Wagner's grandaughters Friedelind and Verena in 1938.
Posted on 06/10/2015 9:55:46 AM PDT by Borges
If you’re a music lover, you may have heard of the so-called “Tristan chord” from Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. Audiences were stunned to hear this infamous harmony when the opera premiered on June 10, 1865 in Munich, Germany. As Tristan turns 150, let’s take a look at what makes the Tristan chord so unique.
The “Vorspiel,” or Prelude, to Tristan begins with with a “dissonant” chord. The terms “consonance” and “dissonance,” “music” and “noise” are largely subjective. Now, in an era where our ears can enjoy everything from Chopin to Chick Corea, what our modern ears hear as “consonant” or musical may have been considered radically dissonant to the ears of people generals past. To hear the chord, click here.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wfmt.com ...
Thanks for the ping.
Classical Music Ping List ping.
I think we played this in high school band. It was ... interesting. Most of the poor kids seemed a bit confused.
(I can understand why)
Personally, I found it amusing, but then again, I played the drums (etc)
...Berg. I love his Violin Concerto.
Wagner's grandaughters Friedelind and Verena in 1938.
Beethoven and Chopin aren’t shocking anymore either. They were to their contemporaries.
A few more, Miku, Florence Foster Jenkins & Cathy Berberian...
> Beethoven and Chopin aren’t shocking anymore either. They were to their contemporaries.
Quite true. Have you ever seen the BBC drama on the rehearsal of The Eroica? Full movie here...
a-flat minor 6th/g-sharp minor 6th
And he makes a pretty good paint sprayer too!
Nightwish is pretty awesome. I use Vocaloid software (Avanna) for scratch vocals. It is incredible stuff. Right now it’s still not ‘realistic’, but with work, English Vocaloids can be made to sound very convincing. Very usable, even good within certain contexts. I very much look forward to the American release of Yamaha’s own “Cyber Diva” which takes Avanna a few steps further.
The biggest issue seems to be that it is percieved as a program for starstruck 14 YO girls and not a professional tool. And of course, their marketing of it to the vocaloid fandom doesn’t help that .
The Cleveland Orchestra preforms Dream/Window by Tōru Takemitsu
A review 9/26/2010
Riding in my car with the radio tuned to WCLV. It was announced that the Cleveland Orchestra would be playing a work by Tōru Takemitsu. Shirley and I looked at each other and we each said "Who?". Perhaps it would have been better had I remained ignorant of this composer.
A few days later, WCLV broadcast the entire performance. It appears that Tōru Takemitsu was commissioned by a Kyoto bank, or perhaps an industrial firm or civic institution to write a piece celebrating the city. I cannot help but think, that, upon hearing this work, the commissioner would have asked Takemitsu to return the commission and then commit seppuku to atone for the embarrassment he caused not only to the institution but the city and the artist as well.
The piece is entitled Dream/Window and proports to envision the view of a Japanese garden through a window and through the window of a dream. A 55 gallon drum of Windex would have done a great deal to help this piece, as the view from this window at high noon with not a cloud in the sky is darker than that of the deepest twilight.
Mind you, I like weird music, very weird music, hell, I make music myself that is so far out of the mainstream that most listeners would run out of the room rather than listen to another moment of one of my works. It gives me hope, though, perhaps someday my noodlings will be given a performance by one of the great orchestras on the planet as they are no worse (or better).
I would probably like this piece by Tōru Takemitsu in another setting, as chill-out music or as a film score. It does not belong at Severance Hall in the company of giants, and, sadly, it was a colossal waste of the talented musicianship found in the Cleveland Orchestra. This is not to say anything bad about the Cleveland Orchestra, as I believe that their true genius shone through in this performance in that they were able to play such execrable music with such virtuosity.
Normally, the orchestra tunes up, the conductor comes on stage and the music starts. I can only assume that the orchestra tuned up beforehand, but after the conductor came on stage and started playing Dream/Window, it sounded like the orchestra was tuning up all over again, not that one could have easily noticed the difference when listening to this piece. This marks the first time that I've heard the orchestra tuning up just before the work was over. In fact, I wounder if the orchestra ever stopped tuning up throughout the performance.
Takemitsu was obviously a Trekkie, as in this piece the Enterprise quickly becomes lost in the Nebulous Nebula and nobody can find their way out. Not once did the Captain (or the composer) consult a road map, stop at a gas station to ask directions or use his GPS. While wandering aimlessly through this piece, the listener is, on one occasion, attacked by huge minor chords that go on for far too long, (as did this piece), and is occasionally aware of disembodied bits and pieces of melodies floating by outside the window, but which never stop in and say hello.
One just knows that the Atomic Mutant Monsters will be showing up any moment now, and although a little change of pace would have been welcome, sadly, in the end they never did.
"Daddy, Daddy, are we there yet?
"Shadup ya little So & So or I'll feed you to Godzilla"
"Oh please do, at least I won't have to listen to any more of this".
Wagner was an anti-Semitic Jew hater. His music is beautiful. I choose not to listen to it when possible.
Wagner also hated Catholics and the French. Mussorgsky also hated Jews so did Chopin.
Incidentally, one of the two women in that photo...Friedlind, emigrated to the U.S. and made anti-Nazi broadcasts, which embarrassed the family and Hitler considerably. She died in 1991. The other one, Verena, is still alive at 95.
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