THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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By Sorabji on Thursday, January 1, 1998 - 01:55 pm: |
Minnesota Public Radio has an interesting Nancarrow site, with RealAudio of some of Nancarrow's schtuff. |
By Jicotea on Thursday, January 1, 1998 - 03:34 pm: |
Now, you want obscure? Try Ray Green. Hehehehe |
By Sorabji on Thursday, January 1, 1998 - 04:46 pm: |
Can't say that I remember ever actually hearing anything he wrote. I seem to remember him as being a fairly minor figure. I'm kind of surprised I remember him at all... Come to think of it I think my next door neighbor is named Ray Green. Maybe he is a composer. |
By Jicotea on Thursday, January 1, 1998 - 05:31 pm: |
Ver-y good, Eddie! That's the boy. He's married to the enchanting Mae O'Donnell (former Martha Graham stalwart), and lives deep in Loisada. Ray (b. 1908) has just completed a new piano concerto, just about the size of Busoni's, and relentlessly diatonic. It got a premiere last year in ... Shanghai. Am I cluttering up your site? Is this stuff of interest to anybody out there? Just tell me to go away if I'm bothering you! |
By R.C. on Thursday, January 1, 1998 - 06:17 pm: |
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By Jicotea on Thursday, January 1, 1998 - 07:38 pm: |
Allow me to remind you that we are the guests of Sorabji.com, and perhaps we ought to do the equivalent of wiping our feet before entering. If I can figure out what that is............. |
By Sorabji on Thursday, January 1, 1998 - 11:30 pm: |
How are we defining obscure, anyway? I guess I agree, Nancarrow is not obscure. I should really re-name this forum, to, simply to "Obscure Composers," since no one we've mentioned, with the possible exception of Zelenka, would ever be considered a "classical" composer. |
By Jicotea on Friday, January 2, 1998 - 12:05 am: |
Stick with classical. Zelenka is a barocker anyhow, league of Pachelbel, not a heavy hitter. I'm interested that one poster thinks Bach is a demi-God, by the way. I'd deify him Roman style if I thought it made any difference. Toccata and Fugue in F, S. 540, is an example of sheer sonic excess which any rocker with ears should be able to get into. Or is that an oxymoron? I assume you like the note-heavy washes typical of Sorabji, Scriabin, and other still-romantic tonal innovators...have you tried Nik. Miaskovsky's Sonata No. 4 in C Minor? It's a real rouser, not at all like the doleful stuff of his string music. The fabulous, fearsome (but now dead) Richter used to deal with it, no recording, though. |
By R.C. on Friday, January 2, 1998 - 07:29 pm: |
,Unknown Composers Page So, are they obscure enough for yr discussion? |
By R.C. on Friday, January 2, 1998 - 07:33 pm: |
http://www.kith.org/jimmosk/TOC.html The Unknown Composer's Page |
By A friend on Friday, January 2, 1998 - 07:49 pm: |
for example, this one and see the advice on slashes here. doing a "view source" on your browser will show you exactly what these links look like. Good luck. |
By A friend on Friday, January 2, 1998 - 07:56 pm: |
And viewing source, i just discovered that somewhere between the preview of previous message and now it changes the Mark Thomas Markup Language to html. I give up. I'm ready for a job digging potatoes. |
By Making Links Kickin Ass on Friday, January 2, 1998 - 08:11 pm: |
- R.C. |
By R.C. on Friday, January 2, 1998 - 08:15 pm: |
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By Jicotea on Friday, January 2, 1998 - 08:18 pm: |
He sets up a lot of straw men, claiming neglect where in fact public exposure has been generous. In his judgements and descriptions he reminds me of a third-grader showing a second-grader the ropes. This durf posts regularly to rec.music.classical (as I now do), so I hope he never sees this, but I don't really care if he does. Those who aren't much into classical music don't twig to more than half a dozen names anyhow. And many who are, are bad with names. Witness my mother-in-law, who noted down from the car radio the name of a composer and work so that I could find the record for her: I spent several minutes working out what she meant by the Ballet Suite of Mark Rega. |
By Jicotea on Friday, January 2, 1998 - 08:29 pm: |
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By R.C. on Friday, January 2, 1998 - 11:28 pm: |
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By Nancarrow - Looking for Clues on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 01:44 am: |
............................................................................ Okay, Messeurs Sorabji & Jicoeta: Pls. to explain the obscurity of Mr. Nancarrow. I listened to theTrio piece. It was perfectly amusing -- sounded like something Twyla Tharpe would have coreographed to back in the '80's. The other stuff for player piano was a bit cacophonous/or maybe it was just over my head. But can you explain to the unwashed masses why complex compositions = obscurity for Nancarrow but translate into undying fame for Rachmaninoff? Which is it... the Rach. (Nocturne) 3? that's so difficult to play it makes pianists' teeth fall out? If one has the chops to play Rach. then one should be able to master Nancarrow, yes? Or is fame as a composer simply a matter of how long you've been dead? (Although John Cage is famous & still living/yes? But he's got to be more than 80 by now/if memory serves me correctly.) I guess what I'm asking is/What creates a reputation for a composer? In the film industry/ which I know a tad more about/there are varying levels of reputation & obscurity. But you can achieve a certain reputation without actually having your film produced. Ever seen the movie "Jacob's Ladder" (1990 - with Tim Robbins)? It was written by a guy named Bruce Joel Rubin. The script kicked around Hollywood for 10 years under the original title of "Dante's Inferno" before it was finally greenlighted & even won an award on the West coast for Best Unproduced Screenplay. (Hollywood even celebrates obscurity! ) "Jacob's Ladder" was a good movie with a bad ending & it flopped. A year later, Rubin won an Oscar for "Ghost', which sucked. But he is not 'famous' when compared to someone like Joe Eszterhaus ("Flashdance/Basic Instinct/Showgirls/Jade"), whom the avg. moviegoer has probably heard of/even though he will never get an Oscar nomination because everyone on the planet knows he's a Hack For Hire. But the classical music biz is different from Hollywood. No performer or record co. would presume to change the title of a composer's work they way they do a writer's screenplay once it's greenlighted. And every composer plays/so even if no one wants to perform their work/they can rent a hall/get up on a stage & perform it themselves for relatively little money. So why is Nancarrow 'obscure/semi-famous'? I had certainly never heard of him until I started hanging out here. But if he were coming-soon-to -a-concert-hall-near-me/I'd definitely check him out. Inquiring minds wanna know... - R.C. |
By Jicotea on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 01:57 am: |
Tomorrow I will take a deep breath and scoop the poop for you on Conlon Nancarrow (he dead) and if you like, John Cage (he dead also). I'll back-channel it instead of cluttering up sorabji.com. Sweet Dreams! |
By R.C. on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 02:04 am: |
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By R.C. on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 02:16 am: |
Ancient legend says that it was Lucifer (his moniker prior to changing it to Satan) who was credited with inventing music in the first place. Well, if Lucifer were a composer/he would have been Bach in my book. For me/his work is a map of the human soul... the 6 Suites for Cello express almost every emotion I can ever remembering experiencing. And some of the Cantatas are so gorgeously melancholic (depression wasn't so terribly underrated in those days)... I know -- every schumck who has ever heard a note of classical musice loves Bach -- but if you've gotta worship a composer/ Bach is as good as they get. |
By Sorabji on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 10:36 am: |
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By R.C. on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 12:57 pm: |
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By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 01:18 pm: |
As for Zelenka, I was by no means implying that he was a "heavy hitter", I was simply throwing his name out there as a (relatively) obscure classical composer and making the observation that while your average professorial "classical snob" might tell us that Bach is far superior to Zelenka, there really isn't that tangible a difference in their ultra-busy contrapuntal technique, at least not to my plebian ears. I still wouldn't go so far as to classify either one as being on the same level as Pachelbel. Ack. Conlon Nancarrow : classical or not, I greatly enjoy his stuff, and it doesn't bother me that no human can play the pieces, that's part of his shtick and I love it for its own sake. Like Varese, his name has been bandied about by Frank Zappa, though, so he's not quite as obscure as some. When I mentioned Stockhausen before, I'm surprised some smarty didn't jump up and say "which one??" ;) |
By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 03:29 pm: |
Someone just sent me an e-mail who seemed to think I was attacking J.S.Bach in my last post. Nothing could be farther from the truth; Bach is so great it goes without saying. All I was decrying is that so many people think Bach and Beethoven is all there is to classical music, and that next to one has heard of Jan Zelenka. If I had my choice I'd be listening to Liszt's "Todtentanz" right now anyways. |
By R.C. on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 03:42 pm: |
And Happy New Year! (Pls.send me yr e-mail address again -- I can't find it posted here anymore.) R.C. |
By Jicotea on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 09:09 pm: |
My Zelenka/Pachelbel parallel takes in more than the latter's celebrated Canon. He committed quite a bit of less tricksy and more serious music as well. There are baroque composers, and then there is Bach. It's that simple. You should be lurking in the background, eavesdropping on the hardheads who post regularly to the newsgroup rec.music.classical. If you don't have a newsserver, you can get to them through Dejanews. Eventually you will join them, I predict. Then you and Eric Schlissel can weep in each others java about all the hordes of neglected composers. I tend to be Darwinian about it. |
By Jicotea on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 09:18 pm: |
He started out as a simple asshole and wound up as a pretentious (also dead) asshole. His most characteristic line: "Classical music is for old ladies and faggots." Nuf sed. Almost. His own later attempts to get out of the no-talent (read rock) rut are intensely lame. Understand my position. I.won't.stay.in.the.same.room.with.pop.music, _any_ genre. Your ultimate bigot! |
By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 09:54 pm: |
Jicotea - no offense taken :) ...As far as Pachelbel vs. Zelenka, I will cleave to your judgment on this one, as Pachelbel's work has never left enough of an impression on me to be able to make any comment pro or con about it.....rec.music.classical, I went there long ago and it was nothing but arguing (like most newsgroups).......As for neglected composers, well, I tend to seek out the obscure in everything - what the masses enjoy and what history tells us is good almost never coincides with what I like, though I do listen to virtually all recorded sound in existence, including race-car sound effects records and cylinders of Alma Gluck.......re: Frank Zappa, I have a love/hate relationship with him, mostly hate. Both my references to him were intended to be subtly disparaging, if that wasn't evident :) The real puzzle is that despite his anti-classical quote you provided, he actually fancied himself as a modern neo-classical composer, yet he chose to waste 99.9 percent of his career making "progressive rock", whatever the fuck that is. Sad. I like "The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny", though. |
By R.C. on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 10:03 pm: |
while Rachmaninoff is celebrated for same. I mean/who am I gonna ask but YOU GUYS? |
By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 10:31 pm: |
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By Jicotea on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 10:59 pm: |
But he didn't push himself on the public, and his works are hardly likely to appeal to an audience which wants a sweating human being up there on stage pummelling away. Which they definitely got with ol' Sergei Rachmaninov. While S.R.'s music is often brutally difficult, it is playable, it is intensely if conventionally melodic, and, as you would surely be able to feel at any live performance, it is calculated for maximum sonority and emotive presence. Most of it I don't want to hear again right away. But there's one piece I slip on the vic whenever I need to get the juices circulating: Symphonic Dances, op. 45 (his last work, composed in 1940). A two-piano recording from Teldec by Martha Argerich and Nikolas Rabinovich is just un-effing-incredible! In respect to full-bloodedness and general consequentiality it leaves Conlon Nancarrow's farthest-out trampled in the dust. |
By R.C. on Sunday, January 4, 1998 - 12:01 am: |
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By Jicotea on Sunday, January 4, 1998 - 05:29 am: |
(Besides, there are two much less interesting pieces filling out that pricey Teldec CD). I'll fill out a tape with other, related stuff which I think is good. Not all piano music, either. |
By Jicotea on Sunday, January 4, 1998 - 05:41 am: |
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By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Sunday, January 4, 1998 - 10:10 am: |
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By Jicotea on Sunday, January 4, 1998 - 10:54 am: |
you will start making distinctions. Mark my words. (signed) oldphart |
By R.C. on Sunday, January 4, 1998 - 12:41 pm: |
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By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Sunday, January 4, 1998 - 01:21 pm: |
And in my experience, making extremely opinionated distinctions is something associated with youth. In my experience, it is only with age that perspective comes and all the distinctions that seemed so important before don't matter so much anymore. Everything is all the same stuff in the end - bad art, good art, bad music, good music, fleas, paint, philosophy, eggnog, fear, Dostoevsky, dirt, spinach, Belgium, lint..... it's all just...stuff. Any meaning we attach to it we invented ourselves. I grow ever more detached from it all with each passing year yet grow exponentially more fascinated with it all at the same time. Try having autonomous tastes sometime, it's a thrill a minute. |
By Jicotea on Sunday, January 4, 1998 - 02:50 pm: |
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By Sorabji on Monday, January 5, 1998 - 11:21 am: |
Zappa was highly intelligent, but it's unfortunate how his marginal and un-interesting symphonic compositions are routinely trotted out as an example of a pop musician who can actually write notes on paper. Zappa had interesting advice for young people thinking about getting into the arts. He said if you have real talent then please avoid getting into music or art. Talented and intelligent people should go into politics or public service, because that is where such people are most needed. So much talent goes to waste in the arts. |
By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Monday, January 5, 1998 - 01:44 pm: |
I read a interview with him around 1990 where he said he'd just realized the importance of timbre. Well, better late than never. History will probably be kinder to Zappa, when some future generation starts conducting new performances of his works, no doubt ignoring the stupider parts of the libretto and rewriting Zappa's history, painting him as some noble genius trapped in a primitive era, much as Zappa himself tried to do for his alleged ancestor, Francesco Zappa. Gosh, such run-on sentences. |
By UHURU on Monday, January 5, 1998 - 05:22 pm: |
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By AntManBee on Monday, January 5, 1998 - 05:44 pm: |
Just think that F.Z.s memory should not be revered. |
By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Monday, January 5, 1998 - 07:54 pm: |
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By R.C. on Monday, January 5, 1998 - 09:43 pm: |
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By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Monday, January 5, 1998 - 10:11 pm: |
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By R.C. on Monday, January 5, 1998 - 10:48 pm: |
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By Schissel on Sunday, February 1, 1998 - 12:44 am: |
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By Mossback lurker on Friday, February 6, 1998 - 09:30 pm: |
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But I don't mean that you mightn't want to try out those symphonies on Arte Nova; or his 2nd string quartet when the Mandelring quartet records it for the (Europe-only, I gather; hopefully some US distributor will pick it up ... sigh) Lotus label, too, as is on their list of projects, according to their website. The first of his violin sonatas was broadcast over Bayer region radio a few months back, sometimes a sign that someone's mooting a recording project, sometimes not. His first piano quintet has also been radio-broadcast in Germany. I've looked at a large number of his scores, unlike Kauder (I've only looked at one of his), so while I'm -not- an expert on Gernsheim, I have some notion what I'm talking about and whether there's a there there... and having heard some of them reinforces me in the notion. But ultimately you have to be your own judge of the matter. Stylistically somewhere - well, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, chromatically a bit more advanced especially in the later works? The August 1999 Gramophone review of the symphonies gave a reasonably good description of them, even though from scores I still prefer his chamber music to his symphonic music- but the symphonies are growing on me anyway with repeated listening. Not sure just what to say about stylistic comparison, no. Not something I excel in describing. |
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the wrong way of looking at things. He used the piano as a sort of mechanical sequencer. It was a tool, he used it. |