Does anyone here listen to classical music?

[billygoverton]

Ludivico Einaudi

Writes some of the most uninspired, dreary, cliched music it has ever been my misfortune to listen to. His fame is a crime when there are so many other great contemporary composers out there. And he studied under Berio; such a waste.

what a shame. he does lack some of the expression my favorites have, but he's quite inventive and minimalist in a way that's completely separate from minimalism as a movement. He plays a bit mechanically, but your words are harsh.

 

[Febel]

I doubt I could actually name any composers or tracks in general but I'm a big fan and have several gigs worth of modern and classic stuff on my ipod right now.

 

[RJ Dalton]

I'm a big fan of Mozart. I also like Bach and Beethoven. I listen to a lot of classical music when I'm writing. It's good mood music.

 

[j.alex]

To be honest I've never been big on Beethoven though. Too... aggressive for my tastes.

How about this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PakU0Tyot5M&feature=related? Sure, it has its passionate moments, but the opening is beautiful and could hardly be less agressive.

 

[Dan Steele]

My Favorites

In the hall of the mountaing king - grieg
Flight of the valkayre - wagner
1812 overture - tchaiakovsky
O fortuna - carl orff
la gazza ladra - giochinno rossini
william tell overture - giochinno rossini
Infernal gallop - offenbach

 

[remnant_phoenix]

I don't really listen to much music from the classical period, but I love modern orchestral music, particularly taken from movies and video games I love.

Favorite composers: John Williams, James Horner, Hans Zimmer, Nobou Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda

 

[j.alex]

what a shame. he does lack some of the expression my favorites have, but he's quite inventive and minimalist in a way that's completely separate from minimalism as a movement. He plays a bit mechanically, but your words are harsh.

Inventive is the very last word I would use to describe him. I read an interesting thread on another forum a while back on him, here it is http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=834560, which might be worth looking through if you have time. If not, the most important points were made in this post:

When I listen to Einaudi all I hear are the barest clichés (eg. 'ritornare' employing an augmented fourth suspended about IV [or presumably VI since this is minor]), with the buzzing fifths in the background all the time like Schubert's organ grinder (but without any of the complex irony in Schubert). Then the figures starts with all those 9ths in... I feel like all development has been evacuated, and all attempt to really explore how something might /feel/ has been replaced by automatic devices that have been well tried and tested for producing 'feeling' -- but deployed almost automatically. If you see what I mean... This is what leaves me so blank. There is also something really bleak about Einaudi's total lack of modualtion or deviation from a diatonic scale, which is the kind of tonal landscape you get at times in Ravel and Debussy, and also in Froberger / earlier contrapunctal composers, and which Bach summons occasionally in Die Kunst -- and it can be genuinely haunting there. But in Einaudi rather than greating a kind of meditative or peaceful stasis it creates just a void.

If people can't tell cliché and artless simplicity from thoughtful simplicity, if they can't tell automated 'emotive' responses to subtle and nuanced responses, this suggests to me that their emotive perception is somehow impaired. It's like crying at a Hollywood happyending: you've been taken in. It's one thing for music/films to be merely entertaining, but if they dictate your capactities for interpreting yoru experience, and in this case we're talking about emotive and empathetic capacities, it worries me that we might as a culture be losing the ability to genuinely feel anything or empathize with anybody. Einaudi's music is inhuman.

 

[GartarkMusik]

Yes I do my friend. Yes I do. Wagner, Beethoven, and Mozart are among my many favorites.

 

[j.alex]

Wagner

About time he was mentioned. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGmUHepwVE8 is one of my favourite overtures ever, along with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOEAgrBgWvo.

 

[MostlyHarmless]

Chopin is and always will be my favorite composer and pianist. There's a reason he's called the Poet of the Piano.

 

[GartarkMusik]

Wagner

About time he was mentioned. [youtube]MGmUHepwVE8[/youtube]

He's damn brilliant, but some people tell me that he can be an acquired taste, which I don't get. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxPLU-jWjL8 I just direct them to this and watch their jaws drop. XD

 

[AlAaraaf74]

Chopin is and always will be my favorite composer and pianist. There's a reason he's called the Poet of the Piano.

Exhibit A:

 

[TiefBlau]

I've played cello since I was nine, and continue to do so in college, but I have to say that I only really ever like pieces that I've played before.

 

[j.alex]

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:


The ballades are arguably the best things he ever wrote, and this is the best of them. Exquisite music indeed.

 

[Dasrufken]

As a smartass I feel obliged to say that I do quite fancy classical music.

http://youtu.be/u2W1Wi2U9sQ <---- favorite and only piece of classical music that I actually know the name of...

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

snip

Yeah, Tchaikovsky was one of my favorites for a long time, but I kind of fell into the Baroque period and just never got out, I guess.

If not for Smetana, Zelenka would probably still be unknown to modern audiences. At least by and large.

Unless I miss my guess, unless you're hardcore into classical (orchestral) music, Zelenka's still unknown to you. He might be more well-known than I am aware, though.

I'm an orchdork...

I got a chance to perform Zelenka's Miserere in c-minor, was freaking amazing.

Smetana has some great chamber music, and his piano works are awesome.

When I said "you," I meant the universal you, not personally. Obviously, you know what you're talking about. Sorry if I offended you. I didn't mean to at all.


But wow, you got to perform Zelenka? Nice. My few attempts at learning an instrument failed amazingly. Just never cared enough to take it all the way. Sometimes, I wish I'd tried harder.

Oh no offense, I didn't mean to come off as rude. I guess I meant it as more of a joke, which failed spectacularly, fantastically even.

My one and only time, really hard too, which came as a surprise to me. But if I really think about it he was good friends with Bach, and his stuff can be deceptively easy. Choir was super loud, could barely hear my own instrument!

That's a shame though, but at least you can appreciate it, at a different level and experience of course. Not a whole lot of people can say that.

 

[j.alex]

He's damn brilliant, but some people tell me that he can be an acquired taste, which I don't get.

I suppose some of his later stuff (Tristan, Der Ring from Sigfreid Act 3 on etc) isn't to everyone's taste, but works like Tannhauser, Lohengrin and The Flying Dutchman are pretty accessible (despite sometimes dragging a little). The shame is that the later stuff is his best, so people who don't like it are really missing out.

 

[flashgriffin]

I'm a music composition major in university up in the great white north.
Favourite composer: heitor villa-lobos.

the latin american composers are all pretty good and have very unique sounds.
from the european family I really like tchaikovsky, brahms, and modern composers like lutoslawski.

Classical music is my music of choice to listen to. That being said, I'm not snobbish and enjoy listening to all kinds of music (yes even country. I'm looking at you Johnny Cash.)

 

[PuffyMuffin92]

I used to only because i took a band class all through middle and high school. So i've hear, and played, my fair share of classical music. Can't really pin down a favorite though.