# The daftest fashion in music



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Taggart, writing on clothing in a new thread today, says "Fashions come and fashions go. Some are stylish, some are just plain daft."

Is the same true of music? Which musical "fashions" do you think are the daftest?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Grand opera. It's just absurd beyond all belief that a genre like that could have flourished for so long with so little real musical value.


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

On the non-classical front I'd say contemporary R & B. Not the old raucous Rhythm & Blues genre as we know it but the shallow, repetitive, innocuous push-button rubbish that has constituted much of the charts for the last 15 years or so.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Which is daftest, which is most stylish?

Bach is, obviously, the most stylish of the best period - the Baroque. In terms of musical fashions I would tend to suggest the fashion that the director or conductor knows best where they produce a swish interpretation accompanied by the raucous buzzing sound of the composer doing an impersonation of a wind turbine in their grave, occasionally followed by the rapid exit of the audience. :tiphat:


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

minimalism. and the extra characters required by the daftest system


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Getting rid of the wigs would be my runaway favourite. It's disgusting actually seeing fellows own hair...


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Highlight the extra characters and select the A for text colour and select white the text in the gap to see how to deal with this.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Kieran said:


> Getting rid of the wigs would be my runaway favourite. It's disgusting actually seeing fellows own hair...


??? But if you get rid of the wigs you would see their hair. (unless they were bald)


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Taggart said:


> ??? But if you get rid of the wigs you would see their hair. (unless they were bald)


Yes, when they got rid of the wigs it was a dangerous and disgusting precedent. Next thing people will be performing in T-shirts and boxer shorts. The fall of the west can be traced back to the day when Franz Liszt (oh, was it he?) flung his powdered wig into the pig trough.

The sooner we all go back to wearing 'em the better...


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Taggart said:


> Bach is, obviously, the most stylish of the best period - the Baroque.


Sorry, it is just impossible that a German Reformationist Lutheran is going to be the most stylish anything -- too dour, too Protestant.

Baroque Stylish, with equal substance to match? Hat's off to Monsieur Jean-Philippe Rameau!


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Wasn't it Rameau of whom a wit said, 'When his piano was closed, there was no-one at home'?

No, Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Lully was the most fashionable of the French Baroque composers - for a while; and then he had the daftest of demises, hélas!


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I've whined about these in other threads, but for me the daftest musical fashion is the obligatory use of woodblocks in 20th century music. Why woodblocks bother me and the even more ubiquitous violins do not, I can't say. They just do.

Nearly as daft is the overuse of appoggiaturas in the classical period. Mozart was especially guilty of this, though all composers do it. It's like they are delaying resolution of a phrase by teasing us with an appoggiatura. I say stop teasing. It's too predictable. C-D-E-F-*F#*---G. Make it stop!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

"Sad Piano Song."

Type that in to the search window on Youtube. 

I'm ashamed to steer people to what is there under that heading, but you did title the OP "Daft Fashions."


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Taggart said:


> I would tend to suggest the fashion that the director or conductor knows best where they produce a swish interpretation accompanied by the raucous buzzing sound of the composer doing an impersonation of a wind turbine in their grave, occasionally followed by the rapid exit of the audience.


Composer John Adams announces a new system to accommodate a rapid audience exit.

http://www.earbox.com/posts/76


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Kieran said:


> Yes, when they got rid of the wigs it was a dangerous and disgusting precedent. Next thing people will be performing in T-shirts and boxer shorts. The fall of the west can be traced back to the day when Franz Liszt (oh, was it he?) flung his powdered wig into the pig trough.
> 
> The sooner we all go back to wearing 'em the better...


Don't think it was him.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> Grand opera. It's just absurd beyond all belief that a genre like that could have flourished for so long with so little real musical value.


I'm being made to have a whole new look at you and my perceptions regarding you.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

One audience fashion I dislike is the obligatory standing ovation. There's a difference between being driven to your feet by the force of the performance and being forced to your feet by an overaccommodating crowd.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Manxfeeder said:


> One audience fashion I dislike is the obligatory standing ovation. There's a difference between being driven to your feet by the force of the performance and being forced to your feet by an overaccommodating crowd.


It's funny, but in Dublin, though we may thoroughly enjoy the show, we rarely stand en masse for the ovation. One or two show-offs raise to their hind legs and roar brava etc, but usually we're cheerful but reticent...


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Kieran said:


> It's funny, but in Dublin, though we may thoroughly enjoy the show, we rarely stand en masse for the ovation. One or two show-offs raise to their hind legs and roar brava etc, but usually we're cheerful but reticent...


Good for you! I think performers know when they've hit or missed, and there are times when I've felt like they were almost insulted at the stand-clappers.


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## DrKilroy (Sep 29, 2012)

I'd love to attend a performance which would deserve standing ovation!

Best regards, Dr


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Tragedy fetishism.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Crudblud said:


> Tragedy fetishism.


Worthy of a separate thread, I think.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

moody said:


> Don't think it was him.


Whoever it was, if it wasn't Liszt, I have a box of wigs and a tub of powder upstairs and I'm ready for fashion to change back again...


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Manxfeeder said:


> Good for you! I think performers know when they've hit or missed, and there are times when I've felt like they were almost insulted at the stand-clappers.


Certainly! Scottish Opera at the Kings wasn't as bad as the Glasgow Empire on a wet Saturday but it could run it close if they weren't any good.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

KenOC said:


> Worthy of a separate thread, I think.


There was one a while back.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Those days have gone in a welter of mediocrity,that has now descended.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

moody said:


> I'm being made to have a whole new look at you and my perceptions regarding you.


I wasn't aware that you had any respect for me before...


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> I wasn't aware that you had any respect for me before...


Well I certainly did.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

moody said:


> Well I certainly did.


Well, when do _you_ think the Meyerbeer revival should begin, then?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> Well, when do _you_ think the Meyerbeer revival should begin, then?


It.s strange that you should say that because I do believe that it has.
There have been fairly recently discussions here about the very point you make.
Opera is a museum piece from the past but I love it more than any type of music.
Your remark is not of great import but remember the tender age of so many members,do give them a chance to grow into it without prejudice.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I hope one day it will come galloping out of the museum again!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

moody said:


> It.s strange that you should say that because I do believe that it has.
> There have been fairly recently discussions here about the very point you make.
> Opera is a museum piece from the past but I love it more than any type of music.
> Your remark is not of great import but remember the tender age of so many members,do give them a chance to grow into it without prejudice.


I love opera just fine, from Monteverdi though the present, but 19th century grand opera (Meyerbeer, Halevy, Auber, etc.) seems dead and buried, at least for the moment, and from what I know of it, I don't mind one bit.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Meyerbeer's "Les Huguenots" and also his "L'Africaine "are well worth seeing. Auber's "Fra Diavolo" is to be seen in Germany reasonably often or was when I was there.But I wouldn't class it as Grand Opera. Halevy sounds fine on available recordings but I haven't seen it.
But let's get it quite straight ,you can like or dislike whatever you wish,though how you can sit through Monteverdi I can't imagine.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Ingenue said:


> I hope one day it will come galloping out of the museum again!


I came galloping out of a museum or mausoleum possibly.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

moody said:


> I came galloping out of a museum or mausoleum possibly.


on a pale horse?


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Weston said:


> Nearly as daft is the overuse of appoggiaturas in the classical period. Mozart was especially guilty of this, though all composers do it. It's like they are delaying resolution of a phrase by teasing us with an appoggiatura. I say stop teasing. It's too predictable. C-D-E-F-*F#*---G. Make it stop!


LOL, I remember having a conversation with a former piano teacher precisely about this matter!. We both hated those appoggiaturas!.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

"CNN Opera" (although I do like Nixon in China).


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

moody said:


> But let's get it quite straight ,you can like or dislike whatever you wish,though how you can sit through Monteverdi I can't imagine.


I will never quite forgive Monteverdi for having more or less invented opera in the first place...


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

deggial said:


> on a pale horse?


You guessed it !


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Sorry, it is just impossible that a German Reformationist Lutheran is going to be the most stylish anything -- too dour, too Protestant.


Jesu *joy* of man's desiring? Bach may have been Lutheran, but was anything but dour. The Lutherans aimed to recreate (as did the Anglicans) the glory of the Catholic liturgy. Bach certainly had at least one run in with people who wanted a more restrained style of liturgy. That is not to disparage the puritans who produced the metrical psalms and the joys of Gaelic psalm singing in the Western Isles. Anyone who can sing psalms to hornpipes can't be _all _bad.

It is a shame to disparage Bach as protestant. We must recognise that protestants and Catholics all worship the same God; they in their way and we in His. :angel:

No, I have no doubt that Bach is the most stylish musician of the best age.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

And don't forget the Scots Protestant sixteenth-century 'nicking' of secular tunes for psalm settings, 'The Gude & Godly Ballatis'. Many of these must be joyful tunes.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

What's really daft for me is the tendency to push the HIP (historically informed performance on period instruments) movement further and further into the late 19th and well into the 20th century . HIP started out with Monteverdi, proceeding to Bach,Handel, Gluck, Mozart,Haydn ,Beethoven etc , then to Schubert,Schumann, Berlioz,Wagner,Mendelssohn, Brahms, and has even gone to Bruckner,Mahler, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky and Debussy .
When will it end ? I'm surpised there was not a HIP Rite of Spring which clained to be using exactly the same kind of instruments of the legendary rioutous 1913 premiere . John Elliot Gardiner has recorded Verdi's Falstaff and Requiem with his period instrument Orchestre Revolutionaire & Romantique . I've heard the Falsatff recording, and I could not really discren any difference in sound between it and th eother Falstaffs by Solti, Karajan, Bernstein, Giulini, Abbadoi, Colin Davis etc. It wasn't "better" in any way than the orchestras on the other ones . 
The Philippe Herrewqeghe Bruckner 4th is pretty good but the orchestra sounds somewhat undernourished compared to the Vienna Philharnonic,Staatskapelle Dresden, Berlin Phil, Chicago symphony etc and doesn't otherwiose sound very different . And do these supposedly "authentic" performances recapture what the performances of the past actually sounded like ? I'm not sure .
Herreweghe has just come out with an HIP Mahler 4th ! which was trashed by David Hurwitz at classicstoday.com . I often find myslef in total disagreement with Hurwitz, but I have the feeling he may be right,and Herreweghe appears to be starting an HIP Mahler cycle .
London's New Queen's Hall orchestra was founded 20- years ago by former EMI record producer John Boyden to give "authentic"" performances of Holst, Vaughan Williams, Brahms, Bruckner Mahler etc, and their website
arrogantly and presumptuously claims that our modern orchestras a re ":wrong" for most of the music of the 20th century . 
What nmext HIP performances of Till Eulenspiegel Don Juan, Ein Heldenleben, and the Alpine symphony of Dicky Strauss ? Sheesh ! Can't the New York Philharmonic, London symphony, Boston symphony ,
Chicago symphony etc play anything anymore ?


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

superhorn said:


> What's really daft for me is the tendency to push the HIP (historically informed performance on period instruments) movement further and further into the late 19th and well into the 20th century . HIP started out with Monteverdi, proceeding to Bach,Handel, Gluck, Mozart,Haydn ,Beethoven etc , then to Schubert,Schumann, Berlioz,Wagner,Mendelssohn, Brahms, and has even gone to Bruckner,Mahler, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky and Debussy .
> When will it end ? I'm surpised there was not a HIP Rite of Spring which clained to be using exactly the same kind of instruments of the legendary rioutous 1913 premiere . John Elliot Gardiner has recorded Verdi's Falstaff and Requiem with his period instrument Orchestre Revolutionaire & Romantique . I've heard the Falsatff recording, and I could not really discren any difference in sound between it and th eother Falstaffs by Solti, Karajan, Bernstein, Giulini, Abbadoi, Colin Davis etc. It wasn't "better" in any way than the orchestras on the other ones .
> The Philippe Herrewqeghe Bruckner 4th is pretty good but the orchestra sounds somewhat undernourished compared to the Vienna Philharnonic,Staatskapelle Dresden, Berlin Phil, Chicago symphony etc and doesn't otherwiose sound very different . And do these supposedly "authentic" performances recapture what the performances of the past actually sounded like ? I'm not sure .
> Herreweghe has just come out with an HIP Mahler 4th ! which was trashed by David Hurwitz at classicstoday.com . I often find myslef in total disagreement with Hurwitz, but I have the feeling he may be right,and Herreweghe appears to be starting an HIP Mahler cycle .
> ...


I agree. I personally think the whole HIP movement is ridiculous anyway.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I'm not opposed to HIP performances per se, and I've heard some which I actually liked a lot . It's not the performances per se which I object to, but the HIP chauvinism and the snootiness of so many HIP musicians who think their performances are so superior to non HIP ones, and turn up their noses at "inauthentic "ones .
My pun for this kind of smarmy HIP snobbism is "Christopher Hogwash ". It's not an attack on Hogwood's musicianship, which is considerable, just HIP snootisness and fatuousness . I've actually nejoyed some of Hogwood's recordings . Some HIP musicians have actually been far more guilty of Christopher Hogwash than Hogwood himself, especially Roger Norrignton .
Christopher Hogwash does not refer to people who are enthusiastic about HIP performances and express admiration for them. There's nothing wrong with that . Its certainly their right .


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Re HIP and post-classical: I find that Gardiner's performances of the Schumann symphonies with the ORR suit my taste very well indeed. Nothing cleans up that Schumann muddiness like reduced forces and a nice energetic approach. These are my go-to recordings (especially the first version of the 4th).


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

I suppose I'm not opposed to it either but, then again, there's not one HIP performance I can name that I actually enjoy. Sorry but when I listen to say Shostakovich's _Symphony No. 10_, I'm not thinking "Boy, you know, I bet this symphony would sound great as a HIP performance." The reality is it wouldn't and it could never beat what has already came before it, but that's just my two cents.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Re HIP and post-classical: I find that Gardiner's performances of the Schumann symphonies with the ORR suit my taste very well indeed. Nothing cleans up that Schumann muddiness like reduced forces and a nice energetic approach. These are my go-to recordings (especially the first version of the 4th).


I have yet hear anyone beat George Szell's set with the Cleveland Orchestra. Gardiner is such an overrated conductor IMHO.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

While we're on this subject, I never understood Roger Norrington's need to play say Bruckner with no vibrato. I mean what's the point of no vibrato in a Romantic symphony? Somebody needs to make Norrington (aka Borington) come to his senses.


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## apricissimus (May 15, 2013)

Neo Romanza said:


> I suppose I'm not opposed to it either but, then again, there's not one HIP performance I can name that I actually enjoy. Sorry but when I listen to say Shostakovich's _Symphony No. 10_, I'm not thinking "Boy, you know, I bet this symphony would sound great as a HIP performance." The reality is it wouldn't and it could never beat what has already came before it, but that's just my two cents.


Have things really changed that much in just 60 years to make an HIP performance of Shostakovich even meaningful? (Don't really know, just asking. But I wouldn't have thought there'd be much difference.)


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

For music before 1850 or so, there's a real reason to use HIP. The modern orchestra upsets the balances of the originals, with its enlarged string section and different tone colors. That said, other than the fascinating Sinfonie Fantastique by Gardiner and his ORR, I really don't care for Romantic-era HIP at all, and that goes exponentially more for anything after 1850. In fact, I usually listen to Classical-era music with modern instruments, just in scaled-down groups rather than huge orchestras, so the only place where I really prefer HIP all the way is with Baroque music and earlier, where it becomes almost necessary (although Bach on piano is a great thing).


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