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Classical Music!


Jarlaxle 56

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So who here likes Classical stuff? Right now I'm getting into Russian composers, Igor Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Sergei Prokofiev.

I told my Russian boss that I appreciated Tchaikovsky, which was somewhat honest - but also an effort to make some sort of connection with him. He went into tirade about him being insane, and a disgrace to Russia - because he was supposedly a homosexual. I don't know or care if this was true, but so much for trying?

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Richard Wagner

Yes, Mozart and Beethoven have much good music to listen to.

I also like Bach, espcially his organ works.

What I like most about Classical Muisc, is how Classical Muisc is used to a good effect in movies.

My favorite Classical Compser is Germany's Richard Wagner (pronounced "Vaughner").

Esquire magazine once did a piece back in 1977 on classical music and how it relates to rock music lovers. They said you could expect to find fans of Heavy Metal at the Opera. They set up a photo of a kid wearing a Led Zeppelin 1977 US Tour t-shirt, sitting in the balcony of an opera house, to illustrate the point. They did specifically mention the music of Wagner.

The Wagner piece that EVERYONE already knows about is "Ride of the Valkyries", used in many films.

My favorite piece however is from the Opera Götterdämmerung.

It is Richard Wagner's "Siegfried's Funeral March".

It was used very successfully and dramatically by Trever Jones in the sountrack for the 1981 John Boorman film EXCALIBUR.

The film also used another German composer's music , Carl Orff's very famous "Camina Burana", which was alo used in Oliver Stone's movie about The Doors.

My other most favorite classical piece used in film, is from "2001:A Space Odyssey".

It is from Aram Khachaturian "Gayane's Adagio" from the Gayaneh ballet suite.

Edited by The Rover
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I'm very much a fan of "classical," though as we use it today the term encompasses not only the Classical period, but also the Baroque, Romantic, and more modern eras in orchestral composition. The list of composers whose works I have enjoyed could go on for quite awhile: Bach (J.S. [the most famous one] and others), Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart (both), Strauss (all of them), Verdi, Wagner, Handel, Haydn(s), Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Mussorgsky, Khachaturian, Bizet, Chopin, Gershwin, and many, many others.

A couple of quick notes about previous posts: yes, supposedly Tchaikovsky was a homo, though many still debate whether that is fact or myth. As for "heavy metal," a music professor I had said that Beethoven essentially invented heavy metal, if you like, though I concur that such a sonic tradition was definitely continued through composers such as Wagner. The Gayaneh (or Gayane) suite...such an excellent piece of music; the Lullaby is stunning.

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  • 2 years later...

There was a French movie that came out a year or so ago, called "Coco & Igor". It didn't get a lot of publicity or wide distribution, unfortunately, and kind of got overshadowed by the Audrey Tatou Coco Chanel movie. But I saw Coco & Igor, and I was spellbound. Is it 100% accurate in depicting the relationship between Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky? Who knows. What I do know is that it is worth seeing this movie just for the first 15 minutes, which depicts with great detail the infamous Paris premiere of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring). And the actors who portray Chanel and Stravinsky are wonderful. Highly recommended for fans of both Chanel and Stravinsky...and if you're a fan of the Rite of Spring and want to see a good visualization of what happened that historic night of May 29, 1913.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21ldvFgZCEI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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There was a French movie that came out a year or so ago, called "Coco & Igor". It didn't get a lot of publicity or wide distribution, unfortunately, and kind of got overshadowed by the Audrey Tatou Coco Chanel movie. But I saw Coco & Igor, and I was spellbound. Is it 100% accurate in depicting the relationship between Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky? Who knows. What I do know is that it is worth seeing this movie just for the first 15 minutes, which depicts with great detail the infamous Paris premiere of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring). And the actors who portray Chanel and Stravinsky are wonderful. Highly recommended for fans of both Chanel and Stravinsky...and if you're a fan of the Rite of Spring and want to see a good visualization of what happened that historic night of May 29, 1913.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21ldvFgZCEI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Probably not, because the story is based on a rumour.

source: wiki

She was quite attractive. He was a young man. The rumoured affair reportedly happened in 1920. These videos include photos of them near that time.

Though the affair in fact lasted just a few months, from the summer to the winter of 1920, Greenhalgh uses intriguing parallels between his protagonists' lives to imply that the bond between them survived. Beginning with Chanel's appearance at the first performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring in Paris in 1913, the author reveals that, after losing everything in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the composer took his consumptive wife and four children to live with the designer. Having made her fortune during the Great War, it was a considerable social coup for Chanel to act as benefactor to such a celebrated musician...

.vogue.co.uk/news/daily/2002-06/020611-coco-and-igor

Edited by Silver Rider
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I have a couple books on Chanel that also place her at the Paris premiere of The Rite of Spring and mention her inviting Stravinsky and his family to stay with her. Any more is conjecture I suppose. But even so, the movie works and I suggest you give it a try. I think you'll like it. Oh, and I forgot to mention in my previous post, but the costumes and art direction/interior design is to die for.

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I have a couple books on Chanel that also place her at the Paris premiere of The Rite of Spring and mention her inviting Stravinsky and his family to stay with her. Any more is conjecture I suppose. But even so, the movie works and I suggest you give it a try. I think you'll like it. Oh, and I forgot to mention in my previous post, but the costumes and art direction/interior design is to die for.

Vogue magazine stated that "the affair in fact lasted just a few months."

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky is based on the interesting fact that the two met in Paris and later had an affair. Chanel attended the infamous Paris premiere of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" in 1913. The audience was appalled. They booed and fled the theater in the middle of the premiere performance.

Though they met briefly on that infamous occasion, it was seven years later that Chanel invited Stravinsky and his family to live at her villa. It is during this period, 1920-21, that Chanel and Stravinsky had an affair.

culturevulture.net

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGz20G26ecA&feature=related

Chanel was born in Saumur, France. She was the second daughter of Albert Chanel and Jeanne Devolle, a market stallholder and laundrywoman respectively at the time of her birth. Her birth was declared by employees of the hospital in which she was born. They, being illiterate, could not provide or confirm the correct spelling of the surname and it was recorded by the mayor François Poitou as "Chasnel". This misspelling made the tracing of her roots almost impossible for biographers when Chanel later rose to prominence.

Her parents married in 1883. She had five siblings: two sisters, Julie (1882–1913) and Antoinette (born 1887) and three brothers, Alphonse (born 1885), Lucien (born 1889) and Augustin (born and died 1891). In 1895, when she was 12 years old, Chanel's mother died of tuberculosis and her father left the family. Because of this, the young Chanel spent six years in the orphanage of the Roman Catholic monastery of Aubazine, where she learned the trade of a seamstress. School vacations were spent with relatives in the provincial capital, where female relatives taught Coco to sew with more flourish than the nuns at the monastery were able to demonstrate.

When Coco turned eighteen, she was obliged to leave the orphanage, and affiliated with the circus of Moulins as a cabaret singer. During this time, Chanel performed in bars in Vichy and Moulins where she was called "Coco." Some say that the name comes from one of the songs she used to sing, and Chanel herself said that it was a "shortened version of coquette, the French word for 'kept women," according to an article in The Atlantic.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coco_Chanel

Edited by Silver Rider
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In reference to the Rover's post above, my favourite use of Wagner in a film is in Werner Herzog's "Nosferatu", his 1979 remake of the silent "Nosferatu". For Jonathan Harker's(Bruno Ganz) journey to the Count's(Klaus Kinski) castle, Herzog uses Wagner's Rheingold Prelude for much of the scene...it begins 2:21 into the clip. The whole scene is epic and hypnotic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkAI9kALWss&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Another mesmerizing scene with great music is the Dance Macabre, or Pestilence scene, where Isabelle Adjani walks through the town square as the townspeople, resigned to the fact that the plague has overtaken their town, live it up one last time. The piece of music Herzog uses in this scene is a vocal chant from Georgia(Russia)

called Zinskaro or Tsinskaro by the Vokal Ansambl Gordelo. For some reason it is nearly impossible to find on cd.

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I don't know everything about classical music but I know what I like when I hear it.

Ravel's 'Bolero'

Beethoven's 'Pastorale'

Isaac Albeniz

The Nutcracker

Gorecki's 'Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs' with soprano Dawn Upshaw

Bach's Lute Suite's

Bach's 'Toccata In D Minor'

Handel's 'Chaconne In G' played on guitar by Ida Presti and Alexander Lagoya

I also like renaissance dance music, classical brass and chorale music.

:)

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  • 3 years later...

I've been discussing Sibelius...Jean Sibelius, with a friend and suggesting some pieces to her by way of introduction to his work. Here are five of the Finnish composer's works that I find particularly fine.

Valse Triste

Finlandia

The Swan of Tuonela

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtNWUw0afqI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Symphony No. 7

Lastly, his dark, brooding masterpiece...Symphony No. 4

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  • 2 weeks later...

Boring....

At the time I posted this, I was referring to the subject of classical music. I am sorry if it was taken as against anyone's taste in music...because it honestly wasn't. Actually my friend gave me a box set of classical music, that he didn't want, and I really tried to, get it, but it lost me...and the box set was then lost to hurricane sandy a few years ago.

I was just in a bored frame of mind, making random posts.

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At the time I posted this, I was referring to the subject of classical music. I am sorry if it was taken as against anyone's taste in music...because it honestly wasn't. Actually my friend gave me a box set of classical music, that he didn't want, and I really tried to, get it, but it lost me...and the box set was then lost to hurricane sandy a few years ago.

I was just in a bored frame of mind, making random posts.

It's no problem. I find some classical music boring too.

I'm currently listening to Wagner's Tristan and Isolde.

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