The Art-Music, Literature and Linguistics Forum
March 29, 2024, 01:15:49 pm
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
News: Here you may discover hundreds of little-known composers, hear thousands of long-forgotten compositions, contribute your own rare recordings, and discuss the Arts, Literature and Linguistics in an erudite and decorous atmosphere full of freedom and delight.
 
  Home Help Search Gallery Staff List Login Register  

What are you currently listening to?

Pages: 1 ... 6 7 [8] 9 10 ... 239   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: What are you currently listening to?  (Read 97273 times)
0 Members and 4 Guests are viewing this topic.
Neil McGowan
Level 7
*******

Times thanked: 79
Offline Offline

Posts: 1336



View Profile
« Reply #105 on: October 05, 2013, 08:25:54 pm »

I find it much harder to accept that it is necessary to write in the extremely strong language used about music which not only gives pleasure but is so deeply and personally meaningful to so many, including myself :( :(

But Mr D! Has anyone really been so terribly scathing about Herr Strauss?  I know I haven't - and I don't think anyone else has been either?

And in my further defence, I was idly listening to ARABELLA (surely his most navel-gazing stuff?) at the time I was writing - so it was what 'I was currently listening to' ;)

As you've said yourself - we can't all like everything, and we can't all admire everything to an equal degree. I am sure that CAPRICCIO, ARABELLA, INTERMEZZO and Strauss's other operas bring enjoyment and satisfaction to many - and I would never seek to see that enjoyment quenched in any way.  It's a bit like people smoking cigars in restaurants - I rather wish they wouldn't, and I certainly wouldn't like to myself - but I am happy that they pursue such a peaceful and hedonistic habit. It's greatly preferable to drinking themselves into a noisy and quarrelsome post-prandial state ;)

I have days when I quite like ROSENKAV (and indeed, I've actually staged a heftily-cut version myself -  put on to allow Opera School students to show their paces - thankfullly all that "Mariendel" nonsense was among the cuts before I arrived in the project!).  ELEKTRA has some good moments (although it's severely prolix, in my personal view), and DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN has kept me interested.  But with all of his operas - and the criterion here is that opera is a theatrical medium - I find his dramatic approach blustering and unfocused. His characters are generally not well drawn musically (something he got right, unusually, in ELEKTRA) - the story all but disappears in a sea of musical syrup. So I have listened extensively to Strauss, and I know all his operas. I don't find his musical language very effective in the theatre, but that doesn't mean I cast it aside. I often think that these works address the cares and attentions of a Viennese public who are no longer really with us in any great number?

Opera is a tough genre to master - many try, but few excel. Yet there remain many, many composers (sadly...) whose operas are greatly less still successful than Herr Strauss's  ;)  Let us not list them - it would be a weary task ;)  Let us instead focus on what we find good, well-written, terse, vivid, inspiring, and attention-worthy, and - in the case of operas - worthy of a production budget to bring them to life on the stage :)

Meanwhile, I don't feel that having a lack of appreciation for Strauss and Bruckner is so terrible... whilst I can claim musical interests that encompass the rondeaux and virelais of Machaut and Solages, the monophonic songs of Oswald von Wolkenstein, huge swathes of French baroque opera, most of Shostakovich's output, all of Gluck's operas (even The Three Chinese Ladies), vast chunks of Russian "Silver Era" romances, most of Storace, Shield, Linley and Attwood, and the latest operas from Rorem, Richard Ayres, Sergey Chechetko, Desyatnikov, Glass, and Schedrin ;)
Report Spam   Logged

Pages: 1 ... 6 7 [8] 9 10 ... 239   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum


Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy