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pim_derks
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« Reply #330 on: 11:14:50, 07-07-2008 » |
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10 The Lord Is My Shepherd (Theme From 'the Vicar Of Dibley') This doesn't suprise me after reading this: I went to a christening recently with a group of friends. Two of us were brought up in churches, had taught in Sunday school etc and the rest were church-phobic. The two of us were chatting and laughing quite happily before the service and the rest of them were sat rigidly staring in front of them, trying desperately to 'behave'. It was hilarious.  |
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"People hate anything well made. It gives them a guilty conscience." John Betjeman
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HtoHe
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« Reply #331 on: 11:32:44, 07-07-2008 » |
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However, today I discovered that I really am a musical snob. The Radio Times has details of a joint venture with Classic FM, to choose "the nation's favourite classical music". but I looked at it and felt....well, snobbish.
My opinion of Lesley Garrett went up a bit when I read that her favourite composer is Bach, her favourite opera Peter Grimes, and her favourite singer Andreas Scholl. Not what I'd have expected at all.
I've just seen this, Mary - and I'll probably feel the same as you when I stop laughing! There's a quote on the page reading "Classical Music once had a strict set of boundaries, but not any more" - which, it seems, is more than one could say for this poll. Not only is there no room for Wagner or Richard Strauss in the 'Composer' list - not one of their works gets into a list of operas that includes 'The Merry Widow' and 'The Mikado'. I'll resist the temptation to examine the values of this list in detail but I must say my earlier positive comments about Lesley Garrett are to be reiterated as she is just about the only one of the interviewees with anything intelligent to say. My favourite daft comment? Henry Kelly: "Favourite work - Schubert's The Trout - a miniature but I absolutely love it. Have you tried the extended club remix, Henry? |
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Ruby2
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« Reply #332 on: 12:53:12, 07-07-2008 » |
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That track list made me chuckle, Ruby. Especially the 'Vicar Of Dibley' parenthesis!  Ha ha, not my transcription - I absolve all responsibility! I copied it off the net but I still corrected all the typos for fear of creating glossary-fodder.  |
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"Two wrongs don't make a right. But three rights do make a left." - Rohan Candappa
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Ruby2
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« Reply #333 on: 12:54:04, 07-07-2008 » |
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10 The Lord Is My Shepherd (Theme From 'the Vicar Of Dibley') This doesn't suprise me after reading this: I went to a christening recently with a group of friends. Two of us were brought up in churches, had taught in Sunday school etc and the rest were church-phobic. The two of us were chatting and laughing quite happily before the service and the rest of them were sat rigidly staring in front of them, trying desperately to 'behave'. It was hilarious. |
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"Two wrongs don't make a right. But three rights do make a left." - Rohan Candappa
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #334 on: 19:14:19, 07-07-2008 » |
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You probably know this SK, but Burt Bacharach studied with Darius Millhaud. His ' At This Time' is a sober response to 9/11, regrettably without Davids' lyrical skill, but there's a bitof what he could do with longer structures.
The other element in the stuff that gets the Classic Rock treatment is the visual (all those bloody fireworks pace N Bombastics' Urban Myth a while back). I saw 'Paint it Black' staged very simply and effectively-referencing a bit Jean Luc Godard meets The Prisoner -a while back in a provincial talentshow. Sondheim was mixed with the lumpen rock ballad school simply this is beacuse the winner would be expected to sing by employers, I guess. In anothe part of the forest, I agree with SK's assertgion that there are 'musics' aimed at people who don't like music but use it as a utility. In Beechams' phrase '..The English doesn't like music (but) they like the sound it makes'. A mate of mine went to Gubbay's current Gershwin effort which he found lavish but distinctly uninspired presentationally. This also doesnt help the bland stuff on Classic FM TV as I recall. It lacks any sense of the filmic for example.On that evidence I agree that a lot of this tendency the sound it makes'. One of the hopeful signs imho is the making and mixing of Chillout music (including the compilers of Classic Fm's Chiller Cabinet) who have mostly keen ears and a sense of musical history if not yet full-on future.
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« Last Edit: 23:37:52, 08-07-2008 by marbleflugel »
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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ahh
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« Reply #335 on: 22:06:02, 07-07-2008 » |
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'Paint it Black' staged very simply and effectively a bit Jean Luc Godard meets The Prisoner
Now, is it snobbish or merely pedantic to point out that neither Godard nor Prisoner strike me as 'stage'd? Perhaps the confusion of filmic/televisual and theatrical (in metaphor at least) is similar to that of pop and orchestra. Personally, I like my rock as rock and my classical as classical. Hybrids rarely work, two separate sets of pleasure principles, it's like round holes and square pegs. I haven't heard 'At this time' - if I did I think I'd want it played on a pyrophone, nice and tasteful visuals! |
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« Last Edit: 22:10:30, 07-07-2008 by ahh »
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insert favoured witticism here
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Ruby2
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« Reply #336 on: 09:05:32, 08-07-2008 » |
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Hybrids rarely work, two separate sets of pleasure principles, it's like round holes and square pegs.
Couldn't agree more. |
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"Two wrongs don't make a right. But three rights do make a left." - Rohan Candappa
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IgnorantRockFan
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« Reply #337 on: 10:10:09, 08-07-2008 » |
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Hybrids rarely work, two separate sets of pleasure principles, it's like round holes and square pegs.
Couldn't agree more. I generally like 'hybrids', but it's a one-way street for me. When an orchestra plays a rock song, they lose everything that makes a rock performance work -- they can't syncopate, they can't improvise, and they can't duplicate the individual performer's rapport with the audience. But when a rock group performs a symphony... ah, there's the difference. A rock group would never attempt to perform a symphony. It would be impossible. What they do is take a single theme from a symphony and perform a new rock work based on that. Ritchie Blackmore doesn't play Beethoven's 9th symphony, he plays "variations on a theme by Beethoven". And I think it works pretty well. I think that symphony orchestras got a composer to write orchestral variations on a theme by a rock group, it would sound much better than an orchestra trying to play a song by that group. (Does the distinction make sense? It makes sense to me.) |
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Allegro, ma non tanto
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Ruby2
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« Reply #338 on: 10:27:34, 08-07-2008 » |
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...What they do is take a single theme from a symphony and perform a new rock work based on that. Ritchie Blackmore doesn't play Beethoven's 9th symphony, he plays "variations on a theme by Beethoven". And I think it works pretty well.
I think it can be a bit hit and miss though can't it? For example, The Farm's Altogether Now is based on Pachelbel's canon, but it's based on it very subtley, they've just lifted the chord progressions. What annoys me is disasterous sampling, but I can't think of an example, which is annoying. And means this isn't much of a point...  There was a hip-hop band that did something on Beethoven's 5th wasn't there? I didn't like that (oooh fascinating story Ruby...  ) Hmm. Might be one of these: http://ask.metafilter.com/72165/Classical-Rap  |
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« Last Edit: 10:33:37, 08-07-2008 by Ruby2 »
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"Two wrongs don't make a right. But three rights do make a left." - Rohan Candappa
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HtoHe
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« Reply #339 on: 11:05:53, 08-07-2008 » |
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[ What annoys me is disasterous sampling, but I can't think of an example, which is annoying. And means this isn't much of a point... Eric Carmen's All by Myself (filched from Rachmaninov though tbf I think the debt was acknowledged) was pretty awful (imo, of course); and that treatment of Barber's famous adagio (William Orbit?) struck me as a waste of effort. I liked The Nice's America - though that piece was hardly a venerable classic at the time - but by the time Mr Emerson got round to Pictures at an Exhibition I'd completely gone off him. |
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Ruby2
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« Reply #340 on: 11:25:09, 08-07-2008 » |
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What annoys me is disasterous sampling, but I can't think of an example, which is annoying. And means this isn't much of a point... ...and that treatment of Barber's famous adagio (William Orbit?) struck me as a waste of effort. [/quote] I think 'waste of effort' is a good way to describe that. I didn't find it hugely offensive, just a bit irritating because of how they'd syncopated it a bit to make it sound like a dance track. ...but by the time Mr Emerson got round to Pictures at an Exhibition I'd completely gone off him.
Glad I've not heard that - I won't have people destroying Mussorgsky. Growl. |
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"Two wrongs don't make a right. But three rights do make a left." - Rohan Candappa
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HtoHe
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« Reply #341 on: 11:39:32, 08-07-2008 » |
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Glad I've not heard that - I won't have people destroying Mussorgsky. Growl. Yeah. That Ravel's got a lot to answer for. He should have stuck to running footwear shops! (The above is a joke, in case anyone was in any doubt. Ravel good, Emerson bad is my opinion. Other opinions are available.) |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #342 on: 11:51:01, 08-07-2008 » |
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Snobbery alert!
Re such things as "the Royal Philharmonic Plays The Music Of Queen": actually that is what the RPO does not do. To extend IRF's comment a few posts ago, what they do is play some of the notes of that music (generally orchestrated in the most crassly functional way possible), leaving out not only the distinctive inflections of Mr Mercury's voice but also ignoring the fact that timbre is one of the most instantly recognisable "parameters" in pop music - since harmonies, melodies and rhythms are necessarily stereotyped and mostly quite simple, much of the individuality of an artist and their recordings resides in the "sound", a trend that you can see already quite highly evolved in the 1950s with the way the young Mr Presley's voice was miked and recorded. This kind of thing gives rise to one of the deepest effects on the way recording technology has affected the way we hear music, it makes us much more sensitive to differences in timbre (and by "us" I mean pretty much anyone who listens to music, of any kind) - and maybe in some cases less sensitive to some other things, but that's another story. If this kind of sensitivity were actually employed by the people who orchestrate rock songs for the RPO we might hear something more interesting, but as things are they keep everything as close as possible to the simpler end of a classical orchestra's core repertoire in order to make the music quick and easy to rehearse. I think such music is a waste of everyone's time and effort (though I expect there's money to be made from it). There's far more than a lifetime's worth of better music to get to know, after all.
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Ruby2
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« Reply #343 on: 11:53:02, 08-07-2008 » |
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Glad I've not heard that - I won't have people destroying Mussorgsky. Growl. Yeah. That Ravel's got a lot to answer for. He should have stuck to running footwear shops! Oh orchestration of piano doesn't count! (God, is that snobbery or what???) |
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"Two wrongs don't make a right. But three rights do make a left." - Rohan Candappa
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martle
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« Reply #344 on: 11:57:00, 08-07-2008 » |
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Ravel good, Emerson bad is my opinion.
For the avoidance of doubt: Good Bad |
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Green. Always green.
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