Jazz for aficionados

Albertporter:

Thanks for your recommendations.

I ordered the Soldier's Tale with John Gielgud, also a DG 'twofer' with Rite, Firebird and Petrushka.
The DG CD is conducted by Abbado,. who passed away recently.

Cheers

The Frogman:
Thanks for your answer.

Life spans:

Mozart -- 35
Beethoven -- 57
Stravinsky -- 89

Now think about musical impact and output. And The Masters did not live in the age of hype / media, and the advantages that can bring, if a person is a darling of the press.

IMHO, Igor was an arrogant twerk.

Cheers

Hi Rok - I would add to Frogman's comments a funny story about a professor at a famous music school who taught a class for non-musicians on music appreciation. The course was also required for graduate level music ed students. She famously would begin this course every year by being a little bit late to the first class, slowly walking to the lectern, and announcing - "Beethoven Sucks!" After some stunned silence, someone would finally ask her to repeat it, which she would do. After more stunned silence, she would launch into her first lecture, which was about how most non-musicians only pay attention to melody when they listen to music. And if music was only judged by that standard alone, Beethoven would be nowhere to be found on the list of all time greats. Which would be absurd, of course. He is a great example of being great about pretty much all other aspects of music, though he struggled to write beautiful melodies, as Frogman said. She would use this humorous opening to get people's attention and make them think about all of the other aspects of music that they don't normally pay attention to.

Learsfool:

Once I get my Igor CDs, will I hear beautiful melodies?

Cheers.

Rok, just curious, what do you base the "arrogant twerk" comment on? If you are basing it on his comment about Beethoven, what is arrogant about a statement of fact (Beethoven's laborious composing methodology); especially one in which he praises Beethoven as being "one of the greatest creators of music"?

"Most people who knew him through dealings connected with performances spoke of him as polite, courteous and helpful." - Erik Satie

****And The Masters did not live in the age of hype / media, and the advantages that can bring, if a person is a darling of the press.****

Are you aware that he was far from wealthy and had to be financially supported throughout his career by, among others, Leopold Stokowski? If you are suggesting that his acclaim is the result of "hype", I could tell you that you are seriously mistaken, but I think it would be much more productive to encourage you to actually familiarize yourself with his works before making those insinuations. Have you heard "The Firebird", "Petrushka", "Symphony In Three Movements"? From one of the greatest musical minds ever:

"The death of Stravinsky means the final disappearance of a musical generation which gave music its basic shock at the beginning of this century and which brought about the real departure from Romanticism. Something radically new, even foreign to Western tradition, had to be found for music to survive, and to enter our contemporary era. The glory of Stravinsky was to have belonged to this extremely gifted generation and to be one of the most creative of them all." - Pierre Boulez

Now, re your life span stats:

I hope we can agree that the size of the output is no indication of its quality. Nonetheless, it is true that Mozart was an incredible genius with an output of over six hundred published works (and probably many unpublished); although some are clearly more memorable than others. But, did you know that Stravinsky wrote about twice as many works as Beethoven? So, if one considers that Stravinsky lived about one third longer than Beethoven, then it can fairly be said that Stravinsky was more prolific than Beethoven; for whatever that is worth.

BTW, did you know that Bird wanted to study with Stravinsky?