What classical composer is your favourite and why?
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What classical composer is your favourite and why?
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I sometimes read a book and listen to music at the same time and ever after when I listen to the music I remember the book and visa versa. A few years ago I read Anthony Beevor's book Stalingrad (in F
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Forums » Open clinical » General clinical » What classical composer is your favourite and why?
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What classical composer is your favourite and why?
posted at 16/1/2012 12:08 PM GMT
on bmj.com
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Posts: 2075
First: 10/3/2009 Last: 18/5/2012 |
I sometimes read a book and listen to music at the same time and ever after when I listen to the music I remember the book and visa versa. A few years ago I read Anthony Beevor's book Stalingrad (in French) while listening to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, mainly Book 1. it seemed perfect for the book for reasons I won't bore you with now. I even wrote a poem about it which is on my website. Bach for me is a brilliant-cut diamond; his lustre is beyond peer. His music is the sun sparkling off the eddies of a mountain stream. He is complexity without showing off. He is the pearl in the oyster prised open by Glenn Gould both in his lively young version and his more reflective older version. I never tire of Bach. He is the Homer of Music. He is the Jewel Box in the southern night sky.
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Re: What classical composer is your favourite and why?
posted at 16/1/2012 2:49 PM GMT
on bmj.com
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*Moderator*
Posts: 630
First: 7/4/2011 Last: 18/5/2012 |
Ah yes, it has to be Bach for me too! After stumbling across the Well-Tempered Clavier, it inspired me to learn the piano so I can one day recite these works perfectly. Odysseus: what do you recommend as further listening? |
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Re: What classical composer is your favourite and why?
posted at 16/1/2012 9:02 PM GMT
on bmj.com
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Posts: 2075
First: 10/3/2009 Last: 18/5/2012 |
The Goldberg Variations played by Glenn Gould. I play some as some are easier than others. The Aria in the beginning and end is lovely. One of my favourite CDs; The Bach Album; Concerto for Oboe and Oboe D'Amore by Dianne Doherty. Ironwood. ABC (Australian). Her father is Prof Ralph Doherty, Nobel Laureate, doctor etc. It is exceptional.
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Re: What classical composer is your favourite and why?
posted at 16/1/2012 9:24 PM GMT
on bmj.com
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Posts: 1325
First: 7/3/2009 Last: 21/5/2012 |
Bach is a foundation. He was a giant. So were later Mozart and Beethoven. For me many composers are loved for different virtues. But then I am a performer, and each composer has a special appeal for me when I perform their music. The most difficult must be Bach. You never tire of finding new depths in his music and performing his pieces is a constant journey for grasping the full intent.
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Re: What classical composer is your favourite and why?
posted at 17/1/2012 3:39 AM GMT
on bmj.com
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Posts: 2075
First: 10/3/2009 Last: 18/5/2012 |
We are on the same wavelength, Yoram. Bach did everything. He did jazz three hundred years before it was born. He can interweave four melodies like an acoustic basket. He creates simple melodies which are demons to play. His range of music is enormous; choral, cantata, organ, clavier, strings, wood wind etc church music etc.
I dislike being manipulated emotionally by composers. They can cause pain and evoke sad memories as music and memory are connected. Bach is subtle but evocative. Rachmaninoff is a drama queen. Strauss is light-weight. Beethoven copies Bach eg Moonlight Sonata and should be on Prozac. He is an ear trumpet, and irascible. Mozart is as frothy as an omelette, superficial with exceptions like his Requiem; his soaring masterpiece. I like birds and bird catchers but only occasionally. His flute and clarinet concerto are magic. Chopin was once my love. To me he is the Keats of music. His music reminds me of TB and the sudden red haemoptysis on white linen handkerchiefs and on the piano keys. He demands too much of my soul. Technically he is diabolical like Liszt. Wagner is nice in small doses but spending three days listening to the Ring Cycle is like attending a cricket test match but with Bavarian beer while I always think of the Führer and dark days, twilight and gods. I like Smetana's Ma Vlast but I love a sunburnt country instead. I am Australian, not Czech. Grieg has the sunny Wedding Day at Troldhaugen and Sibelius's has Finlandia which make me feel I am in church. Tone poems paint a picture I don't want to see their pictures at an exhibition. I like The Trout but not every meal. The Trout reminds me of Gerard Manly Hopkin's poem, Pied Beauty. I like Jerusalem but only at Battle of Britain celebrations and not when the Poms beat us at cricket (a rare event). Bach never tires. His music is masterful while allowing you to lay you own emotions into the piece and not the other way round. He is has no peer. He is Homer. Euterpe, the Muse of Music is the most wonderful of the Nine Muses. |
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Re: What classical composer is your favourite and why?
posted at 17/1/2012 11:25 AM GMT
on bmj.com
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Posts: 2075
First: 10/3/2009 Last: 18/5/2012 |
Even if you can't play all the pieces eg Das Wohltemperiete Clavier, I find that by following the music with the score in front of you raises the appreciation by a quantum leap. When I do I imagine conducting the piece. I have both Part 1 and 2 published by The Associate Board of the Royal Schools of Music as well as the "Goldberg" Variations published by Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics. Regardless of which composer you love, listening and reading the score is well worth considering. Playing it even imperfectly is joy akin to reading Homer in the original. There are many great medical musicians. Music and medicine make good bed fellows.
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Re: What classical composer is your favourite and why?
posted at 17/1/2012 11:46 AM GMT
on bmj.com
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Posts: 2075
First: 10/3/2009 Last: 18/5/2012 |
May I recommend Jacques Loussier playing Bach. Glenn Gould playing Bach's Partita No.1,2,3, and 4, 5, 6 are excellent. He did for Bach what James Stephenson did to steam. No one has excelled Glenn Gould. He is electric; static electricity arcing from a steel ball. No.1 is a masterpiece of blended melodies and sunshine. A friend gave me for Christmas the Brandenberg Concertos played by the Orchestra of the Antipodes (ABC Classics) which is the most interesting rendition of these pieces I have heard with the dazzling of the Australian sun and the complexity of a new approach. This is no German stodge of meatballs and gravy washed down with a gallon of beer.
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Re: What classical composer is your favourite and why?
posted at 17/1/2012 12:27 PM GMT
on bmj.com
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Posts: 10
First: 2/12/2011 Last: 14/4/2012 |
In Response to Re: What classical composer is your favourite and why?: .....Orchestra of the Antipodes (ABC Classics) which is the most interesting rendition of these pieces I have heard with the dazzling of the Australian sun and the complexity of a new approach. This is no German stodge of meatballs and gravy washed down with a gallon of beer. Posted by Odysseus Objection, Your Honour! Germany, the cradle of *Bach*, has long left the times of musical interpretations aequivalent to meatballs and gravy. I can name you several exceptional groups who perform Bach and contemporaries with a subtle and sparkling clarity and delicateness, usually small string and choir groups. I would agree, however, that in the town of Bach, at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, the baroque performance practice has not quite arrived yet. Still, I love being there (Leipzig is the home town of my parents, and I know it well during GDR times and now, emerged of dusty and gray houses to a gem of a town) and I never fail to bring a red rose to Bach´s grave, I owe him more than would be sensible to mention in an open forum. I had the privilege to be one of the two baroque violinists in such a small group of dedicated musicians, ages ago, when I still had a life besides medicine. Additionally, financing part of my medical studies with my violin, I was lucky enough to participate in many of Bach`s oratorial and cantata works. Perhaps someone should start a discussion thread with the topic "What happens to doctors if they loose essential parts of their personal life and their dedication and commitment to certain non-medical areas?" Barbara just listening to the Goldberg Variations, on the harpsichord, played by Pierre Hantai (1993) during the short lunch break  ps there are two sayings I fully support:
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