# Revelations



## Freischutz (Mar 6, 2014)

Hello everyone,

I thought I'd make a first post about why I joined the forum and also why I chose this name, then ask for your own stories if you have any!

Like many classical music lovers (but unlike just as many others), I have generally avoided opera simply because it's a form I never fell for. Well, that was until Weber just this week. By chance, someone I know was asked to listen to the famous Wolf's Glen scene and - having never listened to Weber before just like me - then enthusiastically suggested that I do the same, so we listened together following the score (we chose Carlos Kleiber's recording).

So many thoughts came to mind as I was scrutinising his marvellous orchestration and dramatic skills - not least of which was the stunned question, "this was written by a man who died the year _before_ Beethoven?!" - but my main impression was one of revelation because, for reasons unknown to me, before last week I felt that I had a solid conception of who Weber was and of the style of his music, and every aspect of that conception was shattered, and my image of the man was replaced in total by this new experience.

It came at a good time because I have simultaneously been appreciating Berlioz's orchestral music for the first time and while I do feel a greater affinity for the more conservative schools of the 19th century, looking at how people like Berlioz and Weber wrote really makes you realise how diverse the styles of the time were even though we often talk monolithically of Romanticism as an all-encompassing character of the period.

So I wonder if anything like this has ever happened to you: have you ever thought that you had a fairly good understanding of what a composer was all about only to have that completely overhauled after becoming more familiar with their music?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Yeah. I always thought Berlioz was an okay composer being familiar with the Symphonie Fantastique and Harold in Italy. Not quite my cup of tea, but tolerable in the hpowders chateau.
Then a few years ago I heard Les Troyens for the first time and it was an epiphany. All of a sudden I "got" Berlioz!
Now after much familiarity with this opera, I recognize Berlioz as one of the truly great composers.


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## Whistler Fred (Feb 6, 2014)

For me, it was George Gershwin. In my callow youth, I had dismissed Gershwin as a "pop" composer who shouldn't be even mentioned in the same breath as Bartok, Webern, Hindemith, and the other "real" composers of the 20th Century. I then heard his American in Paris and had to concede that it was really pretty good stuff for a Tin Pan Alley dude. Since then I've grown to enjoy his symphonic music but didn't pay much attention to his piano works and songs.

Until I found a recording of Joan Morris and William Bolcom performing his music. It was electrifying. The piano works were brilliant and idiomatic (Gershwin was a master pianist and it shows in his arrangements). And the songs - so full of genuine sentiment and a bit of world weariness not unleavened with vitality. It made me appreciate even more his Rhapsodies and other music and made my a Gershwin fan for life.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I had that recording once. I believe it was on Nonesuch? Irresistible!


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Welcome to TC.

Yes - Max Reger. I believed all the usual negativity about late-Romantic stodginess and clinging onto old-fashioned methods and it completely clouded my judgement. Now I enjoy his work very much and can appreciate what he was doing within the parameters he set himself. Who knows, he might have changed tack and become a great neo-classicist had he lived after 1916 - he was more than capable of doing so had he wished to.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

This will date me, but as a precocious, classical music loving 13-year old, who thought I at least had heard about nearly everyone, whether or not I knew any of his music, I had never even heard the name Mahler. (This was early 1960s.) A friend had just come back from a Boston record store with a cheap Columbia demo disc of various short pieces conducted by Bruno Walter (because it had the Egmont Overture, which we both liked). We were playing chess (were both terrible at it), listening to the record, when suddenly something came on of a sort I had never heard before. Our ears perked up. When it ended we played it again, and again. The Label just said "Mahler" (who?) "Symphony no. 1, Scherzo." Immediately went to what was then the classical collector's bible -- the Schwann Catalogue -- and discovered that this Mahler guy was mainly represented by a bunch of symphonies, that all seemed to require two discs, and there weren't very many recordings of any of them (!). Of course, the rest is history.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Freischutz said:


> have you ever thought that you had a fairly good understanding of what a composer was all about only to have that completely overhauled after becoming more familiar with their music?


I don't tend to think I have a good understanding now until I have a good understanding. And that's fine, I'll enjoy whatever I enjoy.

edit: I'll refine this by saying within classical music and with composers who have a certain amount of popularity.

I don't remember when I had a classical revelation recently, but that's probably as much because I haven't really concentrated on a composer, I tend towards scattered listening. Even so I certainly don't dismiss some well considered composers offhand even if their work in some cases hasn't appealed much yet.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

For the OP, Beethoven on Der Freischütz and Weber: "The little man, otherwise so gentle -- I never would have credited him with such a thing. Now Weber must write operas in earnest, one after the other, without caring too much for refinement! Kaspar, the monster, looms up like a house; wherever the devil sticks in his claw we feel it."


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## Whistler Fred (Feb 6, 2014)

hpowders said:


> I had that recording once. I believe it was on Nonesuch? Irresistible!


Yes, it was Nonesuch. I actually found it at a 2nd hand music store. Hopefully it's still available, because it's a classic!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Yes. I enjoyed it. Probably had it on a Nonesuch LP.


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## Oskaar (Mar 17, 2011)

Freischutz said:


> So I wonder if anything like this has ever happened to you: have you ever thought that you had a fairly good understanding of what a composer was all about only to have that completely overhauled after becoming more familiar with their music?


Absolutely! I have one obsticle though, that may surprise people, and its kind of a holy grale for many: Beethovens symphonies! With some exeptions maby when I am in exactly THAT mood, I find them dull, depressive, absolutely overrated and in fact annoying! But one day maybe I will brake the code and warship them, like so many do. But I dont intensively listen to them to brake that code, I rather avoid them.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

oskaar said:


> Absolutely! I have one obsticle though, that may surprise people, and its kind of a holy grale for many: Beethovens symphonies! With some exeptions maby when I am in exactly THAT mood, I find them dull, depressive, absolutely overrated and in fact annoying! But one day maybe I will brake the code and warship them, like so many do. But I dont intensively listen to them to brake that code, I rather avoid them.


No crime committed. We are all different. Whatever music floats your boat.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Of course I've always been omniscient but something like this happened to someone I know with an entire genre - jazz. About fifteen years ago this special someone (in most ways he's a nice guy and I wouldn't want to slander or libel or most of all to disillusion him) said jazz was nice background music. A couple of people who knew rather more about most things than my friend did responded with gentle incredulity, and my friend thought, "Well, maybe someday I'll pay more attention and see whether they actually do know something about this that I don't." 

And now my friend loves jazz very much, just like I do.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

hpowders said:


> Yeah. I always thought Berlioz was an okay composer being familiar with the Symphonie Fantastique and Harold in Italy. Not quite my cup of tea, but tolerable in the hpowders chateau.
> Then a few years ago I heard Les Troyens for the first time and it was an epiphany. All of a sudden I "got" Berlioz!
> Now after much familiarity with this opera, I recognize Berlioz as one of the truly great composers.


Maybe I should follow your lead. I'm only familiar with the Symphonie and the Requiem, and don't get what all the fuss is about with Berlioz. Perhaps I'll grow to understand his work more some day.

Back when I first heard Liszt, I thought he was just a shallow saloon pianist who sacrificed musicality for crowd-pleasing entertainment pieces. But then I heard the piano sonata, Vallee d'Obermann, Dante and Faust Symphonies, and his late piano works, and I realized how much of a genius he really is. Even some of the Hungarian Rhapsodies have their profound moments. And he was a great lyricist.


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