Classical Convert

Symphony in C++

Every now and then I can’t keep my classical music and science nerd parts apart.

Today was one of those days.

I present: A Symphony in C++:

key get_secondary_key(key home_key){
    if (home_key.minor == TRUE){
        secondary_key=relative_major(home_key);
    }else{
        secondary_key=home_key+5;
    }
}
 
void sonata_form(key home_key,tempo base_tempo){
    //Calculate secondary key
    secondary_key=get_secondary_key(home_key);
 
    //First get people in the mood
    intro.play(home_key,base_tempo--);
 
    //start exposition, introduce the two main themes
    theme_1.play(home_key);
    transition.play(home_key,secondary_key);
    theme_2.play(secondary_key);
    codetta.play();
 
    //development, mix the themes up
    for(int i=0;i<development_length;i++){
        combine_themes(theme_1,theme_2,key=rand()).play()
    }
 
    //Recapitulation: repeat the themes but in the home key
    theme_1.play(home_key);
    transition.play(home_key,home_key);
    theme_2.play(home_key);
 
    //Finish up
    if(composer == "beethoven"){
        coda.length_in_min=10
    }else{
        coda.length_in_min=1
    }
    coda.play();
}

Want to learn more about classical music but without the code? Go to getintoclassical.com.

Eugh, I know the feeling…

via Reddit. Anyone know where it originally comes from?

Choose Your Own Damn Mahler Adventure

Do you love Mahler? Do you want to marry him and have his babies? Well it’s a bit late for that, but it’s not too late to participate in Deutsche Grammophon and Decca’s latest foray into the classical music social media scene. They’ve done a bang-up job arranging this one.

The idea is that they are putting together a new Mahler boxset. “But Ben! Those are a dime a dozen — well maybe a grand a dozen, but you can definitely buy 12″  I can hear you verbosely shouting at me through the internet. Well yes, but the difference here is that every symphony in the set is from a different conductor and orchestra, and it’s the voting public who get to decide which ones go in the set. “But Ben! I don’t own every single boxset, how will I compare renditions without shelling out thousands of dollars?” comes your next, sensibly thrifty proclamation.

Well that’s the best bit: you can stream — for free! — what appears to be their entire Mahler catalog, in order to confirm your decision.

So go get your Gustav on.

The audience roar their approval

A Chamber Full of Beethoven

This morning, as I sat nursing a cup of coffee and procrastinating starting work,  a sudden Beethoven-related thought appeared: are there arrangements of his symphonies for string quartet? The answer is: sort of.

Theses ones aren’t for quartet, but quintet. I discovered these via this thread, which contains a wealth of information about chamber arrangements of Beethoven’s works.

It turns out that in the days before CDs and MP3s and 8-tracks, chamber arrangements were the shit. Apparently, music publishers in the 1800s were limited to selling only a certain number of copies of a hot new symphony. However, they could get around this by publishing versions arranged for smaller groups of instruments instead. This had the added bonus that the public were probably more interested in the chamber arrangements, because they could play them when their friends were over (unless you happened to be friends with a full symphony orchestra).  This resulted in lots of subpar, unauthorized arrangements of famous pieces (and a few good ones, too).

From liner notes reference in the thread above:

… The present recording of two well-known works by Beethoven affords an example of … [a] practice that was once very common: that of transcribing large-scale orchestral works for chamber resources. This was a popular practice during the Classical era, when successful new symphonies or concertos were offered for sale by publishers in all manner of additional arrangements suitable for performance within a domestic setting, not only in the form of piano reductions, but also in transcriptions ranging from duets to septets and even nonets. Most of these arrangements were the work not of the composers themselves but of arrangers who specialized in this task. But in the case of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 2 in D major op. 36 we have an “authentic” arangement that Beethoven himself prepared soon after the first performance of the symphony in 1803. Whereas the majority of these transcriptions were intended on the whole to insure a wider and quicker distribution of the music, the chamber version of the Fourth Piano Concerto in G major op. 58 that was recently rediscovered and reconstructed by Hans-Werner Kuthen seems to have been intended primarily for the private use of Prince Lobowitz, one of Beethoven’s music-loving patrons in whose town mansion the concerto had first been heard in its original orchestral version in March 1807. Beethoven was involved in this transcription too. Although he entrusted a tried-and-tested acquaintance, the court violinist Franz Alexander Possinger, with the task of reducing the orchestral lines to five-part strings (two violins, two violas and cello), he himself reworked the piano part and in the outer movements alone changed more than eighty passages in order to bring it into line with the new sororities, while at the same time considerably increasing the virtuoso demands on the soloist….

Which is describing this CD of chamber arrangements of Beethoven’s piano concerto No. 4 and 2nd Symphony.

Phew. That’s a lot of information.

I;m not sure how much I like the versions in the youtube videos above. The phrasing feels a bit too over-Romanticcy. I do really like the Liszt piano transcriptions, though.

What do you think?