Classical Music/Opera.

[Mozared]

*snip*

Well, it's a start, I suppose. I listened to about halfway through in the Beethoven and Mozart symphonies, then I realized they sounded pretty much the same as every other piece of classical music I've ever heard. Tchaikovsky's symphonie took about 5 minutes to get started, so I found myself constantly skipping ahead - while I like a good intro, this generally seems to be one instrument playing a riddle of 5 notes and then silence for dozens of seconds.

Mendelssohn's violin concert was somewhat promising though, actually! The intro seemed to have a bit of a melody that was played upon and I liked that. Just as I thought it was going to get sucky (at the silence) the orchestra played an epic version of what the solist just played and for that part I actually found myself listening to classical music and enjoying it. Then, at around 2 minutes it lost the originality I liked and started to once again sound like every other piece of classical music I've always heard.

I'm not too sure *what* my problem with classical music is, really. I just don't seem to like the standard set-ups like the first 2 movies you posted; where there's simply a standard orchestra that plays... something that doesn't seem to have any 'spine' to me. It feels like the whole part is randomly improvised and while constant melodies can get repetitive, this just feels so restless to me. Like the orchestra hasn't got a clue what it's supposed to do and just starts randomly playing things that don't sound bad together. Hence why I generally do like soundtracks; it's not as boring and repetitive as pop music (verse chorus, verse chorus, a solo then boom) but it at least has one melody to play upon, fall back to or evolve. Something like done here [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHZtUJDdHoM&feature=related], if you will.

And yet, I don't dislike multiple melodies. Take a whiff of this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj7iBKoxIUQ], if you will - specifically from 1:10 to 1:50. Unless I'm being confused again (it's 9 in the morning here and I'm about to head off to bed), this is the song in which 7 different instruments all play a different melody in the 'chorus' while still sounding well together.

 

[Inverse Skies]

Snip

That's interesting that you say that about Mozart's 41st, as one of the reasons that movement is so famous is it consists of a sequence of notes, fugato, which consists of three ascending notes then a slightly descending one (the string section opens with this)

Which is repeated many times throughout the piece, with the final few sections being the different parts of the orchestra overlapping each other with that sequence of notes. The same thing with Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto, the main theme of the orchestra is this sequence of notes;

Which is repeated throughout most of the orchestral sections of that piece. Tchaikovsky I can understand, that doesn't have a central theme, whilst the Mendelssohn piece has that opening sequence which it relies on. Perhaps you might enjoy something like this;

Spoiler: Beethoven Symphony 5

Which has this sequence of notes as a main theme,

Or his 9th,

Spoiler: Beethoven Symphony 9

Or Mozart's 24th which plays on the same continual sequence of notes with both orchestra and piano,

Spoiler: Mozart Piano Concerto 24

 

[JoonaspEST]

Well you got a member who is just a massive classical listener. It's me.

 

[Darktan2112]

Reference section -

Middle Ages: 400-1450
Renaissance: 1450-1600
Baroque: 1600-1750
Classical: 1750-1820
Romantic: 1820-1900

Not to be smug, but the music you refer to covers more than just the classical period.

But forget about that...

Many great things to be said about music before the recent decades, when talent and sophistication began to be sacrificed. The only reason I'm not more interested in earlier periods of music is only because their innovations are long out-dated and no longer possess much wow factor to the ear that's had much exposure to it. Contemporary Jazz is my definition of "music" in the truest sense.