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Ron Dough
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« Reply #15 on: 11:23:20, 11-07-2008 » |
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Since the majority of listeners will learn the work from recordings and live performances, won't their answer at least in part be influenced by third-party interpretation? No matter what the work, in the hands of different conductors there will be wide variations in the emotional response, which may elicit in turn different reactions in each listener, depending on their own frame of mind at each particular audition..
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Sydney Grew
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« Reply #16 on: 11:45:23, 11-07-2008 » |
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So . . . is there do we think anything fundamental in the work itself, which does not vary?
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #17 on: 03:11:52, 12-07-2008 » |
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So, you can read the implied emphasis at the beginning of bar 3 as a metric syncopation Does anyone else feel a bit of an accent on the pairs of quavers though? If it were written with just a single crotchet instead of the paired quavers it would be pretty clear, no? For me the melody itself is thus fairly strongly syncopated... |
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martle
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« Reply #18 on: 09:28:22, 12-07-2008 » |
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Yes, Ollie - I'd go with that. Especially since it's made even more tempting to hear them that way by the 3rd beat's rest in bar 3, 5 etc.
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Green. Always green.
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #19 on: 10:59:25, 12-07-2008 » |
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Although this is quite an obvious thing to say, the shape of the melody of the first subject clearly "plays" with a melancholic "humour" (as such things were called at the time), oscillating no less than three times between the quasi-appogiatura semitone before finally finding the emotional "strength" to springboard upwards by a minor sixth. This "affect" was a rhetorical device indicating sadness that's found elsewhere in C18th music (for example, there are several instances in the MASONIC FUNERAL MUSIC). I would hestitate to say whether it really does product such an affect, or whether we merely hear it as such through prolonged exposure to the affect in other cases where external circumstances (a funereal context, or an opera scene etc) where the emotional context is already established?
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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Turfan Fragment
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« Reply #20 on: 20:35:44, 12-07-2008 » |
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I am almost completely sure that Mozart, while aware of the Affektenlehre, was to say the least quite ambivalent about it. In any case, the way this theme develops and returns in various ways would not have been possible with any other interval. Extremely important for my teaching of Mozart is linking the structure of his themes with the formal strategies employed in each movement.
Best,
P71l1pp
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JP_Vinyl
Gender: 
Posts: 37
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« Reply #21 on: 12:42:40, 18-07-2008 » |
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I first heard this symphony as a child of about 9 or 10. I was absolutely enchanted by the lush melodic material and its strong rhythmic content as well. It somehow suggested the word 'elegant' to me, although my knowledge of the wword's meaning was still contextual rather than lexical at the time. I believe there were also moments in the 3rd movement that made me think of a concept I have since learned to label as 'grandeur'.
If anything I sensed a great deal of joy and splendour rather than anxiety or sadness. I was not unexposed to these emotions at that age, for what it's worth.
It would be interesting collecting children's responses to music and seeing how they tally up with the received wisdom of liner notes, program sheets etc.
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I am not going to be shot in a wheel-barrow, for the sake of appearances, to please anybody.
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rauschwerk
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« Reply #22 on: 13:03:03, 18-07-2008 » |
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I quote from Peter Latham's essay on Brahms in Chamber Music (Pelican, 1957):
"...(Brahms's) music often presents...ambiguity. Richard Specht tells us that the Piano Quintet contains some of 'the gloomiest music Brahms has written', and Tovey calls the first movement 'powerfully tragic'. Yet Clara Schumann was 'charmed' by the music - a word that hardly suggests tragedy - and Karl Geiringer describes the first movement as 'lively'."
It just goes to show that the emotions aroused by music in the listener cannot be reduced to words, and in any case will vary from one person to another. So Mr Grew's question is entirely valid.
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #23 on: 13:11:54, 18-07-2008 » |
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I quote from Peter Latham's essay on Brahms in Chamber Music (Pelican, 1957):
"...(Brahms's) music often presents...ambiguity. Richard Specht tells us that the Piano Quintet contains some of 'the gloomiest music Brahms has written', and Tovey calls the first movement 'powerfully tragic'. Yet Clara Schumann was 'charmed' by the music - a word that hardly suggests tragedy - and Karl Geiringer describes the first movement as 'lively'."
It just goes to show that the emotions aroused by music in the listener cannot be reduced to words, and in any case will vary from one person to another. So Mr Grew's question is entirely valid.
But there are also crucial issues of performance to filter in - how Specht and Tovey heard the Piano Quintet could relate to the types of performance they heard (Specht knew Brahms, of course, but was considerably younger than Clara Schumann, and would have been more familiar with the performance styles coming into fashion in the later years of Brahms's life); also one should consider that some of these convictions exist prior to performance - Geiringer could be expressing a wish to hear the first movement played in a lively fashion, an issue not just of tempo, but of lightness or otherwise of timbre, accentuation, texture, articulation, etc. It's not entirely incompatible for something to be both lively and tragic, but it's questionable to make these issues purely about the 'work' independently of its realisation in performance. |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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rauschwerk
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« Reply #24 on: 17:47:19, 18-07-2008 » |
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It's not entirely incompatible for something to be both lively and tragic, but it's questionable to make these issues purely about the 'work' independently of its realisation in performance.
Indeed. It seems to me that there is no way of guaranteeing that the neurones which fire in the listener's brain correlate to those which fired in the composer's at the time of composition! |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #25 on: 17:54:29, 18-07-2008 » |
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Indeed. It seems to me that there is no way of guaranteeing that the neurones which fire in the listener's brain correlate to those which fired in the composer's at the time of composition!
Or that your neurones fire the same as Ian's, or mine fire the same way as Syd's. It's sometimes occurred to me that we may all be hearing utterly different things in our heads when we listen to a sequence of sound-frequencies of delineated length, attack and decay-rate... |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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Ted Ryder
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« Reply #26 on: 20:29:50, 18-07-2008 » |
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The trouble is if your neurones are "saying" something different to my neurones it makes criticism and comparisons pointless and thus much of Radio3ok redundant and none of us want that so I suggest: all neurons speak the same language but some of us have a more extensive, subtle and refined vocabulary than others or, as has always obtained here, if you don't like something I like you're thick and I'm going on posting until you accept the fact. ( Always being polite of course.  ) We all know that's much more fun  I have programme notes that say the downward unison rush in the last bars of Haydn's String Quartet Op 76 No1 is(A) A good humoured laugh (B) a mephistophelian sneer (C) A fate motif. I've no idea how players would set about making their choice clear to an audience. Pehaps Toscanini is right- it's just music but I think he was a bit of a kill-joy. |
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I've got to get down to Sidcup.
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #27 on: 21:16:55, 18-07-2008 » |
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I've no idea how players would set about making their choice clear to an audience. Pehaps Toscanini is right- it's just music but I think he was a bit of a kill-joy.
I agree with what you say, Ted - but the fact remains that the conductor (or Leader, in that case) must decide what he (or she) believes it means, and impart that to the players. The "directionless" performance is no performance at all, and there's little to listen for if they "only play the notes". There's no room for divergence of opinion in performance!  |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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