How do you define understanding classical music?

I define understanding classical music as being able to identify the trasnformations and recapitulations of different motifs and themes throughout a piece of music and along all four time periods of classical music (this doesn’t mean that you have to like all periods, but understand them, because without this clause, people who understand that a melody in a classical style piece by Mozart or Haydn is recapitulated exactly the same at the end, but know nothing else about it would be grouped with people who understand the transformation of different motifs in really complex works such as a fugue, a complex classical sonata or a Liszt sonata). It doesn’t have to be a composer specifically

Share your thoughts

Manuel

The purpose of this is not to criticise, but rather to make a reflection on how I (and I think many others) have changed and developed an understanding of classical music

9 hours ago, Jqh73o said:

and along all four time periods of classical music (this doesn’t mean that you have to like all periods, but understand them

But it is always possible to invent some new style of music which people who understand all the other styles that came before wouldn't be able to understand.  Say for example a style of composing music in which all the musical material has to be derived from quotes of other composer's works (this might be a sort of a form of musical maximalism).  One wouldn't be able to understand the music very well without a wide ranging familiarity with works which might be quoted in the newly composed piece of music.  Hence according to your definition, wouldn't be counted among those who understand classical music.  And to say the least, the 20th century especially is full of a plurality of musical styles which are much more difficult to understand than previous periods in music history, which means that according to your definition people who don't understand spectral music or that can't hear tone rows in 12-tone serialism would be counted among those who don't understand classical music, which I think is a bit extreme.

Edit:  sorry I just realized that what I wrote might be a bit critical of your definition.  I just think that it's enough that people understand those pieces of classical music which they find most palatable not necessarily all periods of classical music.

Edit no.2:  I'll copy and paste what I wrote in the chat box here as well:  I personally believe that there are many people who are capable of understanding classical music (unless you're talking about more recent 20th century innovations) but, say for example Mozart's music I believe to be very lucid and easy to understand and admire by a common populace ... look at for example the popularity of the movie "Amadeus" in which Mozart's music is very liberally used as the soundtrack to the film .. I don't think it was anything outside of the capability of common people to understand.

Composers who lived and worked in the classical era and their music followed trends at the time.

Understanding any of the nuances of how they typically ended a phrase as opposed to the Romantic era or whatever are really not relevant, especially not for listeners.

What matters is that people often lump all (old) orchestral music in with "classical" which means that tragically, second Viennese school garbage gets lumped in with the greats and tarnishes their good name.

I feel that might've been by design...

 All you really need to do to make people understand is when they say "Classical music? You mean like Hans Zimmer?" is say "No, like Mozart".

Hello @PeterthePapercomPoser

57 minutes ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Edit:  sorry I just realized that what I wrote might be a bit critical of your definition.  I just think that it's enough that people understand those pieces of classical music which they find most palatable not necessarily all periods of classical music.

Don’t worry, you were just expressing your thoughts on my definition for music’s sake, and I have to admit that I also thought my definition may have been offensive and seemed too agressive, so that is why I had to reply to clarify that I did not mean to discourage people that don’t fit my description. I think this is a heated topic for everyone.

1 hour ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

But it is always possible to invent some new style of music which people who understand all the other styles that came before wouldn't be able to understand.  Say for example a style of composing music in which all the musical material has to be derived from quotes of other composer's works (this might be a sort of a form of musical maximalism).  One wouldn't be able to understand the music very well without a wide ranging familiarity with works which might be quoted in the newly composed piece of music.  Hence according to your definition, wouldn't be counted among those who understand classical music.

This is a really good example and I didn’t think about it, it was so good that it made me change my mind about my definition (take that as something good because I am really stubborn). So, now taking this exceptions and similar ideas you mentioned as the serialism that are completely different. How would you define the understanding of classical music? Would you define it as the understanding of a specific form? Specific style? Specific form and style? Specific composer? Specific piece?

Thanks for sharing your opinion

Manuel

Hello @AngelCityOutlaw

55 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

What matters is that people often lump all (old) orchestral music in with "classical" which means that tragically, second Viennese school garbage gets lumped in with the greats and tarnishes their good name.

Why are you calling serialism “garbage”. I myself don’t like it. But is it to be called garbage? I don’t think so: it is complex and has the potential to be expressive. What is garbage about it according to you?

55 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

 All you really need to do to make people understand is when they say "Classical music? You mean like Hans Zimmer?" is say "No, like Mozart".

I completely agree with this. Hans Zimmer and other composers like Ludovico Einaudi  are not classical, they just use classical ensembles. I don’t like their music to the point of calling it garbage, but I don’t think it is fair to call it garbage, since all music can be called garbage in some ways (Not saying it is, just, that if you really hate it you could say that is garbage because of something that it has). So I prefer to I say that it is overly simple, and  is unfairly popular because of the little effort and talent that is put to it and the massive attention it gets (this goes more for minimalism, but it applies to some extent to this “classical” composers)

Thanks for sharing 

Manuel

Edit: This is a really heated topic, so I might have described minimalism in a slightly too bad way, What I don’t like about it is more the attention that it gets over classical music rather than the music itself.

6 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

Why are you calling serialism “garbage”

Because it is lol

More specifically, atonalism in general. I don't want to go too far into one my trademark anti-atonalism rants but to try to keep it short

7 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

it is complex and has the potential to be expressive

Not really, but let's say for a moment that it is complex. Complex does not automatically equate to "good". The complexity must still be highly musical and intelligible, this is why John Williams is so revered in the film music world.

It also true that theoretically any performance can be "expressive", but an expressive violin performance of bad music is still bad music.

The point of music is to sound good at a minimum. What is "good or bad" meets a lot more consistent, objective criteria than modernists want to believe and is recognizable across generations and cultures.

Play a Mozart Sonata and one of Schoenberg's back to back for people who have no interest in "classical" music, in any country in the world, and you will find they prefer the Mozart one every time. Because it is a better piece of music.

The entire development of music as a craft, art and science is rooted in tonality and mastery of it. Atonality is therefore a rejection of this history and thereby music itself. It is thoroughly anti-music.

So I would say it is more than fair to call it "garbage".

16 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

since all music can be called garbage in some ways (Not saying it is, just, that if you really hate it you could say that is garbage because of something that it has)

Because not everyone may share the same taste or precise aesthetics and not everyone can be pleased does not mean that objective standards of quality do not exist, however. Not everyone agrees that the world is round, but that does not mean that their perception of reality is equally valid. 

However, I do notice that most of the people who call John Williams' music "Kitsch" tend to be those producing the low-effort "garbage" I just finished disparaging, and I'm sure that is related.

In regards to Zimmer and minimalism, while it is true what I said previously about complexity, it is also true that you require a certain amount of complexity to be musical at all. This is a big reason for Zimmer's failure. The Dune score is nothing but boring drones and pads.

Why this is all relevant to your thread is that for the better part of 100 years now, corrupt academics and suits have promoted woefully unmusical examples of the orchestra or piano and this has caused laymen to dismiss "classical" music because they do not "get it".

33 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

How would you define the understanding of classical music? Would you define it as the understanding of a specific form? Specific style? Specific form and style? Specific composer? Specific piece?

This whole discussion made me think of the galant schema and how people listened to music much differently back then (between the Baroque and Classical eras) and how nuanced it was at the time.  Today, people who listen to music from, either the Baroque, or the Classical eras aren't well versed in the different patterns of Galant music and could therefore be said to not really understand where Classical music itself came from.  Back in the 18th century it was the responsibility of any courtesan who considers themselves a respectably trained amateur musician to be able to recognize by ear the galant schema which music at the time was constructed out of.  Not only that, but they should be well versed enough to be able to seperate schema "of good taste" and "of poor taste" and be able to make suggestions on how to improve music "of poor taste".  Today, few are as well versed in the schema as to be able to recognize them by ear, much less to be able to have developed a taste for particular patterns over others (I started Gjerdingen's Music in the Galant Style, but have thusfar not finished it yet).

I think it's natural for music to evolve and for some types of music to become dated or obsolete.  Familiarity of such music, once it goes out of style diminishes naturally, and few people continue to champion it.  But I don't think the masses, for having moved on, should be counted out of being considered to be able to understand music that has been surpassed by a new style.  If you understand Baroque music, or Galant music, or Classical music, or Romantic music then you champion those particular musics.  I don't think there's a need to make any blanket statements about the whole of the oeuvre of the whole of music history. 

First of all, thanks for debating, even if we clearly have different opinions it is always good to debate, because it opens yourself to reflection on your own ideas and other ideas presented. I am learning so much about avant garde music just by thinking about it and also practicing my English 😂

1 hour ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

This whole discussion made me think of the galant schema and how people listened to music much differently back then (between the Baroque and Classical eras) and how nuanced it was at the time.  Today, people who listen to music from, either the Baroque, or the Classical eras aren't well versed in the different patterns of Galant music and could therefore be said to not really understand where Classical music itself came from.  Back in the 18th century it was the responsibility of any courtesan who considers themselves a respectably trained amateur musician to be able to recognize by ear the galant schema which music at the time was constructed out of.  Not only that, but they should be well versed enough to be able to seperate schema "of good taste" and "of poor taste" and be able to make suggestions on how to improve music "of poor taste".  Today, few are as well versed in the schema as to be able to recognize them by ear, much less to be able to have developed a taste for particular patterns over others (I started Gjerdingen's Music in the Galant Style, but have thusfar not finished it yet).

This is really interesting! It will change the way I understand classical and baroque periods for sure. Where did you learn about it?

1 hour ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Because not everyone may share the same taste or precise aesthetics and not everyone can be pleased does not mean that objective standards of quality do not exist, however. Not everyone agrees that the world is round, but that does not mean that their perception of reality is equally valid. 

However, I do notice that most of the people who call John Williams' music "Kitsch" tend to be those producing the low-effort "garbage" I just finished disparaging, and I'm sure that is related.

In regards to Zimmer and minimalism, while it is true what I said previously about complexity, it is also true that you require a certain amount of complexity to be musical at all. This is a big reason for Zimmer's failure. The Dune score is nothing but boring drones and pads.

Why this is all relevant to your thread is that for the better part of 100 years now, corrupt academics and suits have promoted woefully unmusical examples of the orchestra or piano and this has caused laymen to dismiss "classical" music because they do not "get it".

As oppose as with atonality, I think we have similar ideas about minimalism. However, in what are you basing yourself to say corrupt academics are the reason why the music is in decadence now? I think it is more of an effect of social trends and lower attention spans given how the world is today, but I am open to read about your interpretation. If you have strong evidence that you can share, please do so.

Ps: Was the reference to the round world intentional? Lol 

32 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

Expressive dissonance in romanticism or even sometimes extremely thick counterpoint in baroque style can sound “bad”. But with context it sounds even better than bland diatonicism or monophony

32 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

Not to mention that in some cases, atonal music

But then, these are within a context of a hierarchy of tonality and consonance.

Dissonance is only beautiful within a hierarchy of consonance, or else it is just noise. Atonal passages may be appropriate in a horror film for example, but they must be surrounded by tonal cues in order to not just sound like the composer has no idea what he's doing.

32 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

play a slow movement of a Mozart sonata (or even a more expressive composer like Rachmaninof or Scriabin) and sadly, people will prefer the catchiness and overused rhythms of the modern music

"My Heart Will Go On" is nearly 30 years old and just last year once again topped the charts and it is really not like a club banger.

"I want to spend my lifetime loving you" spent time in the top 5 in several countries when it came out.

Most '80s hairbands biggest hits were their slow ballad tunes.

You are of course correct that most will prefer Britney Spears to Mozart, but it's also not really true that people don't really like this "expressive" stuff. Celine Dion's song is at least as popular as "Oops, I did it again."

But here's the other thing: Lively and memorable tunes are also what most people like about Mozart and music in general, and always have. Most people, especially young people, will want music that has energy which is why they'd probably find Divertimento in D among his best pieces.

I visited your page and I notice it says you were born in 2009.

Two things about that.

1. Holy sh!t I am getting old...

2. Your present stance on this is likely a phase.

I don't mean point two to sound condescending by the way.

When I was 15, I agreed very much with what you're saying. I listened to a lot of progressive metal, hated on "pop" music and so on. I really wanted everyone to listen to my complex pieces and see my musical genius. 

Now, you'll find my playlist can go something like Tchaikovsky > Backstreet Boys > Mercenary > John Williams > David Lee Murphy lol

As Mozart himself said "Melody is the essence of music", and as long as the piece has a great melody (and the accompaniment works and the performance is good) then you have a piece of music worth listening to and people will recognize it. Whether it's as busy as John Williams polyphony, as slow and "expressive" as Schindler's list (also really popular piece btw), or just the Castellow girls singing and strumming some guitar chords, it really doesn't matter. 

24 minutes ago, Jqh73o said:

This is really interesting! It will change the way I understand classical and baroque periods for sure. Where did you learn about it?

Actually, the first time I heard about Galant schema is on this website, probably some discussion with @Luis Hernández.  I then used my local community college's online library resources to be able to access a PDF of Gjerdingen's Music in the Galant Style which outlines the most common schema.  I actually made this chance spinner on pickerwheel.com which you can use to randomly select a series of Galant schema:

Oh yes!  I forgot that there used to be a YCF member who was training his daughter in Galant schema and how to improvise in the galant style.  They told me that my Bourree in F minor used the La Folia schema and that was the first time anyone ever identified a Galant schema within any of my own music.

18 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

But then, these are within a context of a hierarchy of tonality and consonance.

Dissonance is only beautiful within a hierarchy of consonance, or else it is just noise. Atonal passages may be appropriate in a horror film for example, but they must be surrounded by tonal cues in order to not just sound like the composer has no idea what he's doing.

That’s a really good point. But to what extent do you define consonance, consonance can be atonal too, or a more tonal section in an atonal piece while still being mainly atonal. If there is a balance between consonance and dissonance an atonal piece can work just fine.

24 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

2. Your present stance on this is likely a phase.

I don't mean point two to sound condescending by the way.

When I was 15, I agreed very much with what you're saying. I listened to a lot of progressive metal, hated on "pop" music and so on. I really wanted everyone to listen to my complex pieces and see my musical genius. 

While I doubt it since the liking of uncomplex satisfying is a much more common phase, it may be a possibility that I stop seeing potential in some twentieth century styles and begin just to classify them as ununderstandable nonsense. But I think I will continue with my opinion on other styles of atonality (the better sounding one of Scriabin and Debussy for example) as I have already learned to appreciate them

30 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

As Mozart himself said "Melody is the essence of music", and as long as the piece has a great melody (and the accompaniment works and the performance is good) then you have a piece of music worth listening to and people will recognize it. Whether it's as busy as John Williams polyphony, as slow and "expressive" as Schindler's list (also really popular piece btw), or just the Castellow girls singing and strumming some guitar chords, it really doesn't matter. 

Right now, my motto is understandable complexity, and I know most composers had a similar idea in their youth, but I know that my style will evolve towards simplicity as I will grow older because I have common sense and I know that what happened to most composers who weren’t inventing innovative techniques throughout  their lives but rather had a “static” enough style (Rachmaninoff and Liszt for example. Rachmaninoff abhorred writing too complexly and Liszt wrote simpler pieces at the end of his life). That’s not the case for innovative composers who discovered atonality midway their careers, but that is not my case either because my music has already been corrupted by loose tonality and as you pointed out I am only fifteen. So I will write and like simpler pieces in the future. But right now, I have first to explore the limits of complexity before being able to write in a complexly simple style

@PeterthePapercomPoser

Hello

Interesting topic.
For a long time I have studied "music" in a disjointed way, trying to put the elements together (harmony, counterpoint, etc....).
But when a couple of years ago, I started to review Music from a chronological perspective, it opened my mind.
EVERYTHING leaves a great legacy in later movements or styles, although many times they are very blurred or modified.
The transition from modal and monophonic Medieval to polyphony and the beginnings of tonal harmony in the late Renaissance is a very long and fascinating transition.
The Baroque fully established functional tonal harmony and counterpoint, and all subsequent styles were influenced by it.
Romanticism is full of Baroque, Gallant style and Renaissance resources, but with one or more twists.
Even atonality was based on counterpoint and other ancient issues.

On the other hand, I'm glad you noted the importance of schemata. After I studied that very important book, I went on to do much more research and discovered many other schemata: prinner, bergamasca, hearzt, lully, corelli's leapfrog, pulcinella, etc, etc, etc.... I even described some new schemata myself, such as Le Temps.
All these patterns are alive in today's pop music.

On 8/12/2024 at 3:05 PM, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Not really, but let's say for a moment that it is complex. Complex does not automatically equate to "good". The complexity must still be highly musical and intelligible, this is why John Williams is so revered in the film music world.

It also true that theoretically any performance can be "expressive", but an expressive violin performance of bad music is still bad music.

The point of music is to sound good at a minimum. What is "good or bad" meets a lot more consistent, objective criteria than modernists want to believe and is recognizable across generations and cultures.

Play a Mozart Sonata and one of Schoenberg's back to back for people who have no interest in "classical" music, in any country in the world, and you will find they prefer the Mozart one every time. Because it is a better piece of music.

The entire development of music as a craft, art and science is rooted in tonality and mastery of it. Atonality is therefore a rejection of this history and thereby music itself. It is thoroughly anti-music.

So I would say it is more than fair to call it "garbage".

While complexity doesn't guarantee quality, I think musical value often comes down to how engaging and coherent the music is. John Williams, for example, combines complexity with accessibility, making his work widely appreciated. Music that is well-crafted and expressive will generally stand the test of time, regardless of its style or complexity. Preferences between composers like Mozart and Schoenberg can be quite subjective, but the key is how well the music resonates with its listeners.

On 8/12/2024 at 5:05 PM, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Because it is lol

More specifically, atonalism in general. I don't want to go too far into one my trademark anti-atonalism rants but to try to keep it short

Not really, but let's say for a moment that it is complex. Complex does not automatically equate to "good". The complexity must still be highly musical and intelligible, this is why John Williams is so revered in the film music world.

It also true that theoretically any performance can be "expressive", but an expressive violin performance of bad music is still bad music.

The point of music is to sound good at a minimum. What is "good or bad" meets a lot more consistent, objective criteria than modernists want to believe and is recognizable across generations and cultures.

Play a Mozart Sonata and one of Schoenberg's back to back for people who have no interest in "classical" music, in any country in the world, and you will find they prefer the Mozart one every time. Because it is a better piece of music.

The entire development of music as a craft, art and science is rooted in tonality and mastery of it. Atonality is therefore a rejection of this history and thereby music itself. It is thoroughly anti-music.

So I would say it is more than fair to call it "garbage".

Because not everyone may share the same taste or precise aesthetics and not everyone can be pleased does not mean that objective standards of quality do not exist, however. Not everyone agrees that the world is round, but that does not mean that their perception of reality is equally valid. 

However, I do notice that most of the people who call John Williams' music "Kitsch" tend to be those producing the low-effort "garbage" I just finished disparaging, and I'm sure that is related.

In regards to Zimmer and minimalism, while it is true what I said previously about complexity, it is also true that you require a certain amount of complexity to be musical at all. This is a big reason for Zimmer's failure. The Dune score is nothing but boring drones and pads.

Why this is all relevant to your thread is that for the better part of 100 years now, corrupt academics and suits have promoted woefully unmusical examples of the orchestra or piano and this has caused laymen to dismiss "classical" music because they do not "get it".

 

I agree with everything you have written on here, AngelCityOutlaw.  I have said the same things for a few decades.  I have written many posts on Youtube songs as well as other music or musical gear sites.

Just because something is complex in no way means it is good.  And if something is simple, likewise, does not make it good. 

The 3-chords of the vast majority of Rock songs does not make them good.  There are many that are, but most are not.

I've written a few times that the playing proficiency of Jordan Rudess (Keyboardist from Dream Theater) is to be envied.  But the guy knows nothing about composition.  Or maybe I should write, "His compositions suck".  

Being able to play a thousand notes fast without error is truly something to be envied.  But if the riff or stanza sucks, it sucks and shows nothing of merit for the song.

I love a large number of pop songs, but let me take a sentence to define what I mean by "pop".  I mean the songs that were hits on the radio.  BTW, I stopped listening to radio in 1988 because I gave up on it.  Nothing worthy of my listening time was being produced and I was constantly assaulted with trash that the populace embraced.

The intelligence of the world listening society began diminishing severely by the end of the 1980's, and while there were still a few good bands and songs that "somehow" made it to the top of the mediums (I'm still not sure how I ever heard of Collective Soul, which came out in 1994 and I own about half of their CD albums), the vast majority (almost 100%) of music being played on the various mediums were dismal.

For the record, I believe Beethoven was the Master of composition, but I do not like all Beethoven.  His latter works stymie me.  But up until that time (probably because he had gone totally deaf) Beethoven combined both Intellect and Good Feeling in all of his compositions.  And they were extraordinary.  Beyond amazing.  Intellect as was given to us by Bach and Good Feeling (the beginning of the Romantic era, most notable in Chopin).  When listening to any of Beethoven's music you can recognize brilliant intellectualism, and are amazed at how wonderful they sound (feel good) at the same time.  The same cannot be said of the vast majority of the eras' composers that this thread started off naming for all the periods.

I also 100% agree with your comments about the past 100 years of corrupt academics.  That it could even possibly be imagined that Math Music is something, I hold with  such total disgust (head shaking left to right)...

Oh, one last comment.  I read a news clip from a critic who wrote that he had heard Mozart play and thought that nobody could ever be better until he watched and heard Beethoven play (around the year 1800, if I recall) and he said that hearing Beethoven was like hearing the devil himself.

3 hours ago, Toddskins said:

For the record, I believe Beethoven was the Master of composition, but I do not like all Beethoven.  His latter works stymie me.  But up until that time (probably because he had gone totally deaf) Beethoven combined both Intellect and Good Feeling in all of his compositions.  And they were extraordinary.  Beyond amazing.  Intellect as was given to us by Bach and Good Feeling (the beginning of the Romantic era, most notable in Chopin).  When listening to any of Beethoven's music you can recognize brilliant intellectualism, and are amazed at how wonderful they sound (feel good) at the same time.  The same cannot be said of the vast majority of the eras' composers that this thread started off naming for all the periods

 Late Beethoven is always my all time favourite for me. Those late piano sonatas, late string quartets, Symphony no.9, Missa Solemnis, Diabelli Variations, late piano bagatelles are for me the most humanised and at the same time most religious in a humanistic way music for me.

3 hours ago, Toddskins said:

also 100% agree with your comments about the past 100 years of corrupt academics.  That it could even possibly be imagined that Math Music is something, I hold with  such total disgust (head shaking left to right).

They forget that music is written for soul, which they don’t admit we have and they indeed don’t have one.

For me even pop is better than many of the contemporary “serious” music. They are much more authentic and touching the soul than those outward sound chasing organised sound “music”, which is just organised sound but never cultralised and humanised sound.

Henry

21 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

 Late Beethoven is always my all time favourite for me. Those late piano sonatas, late string quartets, Symphony no.9, Missa Solemnis, Diabelli Variations, late piano bagatelles are for me the most humanised and at the same time most religious in a humanistic way music for me.

They forget that music is written for soul, which they don’t admit we have and they indeed don’t have one.

For me even pop is better than many of the contemporary “serious” music. They are much more authentic and touching the soul than those outward sound chasing organised sound “music”, which is just organised sound but never cultralised and humanised sound.

Henry

 

I agree with those Beethoven pieces you mentioned as being fantastic, except perhaps for the late string quartets.  I'm referring to the things that came at the near end of his life.  He began to experiment, I believe it was characterized as by one writer.  II heard some portrayed in a movie about Beethoven and thought the same thing.  "Huh?"

Regarding the bagatelles, may I suggest what I believe to be most fantastic recording of them performed by Stephen Kovacevich on a great sounding Steinway.  Magnificent playing and just the right amount of reverb. His performance of them is stellar. 24 tracks.  I don't know Classical music and all the technical things like so many do.  Apparently there are more than 24 bagatelles?  Some near mint copies still available for sale on this link:
 

https://www.discogs.com/release/5159102-Beethoven-Stephen-Bishop-Kovacevich-Bagatellen

BTW, the performances on that disk are the best.  I have listened to him do them on Youtube from other recordings, and they are not good.  On the disk I am linking, the performances are played faster, perfect articulations, and sound way better than the slower versions I have heard elsewhere. 

Regarding bagatelles, I read somewhere that they can be considered as musical sketches, ideas, that were never developed into full scale concertos.  If that statement is true it boggles my mind at what they could have become.  Like a sketch pad of ideas and he did not live long enough to develop them into full scale (smile).  The bagatelles are so wonderful, and a few of them are under 1-minute long!  The finger work on some of them are flabbergasting.

If you do happen to get that CD, one of my favorites is track #9 (Opus 119 #2 Andante con moto).  Only 47 seconds in length.

Track #20 (Op. 126 #2 Allegro) is really neat and #3 Presto is awesome. And #6 Presto Andante amabile e con moto, too.  So much wonder in these.

I love them all and have listened to that CD hundreds of times.  Truly.

5 hours ago, Toddskins said:

agree with those Beethoven pieces you mentioned as being fantastic, except perhaps for the late string quartets.  I'm referring to the things that came at the near end of his life.  He began to experiment, I believe it was characterized as by one writer.  II heard some portrayed in a movie about Beethoven and thought the same thing.  "Huh?"

but the late quartets are exactly the things that came at the near end of his life. They are his last published compositions! And for me they are his best works, more so than the Ninth and Missa Solemnis.

Kovacevich always plays Beethoven well. His op.110 playing is the greatest of all, so powerful.

Two anectodes, one historic, one personal.

Historic. There is a famous letter of Mozart to his father, where he tells him about how a piano concerto (?) was received and how he felt about it. And as I remember it, Mozart says that he was quite happy with the concerto because "normal" people liked it, and expert musicians found intresting/intriguing/innovative things in it and hence liked it.

Personal. An undisclosed number of years ago 🙂, I hosted for a few days in my apt a friend of a friend who now is a famous conductor and back then was a student seeking admittance at a prestigious school in the US. We talked a lot about music, we played Schubert f-minor Fantasia together, he showed me some rudiments of conducting, it was three exhilarating days (for me at least 🙂). And towards the end, he was playing Elektra on my piano, showing me the daring harmonies used by Strauss etc, and then at some point he like stopped with a sigh and said---I'm kinda envious of you, who can just listen and enjoy instead of working all the details of a score.

What I'm trying to say is that "understanding" is a big word. Take the "risanato" slow movement from the a minor late beethoven quartet. What does it take to understand it? Do you need to understand/know that it is a hymn? do you have to catch its mystic character? Do you have to understand the gratitude for healing that permeates it? do you need to understand the ancient use of modality? do you need to grasp the subtle bits of the harmonic composition? the interplay between the four instruments? etc etc. It's a big term and it's hard to define it, to justify leaving something out of it. As it happens, some people will have the technical ability to "understand" more elements than others do. Some people will have a more basic enjoyment. Sometimes the former might encroach into the latter as my conductor friend implied.

I find it very interesting what was said in this thread: different audiences at different times will "understand" (or: will have the tools to understand) music differently than us. Maybe chamber music in the classical period was understood more than the generic audience of a classic concert does today. I doubt many in a concert hall today do know/understand the forma sonata, or the intricacies of counterpoint, while in the 1700s you could generally expect a higher level of sophistication from most audiences. So a lot of what we mean by "understanding" will depend by the "vocabulary" so to speak that one possesses. One learns about Galant schemata, and recognizes them and learns how to use them, and it's a bit like learning new words in a language, allowing you to understand or better undertsand what's said, and say things yourself, too.

Classical music is I think one of the most amazingly intricate forms of art that we humans have been able to generate. But music (some of it at least) has also this amazing property, that one could now nothing about theory, and still, like I was at age eight many years ago, be moved and engrossed and hooked by listening to a counterpoint of the art of the fugue. It's elusive, i think, to try and figure out what was there to capture your heart so fully. Maybe you learn how to play, you learn harmony, you learn counterpoint, you learn how to write a fugue, and yet you're peeling layer after layer of an onion, and in the end there's nothing left and what really captivated you remains ineffable. So you can understand the technique, you can marvel at the abilities of Bach, you can get a glimpse of why a certain solution was chosen and not another, but what links your heart to that piece, that so many times (most times? always?) remains not understood, and it's a big part of the beauty of music.