• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Classical Music GAF

Been listening to Beethoven for two weeks now, mainly the early piano sonatas and the early symphonies. Wonderful stuff and I never knew classical music and Beethoven was like, good, you know? Probably because it's nowhere to listen to generally and made out to be boring.

I particularly like the fast stuff, for instance the end of the Piano Sonata 1, 4th Movement.

I've got over the feeling like I'm in a war movie or a psycho and just enjoying the music.

Anyway, reading up a bit on Wikipedia about the sonata, it baffles my mind that one needs to understand the copy-pasted below to get the beauty out of it.

Also, I read online an opera singer saying the beauty in the music lies in comparing the composers against other composers, or their earlier works. But this doesn't make sense: if that was the case then one might as well listen to modern music, like Radiohead, because they changed and improved a lot, and then compare them to Muse or Coldplay. Can't a listener just enjoy the music without understanding the context? Also, despite having some knowledge of music theory and practice, there's no way I could ever listen to Beethoven and "hear" what Wikipedia describes below!

So, I'm just trying to ignore the metacommentary and just listen. Maybe read a book on Beethoven, but that's enough.

Cheers to 3 more months of classical music.

Wikipedia on Piano Sonata 1, 4th Movement:

A transitional passage modulates to the dominant-minor key, where a more lyrical but still agitated theme is presented twice. It is noteworthy that Beethoven chose the dominant-minor key as the secondary key, instead of the more conventional relative major. The exposition closes emphatically on C minor, with iterations of the first subject chordal motif.

The recapitulation reprises the whole exposition nearly identically (apart from very slight changes in dynamics and voicings), but significantly all the material is now re-stated in the tonic key (F minor), as would be expected of any conventional sonata form. The movement ends on a fortissimo eighth-note-triplet descending arpeggio, perhaps to give a symmetrical ending to a sonata that opened with a raising arpeggio.

Edit: I remember an interview with Joe Satriani in front of a bunch of fans, and he says he was miffed that no one spotted on one of his albums that all the songs purposefully started with a raising scale. But he refused to say which album lol. Maybe it's not important to "see" the theory to appreciate the beauty.
 
Last edited:

Makariel

Member
I've spent a lot of time the past week listening to Mendelsohn and Tchaikovsky. I've never listened to the whole of Swan Lake before, what a mistake I've made! If you are in the too large group of music enthusiasts that never listened to Swan Lake, do yourself a favour and track down a recording, it's worth it.
 

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Hooked to these currently:





Would appreciate if anyone finds more similar music to these. :p
 

Makariel

Member
Got married last month, this is the song we picked for our grand entrance:



We also had a lot of Bach, Beethoven, Bizet, Mozart, Mendelsohn, Strauss (Jr. as well as Sr.), Tchaikovsky and Verdi playing all afternoon.
 

Kadayi

Banned


Forever intertwined with British Airways in many peoples minds, but a cracking tune regardless.



Been into this a lot recently. The mischievous quality of it appeals.
 

Kadayi

Banned
The perfect soundtrack for when you've just rolled out of a Brothel into the winter day light and are heading to the steps of Montmartre to Duel a fool .....



MONTMARTRE-PARIS-FRANCEiStock_20075174_LARGEsmaller.jpg
027b1d485271db4239522ec50cf78f6c.jpg
 
Last edited:


A favourite of mine. Listen from 07:19 especially. Can't seem to go back to regular music since "finding" Beethoven in the summer. His Sonatas are perfect. Tool's Fear Inoculum and GY!BE are all I've had on other than Mr. B.

I wish I'd found this when I was a kid (I'm 39 - better late than never!). So Beautiful and healing.
 
Last edited:

RAÏSanÏa

Member
To accompany the journey


Time becomes space here The breath-taking demonstration of the power of masculine virtues, the subtle projection on the female of masculine fears and long-ings, the subliminal theme of the Wandering Jew, the abundance of well-nigh sacred analogies to the Christian religion, the subtle interweaving of the ancient traditions of Buddhism and the Orient, the philosophical dimension of Schopenhauer’s conception of the world, the countless deeply psychological allusions, the courage in creating a virtual snap-shot of the dream theatre of the unconscious, ultimately, the grandiose, inescapable music that strives to possess the soul – all this ensures that Parsifal remains to this day eternally topical and fascinating.
 

AbZeroNow

Neo Member
I admit that I have a soft spot for Erik Satie's music.

In less than two months, George Gershwin's two-piano sheet music for Rhapsody in Blue and also some of the piano sheet music becomes public domain in the US:

Also in the EU and other Life + 70 countries, every composition by Richard Strauss becomes public domain in 2020.
 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
Huh. This thread is relevant to my interests. I play piano and - shockingly enough - I'm actually good. My two favorite piano songs have already been posted - Clair de Lune and Liebestraum No 3. I memorized Clair de Lune earlier this year, and after years of practicing it on-and-off, finally got Liebestraum No. 3 memorized in the last month or so. Would recommend.
 

eot

Banned
Huh. This thread is relevant to my interests. I play piano and - shockingly enough - I'm actually good. My two favorite piano songs have already been posted - Clair de Lune and Liebestraum No 3. I memorized Clair de Lune earlier this year, and after years of practicing it on-and-off, finally got Liebestraum No. 3 memorized in the last month or so. Would recommend.
Liszt is tough, but you struggle with memorizing songs? I'm not a great musician technically, but memorization isn't something I have such a hard time with.
 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
Liszt is tough, but you struggle with memorizing songs? I'm not a great musician technically, but memorization isn't something I have such a hard time with.

Yeah, definitely find memorization to be pretty difficult... which is a little weird, because my memory is crazy good for other stuff. The interesting part, at least to me, is that I find the difficult parts of songs waaaay easier to memorize. Like, for the longest time, I had the middle section of Clair de Lune down perfectly, but had no idea how to even start on the first two pages, despite that they're comparatively a cinch.
 

eot

Banned
Yeah, definitely find memorization to be pretty difficult... which is a little weird, because my memory is crazy good for other stuff. The interesting part, at least to me, is that I find the difficult parts of songs waaaay easier to memorize. Like, for the longest time, I had the middle section of Clair de Lune down perfectly, but had no idea how to even start on the first two pages, despite that they're comparatively a cinch.
Maybe for the difficult parts you have to go more on feeling? Like, if you're playing fast you can't think about every note, it has to kind of play itself
 

ROMhack

Member
Any tips for getting started playing piano? Currently working my way through a few books but maybe y'all got better tips (like, must do's and donuts).
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom