Classical Convert

Music Understanders Report In!

Yes, music understanders. I don’t care if mister high and mighty spellchecker thinks it necessary to shove a wiggly red line under it, it’s a word. Lexographical iniquities aside, here’s the meat of today’s problem: I’m dumb when it comes to music theory. I have no classical training, and barely any professional teaching to speak of. I do have a basic grasp of a bunch of stuff, but that sets a pretty low bar hanging to bang into. I’ll evidence this complaining and not-quite self-loathing with an example. Take these two sections in Mahler 6, juxtaposed here sequentially (filled with long words tonight we are) one from the exposition, and one from later on:

This is one of my favorite bits in the first movement, the unexpected change in that descending sequence is ridiculously satisfying. So what’s going on here? My not terribly educated guess is the second version modulates to some related major key (such as C-major) instead of dropping all in A-minor. At least, I assume it’s in A-minor since that’s the tonic of the symphony and it’s the first theme.

Sometimes I really wish I had had a bunch of music lessons.

Tags: classical music, keys, mahler, theory

Leaves

After a dainty little daisy of a month, due to low credit card spending, this one is a sunflower, a whale; a really heavy thing. This is totally and utterly to do with the expense added a few hours ago of a trip back to the UK, to visit family, friends and anyone else who might manage to insert themselves into my clustered itinerary. This time g is coming too, for fun, frolics and, errr, visiting (f and v basically have the same phonemic sound, so despite appearances that’s squinty alliteration). Scarily, it’s about 5 weeks distant from t equals right now, right this second.

It’s been ages since I was in London last, really. I can’t remember all the essentials of what to do. We’re also shoving off to Holland for a few days, but that’s a little less overwhelming. maybe. Until I realistically start thinking about it.

ANYWAY… something musical, something musical… what’s been happening in my all-encompassing little world of classical music today? Well, more Mahler, really. I keep forgetting to move the Gielen version of the 6th symphony onto my MP3 player, so I’m stuck with the more uptempo but less intense Bernstein version. Not that it’s bad or anything, but the slower pacing of the former fits my taste better.

Well horror of horrors, there I am innocently strolling into lab an hour after the appropriate time… and I almost find myself enjoying that romantic theme in the first movement. Almost. Of all my previous classical experiences, the getting into Mahler’s 6th business is most reminiscent of the same process for Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3. Both sounded far too Romanticy on initial listens, and both subtly slid themselves under my skin when I wasn’t really looking.

But, BEDTIME! I have another 9:00 meeting with my supervisor tomorrow morning, even though we spoke for two hours in the corridor this morning. She’s vocally insatiable.

Hot Monday Linkage

Tooooooo tired to type properly. It might be MLK day, but as a lowly grad student, that doesn’t exist in terms of not working. My weekend was filled with hockey games, and sake bombs, and Delta Gamma singing songs about what they would rather do than fight. To negatively cap all the fun stuff off with, today is the start of the new semester, and with utmost dismay and misery I am yet again forced to do a class at 08:40 in the morning.

However, between all of the happenings and hijinx, I managed to bookmark a couple of quality, music-based links which I shall humbly lay at your feet and/or floor. Firstly, there is Ravinia U featuring a very nicely put together introductory guide to classical music. Secondly, there is musictheory.net, which has a bunch of flash based tutorials on basic musical theory, perfect for ignorati such as myself.

PS, The Mahler is better and better.

More On Mahler

Last time in the fresh saga of me converting into a Mahler fan, everybody seemed exceptionally pleased I was going for it — that post has the greatest number of comments of any I have written so far! Having all those nice comments has definitely inspired me to keep up at it.

The piece I have chosen for my plunge into the darkest depths of Gustav is his symphony no. 6, the “Tragic” (after a suggestion, I have also flirted with No. 9, but only very briefly). This bad-boy is long. The first movement is over twenty minutes, the middle two about fifteen, and the last almost thirty. Eeek. So far I’ve probably listened to it all the way though twice, and listened to the first two movements about five or six times.

The first movement starts off with an aggressive, percussive, depressive march, this is definitely my kind of thing:

I love how the brass rudely drops off at the end.

But I get sidetracked by the romanticness of the second theme:

I have a hard time with the lushness of the romantics, my temperament is more acclimatized to the mechanical 20th century, and this kind of stuff grits my teeth. Can’t help it, sorry. I’m hoping that if I keep listening it’ll become more enjoyable, which’d be great as it would also open up certain other late 19th century avenues. Anyway, for now it’s not enough to stop me. Incidentally, I switched to a performance by Gielen instead of Bernstein after one of the previous commentors suggested that the latter plays up the romantic aspects, and I do like this version better.

Listening to this reminds me very much of how it felt when I first started with to classical music. It’s overwhelming. Small sections make sense: I can feel the themes mirrored all over the place, but there are huge glaciers of notes in between the in-place paragraphs, the ones that work with my head. Skeletal connections are shining below the surface, but the metaphorical water is making my eyes sting.

One thing I really like are the very quiet sections with pizzicato strings and wobbly tonality:

Actually there are lots of bits I like, far too many to cut out samples for each. Hopefully they will all seem far more connected after some more listening, instead of lying isolated, as they are now. There is a long way to go yet!

Pre-Monday Mahler

While down South in the wild tundra of South Carolina, drinking barrel after bottle of booze, I discovered that my great Aunt is a huge classical music fan. In fact, the room I was staying in (which was dubbed Cinema 1 due to the presence of all the audiovisual type gadgetry, and furnishings for intake of their output) included amongst its eaves and soffits the entire DG-branded Ring cycle on VHS. Euggh VHS. Had it been on DVD I could have cunningly ripped it to my laptop, instead it’ll have to wait to be Netflixed.

The more stealable, cultural, classical materials were the collection of Mahler symphonies conducted by Bernstein. These bad boys. Apparently, everyone thinks they are fantastic recordings of the symphonies. I nabbed the 5th and 6th (based on recommendations from aforementioned great Aunt Laura, and Alex Ross)

Mahler is someone who I have wanted to get into for ages, mostly because Shostakovich is supposed to be sort of his heir. The problem I have had with his music up to this point is its Romantic tendencies, it’s always sounded a bit too sweeping, too rich. I haven’t really given it a fair chance though, to be honest, haven’t tried to let itself get all up in my head via repeat listens despite the difficulties. Tragically ignoring my own listening advice. That’s in the process of changing, with this recent theft.
The sixth seems to be more intriguing than anything else of his I’ve tried so far, the marchy beginning certainly kicks arse. Plus there’s a big hammer lurking in there somewhere. It’s also really cool how the start of the scherzo mirrors the start of the first movement. As you can probably tell, I haven’t had much time to absorb it yet. I’ll let you know how it goes.