Le Nozze di Figaro (Mozart) <---- Get this
Prelude de l'Apres midi d'un Faune (Debussy)
Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini)
Requiem (Verdi)
Clarinet Concerto (Mozart)
Bassoon Concerto (Mozart)
Piano Concerto: "Elvira Madigan" (Mozart)
Pelleas et Melisande (Debussy)
Triple Concerto for Piano, Cello and Violin (Beethoven)
La Damnation de Faust (Berlioz)
La Boheme (Puccini)
Falstaff (Verdi)
Der Rosenkavalier (Richard Strauss)
Four Last Songs (Richard Strauss)
Kindertotenlieder (Mahler)
That'll do for starters. I'll try and not go on at great length. I am living and breathing music these days.
Fugue for organ in G minor ("Little Fugue") - Bach (Like Argh said, probaby the best classical song of all time)
Ave Maria - Schubert
Rhapsody in Blue - Gershwin (dunno if purists consider this classical and not jazz but i like it)
Anything from Beethoven
Vltava(Moldau) - Smetana
Joined: Apr 15, 2003
Posts: 105
Location: Whats left of Florida
Post subject:
Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2003 10:00 PM
Classical Grainger - Colon
1812 Overture (Full 16 minutes!)
Appalachian Spring - Aaron Copeland
Moonlight Sonata (3rd Movement) - Beethoven
Anything from "The Right Stuff" - Bill Conti
Claire de Lune - Debussy
Any of the Olympic themes - John Williams (Powerful Stuff)
Finlandia - Sibelius
William Tell Overture (Full 12 minutes!)
Requiem - Mozart
The Magical Flute Overture - Mozart
Folk Dances - Shostakovich
My all time favorite works:
The Planets - Gustav Holst (Some powerful shit)
Like Lotus said, there's tons more... this is just what I was able to think of offhand. =P
NPR RULES!! NPR RULES!! NPR RULES!!
I'll have to disagree with Abes and Arghificious on the subject of Baroque. ^_^
If you're after a version of The Planets, be sure to pick up Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (Canadian, yes yes). One of the more likely recordings that you find is Adrian Boult and the LSO which is positively geriatric by comparison!
There are some nice overture selections above, mainly the more popular ones (no problem with that; popular usually means quality in classical) - I highly advise listening to the rest of the work too, not just the overture! It is usually the tip of a rather exquisite iceberg, in the case of Rossini and Mozart, as you have listed above.
For example, The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote) is one of the best ways that you can spend two hours on your own, containing some of the finest music ever created and some unfathomably hard singing pieces. You might want to buy the Klemperer recording on EMI, which is considered to be the benchmark version by most. The character Sarastro is from this opera, too!
Edit: I just noticed that the "perfect partner" recording on that Amazon page is my favourite recording of Le nozze di Figaro! Buy it! It's the single best creation of the entire works of mankind, in my humble onion!
Baroque: just say no. Or no-O-o-O-O-o-o, as you would probably have to say to a twiddly, ornamental Baroque fan. ^_^
Toodlepip,
The Queen of the Night
(Sarastro fans)
P.s. Peileii: which is your favourite planet from Holst? I bet it's Mars. -_- John Williams utterly lifted whole sections of this piece in order to "compose" the Star Wars theme!
Mine favourite is Jupiter! There is a rather famous (and patriotic) English poem set to its theme. It is also the music to the last Rugby world cup. Hehe.
Joined: Apr 15, 2003
Posts: 105
Location: Whats left of Florida
Post subject:
Posted: Sun Nov 16, 2003 01:49 PM
Jupiter the Bringer of Jollity is definately my favorite, followed closely by Uranus the Magician. Mars is ok, but it feels like it wants to lead to something that just isn't there at the end. The CD that I have was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and well done I might add (They also included a version of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Star Wars"). The first time I heard cuts from The Planets was while watching "The Right Stuff"... played while John Glenn was making his flight (goosebumps, baby).
As for The Marriage of Figaro, I ended up downloading it last night (ahem, "legally")... Though, I would like to get the entire works soonish.
I also downloaded Little Fugue... didn't like it =x
I'm not too keen on buying music online unfortunately... I'd much rather buy a CD at the music store if it's available, however, Classical selections are usually very limited.
I also forgot to mention, I am very moved by the music of Riverdance (don't laugh).. Since seeing the show (twice!), I've been very interested in traditional Irish music.
Joined: Apr 16, 2003
Posts: 59
Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL
Post subject:
Posted: Sun Nov 16, 2003 04:48 PM
I've never been a real Classical fan(not because I dislike it, but because I just never really listened to it), but upon reading this thread, I decided to download a few of the listed songs. Some really good stuff. Thanks guys, I think I'm hooked.
Classical music is very hard to get in any meaningful way from peer-to-peer programs, of Kazaa's kind, I think. You tend to be able to find, unsurprisingly, what most people have stored on their computers. This is fine if you're after the latest CD by a contemporary band. There's only one recording of contemporary albums, and lots of people have a copy of it. Finding that last Marilyn Manson album isn't too difficult!
Classical music is a bit different. If you're just looking for the overture to William Tell (Guillarme Tell, properly!), or you want a quick Bach movement,you'll be able to find some sort of version out there. There will be a short piece, taken from a larger and usually more wonderful work, that has become popular and can be found throughout the peer-to-peer networks. This is a great way to get introduced.
If you want to hear more, then congratulations: you have entered the realm of the CD-buying public! If you get interested enough, try Amazon.com, or something similar.
Buying CDs from on-line companies is a way of getting the benchmark, world-famous recordings without paying the inflated price that you might see in your High Street shop. For example, the UK branch of Amazon sells the very best recordings for around 60% of the cost in a UK shop. I'm sure it is the same the world over, whichever Amazon-style business you prefer.
The great thing about buying the CDs is that you get the real music. If I were to construct a tortured analogy, the single track that you downloaded and liked on Kazaa could be equated with, say, a tasty snack. It's appealing, you won't turn down another of similar quality, and it's nice at the time.
If you buy a benchmark-recording CD, containing the entire piece, that might be likened to eating the full four-course meal lovingly prepared by the finest chef in the world! Once you've tried the real thing, you don't go back to the snacks - nice though the snacks were at the time, and all the better that they introduced you to the world of good food. ^_^
On the CD, you get the familiar short piece that you liked from Kazaa, and you also get the rest of the recording, and some historical notes and lyrics (libretto). What can be better than taking the little snippet that you enjoyed from Kazaa and finding out that it is but a single part of a massively wonderous whole?!
How do you find the benchmark recordings? Have a little read! Amazon.com has a series of great reviews. Find a record label that you trust, and that produces music which appeals to your taste. I like EMI ("Greatest Recordings of the Century") and Deutsche Grammophon. There are tons of other labels - I have found those two to contain the majority of important recordings, though. They have been using the world's best conductors and orchestras for over half a century.
The thing with classical music is that, oftentimes, the single best recording of a piece of music can be recorded a long time ago. This is a world in which the music is so good that it has lasted centuries. There are many, many recordings of most works, all varying in quality and character. Critical opinion, over the course of the decades, has usually settled on one or two recordings for each piece - you can find those by reading Amazon reviews, or Classical Net, or a hundred other sources.
What it comes down to is finding something that is beautiful. I like techno, I like alt. rock, I like bluegrass (heh), I like jazz... but nothing is as moving, or as important, or as purely, perfectly beautiful as some of the classical music that awaits you out there.
Downloading the odd track here and there from Kazaa is the first step along a path that will lead you to some of the most genuinely and sincerely soul-shatteringly astounding music that you shall ever have the honour of hearing. If you are looking for beauty, you know where to start looking. ^_^
Toodlepip,
Me.
_________________ A Small Mind is a Tidy Mind
Last edited by Lotusfly Stewnicely on Sun Nov 16, 2003 06:48 PM; edited 2 time in total
As for The Marriage of Figaro, I ended up downloading it last night (ahem, "legally")... Though, I would like to get the entire works soonish.
First of all, excuse me for singling your reply out! I have no problem with downloading classical music: the nature of the genre is that downloading is only ever an introduction anyway, and you have to buy CDs to get the real thing. ^_^
The track that you downloaded was probably the overture. It's exciting, racy, a bit of fun... but it's just the very start of the opera. It's what plays when the audience are just settling into their seats, looking at the curtain and waiting for it to be raised. It's an attention-grabber! It's a lovely piece of music, for sure. However... it's only the introduction!
Wait until you hear the entire thing - it usually gets crammed into two CDs and sold in a small boxed set with the lyrics (libretto), as do most opera. Listening to the overture alone would be akin to watching Star Wars and turning it off when Darth Vader sets foot onto the rebel spaceship right at the start. ^_^
The entire opera is the single funniest, most beautiful, most humane work of art ever produced by a person, in my eyes. It makes you laugh, it makes you laugh even harder, and then it makes you fall in love and all sorts of other things!
Do you remember the film The Shawshank Redemption? It's a great film; if you haven't seen it, you must have been under a rock for the past few years and urgently need to get a copy!
Halfway through, the lead character, Andy Dufresne, locks himself in the prison warden's office and finds an old vinyl LP version of... Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro). He smiles, puts it onto the record-player, and turns the prison P.A. system on so that the music gets played to everyone in the compound.
He (quite sensibly) selects Canzonetta Sull'aria and Morgan Freeman's voiceover says, while the most beautiful music ever created plays to the in-mates, and they all stand dumb-founded:
"I have no idea to this day what
them two Italian ladies were
singin' about.
Truth is, I don't
want to know. Some things are best
left unsaid. I like to think they
were singin' about something so
beautiful it can't be expressed in
words, and makes your heart ache
because of it.
...those voices soared.
Higher and farther than anybody in
a grey place dares to dream.
It was
like some beautiful bird flapped
into our drab little cage and made
these walls dissolve away... and for
the briefest of moments - every
last man at Shawshank felt free."
You'll see what I mean. Maybe you can remember a little bit of it from the film.
You're in for a treat - I envy you, hearing it for the first time!
Joined: Apr 16, 2003
Posts: 676
Location: Southern California
Post subject: Well...
Posted: Sun Nov 16, 2003 08:16 PM
While you are right in many ways about downloading the files off of Kazaa (not even getting into the ethical aspects), I don't have a functional CD player anywhere, even in my car.
Furthermore, one CAN find complete versions of these songs out there. Or atleast, huge sections. My "Ride of the Valkyries" is a 10 minute version. My "Carol of the Bells" is from the philharmonics...
I mean, you're right, one should invest in these CDs, for more than one reason. But the truth of the matter is, those CDs would be more useful to me as coasters than classical music!
Okay okay, I guess I could play them on my computer, but that would necessitate actually taking effort to change them when over, rather than having 5 hours of music randomly, continually playing, in an endless loop of musical inspiration and delight...
MmmMmmm...
~Jason
p.s. I'd rather go see stuff like "The Marriage of Figaro" performed live!
p.p.s. Did you know that Figaro is in FF6?! It's great!
Joined: Apr 15, 2003
Posts: 105
Location: Whats left of Florida
Post subject:
Posted: Sun Nov 16, 2003 09:09 PM
The shawshank redemption is one of my favorite movies, (I actually cried the first time I saw it!).
So yea, I found this $10 Amazon.com gift certificate that I had... Think I'm gonna have to cave in and buy the works~
Becky, I'm curious of your musical background... It sounds very in-depth and I'm curious as to how you were introduced to it/grew up with it.
As for me, I've been involved with music almost all my life. I started singing when I was 3, and stopped when I was a teenager. In middle school (a.k.a Junior High) I started playing Trombone, and in High School, I started playing French Horn (Mellophone when I was marching).
I played Trombone in regular band and jazz bands, and French Horn in high school orchestra as well as some youth orchestras (Including all-state) and in a church orchestra for a time. I played a little mellophone and trombone at basketball games when I was in college. Unfortunately, I haven't really been able to play much recently, so I've been relying on performances to get my fixes =P.
Post subject: Re: Well...
Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2003 04:03 AM
Mornin'! (tm)
Naeron wrote:
Furthermore, one CAN find complete versions of these songs out there. Or atleast, huge sections. My "Ride of the Valkyries" is a 10 minute version. My "Carol of the Bells" is from the philharmonics...
Ride of the Valkyries is pretty great, I agree. To me, it's Oddball from Kelly's Heroes driving his tank while playing this out of a speaker. Hehe.
However, this is a sort of case in point. You say that you found the complete version: the 10-ish minute track that you found is a small excerpt! The entire piece is from Die Walküre (The Valkyries), which is a three-hour long story of one of the Old Gods' daughters who falls in love with a mortal, and defies the will of Wotan (or Odin - the Big Kahuna).
The valkyries are armour-clad warrior-maidens who transport the souls of dead warriors from Earth to Wotan's citadel in the afterlife: Valhalla. He has instructed the valkyries (his daughters) to collect the souls of dead warriors to populate his citadel for the final battle.
Now that single three-hour opera (Die Walküre) is one of four opera that make up a huge Tolkienesque story called Der Ring des Nibelungen! I use the word "Tolkienesque" deliberately, because Wagner's story (created over a century before Tolkien sat down and considered Golum, Gandalf, Hobbits and Sauron) is the obvious source of Tolkien's ideas.
The story tells of Wotan (Gandalf's) struggle with a ring of such immense power that it allows its wearer to control the world via its magicks. However, it is also cursed by Alberecht (Golum), and whoever owns the ring is doomed. The ring has to return to its original resting place... but the forces of evil want it for themselves!
Sound familiar? The similarities go on and on. You sit there thinking "wait a minute...!"
Imagine Lord of the Rings set to incredibly powerful music (Ride of the Valkyries being but a tiny part of one of four opera that constitute it). This is the original and, for me, way better than Tolkien. It's like graduating from Lord-of-the-Rings-lite to the real thing when you discover Wagner. ^_^
There's a great old Bugs Bunny cartoon, called What's Opera, Doc?! - I bet some can remember it: Elmer Fudd is dressed as a warrior (Siegfried), charging up a huge staircase to free the beautiful maiden asleep on a plinth at the top (Brunhilde). In the cartoon, that blonde maiden turns out to be Bugs. Heh. It's from the opera immediately after that containing the valkyries: Siegfried.
I guess this is a long way of saying that, yes, the tracks on Kazaa are great. However, they're all just introductions - Ride of the Valkyries is a great example.
Naeron wrote:
...the truth of the matter is, those CDs would be more useful to me as coasters than classical music!
I guess I could play them on my computer, but that would necessitate actually taking effort to change them when over, rather than having 5 hours of music randomly, continually playing, in an endless loop of musical inspiration and delight...
I use my computer to play all my music, too. The thing to do is just hit the "Copy CD" button in Windows Media Player 9.0 after inserting the disk. It copies it to "My Music" in .wmv format. This saves your original CDs getting scratched and lets you listen to music without CD juggling, without loss of quality (192 Kbps = lossless audio compression from standard CD).
Buying the music on CD gives you the nice feeling that you're being a good girl, but the primary reason you're doing it is to get the entire work, rather than little 10-minute snippets.
Try and find the entirety of Die Walküre on Kazaa, let alone the entire series of four opera which make up Der Ring des Nibelungen!
Naeron wrote:
I'd rather go see stuff like "The Marriage of Figaro" performed live!
I agree, the real thing is even better. However, how often do you see it performed? I keep my eyes open for it all the time, and live in a city jammed with constant opera performances, and we get it once every two years or so! Even then, when you do go, you want to be intimately familiar with the plot and characters so that it means more to you when you do eventually see it performed in the flesh!
Naeron wrote:
Did you know that Figaro is in FF6?! It's great!
I don't know what this means, but I am sure that it is good! It looks computerish. ^_~
I would point you to the original plays by the French writer Beaumarchais if you are looking for something to read: he wrote the trilogy of Figaro stories which form the basis for Rossini and Mozarts opera (both unrelated and enjoyable without knowledge of the other).
Toodlepip,
Me
_________________ A Small Mind is a Tidy Mind
Last edited by Lotusfly Stewnicely on Mon Nov 17, 2003 07:25 AM; edited 1 times in total
The shawshank redemption is one of my favorite movies, (I actually cried the first time I saw it!).
One amazing part of that film is how good it is in comparison to the book. I have lost count of the number of times that a book has been turned into a film and disappointed me. That the conversion requires certain bits and pieces to be cut out is understandable but, more often than not, there is something very definitely missing in the whole feel of a film after translation from a (good) book.
The Shawshank Redemption is one of the few exceptions to the rule, I think! The book is wonderful, and is something that I like to read every now and again (being one quarter of the Different Seasons collection by Stephen King, of course).
One of the only other films that differed from this rule, for me, was Kubrick's version of The Shining. The original book is great - very scary. There was a "King approved" version (made for television?), which adhered very closely to the book but just made for awful filming. It was mediocre, and the tension of the original book was lost. Then, we have Kubrick's version: the character of Jack Torrence from the book was just written for Jack Nicholson. You read the book, and from every sentence you can see Jack's leering face, and see his arched eyebrows!
Peileii wrote:
Becky, I'm curious of your musical background... It sounds very in-depth and I'm curious as to how you were introduced to it/grew up with it.
It's something that I just picked up from hearing the odd thing here and there, and loving what I heard. My father used to play a lot of heavy Russian/Eastern-European music when I was little: Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, some Elgar (British!). That made me aware of the genre, but I didn't really like the music that he played: it was serious, masculine and not for me. I left for university with a love of techno and alt. rock and being largely unaware of how much beauty there was to be found in classical.
Like some of those tracks mentioned by people earlier, I heard the obvious ones and liked what I heard. However, you don't really get exposed to a huge quantity of the real music in day-to-day life; largely, it's the more popular pieces lifted and put into advertisements and films.
My background of choral singing brought me into contact with a special religious subset of music, but certainly nothing of the kind that I later discovered.
I think the turning point came when someone played me Prelude de l'Apres Midi d'Un Faune (Debussy). It made me think: "Wow, I have never heard anything like this before in the entirety of my life!" From there, I borrowed a Debussy CD from a friend (Preludes Book 1), and played it to death. That was a moment of real discovery! It was very exciting. It was as if someone had given me a key to a whole world I hadn't previously considered!
I read a bit around the subject, bought some more Debussy, and then it just snowballed into learning more, buying more, reading more and becoming totally immersed, over the course of the last ten years.
Everyone has their own treasure waiting out there for them. Everyone's personality fits some music perfectly, whether it's classical or some other genre.
I think that the moment of realisation for me came when I discovered that: holy cake, Mozart really writes what's on the very inside of my heart. It's light-hearted and humurous, and very good fun - it's also profound, and shows enormous wisdom about love and people's relationships. I had always been aware that Mozart was "a classic" composer, but hadn't really spent any time with his work.
It's as if someone tapped into the very core of your being, set it to music, and played it back to you.
"Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always know in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams."
...Kahlil Gibran
Lots of people seek beauty, and look for beautiful things - I think I have been lucky in that I have found things that I find truly, inexpressibly beautiful. I hope that everyone else succeeds in finding something that really moves them too! Life is all about feeling alive. ^_^
Peileii wrote:
Unfortunately, I haven't really been able to play much recently, so I've been relying on performances to get my fixes =P.
You'll kick yourself when you're 40 and unable to play! Log out of Everquest and go and do something about it! ^_^
Woo, nice choice. I had a (good-natured!) argument with someone recently who was of the opinion that La Boheme had no plot! I played him our Sir Thomas Beecham / Victoria de los Angeles version on EMI and now he has been forced to agree with me! Muahahaha!
Have you heard that version? It's the benchmark for that opera, and has won more awards than I've had hot dinners!
A quick quote from Amazon:
In the pantheon of recorded opera, Beecham's Boheme stands out eternally. The magic of Beecham's conducting, and the beautiful pairing of de los Angeles and Bjoerling has simply not been equaled in any other recorded version.
Definitely worth a look, if you haven't. The first time that de los Angeles' Mimi says "Scusi?", numerous critics have said that their hearts melted in their breasts. ^_^
Joined: Apr 16, 2003
Posts: 676
Location: Southern California
Post subject:
Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2003 06:54 AM
Ugh, is all I have to say!
I wish I had the money to even pay for downloading, let alone buying CDs.
And the time to listen to it all!
But, the sun is out, and I am young, and it is time to frolick!
Or something like that? *grins*
I am just glad that I have some incredible musical experiences to discover, whenever I want to. Same with literature and art; there are almost endless amounts to appreciate out there! This whole semester has been an infusion of culture! Ah, do I feel alive! (*She* is partially to blame for that, too.)
~JD
p.s. I hope this is not the only area of life you are so passionate, Becky! Do keep up the good fight.
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