An observation about "Modern" classical music.

Eldartford, I love Classical Music including Contemporary Classical Music, and I'm extremely pleased that you love it too. I'm just trying to get new public to modern music.

Of the examples you gave I apreciate all of them. But I must say one thing about Beethoven 5th. Althougth everyone hums this, we are talking about a rhythmic motif, not a melodic one. And he brilliantly makes a symphony out of it. Breath taking. A gigantic leap in terms of music composition. In is time the reponse to is music was very ambiguous.

Brahms is a difficult composer. Is ideas are dense and hard to grasp. Every passage, note, gesture as a key role in is big canvas of composition. Even is chamber music as a symphonic character (the string quarttets). Concentration and memory is very important for the music of Brahms to be understood. Sometimes a music diploma, unfortunately.

Prokofiev is another composer that uses rhythm as, almost, the main ingredient of is music. I'm glad he dindt stop at "Peter and the Wolf", and wrote some woderfull piano sonatas, piano concertos and violin sonatas, and ........
One of the major leaps in XX century music was in terms of rhythm.

Cheers, and continue to enjoy music you love, but I hope you open your mind to new stuff.

PS- As I wrote this Beethoves piano sonata nº 12 in A flat, Op 26 is being played by the great Alfred Brendel.

Eldartford,

"Don't we all narrow our musical choices to stuff we like?"

No sir, we don't. The list of music that I didn't especially like until after a considerable investment in multiple hearings, and in some cases, multiple performances, is quite long. Indeed, if I followed your rule, I might still be listening to "Old McDonald had a Farm." In my youth I found the tune quite likeable and humable.

There remain works of both the classical and modern eras that I just don't quite connect with, even after some effort. Beethoven's Missa Solemnis is such a work. So also are all of the works of Elliot Carter that I have heard. In both cases, I am confronted by a considerable number of advocates, so that it would seem that the deficiency lies with me, not with the composer. In the case of the Beethoven, I'm determined not to give up quite yet. However, it is unlikely that the Missa Solemnis will ever get the playing time of Prokofiev's piano sonatas in my home. I and many other people respectfully disagree with your outrageous assertion that Prokofiev should have stopped at Peter and the Wolf.

As has been stated previously in this thread, no one likes everything. Each listener will make his own choices, and I think we all welcome expression of an appropriately respectful negative opinion about a particular work. I urge caution about painting with too broad a brush, so that entire eras or genres are dismissed.

Brownsfan...Following "quit after Peter and the Wolf" I ought to have put a :-). An exaggeration of course, but you get my drift.

Seurat...Yes, those four notes, by themselves, are strongly rhythmic, but they do have tone, and are answered, in matching rhythm, by four more notes of different tone, leading into a development. Taken as a whole there is a melody.

I guess I have stirred up enough discussion for a while. I will probably be hearing modern music each week at the same time while I wait in the car for my wife to teach her Yoga class. The classical music station seems to reserve this particular time slot for modern music.

When I was a kid my mother told me to eat my peas. "Just try a few" she said. "You will learn to like them".

I still hate peas!
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Eldartford,

It's because you don't understand the peas ;)

Lousyreed1,

You’re right I was really referring to dissonance when talking about Beethoven and Bach since they both centered around a tonal home key. Don’t we all like to go home at the end of the day though? I like to resolve at the end of a movie or composition.

George Crumbe “Hummingbird something” - I’m not sure but it was screeching violins and random noises “seemingly not organized” although I’m sure it was.

Seurat,

I love Alfred Brendel too - never flashy, never overplays a piece.

Today's local newspaper reports that the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and particularly their summer festival, Tanglewood, in Western Massachusetts is in dire financial straits. The new musical director, James Levine, has redirected the program towards more contemporary music, and we are seeing the result. One concert, Schoenberg's "intense and difficult" Gurrelieder saw 300 musicians playing to a mostly empty house. Things are so bad that the volunteers who staff the Tanglewood concerts are being required to "contribute" $75.

Nothing that a little Mozart couldn't cure!
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