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Baz
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« Reply #1440 on: 07:31:59, 22-03-2008 » |
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Mr. Inquisitor's number 421 is taken from the Second Symphony of the tremendous Scryabine. It is in the key of C minor and dates from around 1901. The fashionable Mr. Griffiths is both interesting and absurd on this point (bird-song). He begins by quoting Messiaen: "I do not believe one can find in any human music, however inspired, melodies and rhythms which have the sovereign liberty of bird-song." Messiaen we are told "understood birds - being winged, aerial, and beautiful - as earthly harbingers of the angels."
So far so good and no doubt something similar could be said of Scryabine. But Mr. Griffiths spoils it all with this: "Réveil des oiseaux, the first of Messiaen's major bird-song pieces, is an extinction of creative personality as complete as its great contemporary 4' 33", and as incomplete." Talk about rolling on the floor!
As far as rolling on the floor goes, Mr Griffiths cannot match the polemic nonsense of that amateur guru Norman Lebrecht. Writing of Mozart - who probably figures more in these puzzles than Messiaen - the angry bumbler Lebrecht wrote the following: The key test of any composer's importance is the extent to which he reshaped the art. Mozart, it is safe to say, failed to take music one step forward. Unlike Bach and Handel who inherited a dying legacy and vitalised it beyond recognition, unlike Haydn who invented the sonata form without which music would never have acquired its classical dimension, Mozart merely filled the space between staves with chords that he knew would gratify a pampered audience. He was a provider of easy listening, a progenitor of Muzak... Mozart is a menace to musical progress, a relic of rituals that were losing relevance in his own time and are meaningless to ours. Beyond a superficial beauty and structural certainty, Mozart has nothing to give to mind or spirit in the 21st century. Let him rest. Ignore the commercial onslaught. Play the Leningrad Symphony. Listen to music that matters. http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/051214-NL-250mozart.htmlThis was the man who a few years ago predicted that the Classical record industry would become extinct in 2004. I am still a little surprised that Mr Grew (a strong follower of "the admirable Lebrecht") does not share Lebrecht's preference for Shostakovich as being "music that matters". |
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Tony Watson
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« Reply #1441 on: 11:01:08, 22-03-2008 » |
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Some clues for 412 and 414...
While both have a distinctly "Classical" ambience, 412 was written exactly 200 years after the death of Mozart by a composer born in 1954, and 414 was composed 198 years earlier by a composer born in 1732.
Baz
So 198 years earlier than today (1810) or 198 years earlier than 1954 (1756) or 198 years earlier than the death of Mozart (1593)? All right, the last one is impossible, though no less impossible than the composer I was looking for yesterday who was born in 1951 (apparently) and who turned out to be such a wunderkind he was teaching the already dead Satie before he was born. He probably played cricket at Twickenham and rugby at Lord's too. Oh, I see. It's 198 years before 200 years after the death of Mozart, which is a really Byzantine way of saying two years after Mozart's death (1793). |
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Baz
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« Reply #1442 on: 11:10:26, 22-03-2008 » |
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Tony Watson
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« Reply #1443 on: 11:32:07, 22-03-2008 » |
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For 414 I'll try Haydn's opus 1 number 6.
Not correct I'm afraid (were the Op. 1 4tets as late as 1793?). I was working on 1756 so I tried the earliest one I could find in C major. I would never have got 1793 from that clue. |
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Sydney Grew
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« Reply #1444 on: 11:55:29, 22-03-2008 » |
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Good Lord! Mr. Baziron has succeeded in shocking us. In fact we do not know which is more shocking - the statement itself (it is obviously ludicrous to advise any one to turn to Sloshtacowitch) or the fact that it was made by the hitherto admirable and impeccable Mr. Lebrecht. We wonder what he has to say about Bach. Or was he perhaps writing in a consciously perverse way strictly for septic consumption? |
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Baz
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« Reply #1445 on: 13:00:51, 22-03-2008 » |
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Good Lord! Mr. Baziron has succeeded in shocking us. In fact we do not know which is more shocking - the statement itself (it is obviously ludicrous to advise any one to turn to Sloshtacowitch) or the fact that it was made by the hitherto admirable and impeccable Mr. Lebrecht. We wonder what he has to say about Bach. Or was he perhaps writing in a consciously perverse way strictly for septic consumption? In noting the prescience of Mr Grew's word "hitherto" (above), I should advise him (for the sake of scholarly etiquette, if not mere decency) to drop henceforth the word "impeccable", followed very closely by the word "admirable", in any future mention of Mr Lebrecht. I have, of course, nothing personal against him - other than his utterly banal and stupifyingly idiotic notions. Baz |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #1446 on: 13:05:40, 22-03-2008 » |
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Perhaps those particular scales are at last dropping from Member Grew's eyes, though up until now they seem indeed to have been attached there with something resembling superglue.
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Il Grande Inquisitor
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« Reply #1447 on: 13:48:13, 22-03-2008 » |
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416 is, of course, Dvorak's Symphony No 3 in E flat I. Allegro moderato Just so. Member Inquisitor is right to return to Dvorak. And what a joy Dvorak's music is. One of the earliest box set of CDs I purchased was the Kubelik set of Dvorak symphonies on DG - such warm, vibrant accounts of sunny music. Harnoncourt's recordings of 7-9 contain many fine things, as does Jansons' No.5, but Kubelik's are the recordings I return to with much delight.  |
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Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency
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time_is_now
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« Reply #1448 on: 16:12:59, 22-03-2008 » |
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424 is from near the end of the Jean Barraque piano sonata - it seems to be played a bit matter-of-factly, but I'll probably be told it's from the best performance . . .
Damn: I wish I'd had the courage of my convictions! I was still awake in the early hours when Evan posted his snatch, and I thought it was Barraqué but for some reason I decided to wait until I'd listened to the piece to check. Now, I don't know how I could have imagined it could have been anything else. Is it the performance, as a/hp suggests, or do those pregnant silences always sound a bit matter-of-fact when you haven't listened to the whole build-up to them? Mr Iron perhaps needs to consult his dictionary before he accuses anyone of being 'stupifyingly' ( sic) anything.  |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Evan Johnson
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« Reply #1449 on: 16:17:04, 22-03-2008 » |
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424 is from near the end of the Jean Barraque piano sonata - it seems to be played a bit matter-of-factly, but I'll probably be told it's from the best performance . . .
Damn: I wish I'd had the courage of my convictions! I was still awake in the early hours when Evan posted his snatch, and I thought it was Barraqué but for some reason I decided to wait until I'd listened to the piece to check. Now, I don't know how I could have imagined it could have been anything else. Is it the performance, as a/hp suggests, or do those pregnant silences always sound a bit matter-of-fact when you haven't listened to the whole build-up to them? Mr Iron perhaps needs to consult his dictionary before he accuses anyone of being 'stupifyingly' ( sic) anything. I think you're right, tin, about the silences being not particularly effective out of context; in context, though, I find them shattering, especially w/ that C-G/Ab trill (ok, I'm human, I can't help being a sucker for fleeting suggestions of minor keys  ). That piece (which is one of my absolute favorites) is actually a bit troublesome... anyone who knows it could have gotten it instantly from that snatch or any of several others from the last quarter of the piece, but much of the first half would be more or less absolutely unidentifiable as any of a plethora of such piano pieces from the 1950s, at least unless one is particularly attuned to the effect of Barraque's register-freezing techniques. Great, great piece, anyway, and yes, autoharp, you should check out the Henck recording. Now... any takers for 430? It's not Barraque |
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Evan Johnson
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« Reply #1450 on: 18:14:32, 22-03-2008 » |
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A question from a novice puzzle-setter who has neither the time nor the inclination to wade through the Test thread for the answer to a simple question: how long has it become customary to wait before the posting of clues? I await some valiant attempts at #430 and guidance on how best to nurse this effort through to its eventual conclusion. |
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Il Grande Inquisitor
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« Reply #1451 on: 18:17:53, 22-03-2008 » |
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It's ten hours before you may post a clue on the test thread, Evan, although you may do so here, of course. 415 - Mozart's Quintet K 593? Mr. Watson is of course perfectly right, it is Mozart's String Quintet number 5 in D major, K 593. (All our "no-o-os" above were just intended to indicate our amazement at the neglect of this piece of prime repertoire in favour of Michael Haydn!) Bravo, Tony! I should explain that although I have some Mozart quartets, I do not know the string quintets and felt the style was more Haydnesque!  Am amazed that No.432 is still 'alive' after over an hour!!! |
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Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency
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Sydney Grew
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« Reply #1452 on: 18:33:38, 22-03-2008 » |
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A question from a novice puzzle-setter who has neither the time nor the inclination to wade through the Test thread for the answer to a simple question: how long has it become customary to wait before the posting of clues? I await some valiant attempts at #430 and guidance on how best to nurse this effort through to its eventual conclusion. On the Test thread, wait at least ten hours before posting a first clue Mr. Johnson. Thereafter you may post a further four clues at any time of your choosing (making a maximum of five clues in all). For each clue you receive 75 points. On this Discussion thread you may post as many clues as you like at whatever time you like, but there is no scoring. |
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« Last Edit: 18:38:52, 22-03-2008 by Sydney Grew »
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Baz
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« Reply #1453 on: 19:27:18, 22-03-2008 » |
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Clearly, with Puzzles 425, 426 and 427, Mr Inquisitor has invented a new kind of "French connection"! Baz  |
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Il Grande Inquisitor
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« Reply #1454 on: 19:30:04, 22-03-2008 » |
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Clearly, with Puzzles 425, 426 and 427, Mr Inquisitor has invented a new kind of "French connection"! Baz So it seems, Baz, but you have yet to uncover Frog(s) No.1!!  |
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« Last Edit: 19:56:34, 22-03-2008 by Il Grande Inquisitor »
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Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency
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