# Music/ Composers with Passion...?



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I'm not using Passion in its sense of the Passion or Suffering of Christ but instead with its meaning of 'powerful, barely controllable emotion'.

It's a very fashionable commodity: just about everything done by any famous person is done 'with passion', as are the hobbies pursued by the less famous among us. And okay, I admit, I sometimes talk about my 'passion' for the violin. 

The expression is tedious, and makes one wonder if it's always a good thing to be passionate. Wouldn't a batch of scones turn out better if made *without* passion?

Whether a composer or a piece of music has 'passion' is a very subjective judgement. For me, I think 'passion' in music would include the element of 'sincerity' - that the music is written from the heart & that when I hear it, I feel I'm in touch with the heart of that composer, even if he's been dead for hundreds of years.

For myself, I like the quality - but if a piece of music has 'passion', does that mean that its appeal to the intellect is less subtle?
Is there too much splurging of emotions these days, a hangover from the Romantic Movement?

What do you think? Is 'passion' in music impossible to define, hard to detect, unnecessary, over-indulgent, or a valuable quality? Which music was written with passion - as far as you're concerned. Which composer for you writes with passion?

I am interested in what you think, whatever your point of view; and thanks in advance for any replies. :tiphat:


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Fresh from my Vivaldi concert at Norwich Cathedral last night, I will say that Vivaldi for me is a composer with 'passion' - his music is always full of life and fire, or piercing beauty, and although my listening experience is woefully limited, I have never heard any music by Vivaldi which I've disliked. I always end up being carried away. 

Vivat Vivaldi! :tiphat:


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Ingélou said:


> if a piece of music has 'passion', does that mean that its appeal to the intellect is less subtle?
> Is there too much splurging of emotions these days, a hangover from the Romantic Movement?


I think the taste for passion vs. intellectualism is also a byproduct of the listener's age as much as it is the age we're living in. There are days when I feel about 16 and I want the Earth to shake and the mountains tremble at the musical histrionics that engage me. Other days I feel more my physical age and I think, "Okay, settle down over there. Let's not be unseemly."

A balance must be met between the heart and the mind, and when they work together the greatest art takes place for me.

My current favorite passionate intellectual music is movement 1 from Beethoven's String Quartet No. 4. It rocks out in places! And it's kind of early in Beethoven's output. He was a headbanger almost from the very beginning.

To complicate matters with classical music we also have the passion of the performance. Could passionate performers make a masterpiece of "Itsy-Bitsy Spider?"


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Weston said:


> To complicated matters with classical music we also have the passion of the performance. Could passionate performers make a masterpiece of "Itsy-Bitsy Spider?"


Well if they can do it for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (K. 265/300e) .....

A lot of great music has tremendous feeling behind it, either in composition or in the music itself. Even a gentle Nocturne can be played with passion, spirit and enthusiasm.

When we think of passionate music, we tend to think of the "rock anthems" - Oh Fortuna, Ride of the Valkyries. much of Carmen even Prokofiev's Montague and Capulet dance. However there is a lot of other music with equal depth of emotion but in a more contained way - for example either Byrd or Bull's variations on Walsingham. There is also music where the intellectual depth is translated into passion in performance - Gould's Godlberg variations for example.

All too often we hear of superb technicians who are soulless. The enjoyment of music's passion is a combination of the enthusiasm of the performer and the skill of the composer - when these two meet we have passion. I wonder if it says something that all the non-obvious examples I've given have been variation forms?


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Good post music without passion is a sad thing and one of the reasons I like Varese so much, that guy was so committed to his music and his own style that's what impresses me so much in listening to his music


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## JamieHoldham (May 13, 2016)

In my simple opinion passion is not a criteria for making great music; it is a tool which comes or goes to different people to give them greater will and enthusiasm to create whatever profession they have chosen, as I have chose to compose music, and I can contest I certaintly have great passion for it, without bragging I think this will help me to succeed to make me a greater composer overall.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Somebody said, art is passion recalled in tranquility. Or words to that effect. Does anybody realty think Beethoven composed "like some wild poet," hair going every which direction and the pages flying from his desk in a blizzard?

Even Beethoven said, "An artist must be able to assume many humors."


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

It seems that many of the great composers combined a compulsive work ethic with both passion and then later the coolness to go back and take a second look. The people who knew Prokofiev well agree on his obsession with working every day on his composition; he had hobbies and other interests, but always was mentally if not physically grinding away at composing. He carried a notebook at all times and while traveling by train or streetcar, would be scribbling bits of themes into it. While he doesn't strike one as a particularly passionate artist in the la Boheme tradition, he had clearly a passion for work. And sometimes there is an inner joy that leaps out of some of his works. I feel this in Bach also; actually most all of them display some amount of passion, now and again. The key to greatness is likely that going back with a cooler mind and taking that second look.


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## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

I would say Beethoven composed with a passion, to be determined to carry on even though he lost his hearing!!!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Beethoven certainly was passionate about composing, which is not to say he composed in a passion. And like many of us, his life was driven somewhat by economic necessity. He was after all a professional composer, and his other saleable skill, concert pianism, became impossible late in his second period.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Somebody said, art is passion recalled in tranquility. Or words to that effect. Does anybody realty think Beethoven composed "like some wild poet," hair going every which direction and the pages flying from his desk in a blizzard?
> 
> Even Beethoven said, "An artist must be able to assume many humors."


You might be thinking of Wordsworth: "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity."

You are so right, though, that the process of composition, while it may originate in passion, has to involve a certain amount of coolness - in the editing, in the patient copying out, in the decision to scrap or rearrange.

So in a sense when I take 'passion' from a work, am I being conned? It reminds me a little of George Burns: 'Sincerity - if you can fake that, you've got it made!'

Are there 'tricks' that make us think a work passionate, such as amazing dynamics, speed, certain cadences - and yet I cling to the illusion that there can be some communication from the heart of the composer to the heart of the listener. 
It's a cheering view of the world.


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