A Bunch of Classical Articles
Good god, each time again I type “classical”, the worse it gets. I’m not gonna go all complainy over the lack of satisfactory replacements for the c-word this time, though. It never gets anywhere productive, and no-one knows what the heck I’m chatting about if I try call it something which isn’t…. shudder …classical.
Enough milling around on the keyboard. The point to this little post was that last Friday the Guardian film and arts section did an extra-special issue on classical music. Unfortunately, I’m completely incapable of finding a link to, like, a master index or something similar such. You’ll just have to look at the links at bottom of this article which discusses (and berates) the ubiquitous and insidious (and other GRE words ending in ous) use of classical and classical influenced music in films. It’s mostly amusing, and lessly just a tad pretentious, but the most important thing is the writer dislikes Rachmaninoff as much as I do, so gets about 20 thumbs up.
A sampling from the section where he describes in films certain pieces appear :
Anything by Antonio Vivaldi
The stuffed shirts are preening, the plutocrats are beaming, the gentry are celebrating, the society matrons are congratulating themselves on yet another job well done. High time for Adam Sandler to fart into somebody’s face, doncha think?
October 10th, 2007 at 8:01 am
Don’t think one cannot appreciate Shostakovich’s 4th with Rachmaninoff’s 2nd at the same time (ok, Schnittke is too much for me).
And don’t get me started on Vivaldi: he’s great!
The article is funny, but rather than be ironic to the fact how music is (over)used in certain film-moments, I got the feeling that he “hates” this music.
October 10th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Hi Zoltan,
Yeah, I got a similar kind of vibe from the piece - it has a bit of a cold, aloof sort of air - but like you said, it’s also pretty funny.
As for Rachmaninov… I just don’t get him, or the other late romantics. But props to you if you can appreciate both Rach 2 and Shosty 4