Your favourite classical pieces

[ShootMyMonkey]

Oh man, must have been 81-82. My brother & sister had been going for the previous few years. (Bass & viola respectively)

Ah. Never mind then... I hadn't so much as set foot in the US at that time. I heard a similar performance around 2001-ish, and again when I went to ACM conference in 2005.

 

[Bludd]

J.S. Bach's Weinachts Weihnacht Oratorium.

It is awesome.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Actually there's a really nice little piece by David Popper that I really like, but I have no clue what it is called.

I can still play it, but I don't remember what it's called.

(The piece stuck with me hard because I have a Popper cello)

 

[AlNom]

John Williams goes up there with every other famous classical composer in history, at least for me. He really is quite talented.

2001, Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones, Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, Home Alone... the list goes on... Even his scores for the Star Wars prequels were pretty exciting to listen. They're just wonderful and fit the films so well.

And Family Guy was right... if there's anyone who can orchestrate porn, it would be John Williams; he's that talented.

I've seen him in some documentaries and he's definitely aging... He'll be 75 this year.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Hmm... in no particular order,

Liszt - Etude in Db Major
Orff - Carmina Burana
Handel - Messiah
Rachmaninov - um, a lot of them, notably 2nd and 3rd concertos, Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini
Barber - Adagio
Chopin - Nocturne in Eb Major
Mussorgsky - The Great Gate of Kiev
Respighi - The Pines of Rome
Copland - Fanfare for the Common Man

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Thanjavur S. Kalyanaraman's rendition of Samajavaragamana -- utterly blows my mind, and there's a subtle detail and depth to every single note from alapana all through swara prstharas.

It is definitely interesting, but I don't see how it is very different than a good performance in the Jazz style. Of course, I think people like Wynton Marsalis are just masterful, so I guess this is equivalent in the Indian style?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Oh man, how could I forget Vivaldi?

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Granted, listening to performance of Western music doesn't demand the theoretical understanding that it takes with other systems. It's designed to be approachable to everyone... people often forget that the music of Mozart or Bach was the pop music of its era. It's designed to play to a very generic crowd and has largely simplified and lost melodic complexity over the years in favor of harmonics and layering.

Personally I think there is a lot to be said for the gift of writing theoretically complex music that is enjoyable to a large audience. Take Wynton Marsalis as a counter example - extreme depth in his understanding and mastery and control over his instrument, but not appreciated by a wide audience.

Then you have Bach, who wrote "simple" melodies that many people can appreciate and enjoy (indeed, even buy to play in the crib for their babies because it is so soothing), yet has a layered complexity that is staggering on a theoretical level. He was fond of using melodies backwards, inverted, slowed such that each note began a measure or phrase, sometimes having the melody running at two speeds at once. "Pop" or not for its time, the technical mastery is undeniable. To be still enjoyed hundreds of years later speaks volumes more about his talent. Much the same can be said for a few other classical geniuses...

IMO the difference between say Bach/Mozart and Orff/Korsakov is how widespread the appeal is. A lot of people have written and/or performed theoretically complex pieces, but to do that and still have a lot of people like it is a rare, rare talent.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Oh man, how could I forget Vivaldi?

heh, I did too. Four Seasons is one of my all-time favorites!

 

[Bludd]

Oh, and J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, especially the third.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

It is definitely interesting, but I don't see how it is very different than a good performance in the Jazz style. Of course, I think people like Wynton Marsalis are just masterful, so I guess this is equivalent in the Indian style?

Yeah, I would say that Jazz is definitely the closest thing Western music has to Indian music -- I think the big differences lie in the genealogy in that Jazz and Blues tried to bring a lot of improvisation into an otherwise rigid system built for large ensembles whereas Indian classical music was built from the ground up a few thousand years ago (though it's been through organizational reworkings, particularly around the 16th century) with improvisation and extemporaneous performance by individual performers as a fundamental aspect, so the encouragement for improvisation is far more... systematic, for lack of a better word. You take that particular song for instance, for which the raw composition with all of its expressly written sangatis (variations) probably add up to about 3 or 4 minutes... instead, he made it into a sea of variations and swara prstharas that covered some 25 minutes not including the alapana. Include the fact that he is as precise as he is even with his brighas (what you might call trilling), which are done at a speed relative to the tempo. But for him, and people who have since followed his example, that's pretty normal treatment for the song that becomes the "main song" of a concert (excluding the RTP, which is a different story).

A lot of the things that people *think* are the case with Indian classical music are there because of the fact that the Western audience got exposure to the likes of Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha at a time when the audience receptive to new styles of music were all doing psychotropic drugs. What you're hearing is in fact closer to the genuine nature of Indian classical music, though after theoretical study work over the course of the 20th century has really transformed the complexity by leaps and bounds.

Part of the "hypnotic" and "meditative" aspects that everybody thinks of come from the fact that the fundamental definition of a note is different. In western music, it's a point -- a pitch. In Indian music, all notes are a set of shapes that can include hard terminal points derived from 22 pitches (per octave) or even microtonal inflections and so on. And this is partly why I don't like how people often refer to "gamakas" as "embellishments" because the word "embellishment" seems to imply that they're optional. They're very much NOT.

Secondly, more people in the West are familiar with the North Indian style (a la Ravi Shankar) than with the South Indian style, which is what you heard. Admittedly, the North Indian style is more amenable to fusion and such as it has already taken in influence from other styles over the years. Nonetheless, there are also rhythmic differences as well -- tabla players actually keep the count apparent as they play, whereas mridangam players don't, so you'll often see that in Hindustani (North Indian) performances, lead performers don't count the beat cycle as they go, while Carnatic (South Indian) performers do. That means that it's a lot easier for someone less familiar with the music to read the rhythm. Carnatic rhythms are much harder to read for someone unfamiliar because the percussionists are given so much free rein... For instance, this guy on the Kanjira -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPPBoei6oCs Yeah, I know it tells you what the talam is, but assuming you don't know can you guess how many beats to a cycle it is? Or when he hits those really fast quick strokes near the end (around 3:06-ish?), how many strokes per beat that's equivalent to?

Another thing is that there's a structural system in Hindustani music that centers around repetition at several speeds, so you tend to hear a lot of sloooowww starts, which makes people think that it's a meditative experience, but they miss out on what comes further down the line.

Then of course, you have the fact that Hinduism is an introspective religion by nature, and that makes people assume that the music which is often devotional in content (not necessarily, though), must also be introspective. The reality is that the introspective nature of Hinduism affected things at a music theory level. You think about Western religion involving people gathering in prayer and speaking of the glory of God in unison, and it's not surprising that Western classical music should have developed in such a way as to support many voices. Hence why you have orchestras and choirs. Conversely, Hinduism is all about individual exploration and interpretation of the glory of God, so what does one individual have at hand to evoke the praises of God? Usually, it's his/her one voice. So it shouldn't come as any surprise that Indian classical music tended to be built around the extents of what a single singing voice can do. And that's why accompanists tend to act in such a way as to support the vocalist rather than try to take a course of their own. Also, it's why the violin was such a well-received instrument for accompanying a lead performer, because it's just about as flexible.

You look at the way Carnatic violinists learn to play (and I went through this as well), we always learn to sing the piece before we play it. Similarly we control our bowing to "pronounce" the syllables (though the violinist in that particular recording is better at it than anybody, and he did that whole song not including the alapana on one string with one finger)... a consonant sound starting with "k" for instance is a rough sound by nature, so on those syllables you start your bow with an instant of heightened pressure on the strings... a syllable starting on a raw vowel "ah" would be smooth but sudden, you adjust accordingly. "s" would yield a smooth acceleration of the bow in the first fraction of a second and so on...

Personally I think there is a lot to be said for the gift of writing theoretically complex music that is enjoyable to a large audience. Take Wynton Marsalis as a counter example - extreme depth in his understanding and mastery and control over his instrument, but not appreciated by a wide audience.

Yeah, I find it easy to think that Carnatic and Hindustani music is easily appreciated by many because that's how it is for many within India. As much as it is a deeply technical system, you look around in the right parts of India (i.e. the areas that aren't so "westernized"), and just about everybody knows a hell of a lot about music, and often times not just Indian music. You go to Chennai (where the Music Academy happens to be), and you could walk past a homeless guy in the street who could lecture you on ragamalika(modal shifts) and swarabedham(tonic shifts). Here in the western world, we don't have our direct descendants of Mozart or Bach here nor would we know where to look to find them... but you go to the music cities of India like Tanjore, and you couldn't go very far without finding someone of such a heritage.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Hmm... thanks for an introduction to the background of Indian music. But, for all of that, your description could almost be talking about jazz music as well! What you call microtonal inflections, jazz artists call half-tones, quarter-tones, "bent notes" etc. Not as technical sounding, but the same principle. To me, that just underscores how much music from vastly different origins often has more in common than it has in difference. Take the Kanjira solo for example... that could easily have been congas in Africa (not sure of their native name), trap set in American jazz, bongos or congas in latin/cuban jazz, etc. The rhythms sounded very familiar to me, even though Indian music surely is not!

And I'm not sure about the rhythm count. Many counts can come off sounding very, very similar depending on the personal style of the player (i.e., 2/2, 4/4 in Western music can often get confused). But I'd say that sounded very much like a straight 4/4 to me with 16 notes per measureas the typical "fast" notes he played. Hard to tell about the stuff at the end... I think it is above 32/measure and it has a triplet feel to it, so perhaps 48, but when I see the technique I realize that it might well be tied to how many fingers he has on his hand (plus thenar/hypothenar eminences - not sure of the lay terms for that) and not directly derived from an intentional division of the beat. At least, Western music has a lot of instances like that, where you need to get X number of notes into a given division of the beat, so a lot of nonstandard stuff pops up (like groupings of 7, 9, 13, etc. - look at Liszt's Etude in Eb for example).

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Hmm... thanks for an introduction to the background of Indian music. But, for all of that, your description could almost be talking about jazz music as well! What you call microtonal inflections, jazz artists call half-tones, quarter-tones, "bent notes" etc. Not as technical sounding, but the same principle. To me, that just underscores how much music from vastly different origins often has more in common than it has in difference.

Yeah, ultimately, we all tend to find a lot of the same things in the end. I could actually also apply a lot of the stylistic factors when speaking of Chinese classical music and some of the ancient music of the Tibetan-Mongolian regions. Even the style of rendering on the violin I mentioned could be applied to some modern schools of rendering songs on the erhu. The fact that the perfect 5th and 4th are pretty much universal is kind of the canonical example for musical similarity across cultures, but it is one of those things that makes you wonder just how hardwired we are in terms of aesthetics.

BTW, I do use the term "microtonal" to signify that there are gamakas or "bent notes" which are extremely small. In the ragam Hindolam (which that song Samajavaragamana happens to be in), there are a few microtonal backstrokes that are as small as 2 cents. What amazes me is that Kalyanaraman, a guy who was born with congenital heart and lung defects, is pretty much the only person ever to do those kinds of 2 cent vakrams vocally with precision consistently... even in a dvi-madhyama raga (ragas that have 2 fourths), which is something even instrumentalists can't do even now.

And I'm not sure about the rhythm count. Many counts can come off sounding very, very similar depending on the personal style of the player (i.e., 2/2, 4/4 in Western music can often get confused). But I'd say that sounded very much like a straight 4/4 to me with 16 notes per measure as the typical "fast" notes he played. Hard to tell about the stuff at the end... I think it is above 32/measure and it has a triplet feel to it, so perhaps 48, but when I see the technique I realize that it might well be tied to how many fingers he has on his hand (plus thenar/hypothenar eminences - not sure of the lay terms for that) and not directly derived from an intentional division of the beat.

Well, I can see how you get the straight 4/4... It's actually an 8-cycle beat on whole notes (i.e. 8/1). The 8 cycle comes out however as if 2 sets of 4 because the first strong beat is 4 beats away from the second strong beat. Cycle is -- strong-weak-weak-weak-strong-secondary-strong-secondary.

And you guessed right on the triplet feel part, and one thing that happens a lot is that people like to do a lot of prime number subdivisions when they get into climaxes of a percussion solo. What he did was take the triplet walk on the 8-beat cycle (which is now 24/3 in his head) and subdivided one triplet count into a quintuplet and did a 5-stroke swing on that. Making it equivalent to a 25 on one beat. Which in turn means it's 200 per measure at 8/1. You might have noticed that on some instances, it seems like he rushes into it, and in some it sounds like he's delaying it a little, but that's just deliberate timing offsets he's doing to make the calculations come out rightly aligned in the end.

In a few spots in the previously linked Kalyanaraman performance (which is in the same 8-beat cycle), there are spots where he goes from a triplets into 1.5-lets. Right around the end, the faster part is quintuplets, but he's breaking the quintuplets into a pair of 2.5-lets (which accounts for the "shuffled" feel there). It's a little hard to tell because the notion of "tempo" is not something that's fixed for a given song, so everybody chooses one that works for them. In his RTP in the same ragam from another concert several years later, he does something similar trickery but on a 25-beat rhythmic cycle (which in turn means that he had to compose lyrical phrases in a 25-count meter, and every improvisation has to ultimately come back around to the beginning of the 25 counts). Cycling through 25 beats on 2.5-lets leads to some interesting results. My brother happened to mridangist for him that time, and he still talks about that one RTP.

Well, I should at least add that for all I bring up, these are cases where performers save their efforts for where they're needed, and where so many times more complexity lies in the performance more so than the root composition. While they try to bring forth a panacea of elements in a given concert, there will be a number of pieces where the renderings are less out of the ordinary and subject to more subtle and/or not-so-radical variations, but still at least present something different. And then within a concert, there will probably be some "main song" that gets a lot of the attention to detail, and then an exhaustive RTP that is intended to be a technical Pandora's Box and one or two other special cases. While I'm sure there are more basic renditions of any given song that are easy to comprehend, those aren't the renderings that one would speak of in the sense of being "mind-blowing." With the obvious exceptions of course .

 

[nutball]

Vaughan Williams
Delius
the odd bit by Britten

 

[zed]

Vaughan Williams
Delius
the odd bit by Britten

nice i love this classical style (mainly made by the english/french/scandinavia(bit) musicians from 1850-1950)
i note the vast majority of ppls choices arent partically original (true some are good), then again i have been listening to classical practically fulltime (6+hours a day for >20 years)

to the OP, check out the rest of beethovens piano sonata's theres 32, i got a boxed set of 40 cd's of beethoven a few years ago for <$100 ( thats one huge benefit of classical music, its usually easy to pick up music very cheaply, contrast this with a pop cd at $30 for one )
find which ones u prefer the early stuff the middle period or the later period (once u know that u can see what other sorts of composer styles u also may like)