Classical Music

[EdoHart]

I don't listen to classical music often and have only been to the symphony twice. But I really do like it. Mozart is great, but lately (in terms of my classical music listening) I have come to like Mendelssohn.

My first symphony they played Samuel Barber's adagio for Strings op.11. Opus 11 means this was only his eleventh composition and he came up with this master piece.

 

[MarkBC]

Yep -- classical music rocks! Well...it doesn't rock exactly, but it's mighty fine.

On second thought...actually, when I'm driving on a road trip, listening to music on my truck stereo, and I play Beethoven's 9th Symphony -- especially the Second Movement -- I crank up the volume as high as I do when listening to hardcore punk. Man, that's intense stuff!

Seems like I heard Barber's Adagio for Strings a lot just after 9/11... I know NPR was using it as the intro music to their early coverage. I hear it used other times when melancholy/sadness is trying to be conveyed.
Amazing that something so....sedate could be so powerful, even brilliant.

 

[EdoHart]

I like Beethoven's 9th too. And Vivaldi's 4 seasons.

The only time I found that I had the volume turned up to "11" was when I tried to add that little extra umph while listening to Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries only to realize that the knob wouldn't turn any further. I also realized that I was doing about 85 mph, when I thought I was doing 65.

 

[MarkBC]

The only time I found that I had the volume turned up to "11" was when I tried to add that little extra umph while listening to Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries only to realize that the knob wouldn't turn any further.

Whenever I hear that bit from Wagner I can only think of one of two things:

The Bugs Bunny version with Elmer Fudd ("kill the wabbit!")

or

The Apocalypse Now version with Robert Duvall

See what popular culture has done to high art!

 

[EdoHart]

I can't find the full cartoon of Buggs Bunny doing the "Barber of Seville," but that may be one reason I like good classical music. More likely I like Classical music because it is, well...Classical.

 

[MarkBC]

Buggs Bunny doing the "Barber of Seville," but that may be one reason I like good classical music.

Along the same lines, I first heard (and was blown away by) the Second Movement of Beethoven's 9th when it was used as the closing-credits music to the Huntley-Brinkley Report (NBC News) in the '60s.

 

[highz]

If you've seen "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World", then you've heard a portion of one of my very favorite pieces - "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" by good old RVW.

If you have 17 minutes to spare, here's a recording from Gloucester Cathedral - the type of acoustics he wrote it for:

(part 1)

(part 2)

Actually, there's a lot of RVW's music that speaks to me - "Sinfonia Antactica" (Ye ice falls! Ye that from the mountain's brow/ Adown enormous ravines slope amain —/ Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,/ And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!/ Motionless torrents! Silent cataracts!), "Dives and Lazarus", "Job: A Masque for Dancing", "The Lark Ascending", and more.

 

[Ted]

We were in a campground once when some neighbors started listening to the car stereo loud enough for most of camp to hear. We slipped a Beethoven CD into the stereo, opened up all the doors, and cranked it. After about 20 minutes turned it down and noticed no other music. Message sent. Turned ours of too.