# Make a short snobby review to a classical masterpiece, as if it was in that year!



## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

From the advice of Clavichorder, I start with this here:

"Today I went to watch a ballet called "The Rite Of Spring" by a dreadful short young fellow named Igor Stravinsky. I brought my tickets expecting a delightful sequel to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons but instead I got the sound of a castrated monkey. I am appalled that The Ballet Russes would put their audience through such suffering at the expense of my hard earned cash. I would strongly advise anybody wanting to hear lovely and pleasing REAL music to look elsewhere. Good day" :devil:


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

^Except Vivaldi was almost completely unknown in 1913. His rediscovery got going properly in the 30s and the Four Seasons didn't start to become greatest hits until after WW2.


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

SimonNZ said:


> ^Except Vivaldi was almost completely unknown in 1913. His rediscovery got going properly in the 30s and the Four Seasons didn't start to become greatest hits until after WW2.


You're taking it a little too serious...


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Area 51 thread.:devil:


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

Pugg said:


> Area 51 thread.:devil:


For what???


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## Guest (May 31, 2016)

Requiem by Ligeti

No melody, no counterpoint, no music, no nuthin! What is the point of this atonal nonsense? Maybe it would be OK in some weirdo film soundtrack but that's not going to happen as it's going to disappear without trace. Like the big monolithic slab of noise that it is.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Xenakiboy said:


> For what???


I was suspecting a new bloodbath


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Herr Beethoven, no stranger in Vienna by now, has written a new symphony of inordinate length and great volume. It appears to celebrate Napoleon and disregards that tyrant's attacks on German soil and even directly on this city.

Lasting almost an hour, the lack of intelligible design and pleasing melodies makes it seem much longer. While it certainly has its partisans, they seem moved more by a desire for novelty than for a rewarding music experience. Many in the audience at the latest performance had left by the middle, even though they had paid handsomely for their tickets, which were sold at a premium price. For the rest, the end arrived some time after it would have been welcome.

If Beethoven continues along this path, he will likely estrange those who have enjoyed his music thus far. Both he and the musical public will suffer in consequence.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Doh, I already wrote one last week in a novella of mine, for an imaginary set of composers and compositions...


> I felt it time to pay a visit to Novgorod's resident Music Dilettante's club concert to hear what kinds of things they've been scratching up these days. Turns out it was about the same, if not worse. What made things worse is that a new composer has joined them. This young pianist who deems himself a composer fashioned a concerto that managed to drown the audience in morose and gratuitous violence and then make us deaf all at the same time! Half the concerto was avant-garde gibberish while the other half was clearly a hackneyed impression of Chopin and Liszt. If I could draw conclusions, I would say this piece would have been an outright insult to our venerable pianist composers, if even Liszt manages to hear of it. But even that I doubt, and I suspect that Concerto in particular will never leave Novgorod. I begin to wonder if this group of self-proclaimed "Composers" will ever realize that the only people who enjoy their scratchings are themselves, their mothers and possibly a sympathetic lover who just likes seeing their beloved's shiny face in the limelight...


:tiphat:


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Herr Gustav Mahler, well known to habitués of orchestral music here in Berlin, has performed his new symphony, which he has nicknamed (with some effrontery since he is a Jew) the "Resurrection Symphony." Soprano, alto, and choral voices are used in the last two movements.

Continuing an unfortunate trend in German music, the symphony requires vast resources and lasts an hour and a half. Whose patience will not be tried by the ordeal of sitting though it? As beautiful as some parts are, one's attention is divided among discomforts in the backside, which develop gradually, the need to visit the restroom, and a growing desire for something to eat or drink. I need hardly say that this lessens the pleasure of a performance which, after all, costs handsomely to experience.

One truly hopes for less of this sort of thing. Perhaps we will be fortunate and this symphony, as well as its brethren by Herr Bruckner and others, will pass the way of those gigantic animals that we are now told once walked the earth -- animals unimaginably huge, slow, and ponderous, animals in fact bearing a certain resemblance to this symphony.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Two years ago Comrade Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 was first performed. It was an attempt to remedy certain deficiencies in his musical style that were deemed important enough to be discussed in Pravda. The symphony was a success, although some still had questions about the ideological content of the final movement, which seemed (to them) perhaps more sarcastic than joyous.

Now Comrade S. has written an new symphony, his sixth. The first movement, which comprises two-thirds of the work's half-hour length, is a slow, monochrome, and lugubrious affair, seemingly an exercise in depression and hardly likely to appeal to Soviet workers. The last two movements are both short, noisy, and brash, with no apparent connection to what has gone before. The overwhelming impression is sarcastic nose-thumbing. At whom? I confess the answer isn't obvious, but again, any service here to the Soviet proletariat seems lacking.

Comrade S. has again forgotten the role of a Soviet composer, to bring enjoyable art to the masses in our society, not just to decadent intellectual circles in St. Petersburg and elsewhere. His new symphony seems unlikely to do that. I caution Comrade S. to look once more to his musical attitudes and musical duties, and to try earnestly to reform his outlook. Otherwise, this could end badly.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

^^^ Muddle, not music!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> ^^^ Muddle, not music!


Indeed!

https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/muddle-instead-of-music


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

I'm Felix Mendelssohn and my wife sent the wrong copy of my Italian Symphony to the publishers. I'm gonna scream.

[I'm sure I did a thing wrong]


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Abraham Lincoln said:


> I'm Felix Mendelssohn and my wife sent the wrong copy of my Italian Symphony to the publishers. I'm gonna scream.
> 
> [I'm sure I did a thing wrong]


Do you want to talk about it?


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Snobby isn't always denigrating. I'm waiting for someone to dare to post a snobby positive review!


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Xaltotun said:


> Snobby isn't always denigrating. I'm waiting for someone to dare to post a snobby positive review!


Got that too! Except not for the premiere of music. Just regular snobbishness to do with music already known.



> I enjoyed Maestro Mitin's recent concert with the Novgorod Symphony in a performance of Mozart's 40th Symphony, and Schumann's Second Symphony. What genius writing these composers achieved, what perfectly crafted melodies and harmonies! I'm sorry to say that is not the case with new music these days. Rumors of new music in St. Petersburg have caused contention, this so-called "Free Music" movement. It certainly has plagued our city as well with the incessant promotion of its own uneducated composers. Why can't Russia have good composers? That is the question I've asked for years, but fortunately now we have come to a solution with the founding of the Conservatories in St. Petersburg and Moscow that will surely put our music culture on the straight path. We are seeing those fruits slowly but surely! We the Russian people are not ruffians, nor shall we be defined by our poverty and lack of education. No more! We have this rise of education standards in due credit to the work of committed patrons who know where to put their money in this time of great transition in Russia. Once Russia has embraced true Western education, only then will its Arts flourish. And only then would I ever willingly hear new music...


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

KenOC said:


> Indeed!
> 
> https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/muddle-instead-of-music


Wow I've never read that in its entirety before, thanks!


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

I'm enjoying reading these after starting this thread and its great to have you people joining in. I think I'm going to need to make another review!


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