tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post8146700830800455713..comments2024-03-27T23:06:03.736-05:00Comments on The Music Salon: The Guardian on Bruckner and HaydnBryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-58004794066386504512013-12-15T10:37:13.035-06:002013-12-15T10:37:13.035-06:00Bad Edgard Varèse? I'd say that's redundan...Bad Edgard Varèse? I'd say that's redundant.Nathan Shirleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14123467208814463388noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-46850229263056149332013-12-15T07:30:41.318-06:002013-12-15T07:30:41.318-06:00Maybe we could add Gesualdo in there as well. Good...Maybe we could add Gesualdo in there as well. Good point about the unsettling qualities of serialism! And have you noticed that a lot of the music used in horror films sounds like bad Edgard Varèse?Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-45894570072070150092013-12-14T12:58:22.136-06:002013-12-14T12:58:22.136-06:00I think that element has always existed. There is ...I think that element has always existed. There is the actual nightmare inspired Devil's Trill Sonata, various examples by Vivaldi, and of course painters like Bosch and Bruegel.<br /><br />Many artists throughout history have been fascinated by the macabre, grotesque, demonic, etc. As music became increasingly chromatic, it simply became easier and more natural to express more extreme, nightmarish sounds. I would argue the 12 tone-ists and their followers express little or nothing, the music tends to have a creepy sound by the mere coincidence that if you play random pitches with random rhythms and random dynamics, the result is usually a bit unsettling... not good, just unsettling. That's in contrast to some of the fantastically unsettling music by Mussorgsky, for example.Nathan Shirleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14123467208814463388noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-61608675552273040212013-12-14T08:25:59.267-06:002013-12-14T08:25:59.267-06:00I think that what you are taking note of here is t...I think that what you are taking note of here is the demonic aspect to Romanticism that turned truly nightmarish in the 20th century. An early harbinger of this might be some music by Schubert. An example would be Der Erlkonig, written when he was seventeen, but already with a strong suggestion of the nightmarish. Goethe's Faust is another early influence. Yes, the opening of the Sonata, op 111 with its dotted vii diminished 7th chord of the dominant certainly has an extreme feel, possibly demonic!Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-82016560278406153432013-12-13T12:17:29.774-06:002013-12-13T12:17:29.774-06:00Anyways, something I forgot to mention and that I&...Anyways, something I forgot to mention and that I've been thinking for some time: Beethoven's 32nd sonata (at least in the beginning) makes me think of some sort of old (not the Twillight-type) vampire movie.Rickardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08084578675339015204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-39996351418722751472013-12-13T12:10:08.612-06:002013-12-13T12:10:08.612-06:00Thanks for reminding us about Tom Service's sy...Thanks for reminding us about Tom Service's symphony guide. I'm much more familiar with Bruckner's symphonies than Haydn's (mostly because of the huge amount of symphonies Haydn wrote, it's hard to keep track). Bruckner is actually one of my favorite symphonic composers. His symphonic music is very intense, both in its' more climatic moments and in its' calmer slower moments. My favorite is the 9th but the 8th is also very good. Tom Service's description contains many things I haven't though about. I don't know if you've mentioned it somewhere but he also wrote about Sibelius' 6th symphony (a very good choice too).<br /><br />An especially interesting thing written about Bruckner's 8th:<br /><br />"and the critic Eduard Hanslick - who left before the symphony's finale - wrote grudgingly, "In each of the four movements, especially the first and third, some interesting passages, flashes of genius, shine through - if only the rest of it was not there! <b>It is not impossible that the future belongs to this nightmarish hangover style - a future we therefore do not envy!</b>""<br /><br />While I think the critic was harsh his prediction was surprisingly correct. Music became more and more nightmarish as tonality began to break down and then with 12 tone technique and then serialism and the whole extreme-modernist spectrum. I think the whole nightmarishness (or dark music) you wrote about in a post not long time ago mainly started with the romantic era as music got sadder and also darker. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, his 32nd Sonata or Liszt's Tonentanz are pretty dark. This whole dark mood got amplified with modernist composition techniques and we are still a bit stuck in this quasiromantic quasimodernist dark mood.Rickardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08084578675339015204noreply@blogger.com