Ringtonetime
I get real pissy when music is used as a cellphone ringtone. It still jars the hell out of me when a song abruptly sputters out of a tinny cellphone speaker, and the absolute worst is when no-one answers and so it repeatedly loops through the first 5 seconds. Don’t even get me started on ringtones which are actually supposed to be played on an orchestra.
However, after complaining about all that in a somewhat uptight and snobby fashion, if I absolutely HAD to choose a piece of classical music to use as a ringtone I think the first 30 seconds or so of this would be pretty swell:
And that’s because… DUN DUN DUN… it sounds like a freakin’ telephone.
That’s the second movement of Nielsen’s Symphony No. 6
Following the Unheard
My mp3 player listens to music alone. Sometimes, starting it up as I enter the outside, it begins playing a piece which was not what I left it with. There is an obvious explanation for this: it so much enjoys the music I listen to that it conducts private performances, hidden safely within the black headphone cord spaghetti. I’m pretty sure that’s it.
Sometimes this misbehavior results in serendipity. For example: this morning. As usual, I skipped down the gleaming, freshly painted steps of my house, brimming with enthusiasm for the day ahead. As I pranced down our path, the family of bunnies in our yard (the Benjamins) paused their game of jump-rope, just long enough to call out a cheerful “top o’ the morning, mister Smith!”. The widely grinning sun tipped his sunglasses and gave me a thumbs up, before removing an embroidered white handkerchief from his back pocket and wiping the perspiration from his forehead. The milkman whistled Frere Jacques as he clinked and clanked merrily up the cobblestones.
Everything seemed so normal and boring, so average.
Then came the shocker. As I pressed the play button on my mp3 player, unfamiliar music wafted violently into the sides of my head. And it was awesome. I swear to god I didn’t leave it paused there before, it was like, providence, or something.
It’s the Nielsen string quartet no. 2. It’s got that funky not-quite-tonal thing going on, which totally floats my boat, and carries my tote, and tethers my goat. If I listen to it more and really get into it I’ll give you more detailed feedback than fanciful caprine (frickin’ word of the day right there, folks) wordplay.
Pre-X-Mas-Ing
This is a busy and non-bloggy week. I’ve been preoccupied with the end of the semester — and extra importantly — the return of G. from Manhattan. Tomorrow we have the departmental machine-shop party (which is infinitely better than the regular departmental party), and a crapload of snow. Then on Saturday I am sneaking up through the wintery weather into darkest Maine.
I have managed to find a bit of time to listen to music, mostly during the brief jaunts between home and lab. I’ll have tonnes more time over the next week. Here’s what’s been on the menu:
- Nielsen – I’ve been going through one of those rediscovery periods with Nielsen recently, where you listen to all these pieces that once got a lot of headphone time, and wonder why on earth you stopped listening to them. This time around I’ve been back to the last three symphonies, but also added two string quartets. The biggest rediscovery is probably the slow movements from the 4th symphony — I had either not noticed, or totally forgotten, how they have this deliciously slightly-broken Romantic sound. Like the little off-key chirrups in the 2nd movement, and the ominous timpani in the 3rd.
- Mahler – Yep, still working on him! The 9th symphony is working out really well, I’ve listened to the kick-arse 2nd movement infinity more times than I can count, and am starting to properly branch into the other movements. The rather awesome Ben Zander sent me a bunch of CDs this week (with his performances of the 1st, 5th and 9th) all of which also include a CD with him discussing the pieces. I am looking forward to listening to those while lounging around the living room in Maine.
- CPE Bach – The 5th symphony (sinfonia, whatever) totally rocks.
Back from Toronto, with 2 new CDs
Well, Toronto was lots of fun even if I consistently and often felt pangs of I-should-be-in-the-lab type guilt. It also takes a lot longer to get across the border than I remember previously, and the QEW (I’ll refer to it as the Queen-E next time, thanks ever so much wikipedia) was completely, utterly, jam-packed up full of Canadians in their cars on Friday evening. I forget what gridlock is like, living out here in the middle of nowhere.
Lying in wait for me upon my return were two previously ordered CDs – neither of which I have had much of a chance to listen to yet. I have:
Which completes my set of Nielsen symphonies (plus other opus goodies). After listening to everything through approximately once, my first impressions are that these symphonies sound a little more traditional – and more romantic – then the last three. In places some of it almost sounded like Tchaikovsky. I’ll probably completely change my mind after a bit more listening, though.
Nielsen Out-Schnittkeing Schnittke
As part of my exciting foray into the compositional world of Nielsen (who is sneaking his way progressively further up my list of favorites every day) I’ve been listening a lot to his symphony No. 6
This is the kind of thing Schnittke does (taken from the second movement of his viola concerto
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And here is the section of Nielsen’s 6th symphony:
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The Nielsen is even more surprising, in a way, because of the (comparably) reasonably normal tonality preceding the outbursts. It really jumps out at you. With Schnittke you’re always three-quarters expecting (Get it? It’s like half-expecting, but more so) something like that to happen. The Nielsen is one of the most sonically violent passages I know of from that time period – it was written in 1924/1925. I really like it. I love pieces which play off tonal order, versus disorder.