Classical Music for Aficionados

And your last paragraph is wisdom itself , learsfool .
I operated like that for many decades , have heard Schubert Octet many times , no doubt my own fault for not hearing Op43 .
I live in Twin Cities , did live in Berlin for over 20 .The two metros have almost exactly the same population and area .
Believe it or not, there is, excluding opera, more quality classical music
here than in Berlin. Perhaps more choir music here than anywhere in the world .
And there are several halls with acoustics better than anywhere in Berlin .But , in my dotage I’m lucky to make 3 concerts a month , down from 3 a week for decades .


I don’t say all this as a homer either , St.Paul is a place I live , Berlin is a place I love, and, were it possible, where I would live .
P.S. I’m with Brahms .

Hi schubert - yes, there is an abundance of great choral music in the Twin Cities. And you also have the Mask of the Flower Prince blogger - one of the best in support of symphonic musicians everywhere (I do know his real name).  

Not sure what you mean by your "I'm with Brahms" postscript?? Meaning you are anti-Wagner? I know we have had that conversation in the past. 

To me Brahms, as a person , is the most interesting of all the great composers , I have read most of what has been written about him in English and some in German.He felt music was going the wrong way and when I read his reasons why , I agreed .

I believe we all look at things from our situation in life, a musician like yourself sees one thing , an historian like myself sees something else.Small poor example, first time I read of teen-age Brahms playing in cafes on Album notes
I knew at once that their were no cafes in Hamburg dock side area, at that time the biggest harbor in the world .What there was were a plethora of low-down brothels as nasty as there were on the planet .No wonder Clara Schumann , misogamy etc.I’m anti-Wagner because the most famous man In Germany wrote more hyper anti-Semitic pieces that he did music. Historians I studied under were the best in Germany, they drew a straight-line from him to Hitler .He is the only composer I abhor .

I imagine than when a skilled musician sees some thing in Music they judge ,the music as music alone .A historian might be prone to look at its effect in general as that is his skill . Of course , the musician knows more in his realm ,
what you correctly see as a fabulous twist in , say Mahler, I might hear as a dog chasing his tail

P.S . I don't know the bloggers name as I never heard of him .

@schubert ,
Great points raised.
Though I think just about every composers life is interesting. They are artists after all. (and, as a gardener, I am hypnotized by the diaries of plant explorers in the 17th, 18th centuries-Even Captain Bligh had breadfruit named for him-Blighia).
Besides anti Semitism, Wagner was just an out and out deadbeat. I never found a place for him in my listening.

No wonder Clara Schumann , misogamy etc.

What were you trying to convey? I am a bit confused?
Bob

Hi gdnrbob - schubert is correct. Brahms literally grew up playing piano in some pretty nasty brothels.  Women were either madonnas or whores for him forever after.  One wonders if his experiences in them also contributed to his lack of confidence in his artistic craft that he struggled with off and on through his whole career. He literally tore up half of what he wrote. 

schubert and I have argued about Wagner on this board before. I won't rehash all of it, but I will say here for readers of this thread that almost all artists would agree that one must separate the art from the man. As far as Wagner the artist goes, he was one of the greatest iconoclasts in the history of all of the arts, truly an artistic genius. He had a bigger effect on music debatably than any other artist has ever had on his/her art. Music was never the same after him - though it did not go the direction he expected it to, it splintered off into so many different directions. Pretty much for the next 100 years, everything written was influenced by him in some way, whether pro or anti, in a musical sense.  Wagner the man was truly despicable, but almost all artists would agree that one must not throw out the art for that.  This question has come up again in a different fashion in the musical world over the last year, with some listeners wanting to get rid of their Levine and Dutoit recordings because of the sexual harassment/abuse scandals. 

The Wagner/Brahms controversy was about taking music in new directions vs. musical conservatism.  The two composers themselves rarely entered the fray (in fact they were mostly complimentary of each other's musical abilities publicly), which was fostered mostly by the famous Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, who was most firmly on the side of Brahms and conservatism. George Bernard Shaw, who besides being an incredible playwright and essayist also happened to be one of the greatest music critics, was the most famous critic who took the part of Wagnerism (musically only, of course).   As a side note, anyone who wants an education in music criticism or the state of music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries could do no better than to read Shaw's collected music criticism. Truly wonderful writing, very entertaining, and far ahead of his time on many issues. Late in life he retracted many of the negative things he wrote about Brahms when young, too.