Ravels Radical Rivalry

I second Adam Neely. The guy is brilliant and explains complex stuff in a manner that is easily understood. I skimmed through this thread and did not see this channel mentioned. This is another brilliant musician who I love. He has a love for all classic pop and rock. He has a collection I would die for of records and guitars and all sorts. Love his run through on songs when he talks about their structure and their form. Love his lists. Love his stories. https://www.youtube.com/@RickBeato

I will head towards some of my favorite moments in music that just happen to be film scores first. This is one of the single most enthralling compositions in the history of the art form:

No it will not be. Not if I post often. I appreciate enough John Williams stuff of course, but I do not worship the man. I am well verse in all film music and am a damn huge fan of it all. Honestly, making posts in this thread that come from my true opinion wouldn't even lead to a 33% John Williams saturation level.

Heya! We all seem to be sticking our heads around the corner and seeing what is going on here at least now and then. I remember you and several of the others. I spent so much time on here I don't think I can forget most of y'all. I adore the ideas you have in this piece. I think it is very effective. It is straight up my alley. I hate it when people make the comparisons of their "structured classical composition" to a "video game style" as if it is a bad thing or as if it means it should be viewed as lesser music or not to be viewed as being as legit by scholarly people or whatever the heck. It is very probable that there is a direct influence from your listening and playing and composing of video game things. I don't care one way or the other. It is legit regardless. I think compositional ideas are ideas no matter where they come from. I think that a composer has his own unique message to relay and his language is notated for musicians to play. If he feels he needs to speak his mind or express himself in a style that falls into some category that is preconceived to have these attributes than whatever ... that is your voice and your style ... these were just the ideas you had felt like expressing at the point you decided to go for it. I think it is this notion that people have had in the past that somehow these types of ideas cannot be mixed in strictly scholarly, institutional classical writing that has held back music from just being whatever gorgeous, exciting and righteous thing a composer could imagine. I have seen a lot of example of certain people taking whatever route they wanted and running with it successfully recently and in my opinion really broadening and brightening up what it means to write modern classical music. Like, how about we just get back to writing music! How about we take whatever ideas that make us passionate about any type of music and try to be as creative as possible. It's awesome that you completed a degree and made your way a little in composition. I totally understand having other things in life and different career paths then composition that prevent you from a prolific output. I never did really compose legitimately and It certainly doesn't play a role in anything I do to make money. I echo the sentiment others have expressed about any issues I think I would have with the piece. It does seem heavily to rely on the same progression and regardless of the different ways you have been able to notate different variations of it it comes back to the same root maybe more than I would like. I do have the same feeling about the continuity of the ideas with the transitions between them. However, I get the language. I get the ideas. I love the ideas. Still think it is a beautiful and brilliant piece. So kudos for running with it and coming up with what you did!

I just wanted to get a conversation going about a particular topic. Major orchestras were already struggling entities before the coronavirus pandemic. Lots of the major ones throughout the Unites States were not profitable organizations and were barely holding on and surviving. Attendance in todays type of culture for the performance of major/typical classical repertoire wasn't like it used to be once upon a time. Music education throughout k-12 public schooling is pitiful and cultural awareness is essentially nonexistent. Now, we have almost all orchestras cancelling half a season or more. It's a blow. It is a huge blow to an already dying entity. My hometown is Kansas City. They have come out within the last week and announced the cancellation of any event up through January 2021. They are one of the rare oddities in the orchestral organization world that was actually turning a profit and filling every seat for every concert. The city very much so supports them and there is lots of excitement around the cause. Brand new top in the world performing arts center fully funded by donation. Unprecedented community involvement from organization to community and community to organization in these times. They were very lucky. However, they are still going to be slaughtered by this turn of events. So, how do you think this is going to effect the industry? Do you think the pandemic will change classical performance forever? Will we ever recover and go back to attending performances as we once did or will a lot of organizations go under and never come back? Do you think society will be comfortable attending relatively soon or not? Do you think it was necessary to cancel this much season? Should we or could we have gone about attending with some form of social distancing requirement and other mask/glove, etc. requirements? Will the actual method of performance change? Do you think we might need to start seeing virtual performance? ... for the time being? ... for the long haul? What do you think we might start seeing these organizations start trying to do in order to attract the audience and keep themselves going? Tell me about your city and what the protocols have been. Was their orchestra pretty successful beforehand? Do you think they will make it through the pandemic? How has it effected them so far? Do you think society going forward cares enough and is educated enough to appreciate classical composition and performance on the scale needed to support these types of organizations with enough monetary value to keep them alive? Are they educated enough and have the appreciation of traditional composition (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, etc.) to keep it alive? Are we going to have to see a much larger resurgence of a different more attractive/mainstream/pop-like or "dumbed down" style of orchestral composition to get people in the seats and money flowing to keep the tradition alive? Do you think we are at a crossroads and a transformational period where change is inevitable? How does this change y'all as composers? What type of composing have you been doing knowing that for the foreseeable future there will not be an event held as to where a live audience can support the cause of live musicians performing even on the scale of chamber concerts or solo recital concerts? With the advent of computer notation and extremely developed electronic playback do you think we will ever see the time when live orchestral performance is dead and composers only ever write for the machine? We have already seen electronic take over pop music. We have seen the subtle creeping of electronics into the classical sphere. What do you think of this idea? I have my own opinions and will chime in, but I would really like to see a fervent discussion take off. I think it is highly important for society to keep the tradition alive and to keep the memory of the past and the giants of the art form alive. It would be a devastating thing for the whole of society and culture for orchestras to die off and not be able to maintain themselves as organizations to the point of being able to offer the same types of performance season for the masses to attend as has been the case for centuries.

Another absolutely brilliant Canadian composer that rarely gets mention is Marjan Mozetich. I really am not sure why he goes unnoticed by nearly everyone on the planet. He doesn't have the catalog of a major composer, but he has so many amazing compositions to offer. Personally, a piece he wrote called "Passion of the Angels" which is a concerto for two harps is one of my favorite pieces of music to listen to period. You all should go check him out.

Hey! The Kansas City Symphony (the symphony orchestra of the town I am from) just performed this symphony a few weeks ago. The last movement is very cool.

This is going to be a very simplistic post. I just found this guy online. I really like his music. It's not necessarily incredibly innovative or new. Its not the most mind blowing thing you will ever hear. However, I really like the mood and atmosphere of his stuff. I like his melodies and chord progressions. It think it is really sophisticated and beautiful. I thought I would share. He has been around in the music industry one way or another for a long time now. He is mostly known as the lead conductor of the majority of the live recordings of all the scores that get produced in Hollywood. He does write music though however. Just as a side note, he wrote the music that accompanies the fireworks show at Epcot in Florida. Recently he has been on a solo piano composition kick. He has released two albums that I think are great. The first one was in 2016 and is called "Il Falco Bianco" and the second one was released this month called "Woven". The Woven album is decidedly more minimal and modern then the 2016 album. Il Falco Bianco to me plays through like Debussy's book of preludes ... just different ... Greenaway's book of preludes. Just give it a listen. I am sure half of you will like it and the other half with think it is simplistic and not creative enough to be worth it. Some highlights of my favorite tracks to check out: https://youtu.be/ZYp1ma-i3sc https://youtu.be/wL4ofGqALwA https://youtu.be/YsxbXD8nelI https://youtu.be/I2WJsxAM4js https://youtu.be/T7nxKpt5A-4 https://youtu.be/I2MeTudmfqs

I don't care for Berg's violin concerto either. I am not a fan of Mozart in general. I like his Requiem mass. There are a few things here and there in the operas and otherwise that I will admit to finding tolerable, but I really just think he is a devolution of music from what had come before him. He is so much simpler and frankly dumber in comparison to Bach and Handel and even more often I'd rather listen to other people who composed around his time like Schubert, Beethoven, Borodin and Hayden.

Oh My God! Thomas Newman is brilliant. I have always wanted to hear someone talk about Thomas Newman's harmonic language. It is such a unique sound and feeling. I could never pinpoint exactly what was being done to make that atmosphere. I had never heard of this guy before this video either. Thank you for posting this.

Agree. There is more to Sibelius then the general classical world's consensus would have you believe. He ought to be performed more frequently.

I hear the derivation that you speak of ... if I am thinking of the same part of the Stravinsky that you speak of. That is an interesting observation that I had never been aware of.

I am a huge Sondheim fan! My favorite composer of broadway stuff. Everything about this clip says Sondheim. I adore Send In the Clowns, but I love all the regulars like Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Anything Can Whistle, Sunday in the Park with George, Follies and Company and all those great musicals. I think he is the greatest that genre has ever seen.

Why are you worried about whether your tastes are good or bad. Your tastes are your tastes. I happen to think they are awesome musicians. I really love the style and the harmonics they have going on. It is groovy and I could listen for a long time before getting tired if ever. That's my opinion.

Huh ... I don't really get it.