Classical Convert

Sweet as a nut, mate.

It doesn’t matter how experienced (and pretentious) I get with regards to classical music, this way-overplayed piece will be awesome forever:

When I first started grad school everyone was showing off (fairly discreetly, for a bunch of borderline autistics) just how much stuff they knew, and how clever they were, and how they were gonna become professors. Blah blah blah, took this class, solved these problems, mathematical genius, blah blah. Well, after a couple of weeks of getting assaulted by graduate school, almost everyone did a perfect half-spin, and it became cool to talk about how you would NEVER stay in academia, and how things were way more impossible for you. And of course now, at graduation time, everyone is going on to do post-docs.

Well that’s sort of how I feel about the Nutcracker Suite. It’s the kind of piece which is fine to like when you listen to classical only casually, then you have to not like it for a bit, and finally it’s alright to come back to it again. As long as you give some sort of long-winded explanation proving that you know it’s not considered a masterpiece or anything. Classical musical enthusiasts snooty? Never!

How many pieces did Stravinsky compose?

Someone has asked this question before. I can’t tell if the only answer at that link is ignorant, or just really facetious.

Trivial composer facts

• Haydn had his head stolen for 150 years
• Mozart’s full name was Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart
• Mendelssohn’s symphonies were composed in the order: 1, 2, 5, 4 ,3
• Dvorak’s opus numberings are even more confusing
• Mahler only composed about 20 pieces.

Listening Post

Recently I’ve been listening to Copland and Bocolm, both on a bet that I’d (against my will) enjoy modern American composers. Well that’s not entirely true, since I already enjoy John Adams. Really it was about not liking Copland. Until very recently I stereotyped all of Copland’s music as part of one big circus and/or Western soundtrack. Well it turns out that isn’t true (somewhat expected revelation thanks to this CD). I’m going to write more about this soon, but in the last few days I got sidetracked by accidentally discovering a rather different piece of music:

(That’s Valentina Lisitsa, a “pianist electrifying!” and rising classical superstar, playing the last movement of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” piano sonata, Op. 106)

There is so much Beethoven I don’t know, or don’t understand. This was a piece I had heard mentioned dozens of times (it’s one of the most famous sonatas, and I think one of the more famous Beethoven pieces), but I never really liked the first two movements enough to listen all the way through. I must’ve always skipped to a different sonata after a couple minutes (I have the Claudio Arrau boxset, and Beethoven wrote 32 sonatas, so it’s way easy to skip to one I know I like better like No. 32, or the Appassionata).

But now I am totally in love with the Hammerklavier. Especially the last movement, with the crazy fugue, which conveniently lasts exactly as long as it takes me to walk into lab!

Losing your head

Oh wow. This last year of graduate school is running me into the ground! Weekends have become just like every other day, except I don’t go in until noon.

I have found some time to work on updating all of the “beginners guide” stuff on this site — which is something I’ve been meaning to do for ages. I’m not doing it incrementally though, it’s all gonna change at once. While doing this I’ve discovered all kinds of little tidbits. For example, do you know the one about Haydn’s head? Apparently he was the victim of head-robbery (a dangerous and serious problem often ignored by mainstream news outlets) and didn’t get it back for about 150 years. And now he has two.