fable's Q&A on classical music

[fable]

We've got threads offering to answer questions about Islam, others that dispense information about drugs, wars, and everything else. So here's my little effort: a thread in which I'll endeavor to answer every question you could pose (or would care to) about classical music. This includes orchestral music, chamber music, opera, ballet, classical choral works, composers, instruments themselves, etc. That's about 700 years worth of Euro-American stuff to consider, so have at it. Is there a composer you're curious about? Do you want to know about the best versions of a particular work? Do you have a burning ambition to know who wrote the most classical music?

(I'd offer to throw in jazz, but I'm rusty on very recent developments.)

Note, I'm not taking on non-Western classical music, such as those of India, Java, or Bali. While I'm a devotee of all three, I know just enough to get back while keeping my mouth shut.

So have at it. I'll be away from the keyboard for much of today, but when I get back I'll begin answering questions.

[HighLordDave]

fable,

1. It has been my observation that many people think that just because something was written by Beethoven, it must be good. In your opinion, what is the worst piece of classical music written by a major composer?

2. What do you consider the "Golden Era" of classical music and who is its most influential composer (and why)?

3. Is classical music still a viable genre today? Who are its stars? In an age of electric guitars and synthetic sound, what is in the future (if there is one) for classical music?

[C Elegans]

As a former classical pianist, I have of course always been interested in many types of classical music, and to me, it is very important to find the right conductors and orchestras for different works. I'd be interested in your preferences, who are your favorite conductors and favorite orchestras for different genres?

(As you know I am a great lover of the Russian tradition, so my taste is obviously heavily influenced by that preference. Still, I do think that the old USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony orchestra was the best the world has ever seen, for any genre of symphonic music.)

[fable]

Originally posted by HighLordDave
fable,

1. It has been my observation that many people think that just because something was written by Beethoven, it must be good. In your opinion, what is the worst piece of classical music written by a major composer?

2. What do you consider the "Golden Era" of classical music and who is its most influential composer (and why)?

3. Is classical music still a viable genre today? Who are its stars? In an age of electric guitars and synthetic sound, what is in the future (if there is one) for classical music?

Ouch. Right to the heart of some of the biggest questions around, eh? Let's see:

1) I suppose this really revolves around the definition of what "worst" means in a classical context: whether it refers to "poorly composed," or "boring," or "over-rated." I think I would give the palm for bad classical music by a major composer, though, to Hector Berlioz. The composer of such fine works as the Symphonie Fantastique and Harold in Italy (actually a Viola Concerto), several great operas and some fabulous overtures, he also wrote the incredibly tedious Lelio (a followup to the Symphonie Fantastique). He was dismayingly uneven. Some critics have speculated that this was because Berlioz saw his own life as a romantic struggle against the mediocrity of everybody who didn't like his music or his reviews (which lambasted all but his friends), and he therefore lacked the ability to distinguish what he wrote that was very good from what was complete rubbish. In any case, Lelio is very seldom performed, and having heard it, I can tell you why. If you hear of it showing up near you, give a pair of tickets for a performance to someone you don't love.

2) I am a firm disbeliever in a Golden Era of classical music. Meaning no offense, but it's too simplistic a model to apply to a land mass spanning dozens of cultures at any given time, over seven centuries. Rather than one Golden Era, there have been several, depending largely upon the money available to bring together talented musicians with fine composers and an appreciative audience. Combine those three, keep it bubbling for a sufficient amount of time, and you've got a recipe for a great Golden Era.

So the Italian courts of the 17th century proved an unusually fruitful occasion for composers of vocal classical music, precisely because the court rulers were vying with each to snap up great singer/composers for their private choral groups, using the same pertinacity modern industrialists show when purchasing sports teams. It was quite common for, as an example, Mantuan diplomats in the Milanese court to offer top salaries secretly to Mantuan compoer-performers, and secretly spirit them out of town. In fact, there were economic blockades and threats of war when particular, highly paid favorites vanished from the local jurisdiction, only to pop up two months later at another small kingdom several hundred miles away. And then, of course, the word got about in the French, Spanish, English, and German city state courts, who had to one-up the Italians by also purchasing *their* Italian composers.

The end result, in any case, was a ton of firstrate music, including the first operas, around 1600 AC. Much of it is still being unearthed today, since the manuscripts remain either in the possession of local Italian state archives, or in private hands. It was definitely a Golden Age.

Another Golden Age began in the middle of the 19th century in Russia. Several composer wannabes were trained by the autodidact Mily Balakirev, an extremely contentious man but a brilliant critic and composer. Avoiding the national schools which used Italian and French examples greatly appreciated by the Court, its nobles and the upper middle class (which aped the nobility), they chose instead to base their music on classical principles interpreting folk melos. It was the first genuinely "Russian" classical music, and it launched a war between the establishment and the mavericks. For about fifty years there was a great deal of experimentation and a lot of interesting stuff being written and analyzed, especially after members of the Court began seeing this music as a means of establishing a nationalist position in art. But whatever the reasons for its financial support, it did create great art, and plenty of it.

Those are two examples. There are others. Suffice to say, depending on where you look and at any given time, somewhere, somebody is spending money to take pride in the creation of great cultural artifacts like classical music. And just as often, there are plenty of governments saying it's all a waste of time, let's build better bombs.

Big storm coming through. I'll be back to deal with more questions, in a bit.

[fable]

3. Is classical music still a viable genre today? Who are its stars? In an age of electric guitars and synthetic sound, what is in the future (if there is one) for classical music?

Around 1970, the answer would have been "no future at all." Classical music had become an increasingly code-like structure for a small elite of academics whose audience included one another, and nobody else. The reasons can be traced back to a musical system created in part by Arnold Schoenberg, around 1910. Schoenberg wrote that all twelve notes of the standard Western scale should be treated equally and that music-making should involve a series of strict mathematical rules. This theory actually did produce some good music thanks to Schoenberg's own great talent and that of at least one of his disciples, Alban Berg; but it evolved into a dictatorial philosophy towards composing. Either you wrote this kind of music, often called dodecaphonic, or you simply didn't get a degree in music, or a job writing it.

Predictably, audiences stayed away in droves. The dodecaphonists sneered that they didn't audiences, and classical music became increasingly isolated in a few international figures who rejected the movement: Bartok, Shostakovich, Poulenc, Hindemith, Stravinsky, etc. They all wrote great music, but it was getting hard to find composers after these died. Making matters worse, the dodecaphonists evolved a hardcore radical element who pushed the movement still further away from audiences. One example, John Cage, was praised by the fashionable music world for having composed, for example, 4'33", which is literally 4'33" worth of silence.

Then, somewhere in the 1970s, a noted international musical figure and American composer, George Rochberg, lost his son to suicide. This caused Rochberg, a dodecaphonist, to reexamine his own life, and the kind of emotions he could express through classical music. As he put it around that time, Schoenberg's 12-tone-system was great at creating a sense of expressionsist horror, depression, and angst, but that was its emotional limit. Rochberg wanted to say more. He began writing quartets that involved entire movements written in the style of late Beethoven, for example. Then, he tried that on complete works, like his Violin Concerto.

Overnight, Rochberg became a hit. Audiences that had stayed away from concert halls now became returning to hear his music--and that of other composers, who suddenly realized that audiences were idiots, after all: they just didn't like encoded music by and for small groups of academicians and theorists.

The state of classical music overall, now, is definitely healthier than its been in some time. There is still a fear among modern composers of writing in large scale forms of the past, a fear probably borne of career failure if they fail; but many new works have become concert hits, and the old tonal system is back in center court.

[frogus]

Well, I know absolutely nothing about Classical Music...nuh-thing...so feel free to laugh at my embarrasing ignorance, but I would like to learn...so tell me, and I'm sorry for the not very taxing questions...as I say, I have zero knowledge whatsoever in the field:

1) Please tell me about the 'movements' of classical music. I assume that, like in all art forms, there have been eras, schools, styles, influences...you know, movements . So outline the movements through the history of classical music, or if there are too many, only the most important few . Also, how can a piece of music be identified by the listener as belonging to a certain period or shool or movement?

2) Is 'classical music' still being made today, and if so, what makes it 'classical'?

3) Please tell me what concertoes and symphonies are?

Thank you Sorry for the big questions...

[fable]

Originally posted by C Elegans
As a former classical pianist, I have of course always been interested in many types of classical music, and to me, it is very important to find the right conductors and orchestras for different works. I'd be interested in your preferences, who are your favorite conductors and favorite orchestras for different genres?

There are many excellent orchestras, but few orchestras that I think push beyond that to gain an undefinable "something" that makes them (at certain times) truly great. The Amsterdam Concertgebouw (now the Royal Concertgebouw--big deal, where was the Dutch Royal family in supporting 'em over their first 100 years?) under Willem Mengelberg, the Vienna Philharmonic under several of its best conductors, the Chicago Symphony under Fritz Reiner, the Royal Philharmonic under Beecham: these are some examples of orchestras who achieved special distinction under the catalyst of a magnificent conductor. I'm partial to them all. A few months back, for instance, I reviewed a pair of performances of Dvorak's New World Symphony and the Franck Symphony by the ACO under Mengelberg. Now, I've long grown tired of both these works, heard 'em hundreds of times. but Mengelberg made them sound so fresh. Despite the fact that he was an anal-retentive preparer down to the last detaill, none of his recordings sound that way, and everything sounds as it was being looked at as though nobody else had played it before. It could be eccentric under other hands. Under his, it works. That's greatness.

(As you know I am a great lover of the Russian tradition, so my taste is obviously heavily influenced by that preference. Still, I do think that the old USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony orchestra was the best the world has ever seen, for any genre of symphonic music.)

I'm a big fan of the Russian tradition, as well--in fact, that's probably my specialty, if I have any. There are still about 300 Melodiya LPs clogging my bookshelves. Their orchestras were never especially great in the old Soviet days (their brass were particularly laughable), but they did have great conductors, like Golovanov, Gauk (who emigrated to Israel, and became persona non grata), Mravinsky, Samosud, Kondrashin, etc. The Soviet also possessed some of the finest soloists over the last century in all classical fields; worldbeaters like Richter, Gilels, Feinberg, Ginzburg, Neuhaus and Yudina among pianists, Oistrakh, Kogan and Fikhtengoltz, opera singers like Reizen, Kozlovsky, and Lisitsian all won awards wherever they went.

Nowadays, Russian orchestras are far better overall than their Soviet counterparts were, but they lack the stimulus of great conductors. The Soviet system of awards for artistic merit is broken, and with it, the ability to develop an unusually large number of superlative artists who rise to the top of international classical circles.

[Koveras]

Which do you think is better, Messiah or Beethoven's 9th symphony?

How did Schubert die?

Is it true about Mozart being able to play the violin really well the first time he picked it up?

[fable]

Originally posted by Koveras
Which do you think is better, Messiah or Beethoven's 9th symphony?

Better isn't possible, since these are works in two very different forms and styles, meant to suit different different audiences in different periods. Preference? The Beethoven, although I don't like the fourth movement, frequently known separately at the Ode to Joy. It's got a great tune, but all Beethoven does architecturally is restate this over and over with more instruments at a higher feverish pitch. Mind, *it* can work, especially in time of war, when the intensity of emotion from the performers communicate to the audience, but I think that falls under the category of special circumstances.

How did Schubert die?

Syphillis, and in this case, pinpointed directly: he knew the particular barmaid he'd had sex with that caused it. Nor was he the only composer to die from the disease. Schumann did, and Donizetti had it worst of all: he went through the tertiary stages that ate away at his brain, leaving him a hollow shell in an asylum. Rossini had a lesser form whose psychological effects forced him to stop composing for roughly a quarter-of-a-century.

Is it true about Mozart being able to play the violin really well the first time he picked it up?

Put simply, no. Extreme precociousness doesn't produce this. Only the occasional autistic child that can focus all attention on aping a particular series of motions without understanding them, is able to achieve this feat. Mozart was capable of learning the violin extremely quickly. However, he was never a topflight virtuoso on it, as he was on his primary instrument, the harpsichord/early piano. His father, an excellent musician and fine composer, trained him for years in both.

There have been classical musicians, by the way, who could play just about every instrument in the orchestra effectively. The 20th century composer Paul Hindemith was like that, and he was also a virtuoso viola player. Then, there's the story about the great Russian composer, Alexander Glazunov. Late in life, after having lost everything he had during the Bolshevik Revolution, where he spent a decade continuing to teach and protect young students at the St Petersburg Conservatory (he was apparently a man of great ethical courage), Glazunov actually made a record or two in Britain. He was ill, overweight, and alcoholic. He looked befuddled. A clarinetist told Glazunov that a certain note in his first symphony simply was beyond the range of the instrument.

Glazunov shuffled over to the musician's chair, asked gently for the clarinet, and looked at it as though he'd never seen such a thing before. Then he put it to his lips, and hit the exact note.

The whole orchestra broke into spontaneous applause.

This anecdote has been verified by several accurate sources in the orchestra and on the record label's staff. Sounds almost too good to be true, but it is true.

(Frogus, I haven't forgotten your questions! I'm just very busy at the moment, and they're pretty tough ones to answer quickly. I'll be back to 'em, later.)

[Rob-hin]

My questions about classical music.

1 - WHY?!?
Nah, just kidding.:P Music I can understaind, but the ballet and that stuff is nothing for me. It's just not my style, so I don't know much about it.

But seriously.(just a bit though)
What whould Mozart and Beethoven and all those guys think/say if they saw the music they loved so much, beiing used in Tom and Jerry etc. cartoons?

[HighLordDave]

This is a follow-up to my third question about the state of classical music today. Like many American children, my first real exposure to classical music involved Elmer Fudd dressed in long blonde locks carrying a spear and singing "Kill da wabbit! Kill da wabbit!" or Bugs giving Elmer a shave. As such, I first thought of classical music as a soundtrack to something on TV or in a movie.

Do you think that men like John Williams, Michael Kamen and others who have made a living and repuation composing movie scores deserve to be considered classical composers?

[frogus]

Originally posted by Rob-hin
Mozart and Beethoven and all those guys

LOL. This reminds me of Tom Lehrer's " Mozart, or....one of that crowd"

Sorry to spam.

[C Elegans]

Originally posted by fable
There are still about 300 Melodiya LPs clogging my bookshelves.

Heh, I have a few myself, maybe 30 or so, they were terribly difficult to find and those I have I mostly bought in Russia. Should I ever decide to change my career and become a burglar, I know where I will strike first!

Speaking about the Russian tradition, you know my absolute favorite music is Shostakovitch. What do you think about his autobiography, "Testimony"? I have heard claims that it is not authentic, but I never understood why it wouldn't be.

[fable]

Originally posted by frogus
1) Please tell me about the 'movements' of classical music. I assume that, like in all art forms, there have been eras, schools, styles, influences...you know, movements . So outline the movements through the history of classical music, or if there are too many, only the most important few . Also, how can a piece of music be identified by the listener as belonging to a certain period or shool or movement?/quote]

That whole movements movement is rubbish, IMO. I was taught the "baroque into classical into romantic" nonesense when I was I was public school, and if it didn't stand up to even the most casual questions put by a pre-pubescent, it stands to reason that it won't make the grade with anybody who truly cares to research the various trends in classical musicmaking at any given time. There are simply far too many things going on for such a simplistic summary of activity in one of the major arts.

The second problem is that these "isms" give the impression of active, deliberate change outside the stream of surrounding culture activity: thus, impressionism arose from romanticism because composers (or painters, or sculptors) decided they were tired of romanticism. Not so: in some cases, impressionists were renewing and increasing romanticism by reacting against the officially approved version of it. The symphony wasn't a "classical period reaction against baroque forms," as we were taught: it was a positive economic response to the middle and upper class fascination in 18th century Europe with foreign cultures, in this case, the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), and the latter's use of a modern orchestra.

When someone asks me to name isms to see what they'd like, I typically tell 'em to name a 50 year period of time they're interested in, and I'll mention a half a dozen composers that represent a wide variety of different styles they can try out. It's more reliable.

[fable]

Originally posted by frogus
Well, I know absolutely nothing about Classical Music...nuh-thing...so feel free to laugh at my embarrasing ignorance...

I never laugh at ignorance, @Frogus. I am guilty of snickering quietly on occasion at people who are dogmatically certain in utter rightness of their stupidity, or the assumption that their opinions form a body of perfect truths. But even then, I tend to give the benefit of the doubt.

2) Is 'classical music' still being made today, and if so, what makes it 'classical'?

Yes, it is being composed and performed today. In fact, as mentioned above, classical music on the concert stage has undergone a renaissance of sorts over the last two decades.

What makes it classical? By now, there's a long, established tradition involving instrumentation, forms, and music structures. Although that tradition was broken in the 20th century by people who were intent on "remaking" classical music, each movement (serialism, musique concrete, chance music--all loaded with political and philosophical overtones) faded because audiences simply weren't interested. That's not to say audiences are unable to adapt to new musical styles--they are; but they expect that music to play by the rules of the game. When they don't, people in the audiences grow bored, or angry, or frustrated. One of the problems with these movements is that their dismissal of audiences inevitably meant treating the audience as a monolithic creature. Instead, the audience is thousands of people, each of them making up their mind. If thousands of people are simultaneously annoyed with your music, my suggestion is that you, not them, need to consider what's going on.

If you're curious about whether a specific work or style is "classical," just ask. I'll do what I can to answer.

3) Please tell me what concertoes and symphonies are? [/b][/quote]

The symphony was evolved around the midpoint of the 18th century. Johann Stamitz (actually Jan Stamic; he was one of the many Czech/Bohemian composers who came out of the incredibly rich Czech culture to seek fame and fortune in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) was named Director of the Mannheim court orchestra. The ruler gave him enormous funds of money to operate with, and Stamitz hired the best soloists and disciplined them thoroughly. It is now regarded as the first orchestra in the modern sense of the word, with a string, wind, brass and percussion section.

Stamitz took the the Italianate symphony, which was literally a three-part introduction to an opera, nothing more, and gave each movement more weight and substance, while removing it completely from the operatic form. But what really gave the symphony a tremendous impetus was the work of Franz Josef Haydn, who had been hired on by one of the Counts Esterhazy to lead the private Esterhazy estates orchestra in the 1760s. Haydn had literally dozens of years, an orchestra to do exactly what he wanted, and a noble patron who was unusually enlightened and a good musician. Haydn wrote dozens of symphonies for the Esterhazy orchestra, the Count, and his successors--more than five dozen, easily; and the manuscripts were circulated among academic and musical circles. (Many copies that were lost in various fires at Esterhazy over the years have since turned up in monastery libraries.)

Thus, Haydn evolved, in a private environment, an extremely advanced stucture of classical music that quickly became celebrated throughout Europe. He became something of a star: publishers vied for his work. He created a series of symphonies for a Parisian firm in the 1780s, and twice visited London in the 1790s with two more series of new symphonies. What had been a light, three movement work of graceful airiness to start operas in the 1750s became a four movement piece lasting 30 minutes or more, and providing a great deal of musical content, by 1790.

Concertos are the descendants of the concerto grosso, literally "great concerto" that was meant to show off the abilitites of various instrumentalists in an orchestra. During the 18th century the notion of soloists before orchestras evolved, particularly in France. These were the first concertos, pitting a single performer (or small group of performers) against a main orchestra. Over time, the form became more and more complex, although various trends in classical music have also created very light, short works of great entertanment value in the concerto format.

Hope that information helps.