civil War… had a population of free blacks and developed their own classically-trained orchestras. This was wiped out by the Civil War and post-Civil War. Many of the classically-trained black musicians who remained survived by working in nightclubs, cabarets, and brothels. One theory of the term “jazz” was that it came from the jasmine perfume worn by the prostitutes and performers/dancers/strippers. The musicians improvised and expanded on popular tunes preferred by the girls and their audience. If this is true it would seem that Jazz was a merger of popular and classical music from the very start.

I began listening to Jazz while I was still in high school. I remember beginning with a series of box sets of the key artists (Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Miles Davis, Count Basie, John Coletrane, Thelonius Monk, etc… There are a number of performers and/or recordings that truly straddle the line between jazz/popular music and classical/composed music: Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain, Louis Armstrong’s and Miles Davis’ Porgy & Bess, Keith Jarrett’s improvised recordings… especially The Köln Concert, Paris Concert, Vienna Concert, Bill Evans, etc…

 

[stlukesguild]

I have long admired Samson François’ recordings of Ravel and Debussy but just came upon this one of Liszt. I am slowly building my playlists of classical music on Spotify… composer by composer.

 

[stlukesguild]

Many of the composers of the Baroque era were forgotten for a good deal time… with the exceptions of J.S Bach, G.F. Handel (largely on the basis of The Messia), and Antonio Vivaldi (largely on the basis of The Four Seasons). Late in the 20th century musicologists began to rediscover the wealth of compositions by these and other Baroque composers and rethink how their work was performed employing the instruments of the era and the scale of the ensembles.

France was arguably the dominant culture of the era, but even the major French composers of the era such as Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, and Jean-Philippe Rameau were largely forgotten as compared to Bach or Vivaldi. François Couperin was one of the leading French composers of the era working both for the church and the aristocracy under Louis XIV. He introduced the sonata forms from Corelli to France and published a collection of keyboard works that inspired composers as diverse as J.S. Bach, Brahms, Ravel, and Richard Strauss… who was struck by the poetic… almost tone-poem nature of his keyboard works. Couperin’s work has been revived by performers such as Jordi Savall, Alexandre Tharaud, and Angela Hewitt.

I was listening to these two recordings while making/eating breakfast.