# Slay your sacred cow!



## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Sometimes here the tendency is maybe to defend our favourite composers against almost any attack, no matter how senseless - or accurate - the blow. But the fact is of course that these men were finite people, incapable of absolute perfection in everything they did. So if you think of the composer you admire to the point of obsession, then what is that sneaky _what-if_ you conceal from the rest of us? The Achilles heel? The wish list? Or the fatal flaw, lapse, or gap in their curriculum vitae?

I like Mozart. You may know this already. But sometimes I wish the rondos at the end of the PC's would be a little less breeze-through and a lot more weighty. Some of them are! But some of them are confection for the Viennese bourgeois, to send them to the bar chirruping. The final movements. I'd wish that for #21 - for instance - he'd brought a more substantial conclusion to the breathless and poignant dialogue between piano and orchestra than a bloke whistling on the way home from the pub. It's good, don't get me wrong: it's just not necessarily as good as the first two movements.

I suppose this comes from his compulsion to earn, his life as a working composer and not a man who felt compelled to pour himself into his art. Without affecting the authenticity of the piece, he could bring it to the fashionable ending, and so retain his place on the shelf, and so compose more, feed his family, and so on. But this something I wish: that's he'd been as bold as he'd been been when he composed #9. I'm sure I'm wrong in this, but I don't listen uncritically, and sometimes there are times I (selfishly) wish for more.

What about your own particular sacred cow? You ever wonder..?


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

I would say Mozart's rondos are only disappointing if you want them to be something they're not. The weight is supposed to be on the first two movements. The finale is a comparatively relaxed taking-leave-of. (This is even still basically true of Beethoven. When people complain that the finales of symphonies 5 and 9 are a bit gauche, it's because _the way we play them, they are_.)

Or rather, part of the problem is even performers want them to be something they're not. The universal convention is to maunder in the first movement, which is supposed to be a curtain-raiser, then try to make up for it by overselling the finale. (As Charles Rosen points out somewhere, when metronome markings are available for works from the Classical period, we today tend to play the opening movements slower and the finales faster.)

Okay, my turn: The celebrated "Contessa, perdono" bit in _The Marriage of Figaro_ is one of the most shamelessly manipulative moments in all of opera. Incredibly moving until you think about it for a second, and then the question is, "Why do I care this much about this petty marital quarrel?" And then the entire ensemble starts singing like they've seen the unveiling of the Holy Grail. And this is just maybe the most egregious example of what's always the worst thing about Mozart as an opera composer: He's at least partly swallowed the Kool-Aid with regard to the most sentimental ideas of the Enlightenment - forgiveness (distinguishable from the Christian kind only because God himself has been expurgated) and humanity ("ein Mensch zu sein").


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Let's face it, the opening to Beethoven's 3rd and 5th Symphonies are both an exercise in amateur hour.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Klassic said:


> Let's face it, the opening to Beethoven's 3rd and 5th Symphonies are both an exercise in amateur hour.


Okay, We get it. You don't like the Eroica. That doesn't mean we can't be friends.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

Bach's concertos are mechanical
Some of Bruckner's and Mahler's symphonies do not need to be as long as they are
Middle era Beethoven is losing its old effects on me


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Klassic said:


> Let's face it, the opening to Beethoven's 3rd and 5th Symphonies are both an exercise in amateur hour.


The difference, of course, is what follows those openings.


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## Guest (Feb 29, 2016)

Stockhausen's _Aus Den Sieben Tagen_ texts are sometimes incongruous with the typical styles he gets out of his own ensemble. For instance, _Setz Die Segel Zur Sonne_'s text clearly hints at something we might expect from Scelsi or Haas, but Karlheinz, Vinko, and friends didn't have the widest interpretive range here.

Cage's chance works that put the most emphasis on chance composition (as opposed to chance performance in the number pieces, etc) - talking here about the Etudes, etc - should have accounted more for fluidity of melody in his selection of chance operations. I have tried to experiment with chance operations that improve this weakness. It is not impossible at all, for the record, but I don't think it was Cage's primary concern.

Ferneyhough should man up and make the appropriate threats until Firecycle Beta and stuff like that sees some official recording by top tier labels like NEOS or KAIROS. Barrett should follow suit with resistance & vision.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

Mendelssohn's Jenny Lind letters. It's as if someone installed a Berlioz OS onto him.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

In Nielsen's most famous Symphony no 4, sometimes I feel the beginning to be choked with too much activity in a way that I can be annoyed with. I understand you can chalk these things up to a sensible intent of the composer, but it is hard for me to find a recording that breaths more. The first movement in general is so extremely forceful, I feel it needs to he massaged carefully in performance so we can feel a bit more fluidity. I have no problems at all with the other three movements, and they almost answer perfectly to it, so maybe it's my problem that I love to revisit solo movements so much.

In general his style is rife with certain motivic material but it is very hard to determine whether he uses it more than say, Brahms or Beethoven would, who also have their components that make up their signature sound. With Martinu, another composer I love, it is more clear to me that he is stretching material out with his 'voice', however ingeniously done and marvelous the voice. Nielsen is somewhere in between that and the uncompromising searching and greater novelty in the very greatest composers.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

I was totally joking about the openings of Beethoven's 3rd and 5th. I thought it would be an obvious statement of ignorance. I was hoping to stir the pot a little.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Klassic said:


> I was totally joking about the openings of Beethoven's 3rd and 5th. I thought it would be an obvious statement of ignorance. I was hoping to stir the pot a little.


Got me.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Music itself makes noise. Sometimes one prefers quietude.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Sometimes I'm listening to Bach and the cycle of 5ths progressions become too obvious, and I'm reminded that his music was not perfect.


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