beeri

It's not hard to make something sound Jewish. Flat-six, sharp seventh, some um-pa-um-pa, a nice syncopated melody, an ornament or two thrown in, and voila! Jewish Music! Congrats you achieved the standard generic Jewish cliché. Now clean up your freakin score. And come up with something more interesting. ;-)

Hi The Baroque period ended more than 200 years ago. Not bad for a first try at imitating a Bach solo suite. You might want to do a harmonic analysis of his suites. You will find at least two things: a clearly implied harmony is always there. You did that well. But he explores different keys. You stay in F minor too long for the whole thing. Learn how to modulate to different keys. And I agree with whoever said m. 28-30 is way too high and hard on the viola. Not impossible but very hard and will probably sound terrible. Viola just does NOT sound good up there. Anything above High C is risky.

I am actually specifically thinking of using recorded samples BUT only at the very end. Not like Different Trains which uses recorded samples throughout. Something like Respighi's Pines of Rome... most of it is purely acoustic then at the end just a recording of a nightingale. Can anyone think of similar examples from the literature?

Hi Thanks for you help with my previous questions. I have another question. Sometimes I notate music and I want it performed exactly how I wrote it. Other times (often within the same piece) I don't really care about the exact rhythms and pitches, but I'll notate the approximate texture that I want and write something to the effect of "rhythms don't have to line up precisely." Kind of like aleatoric freedom but not quite that free. Can anyone think of precedents in the repertoire of this kind of direction? Thanks again! Beeri

Can you think of any compositions (pref. by well-known composers) that use electronics in only some of the movements, with the rest of the movements only acoustic?

Oh woops. Sorry about that... just fixed it. Why is simply getting the link right always so hard for me??

What's up with all these gross reductions?! Reducing music to a rock in the other discussion and reducing argument to flipping of a coin?! The world is not that simple. What are we to base our artistic opinions on if not our personal experiences? Not everything can be backed up by empirical facts, and even clear statistics can be skewed and spun to support any arguments. %69 of statistics are made up on the spot!

Both are obviously related.

A stone on the road was not created by a person, and is not likely to elicit strong emotions. What a weird analogy! A painting: once it's painted, it's pretty much done. Music: can change with every performance, more open to wide interpretations. If you want to take the universal language idea further to mountains and smells, you could. And you could extended to any art form yes. But music lends itself especially well to it.

And the money is not there precisely because audiences are not willing to challenge themselves and attend a program of music they have never heard before. It has everything to do with it. If you think LOLLING your way through an argument is going to make it stronger, try again.

Program Notes, Score, and More

This is the raw data and it shows disproportional attention to the 18th and 19th centuries. I guess some will interpret it any way you like to support your argument. But your second point, is exactly what I am saying. People concentrate on the earlier music in part because it's easier... they prefer not to challenge themselves too far beyond their comfort level. I'll agree with you there. I went to a conservatory thinking I'm gonna practice only on my instrument but I ended up taking dozens of extra courses, and I am now making a living in music doing a lot more than just playing the violin-- teaching, writing about music, performing, composing, arranging...

About music as communication: I also didn't understand that Mendelssohn quotation until I went to the a museum of art and I was particularly taken by a certain painting. I was really moved, as I am often moved by music but rarely by paintings. Then for some reason the Mendelssohn quote came to my mind and I understood it. Music is a lot more abstract than other arts. To the listener, there is not a physical tangible component, so it really depends on every single listener's interpretation more than a painting or a written poem or something. It's like saying music is the "universal language". That's a cliched term but as others have said here, the same music can mean different things to different people. The paradoxical explanation I gave explains it on a different level from "happy music makes anyone feel happy"

After about 10 years freelancing and touring around the world, I think I'm entitled to an educated opinion. If u disagree, it's your loss. But you want numbers? Go to the American Symphony Orchestra League's website. They keep statistics on what is played by major orchestras. ORR Current-League of American Orchestras and look at the proportion of music that is pre-Brahms. I think this is at least partly explained by my original claim in the essay.