Your comments on Schumann's review of Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique" reminded me of Berlioz's own complaint about the rules for the Prix de Rome when he competed for it. He said that the judges got to see the composers' submissions only in piano-vocal score, and the orchestration was never heard at all unless the piece won the contest and was played in a concert as part of the prize. Berlioz felt that this handicapped him because he was (rightly) proud of his mastery of orchestration, but the contest judges would never see (in score) or hear his elaborate orchestral effects.
The channel just gets better & better. The new essential works series is superb. I’m a relative newcomer to classical music so for me all this is just gold.
I think how the audience felt and evaluated music over time explains, at least in part, why certain works and certain composers, famous in their days, kind of fell off the map by the 1930s when fashion became the measuring stick in assessing the intrinsic value of these works (of course, the critics had something to do with it): composers like Offenbach, Lehar, Rubinstein, Halevy, Sauer, Stojowski, Glazunov, Bax, Myaskovsky, Heller for examples. Another illustration are works that were mainstays in various repertoires became forgotten: Le Roi d'Ys, The Queen of Sheba, The Seasons, The Demon, Esclarmonde, etc.
This is one of your most illuminating and fascinating talks. I'm still trying to get my head around how the Classical era composers managed nevertheless to be so consistent in form that a later "explorer" could map it out so reliably. I also wonder how the composers talked among themselves about their craft. (This puts me in mind of a video I recently saw here explaining how even the great cathedrals were built without the aid of mathematics but solely with principles learned through practical application. The mathematics came much later!) So: it seems a knowledge of music history is more useful than for simply winning arguments about vibrato! 😄
Thanks you for this very interesting talk! Every your video is a new discovery. I am incredibly grateful for all your videos, they help me a lot in developing my musical taste and lots of other things. Thank you! :)
The point that music was discussed theme by theme without regard to the big picture jibes with the notion of understanding trees before understanding forests. It resonates with how anyone would approach something new, and for those listeners, just like us today, the senses provide the first impression. At the end of the day, you can enjoy the beauty of a skyscraper without understanding how it stands so high. Likewise, music.
Precisely. Probing the esoterica of form, structure, etc. is fine and quite interesting for those so inclined, but is not requisite to finding deep enjoyment in music. We can see or hear and be moved by beauty of all kinds, whether in nature, artistic expression, engineering or any other realm without understanding its underlying minutia. This was as true in earlier times as it is now.
What a wonderful discussion of this topic! You have a way of drawing out issues that were never addressed in my formal academic musical training. Your selection of sources - including your own ears - are so common sense it's almost shocking. Very refreshing!
I have a question for "Ask Dave": How classical music recordings evolved over time? Where these recordings made in fewer and longer takes in older times? Are newer recordings made in shorter phrases? Is there more post processing in newer recordings? Please Dave, if you find something interesting to discuss about this, maybe you could address it in a future video. Thank you!
Thank you for sharing your as ever fascinating and interesting insight into this. Funnily enough a thought similar to your comment about having contemporary documents from the era to rely on came to my mind shortly after posting the question. What better documents than just about every Jane Austin novel in which she often mentions "accomplished young ladies" being able to read music and play instruments, generaly the piano. And it’s just a film of course, but there is a scene in Mr Tuner (a really nice film about the artist) in which the painter is in a room having a discussion with a patron and an "accomplished" young lady is playing the new Beethoven Sonata Pathétique. In addition to the lack of vocabulary describing the form, lack of concert opportunities and so on, I'm wondering how people, even the most musically knowledgable, thought about the music of their age. Meaning perhaps they would have thought of Beethoven’s 5th as we do of the latest song of some successful contemporary artist. They obviously would not have known that these pieces would still be listened to two or three hundred years later and be described as "classic". I guess we should be extremely thankful that so many great works even made it to us rather than just being forgotten about. I do have a follow up'question if I may... do we know, or at least have some indication, that composers themselves heard their own compositions in final orchestral form? To a newbie such as myself who would like to learn how to properly listen to classical music, would you recommend the book you mention is the video or your "Beethoven or bust?
Beethoven or Bust is a general intro to classical music. The Beethoven Orchestral Works is about Beethoven specifically. Most composers heard their works if they lived long enough, but there are some notable exceptions (Bruckner's Fifth, Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde and Ninth Symphony).
I've heard the fact that the first and second subject of a sonata form are in different keys described as a conflict, and the point of the form as being the resolution of that conflict. I've always wondered about the extent to which it's even possible for an audience to perceive that kind of large scale tonal organization. For someone who doesn't have perfect pitch, I'd think that detecting how the key of a given passage relates to the tonic key of the piece would entail something like, every time there is a modulation, making note of what interval it modulates by, and keeping track of what their cumulative effect is. Trip up once and you're lost. But I guess if people were mostly learning this music by performing it themselves, it would be obvious.
No, you hear what you need to hear whether you are conscious of it or not. You don't need to hear how one key "relates" to another. All you need to hear is the pattern of tension and release created by contrasting key areas and the themes that define them.
Some interesting historical insights. I'll pick just one nit: just because early audiences didn't have the "vocabulary" to describe various aspects of classical music (e.g. symphonic form) doesn't mean some of the brighter audience members couldn't have picked up on them while listening (or reading/playing).
If you paid attention, you would notice that I said just that. What I said was that they may well have heard and understood the form, but didn't have the vocabulary we have to describe it.
Your comment about harmony and counterpoint being the only things left after an orchestral work is boiled down to a piano reduction is most interesting. I don't think I've thought about it that way, but I really see your point.
That's why Beethoven being deaf wasn't such an issue for him, most people coudn't hear the music anyway. Jokes apart it has always fascinated me the level of inner hearing that this people may have had to be able to compose such large scale works without ever listening them until de day of the first rehearsal. Think of works like the Bach passions... It's like painting without ever looking at the picture. That's why I don't understand when people complain about bad orquestrations in Schumann or anywhere else, then go do it yourself...Such great minds this composing folks.
