It seems every generation has their group of musicians that put on a show not with just their songs but their behavior, their clothes, or maybe just their names. Which era do you think was the most bombastic?
Musically, I agree, but as to the stage performance flamboyancy, baroque opera is at least equally, if not even more insane. Maybe opera is cheating, though, given it's nature. If that is the case, the romantic era wins, with it's thousand-man orchestras and jeweled-baton conductors.Soviet Heavy said:The Romantic Era was easily the most flamboyant. Every era of music has been a response to the stuff that has come before. Following the Classical Era's rigidly structured music, composers of the Romantic Era went the complete opposite direction. Their music was dictated less by structure and often more by narrative. With the context of the music and the name of the piece, listeners were able to piece together what was happening in their minds, painting a mental image of the story as the music progressed.
A lot of the time, composers tried to emphasize the ideas and characteristics of the Romantic Era, such as a greater focus on nature, supernatural elements, national identity, or nostalgic portrayals of the past centuries. What resulted was a lot of music that is just all over the place, criticized for lacking in substance or meaning, but following a nonlinear train of progression that adheres to the Composer's own flights of fancy.
Take Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights for example. It starts off incredibly intimidating before making a sharp turn into an almost childlike bridge before diving back into the darkness. His work might be from the 20th Century, but it still retains a number of Romantic elements that follow the sort of organized chaos the movement was known for.
The Baroque guys were just fucking nuts, but on a more personal level. Since the Romantics were trying to counter the Classical guys, they adopted a lot of the Baroque player's madness and fused it with the Classical stuff. It was on a much larger scale then.e033x said:Musically, I agree, but as to the stage performance flamboyancy, baroque opera is at least equally, if not even more insane. Maybe opera is cheating, though, given it's nature. If that is the case, the romantic era wins, with it's thousand-man orchestras and jeweled-baton conductors.Soviet Heavy said:The Romantic Era was easily the most flamboyant. Every era of music has been a response to the stuff that has come before. Following the Classical Era's rigidly structured music, composers of the Romantic Era went the complete opposite direction. Their music was dictated less by structure and often more by narrative. With the context of the music and the name of the piece, listeners were able to piece together what was happening in their minds, painting a mental image of the story as the music progressed.
A lot of the time, composers tried to emphasize the ideas and characteristics of the Romantic Era, such as a greater focus on nature, supernatural elements, national identity, or nostalgic portrayals of the past centuries. What resulted was a lot of music that is just all over the place, criticized for lacking in substance or meaning, but following a nonlinear train of progression that adheres to the Composer's own flights of fancy.
Take Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights for example. It starts off incredibly intimidating before making a sharp turn into an almost childlike bridge before diving back into the darkness. His work might be from the 20th Century, but it still retains a number of Romantic elements that follow the sort of organized chaos the movement was known for.