# Seventeen Minutes of Pure Ecstasy



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Handel: Concerto a Due Cori No.2. One thing that can be said for Baroque music is its capacity at times, with certain pieces, to induce a state of joyous euphoria that brings tears to one's eyes at the loveliness of it all. This is surely one of them......






Some favorites of others?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Here's another--this time 13 minutes of pure ecstasy: Sibelius: _Pohjola's Daughter_


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Here are roughly 16 minutes of additional ecstasy--Bach says "I can handle Handel easily": Brandenburg #4... The Presto is to die for..


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Strange Magic said:


> Handel: Concerto a Due Cori No.2. One thing that can be said for Baroque music is its capacity at times, with certain pieces, to induce a state of joyous euphoria that brings tears to one's eyes at the loveliness of it all. This is surely one of them......
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There seems to be quite a bit of Baroque music with such a sensibility as this piece by Handel. They just don't make music like they used to anymore. I suspect the Baroque composers just haven't encountered any of that 20th-21st century philosophical _angst_ which colors so much of our current unjoyous uneuphoric music. (_And_ if some Baroque composers _had _encountered the aforementioned "angst", they were wise enough to leave it out of their art.)


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

SONNET CLV said:


> There seems to be quite a bit of Baroque music with such a sensibility as this piece by Handel. They just don't make music like they used to anymore. I suspect the Baroque composers just haven't encountered any of that 20th-21st century philosophical _angst_ which colors so much of our current unjoyous uneuphoric music. (_And_ if some Baroque composers _had _encountered the aforementioned "angst", they were wise enough to leave it out of their art.)


The final movement of Bach's magnificent D-minor keyboard concerto shows more of the same uninhibited joy. I cannot praise this piece enough, nor the performance which combines a beautiful, talented woman with the fantastic music--sight as well as sound bought into play...


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I'll offer this Baroque gem to add to the "ecstacy" links: the Oboe Concerto Op. 9 no. 5 from Albinoni.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

^^^^SONNET CLV: great example! Seeking more modern pieces indicative of great joy, we turn again to Sibelius who offers a joy mixed with a certain triumphalism, of accomplishment, that somewhat varies from the Baroque suggestions. I have this music played before I enter a room: Lemminkainen's Return: :lol:


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Ravel's Bolero. If done right.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

geralmar said:


> Ravel's Bolero. If done right.


I can see your point here but I bring to Bolero a notion, as I indicated in another post, that there is, in its relentless combination of repetition and its swelling volume and fuller orchestration, a suggestion to me of a sort of totalitarianism on the march. Literally on the march. My picture, as I posted before, is of a fully-uniformed mass of Francisco Franco's _Falange_ slow-marching down a wide, empty boulevard under the noonday sun in a completely empty town--we hear them at a distance and slowly coming toward us. Shostakovitch 7th suggests a similar picture of the approach of a relentless fascist advance. Obviously your impression differs, showing again the variability of the human mind. Even though Ravel called the piece "orchestration without music", it remains a deathless masterpiece and very Ravelian indeed.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

geralmar said:


> Ravel's Bolero. If done right.


I want a brickwalled version I can play in the car.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> I can see your point here but I bring to Bolero a notion, as I indicated in another post, that there is, in its relentless combination of repetition and its swelling volume and fuller orchestration, a suggestion to me of a sort of totalitarianism on the march. Literally on the march. My picture, as I posted before, is of a fully-uniformed mass of Francisco Franco's _Falange_ slow-marching down a wide, empty boulevard under the noonday sun in a completely empty town--we hear them at a distance and slowly coming toward us. Shostakovitch 7th suggests a similar picture of the approach of a relentless fascist advance. Obviously your impression differs, showing again the variability of the human mind. Even though Ravel called the piece "orchestration without music", it remains a deathless masterpiece and very Ravelian indeed.


Interesting to associate Bolero with brutalism and Fascism. It is surely more unbridled and ecstatic? Maybe Shostakovich 7 made you think that way? But I am unsure that Shostakovich intended a picture of brutalism per se either as the music seems rather too glib for that. And, after all, the tune is taken from Lehar's Merry Widow. I think Shostakovich was partly mocking or belittling the hated enemy.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Enthusiast said:


> Interesting to associate Bolero with brutalism and Fascism. It is surely more unbridled and ecstatic? Maybe Shostakovich 7 made you think that way? But I am unsure that Shostakovich intended a picture of brutalism per se either as the music seems rather too glib for that. And, after all, the tune is taken from Lehar's Merry Widow. I think Shostakovich was partly mocking or belittling the hated enemy.


We don't know what was going on inside Ravel's sleek head when writing Bolero, but it seems to me that "political/historical" issues may well have been at play both in Bolero and La Valse, with its suggestion of the unraveling of the pre-WW! certainties.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ Yes, that's possible. But perhaps only as a starting point and maybe only in the way that so much of the music of that time did. Certainly, Bolero seems to end in violence!


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Strange Magic said:


> I can see your point here but I bring to Bolero a notion, as I indicated in another post, that there is, in its relentless combination of repetition and its swelling volume and fuller orchestration, a suggestion to me of a sort of totalitarianism on the march. Literally on the march. My picture, as I posted before, is of a fully-uniformed mass of Francisco Franco's _Falange_ slow-marching down a wide, empty boulevard under the noonday sun in a completely empty town--we hear them at a distance and slowly coming toward us. Shostakovitch 7th suggests a similar picture of the approach of a relentless fascist advance. Obviously your impression differs, showing again the variability of the human mind. Even though Ravel called the piece "orchestration without music", it remains a deathless masterpiece and very Ravelian indeed.


I've always envisioned me on my deathbed; but I do tend to over personalize things


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## BRHiler (May 3, 2014)

From the various sources I've read on Bolero, Ravel was seeing if he could compose a piece where the various parts (the melody, the ostinato, etc.) never change. That means the only changes he allowed himself were playing with various orchestral colors and increasing the density of the parts (and volume). He never expected it to be so famous.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

BRHiler said:


> From the various sources I've read on Bolero, Ravel was seeing if he could compose a piece where the various parts (the melody, the ostinato, etc.) never change. That means the only changes he allowed himself were playing with various orchestral colors and increasing the density of the parts (and volume). He never expected it to be so famous.


And he composed it for Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein as a commission. Commissioned works are often quite unique, as if the composer, with money or the promise of it in their pocket, feels somewhat free to try "something a little different". A number of my favorite 20th century works are commissioned pieces.


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## BRHiler (May 3, 2014)

Strange Magic said:


> And he composed it for Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein as a commission. Commissioned works are often quite unique, as if the composer, with money or the promise of it in their pocket, feels somewhat free to try "something a little different". A number of my favorite 20th century works are commissioned pieces.


That is an excellent point. Commissions are the lifeblood of "art" music these days.


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## John O (Jan 16, 2021)

The Adagio (3rd movement) from Beethoven's quartet Op 132


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Enthusiast said:


> Interesting to associate Bolero with brutalism and Fascism. It is surely more unbridled and ecstatic? Maybe Shostakovich 7 made you think that way? But I am unsure that Shostakovich intended a picture of brutalism per se either as the music seems rather too glib for that. And, after all, the tune is taken from Lehar's Merry Widow. I think Shostakovich was partly mocking or belittling the hated enemy.


A common conception of Bolero is less unbridled and more uh, "bridled", in the sense of a melody being "trapped" in an unceasing rhythmic pulse. I think a few ballet stagings of this made the point by having a dancer be in some sort of industrial setting, to contrast the lifting melody with the backdrop of constant, steady rhythm.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

fbjim said:


> A common conception of Bolero is less unbridled and more uh, "bridled", in the sense of a melody being "trapped" in an unceasing rhythmic pulse. I think a few ballet stagings of this made the point by having a dancer be in some sort of industrial setting, to contrast the lifting melody with the backdrop of constant, steady rhythm.


here's my favorite setting of Bolero, from the partially animated film Allegro non Troppo


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## scott.stucky48 (7 mo ago)

Roy Harris. Symphony 3.


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## Pyotr (Feb 26, 2013)

Henryk Wieniawski: Scherzo-Tarantelle


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