A Few Musical Aphorisms...

[njurkowski]

I recently bought a CD of Simon Rattle conducting Schoenberg (+ Webern + Berg) with the Birmingham SO. He makes it sound really fresh and interesting.

 

So: can we expect some Schoenberg on the concertina from you any time soon? ;-}

 

 

Heh - weeeell...I've thought about it (though mainly with regards to Berg, whose music I love). The problem, of course, would be the arrangement. If the music is twelve tone (or based on interval sets), every note has to be preserved, or you're really rewriting the piece. I'm working my way through Schoenberg's Sechs Kleine Klavierstucke on the piano...I'd love to hear that on concertina, but the range for many of them is probably too expansive for my English, even if it were transposed. Still worth looking into. That topic probably deserves a thread of its own...

 

I remember reading an account by Webern of hearing one of his pieces played too mechanically and not musically enough. He described it as essentially random notes - "music of a madman," or something. A good performance of Webern is absolutely crucial to appreciating it. Otherwise it really can sound random. I'll look up Rattle with regards the 2nd Viennese School - I'd like to hear the recording.

[Chris Timson]

So: can we expect some Schoenberg on the concertina from you any time soon?

I've never tried to play any Schoenberg, but there are time when I've done quite well at sounding like a John Cage work for concertina. Indeed, I'm getting awfully good at 4'33.

 

Chris

[Ray]

I've done quite well at sounding like a John Cage work for concertina. Indeed, I'm getting awfully good at 4'33.

I have actually performed 4'33, in a group featuring the concertina, banjo, guitar, fiddle, mandolin and flute. It was during a local arts festival when the local council was getting fussy about music licences at venues, so one venue provider decided to test just how far the council would go to enforce the law. We 'performed' 4'33 at Cage's recommended volume, and after checking that no council officers or police had turned up we extended the evening's programme by playing some other impromptu pieces which were rather more audible.

 

Ray

Edited March 9, 2008 by Ray

[njurkowski]

I've done quite well at sounding like a John Cage work for concertina. Indeed, I'm getting awfully good at 4'33.

I have actually performed 4'33, in a group featuring the concertina, banjo, guitar, fiddle, mandolin and flute. It was during a local arts festival when the local council was getting fussy about music licences at venues, so one venue provider decided to test just how far the council would go to enforce the law. We 'performed' 4'33 at Cage's recommended volume, and after checking that no council officers or police had turned up we extended the evening's programme by playing some other impromptu pieces which were rather more audible.

 

Ray

 

That's fantastic! Did you do all three movements and use a stopwatch?

[Chris Drinkwater]

A few more.

 

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to. Elvis Presley

 

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. Groucho Marx

 

Without music, life would be a mistake. Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end. Igor Stravinsky

 

Only sick music makes money today. Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail. Luciano Pavarotti

 

I function as a channel from which music emerges from the chaos of noise. Vangelis

 

How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy. Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays. Oscar Wilde

 

What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal, yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed. Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

Chris

[Ray]

That's fantastic! Did you do all three movements and use a stopwatch?

Certainly - stopwatch on the conductor's lectern (I don't know whether Cage intended the work to be conducted, but we thought it essential to keep everything together!), and for added interest we all swapped instruments between movements.

 

Ray

[Ray]

On being asked to accompany some Scandinavian music, guitarist Jeremy Sherman said: "The Swedish stuff is OK, but I'm happier when we get to the Finnish."

 

Ray

[fiddlerjoebob]

And, this from "musicalsore" posted on a separate thread. I thought I would stick it here.

Randy

 

 

Remember, music can bring people together, but it can take the police to separate them again.