I am continuing to add to the new compilation blog "Bruce Charlton on Music" - most recently a post that might be useful to those who are setting out to explore the Classical music repertoire.
I focus on my three favourite composers, and probably the greatest by reputation - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven; and discuss how a good deal of their music is pretty bad; but each is bad in different ways.
The different quality of badness in the bad-stuff from B,M& B; can throw light on the nature of the greatness.
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ReplyDeleteBeethoven. There's an Andras Schiff masterclass where he chides a student for playing a chromatic passage of his too smoothly. Everything has to be a struggle.
Or about 1m 25s into Dudley Moore's famous parody where he repeats a phrase mechanically, twice rocking his body forward in an identical manner. The clunkiness is intentional and it fits.
And some of the beautiful slow movements in the piano sonatas though not struggling do seem to be melancholy recoveries from previous struggles! I'm thinking of the Allegretto Op.10 no.2
So yes, and a very interesting approach, though I'm sure the composers themselves wouldn't have liked to read the post (Beethoven could struggle through it perhaps!)
@Ron, I really love that Dudley Moore parody - I laugh out loud every time; especially when he gets locked into the dominant-tonic cadences at the end (presumably parodying the last section of Beethoven's 8th Symphony), and desperately tries to escape.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GazlqD4mLvw