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Joe Barron

The Charlie Rose interview was most interesting for what Levine and Barenboim had to say about Carter. Often they asked questions to Carter, which were much more interesting that what Rose was able to come up with. Maybe Rose should have just stepped out of the picture and let Levine, Barenboim and...

Joe Barron

I'll stick with his Symphony No.1 - it sits best with me. Much of his music is too advanced for my taste - I've tried a lot of it. Well, if you like the Symphony No. 1, you might also want to try the Holiday Overture, the Elegy, the Pastorale for Clarinet and Piano, the lovely Woodwind Quintet, and...

Joe Barron

I liked the Rose interview, too, until I saw Stephen Stuckey's filmed interview with Carter Saturday at Lincoln Center. Stucky asked questions that seemed to trigger associations in Mr. Carter, then he just sat back and let him talk. (Carter's ideas on modern poetry were most absorbing.) Rose, in co...

Joe Barron

Never underestimate the power of television to sell anything.

Joe Barron

Poor Lenny. As a composer, he wanted so much to be the American Mahler, but he didn't have it in him. He was too successful and too damned happy. It's impossible to accept that sort of introspection and spiritual mountain-climbing from a jet-set TV personality.

Fascinating article.

Joe Barron

Dover has a wonderful line of inexpensive minature scores of works in the public domain. I have three of Brahms' symphonies (not the Second) and the late quartets of Beethoven. Debussy and I believe early Stravinsky are also available. It's always a problem for me to follow along with the scores whi...

Joe Barron

Elliott Carter's Quintet for Piano and String Quartet, one of the composer's best works of the nineties, and one of the great examples of the genre from the last century.

Joe Barron

Irmelin Moller, daughter and oldest child of Carl Nieslen, was a well-regarded choreographer.

Joe Barron

Nick Shadow in The Rake's Progress

Joe Barron

The best place to go exploring is artofthestates.org. You can listen free online to representative pieces of many composers active today. The music is arranged by time period, composer, instrumentatino and genre, including minimalist. Happy listening!

Joe Barron

Also known as a jaw harp.

Joe Barron

For those of you who have never heard Mr. Carter speak, here is a brief Youtube interview:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ACuEv7JSoGk

Joe Barron

I find that Carter’s music is less like the traditional music that I am familiar with and more like a drama in which the instruments are actors speaking their lines. A perceptive observation, all the more impressive because it accords so closely with something Carter himself has said about his musi...

Joe Barron

Carter and Wuorinen like big sounds and sometimes write music which has a kind of obsessive pull toward multiple climaxes... omg ... omg... omg... how could anyone not like this music? Beckmesser, you are obviously well on your way. As for the First Quartet, I would say one of the things to listen ...

Joe Barron

I like Copland's performance of the complete score. BTW, Copland never made a full orchestra version of the complete ballet, so any orchestral recording of the work is going to be the suite. In agree with Diegobueno in this case, as in so much else. Copland's own verson is the one I listnen to more...

Joe Barron

Of course they thought he had something interesting to say. It's probably virtually identical to what the Post Editorial Board has been saying the past few years; and virtually identical to what most other celebrities have to say on similar matters. I could drop Fleisher's name and substitute Bruce...

Joe Barron

But since when is a newspaper obligated to give that much space to the political views of an artist? A newspaper is never obligated to do anything. I assume the Post gave him the column because the editors believed he had something interesting to say, and he is a public figure by virtue of receivin...

Joe Barron

I'm not sure why these people think anyone cares about what they think on anything other than their art. Yeah, for God's sake, Leon, just shut up and play. Never mind that this is America. You exist solely for our entertainment. I swear, this is the only board I visit where I can find die-hard Bush...

Joe Barron

Corlyss_D wrote:
karlhenning wrote:Oh, Corlyss! My question was actually, "What piece?"

Cheers,
~Karl
Holiday overture or something like that.

Oh, no wonder ...

Joe Barron

There isn't much I can add to this enlightening discussion. As the comments reveal, Carter is both loved and despised. His music is indeed difficult, because there is much going on, there are no themes (as in much other atonal music), the line is constantly shifting from one instrument to the next, ...

Joe Barron

And it would also be easy to write music like Haydn by studying the London Symphonies or like Wagner by studying the Ring. Absolutely and what's wrong with that for the exercise? I'm reminded of Rubens who taught that if you want to learn to paint, copy the methods of the Old Masters (without copyi...

Joe Barron

Of course it can always work the other way. I'm thinking of Stravinsky who reached his peak with Le Sacre du Printemps then..... I don't know what happened. Oh: I do, I do! He went on to write other magnificent pieces, in a markedly different style. Hey, if you don't like any Stravinsky after Le sa...

Joe Barron

Stravinsky

Joe Barron

karlhenning wrote: Is it only that that does not fit into the Thos Kinkaid-ish confectionary, cupie-doll caricature of Mozart, that what's-his-face takes this as "waning creativity"?

Well, apparently, yes.

If Mozart had lived, we'd at least have the completed Requiem.

Joe Barron

If Elliott Carter had died at 31, we wouldn’t be hearing the music he’s writing now as he approaches 100, said by many to be as fresh as anything that came earlier. I love this. The guy's so clueless he can't even state an opinion. He has to rely on what "many" are saying. I guess the many would in...

Joe Barron

James wrote:Naxos is releasing the cycle which is nice,
the 1st & 5th Qrts issued next month...

Very nice, since the recordings of the first four quartets by the Juilliard and the Arditti are out of print. Only the first, second and fifth are available on CD at present.

Joe Barron

Mind blowing to realize that he was writing music before many of us were born. I was about three or four when the Double Concerto appeared. Carter once observed that when his Cello Sonata was first perfromed, it was considered too difficult for all but the most virtuosic players. Now, hesaid, it is ...

Joe Barron

Happy Carter Day to all! May we all be as alert, healthy and productive when we're his age. Thanks to Don for the tribute, though, of course, I respectfully disagree with his characterization of the Double Concerto and Piano Concerto as "dry" or "austere." To my ear, the one is as beautfl, and the ...

Joe Barron

Oh, what the heck. I'll do it.

Problem is, no matter who they get, the PO will never be as exciting as the BSO is now under Levine, imho.

Joe Barron

Razumovsky No. 3
With the Orford Quartet

John, get well soon. With any luck, you'l be back pissing people off in no time.

Joe Barron

Ives -- 3rd Movement of the Second Orchestral Set: At the End of a Tragic Day the Voice of the People Again Arose ; written as a result of his experience on the New York 3rd Ave. elevated platform shortly after news of the sinking of the Lusitania became known. People instinctively knew it meant wa...

Joe Barron

A friend of mine once gave me a recording of Romanain folk music, played on violin. One of the tracks contained a stunt piece inwhich the violin does a high, fast, two-note bird call. When I played it at home, my cat, Cassandra, climbed all over the speaker looking for the bird.

Joe Barron

absinthe wrote:I'd be interested to learn of a single act opera composed by Berg?

I meant long, single acts, not operas in one act.

Joe Barron

it seems very difficult to write a movement of any length in the 12-tone system. How would Mahler have handled the 12-tone system had he lived longer? Interestingly, Charles Rosen has written that in classical tonality, as practriced by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, no movement lasted longer than tw...

Joe Barron

Was Schoenberg driven by the need to find a system that produced great music--guaranteed? The short answer is no. Schoenberg and the other great serialists recognized the need for intuition. Schoenberg's use of the system was never "pure." What he wanted to do, to my understanding, was return to pu...

Joe Barron

Corlyss_D wrote:
Joe Barron wrote:I had the good fortune to meet him at the University of Maryland Handel Festival several years back. A very lovely man.
Joe! When were you there? I was in the early 80s.

I'm vague on the exact year, though it was in the mid to late 80s. I remember a performance of "Semele."

Joe Barron

While I am not disagreeing with you, Rosen is not a music critic, but an extremely serious music theoretician, perhaps one of two or three most important of the 20th century. How his book "The Classical Style," which is very advanced, became a best-seller is beyond me. There is not an easy idea in ...

Joe Barron

Fleisher and Szell have already been mentioned a couple times, but I'd like to drive home the recommendation. Theirs is the only version I have, and as much as I love Brahms's concertos, I don't feel the need to go looking for more. The recording of the First is one of my favorite rcordings of any p...

Joe Barron

Wallingford wrote: And even though I don't agree with your assessment of Nielsen's Fourth, I never manipulated it as an attack on the work, as others here have.

I don't think it takes much manipulation to interpret
"Azheimer's Symphony" as an attack.

Joe Barron

This sounds like a very nice program of light, tuneful, crowd-pleasing stuff, and there's nothing wrong with that. It should be a great introduction to classical concerts, if it's even halfway decently played. And I've always liked the Pizzicato Polka.

Have a good time.

Joe Barron

I always liked Andrew Porter, who wrote for the New Yorker when I was in high school and college, and thus helped me understand a lot of things just when I was learning about music. He was a good writer, and his tastes corresponded to mine in many ways. I now have all of his books of reviews, and I ...

Joe Barron

I have tried and tried and tried to get to know and appreciate Nielsen. But to no avail, it just doesn't do it for me, whatever "it" is. I call the 4th the "Indistinguishable" 8) That should be the title of a PDQ Bach piece. Interesting comments, though, since since I find nothing but melody in the...

Joe Barron

Search for Brahms chamber music on Amazon and you won't find much. The ubiquitous Beaux Arts Trio set on Philips and the Amadeus on DG always come up. You problem is that if you search for "chamber musuic," you won't find much unless those words appear in the title of the CD. As other posters have ...

Joe Barron

This sound like the opera Charles Ives should have written. It would have been the perfect subject for him. Glass, on the other hand …

Joe Barron

pizza wrote:I think you meant Peter Lawson if they're the same Virgin CDs I have.

Peter, yes. Sorry.

Joe Barron

As for the idea that there were no significant piano sonatas after Beethoven: I think the romantics considered the sonata something of an academic form with very specific rules, and so tended to avoid it or think of it as a kind of student exercise. Chopin and Brahms wrote only three piano sonatas ...

Joe Barron

Well, since the Concord has already been mentioned, I'll recommend Elliott Carter's great sonata from 1945-46, which is available in several performances. John Lawson recorded it on Virgin with sonatas by Copland and Barber, and the Three-Page Sonata of Ives. Can't go wrong there. And they are all c...

Joe Barron

From an acquaintance in Canada, a homemade CD of redio broadcasts of some of Elliott Carter's more recent music, which is not yet available commercially --- two song cycles ( Of Rewaking and In the Distances of Sleep ), Soundings for piano and orchestra (contains a stunning tuba recit), Reflexions, ...

Joe Barron

Hey, and don't forget my Carter apology from this past April. That fake AP report made it around the world. A lot of well-known people took it seriously, I'm told, and it's been posted on at least a dozen discussion boards.

Joe Barron

If there is anything timeless in Music, it must be the content of complaints against current composition :D Or, as Rosen has pointed out, the imminent demise of classical music is perhaps its oldest ongoing tradition. There were critics in the mid 1700s who were saying the forms were exhausted.

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