# This work has these qualities and has these effects on me...



## Guest (Feb 21, 2014)

Prompted by some guy, how about taking him up on his suggestion*?

Name your work and offer some thoughts - technical or non-technical - about its qualities and how it affects you.

[edit]"observation" that it might be "an interesting thing to try".


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Blandine Verlet plays BWV 870. She makes the music in the prelude sound nastily physical, like someone panting with excitement. Dirty Bach. I don't like it, it made me think of sweat and spunk.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I can't say I enjoy that gushing Bach performance either.^ 


My first thought about some guy's suggestion was that in some ways we are already doing it in the current listening thread. Although there is an awful lot to wade through, many posters express how they react to the music, with little or no ranking. But it could be less graphic intensive to have a thread specifically geared toward that. I'll need to give it some thought.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Ives Concord Piano Sonata.
Mix 65% dissonance with 35% nostalgic Yankee hymns.
Stir for 42 minutes and somehow it comes out profoundly beautiful.
Affects me emotionally like no other piece.
I can't begin to imagine what masterpieces Ives would have created if he didn't waste time converting whole life policies to term.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

_I_ use extreme caution when approaching any of _some guy_'s suggestions. If you think your defenses are strong enough... I hope you are right.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2014)

Make an observation, and suddenly everyone will start accusing you of making suggestions.

I have made suggestions in the past, it is true. And my last observation could certainly lead to a suggestion or two.

And, to take up Ukko's observation, I would suggest that everyone use extreme caution at any of my suggestions, too, and at any intersection as well, busy or not. People who drive cars are maniacs!! (Yes, I'm writing this from a train.)

But I digress. I remember the first time I heard Prokofiev's _Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution,_ which should really be quite gagsome but which is actually charming and delightful. Be fair, bandoneons? I'm in. And that gorgeous, yearning chorus on the word "Philosophy." Why is that so magical? It should really be silly and goofy. Anyway, so I'm listening to this piece for the first time, right?, and really digging it (which is how people used to talk about things that were really dope) and suddenly there's this bit that I've heard before. But I can't identify it. It's by Prokofiev, one of his many self-borrowings, but I could not think where I'd heard it before.

In desperation, I turned to the program notes, something I had given up doing when I was ten, frustrated that the notes I was reading did not match with the notes I was hearing. And so it was this time as well. I wanted some information about what I was hearing, in which other piece Prokofiev had used this vigorous and distinctive tune. Hah. What I got was some highly colored impressionistic mumbo jumbo on how this section so exactly depicts a battle. Of course, and the program notes pointed this out as well, this section is a textbook example of the sonata-allegro form. So this archetypal sonata-allegro is also a depiction of a particular conflict in a particular revolution, eh? Curious. That means--as I growled to myself--that any sonata-allegro could be described as depicting this particular conflict.

Alas. And perhaps alack as well. So the sonata-allegro bit was all very well--at least it was about the music. But still nothing about what that music was, where Prokofiev had used it before. So I went on a quest. I listened to every piece of his that I thought might include this music. Nothing. It's always fun to listen to music by Prokofiev, but still. I was on a quest. And this particular grail proved to be as elusive as that other one. You know. The one in the Monty Python film. And my quest didn't even turn up a grail-like beacon not to mention eight score young blondes and brunettes, all between sixteen and nineteen-and-a-half... bathing, dressing, undressing, knitting exciting underwear.

And no other piece by Prokofiev with this tune in it.

I found it finally, after I'd given up my quest and gone into a monastery. It's the _Ode to the End of War,_ a not very well known piece that's also a real stunner.

You're welcome.:angel:


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

OK, you wrote that on a train... it still ain't the Gettysburg Address.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2014)

some guy said:


> suddenly there's this bit that I've heard before. But I can't identify it. It's by Prokofiev, one of his many self-borrowings, but I could not think where I'd heard it before.


I'll go listen to the piece you write about. In the meantime, I'll observe that even in my limited experience of Prokofiev, I find he nicks his own stuff all the time. The 5th symphony that I only recently discovered and raved about - the 2nd mvmt reminds me quite a bit of his 1st - 4th mvmt.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

And that's why someguy is on a train (in Europe) going from one experimental musical festival to another, in another country, while we are in our underwear (in Vermont) watching re-runs of Gilligan's Island on cable (in HD), eating Cheetohs and gulping Sunny-D.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2014)

Ukko, I rather doubt that Mr. Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope in a train, either. Maybe a rough draft. Dunno. He was a better (vertical) writer than I am.

million, unfortunately, I was writing that between Martinez and Richmond in California's bay area. And the last experimental festival I attended was in May of 2013.

Still, it could happen again. And I hope it does. Sooner rather than later. Those festivals are more fun than... than...

...than watching reruns of Gilligan's Island in your underwear (in Tennesse, sipping Jack Daniels). 

(Also at these festivals, it's usually possible to sip Jack Daniels, too, for a coupla euros. Underwear optional.)

MacLeod, give Eugene Onegin a listen some time. That was the piece Prokofiev nicked from the most frequently.

Berlioz was another guy who nicked his own stuff all the time. You'd think that would be just lame, but when those guys do it, it's magical.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> while we are in our underwear (in Vermont) watching re-runs of Gilligan's Island on cable (in HD), eating Cheetohs and gulping Sunny-D.


We are? That's odd...I could have sworn my wife and I just had fish and chips having got back from the flix to see The Monuments Men...


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> We are? That's odd...I could have sworn my wife and I just had fish and chips having got back from the flix to see The Monuments Men...


The Vermont climate can have that effect on the brain.


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## bharbeke (Mar 4, 2013)

I recently listened to Haydn's Piano Sonata H 31. It had a lot of Haydn playfulness, but it also had some darkness churning in its middle movement. At some points, the combination of melody and rhythm made me want to move my body along with the music, an effect that I like.


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