!!Classical!! Thread

new TME classical music only group?

currently enthralled by nono's fragmente-stille. helps bridge my mental gap between,say, lachenmann and more tonal pieces, aesthetically if not necessarily temporally. i have his 'complete works for solo tape' too, but a lot of early electronics (except for maybe robert ashley's) feel imposing to me - which just means it deserves a relisten.

tonal/tonal refers to how it sounds in relation to that old German-dominated theory of "classical" music from the Renaissance to the turn of the 20th century. What do you mean "emphasize" the tonal properties of the instruments?

It seems really difficult to conceive of a distinct continuum from "notes" to "noise", doesn't it? Especially since composers will indulge in both within the space of a piece (like the prologue from Grisey's "Les Espaces Acoustiques", where it degrades from a searching monodic line into pure noise). I just don't really see a dichotomy of terms here that could be applied to describe a composer's musical milieu (except of course in historical cases where our concept of "musical noise" didn't exist or the composers just weren't aware of it).

IOW, no, there isn't a term for it. I guess you could say "notey" as opposed to "noisy".

From a performer/musician perspective, such (when originally designed) unintended uses of instruments would fall under the broad category of extended techniques. So treating a piano as a wooden percussion instrument like in the above video would fall into that category, but so would multiphonics on a wind instrument or altissimo on a woodwind. Both of those last two examples include pitch or tonal attributes, which leads to the grey area surrounding "noise" and "note."

I've always felt that, from the performer's perspective and particularly in free improvisation, there are moments certain pitches are purposely chosen, in relation what else is occurring or just occurred, and other times when any pitch will do. For the latter I'm imagining an instance when one wants to play a high or low sound, and an arbitrary note is chosen to achieve this effect. Think of someone screaming or moaning in a piece of music. What is at issue here is tonal versus atonal. Is the composer/performer thinking in terms of tonality or atonality? As for the percussive piano example, percussion exists in both tonal and atonal music so it's a bit of a confounding example.

looks great (and new albion is a wonderful label) but the download link's not working : (

mattimeus said:
looks great (and new albion is a wonderful label) but the download link's not working : (

it's working for me. what exactly seems wrong?

woo, worked for me now. megaupload was just redirecting to a file error page earlier. maybe it was just processing, or something.

Interesting pieces for a novice to get hooked by. It's usually colourful orchestral pieces, something a bit more accessible.

Anyhow, maybe:

Strauss - Metamorphosen
Dallapiccola - Piccola Musica Notturna
Ives - Central Park in the Dark

rm508 said:
Interesting pieces for a novice to get hooked by. It's usually colourful orchestral pieces, something a bit more accessible.

Anyhow, maybe:

Strauss - Metamorphosen
Dallapiccola - Piccola Musica Notturna
Ives - Central Park in the Dark

Schoenberg's music was more unsettling than the pieces you recommended (although Dallapiccola's Piccola Musica Notturna had those elements mixed with traditional orchestra.) Strauss' Metamorphosen is a wonderful piece of music and it connects on a deeper level than Górecki's Symphony No. 3 (in my opinion, both works deal with the aftermath of WW.) Pardon my classical vocabulary :)

sharkeyanti said:
any information worth knowing?

It's - surprise, surprise - long and boring. But seriously it's Tragic, so expect some good old golden pathos build up. And yes, 5th Brandenburg is brilliant live.

That's not how I say it.

just go full hick with Pur Nur-Gurd