What piece(s) are you currently trying to learn?

Originally posted by J. Lee Graham@Jul 29 2005, 04:39 AM

Duck, is there more than one numbering system for Sor's etudes?

I'm constantly defending Segovia and Sor, but it's worth it.

I've personally never heard anyone call them talentless... In fact it has always been the opposite. Segovia is the father of classical guitar as far as I care!

Sor is good, but I've always preferred Tarrega's and Albeniz's music. By the way, for anyone who has never heard a guitar concerto but wants to hear an amazing piece of music, I recommend Concerto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo... very famous, but I've found that many non-guitarists have never even heard of it. The second movement is of heart-breaking beauty.

Perhaps you and I hang out with a different group of guitarist! If so i', dumping mine and joining yours. I think most of the guitarist that I know are "modern classical". Not exactly neo-classical, but like a john cage view of the guitar. I do like Tarrega a lot, but not so much Albeniz.

Perhaps you and I hang out with a different group of guitarist! If so i', dumping mine and joining yours.

Welcome aboard!

About two years ago my college hosted a guitarist named David Burgess, who was trained personally by Segovia. BEST guitar I ever heard! Hardly cliche. I think he played a couple Segovia pieces too.

Scott Joplin's "Bethena (A Concert Waltz)", for my school's yearly talent show (occurring in February).

Originally posted by Central Scrutinizer@Jul 31 2005, 11:25 AM

Scott Joplin's "Bethena (A Concert Waltz)", for my school's yearly talent show (occurring in February).

I love that piece! I have the complete piano works of Joplin, and that's in the top 5 in the whole book for me. Good luck learning it...it's not as easy as it looks. But then, none of Joplin is.

Oh my...we have THE CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER (sic) in our midst! A Frank Zappa fan, I take it? :D Weasels rip my flesh, baby.

Oh, no. I loooooove Joplin. Especially Bethena. It is one of my top five in my Joplin book as well! Bethena has so many sections but it keeps going back to that beautiful main theme, and the ending is magnificent! If you like that one, I suggest Bink's Waltz, Eugenia, and the Magnetic Rag. The Mag Rag is probably my favorite of all his rags. Good luck with this one, I'm sure you'll play it beautifully!

My word. I just went and downloaded it because I was curious and, despite an interest in Joplin's music, didn't think I knew it. But I did; it was the music between scenes for a little play we performed in sixth grade!

* draws a line through it on list of unidentified pieces *

All right! Thanks, guys!

Heh. Love it!

If you like that one, I suggest Bink's Waltz, Eugenia, and the Magnetic Rag. The Mag Rag is probably my favorite of all his rags.

Oh my...

The Magnetic Rag...one of Joplin's last (1914) and greatest.

"Ragtime Dance (Stop-Time)," "Easy Winners," "Pineapple Rag," and "Solace" are up there for me, too.

But I just might trade any one (or maybe all of them) for his opera, "Treemonisha" (1911-1915) - especially the ragtime choruses, including "We're Going Around (A Ring Play)," "Aunt Dinah Has Blowed De Horn," and "A Real Slow Song (Slow Drag)." ;) :D

Yep...Joplin wrote an opera. Can you even imagine it?

Don't even try! Go here and listen to the samples! :D

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=samples#disc_2

Ooh I knew he wrote one and I had heard some MIDIs, but I never really sat down and listened to it...I'll check out those clips tomorrow! Thanks, J!

Oh, and do you have info on how he died? It was like April 1917 or something... I know he went to a mental hospital at some point, do you have any more info?

I am currently learning:

Percussion - Malaguena, Caravan, Harlem Nocturne, Echano (marching band. ;))

Sax - Variations on a Gavotte by Corelli, Sonata No. 3 (Handel)

Since I'm also a conductor I'm learning those scores

- An opera to be Premièred in march by a friend composer.

- Bruckner : Symphony No. 5 in Bb Major

Oh, and do you have info on how he died? It was like April 1917 or something... I know he went to a mental hospital at some point, do you have any more info?

Sorry, Nick...don't know how I missed this question.

Scott Joplin's (1867-1917) life and death were somewhat tragic. First of all, he was an African-American and a musical genius at a time in America's history when it was difficult to be both of those things at the same time and be taken seriously. It was hard enough just being of African descent in America then, I'm ashamed to say; slavery supposedly ended in 1863 with President Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation," but in many parts of the United States it didn't effectively end until about 50 years ago because of the barbaric state laws that perpetuated many of the abuses of slavery by skirting Federal law. In the Southern US especially, black people were free in name only. In reality, they remained slaves for all intents and purposes.

While details of Joplin's early life were sketchy, he showed musical talent early and was given free piano lessons and a solid education in classical music by a German music teacher as a boy (thank God for sympathetic and visionary people). He later studied composition at George Smith College. He used his knowledge of classical form to synthesize a more "respectable," classical form of ragtime (the idiom had its roots in African-American and Latin-American folk music) that set a new standard.

He is reputed to have played piano for a living in brothels and hoehouses in Missouri and elsewhere in the Midwest in his youth (Brahms is said to have done the same thing in Hamburg when he was young, though some dispute this). It has been assumed that he contracted syphilis in this environment. However he got it, he suffered from syphilis most of his adult life.

He eventually moved to New York, and through the sale of his compositions, which were immensely popular, he became a prosperous man despite his race and social status. But money couldn't buy Joplin the respect he craved, and by rights deserved. He always wanted to be respected as a serious composer - much like Sir Arthur Sullivan, who much to his chagrin was better known for his comic operettas than his serious music. In 1915, Joplin tried to interest backers in his opera "Treemonisha," which became his absorbing passion in the last years of his life, and put on a private performance at enormous personal expense. But the backers weren't interested and the opera was not performed again until the 1970s (BTW, the recording I referred you to on Amazon is of the first professional production, original cast, from 1975).

By the 1910s, Joplin's syphilis infection had progressed to the tertiary stage, and had begun to affect his nervous system. He had trouble playing the piano, and he began to go insane, but in 1916 he still managed to make several piano rolls of his playing. He was institutionalised in a sanatorium (insane asylum) in January, 1917. He is said to have had periods of sanity when he would write music frantically before his mind left him again. He died in the Manhattan State Hospital on April 1, 1917.

On the sax, I'm working on Andante and Allegro by Andre Chailleux. This is for Solo and Ensemble, so there is a piano part to this. And on piano, I'm working out of a book called "Boogie Woogie Made Easy" by Eddy Ballantine. Old book.

Personally on flute:

Medieval Suite by Katherine Hoover

Sonata by Hindemithe

Sonata by Taktakishvilli

Duo for flute and piano by Aaron Copland...

A few more but mainly those. Good pieces, all.

Earlier in the thread, we were talking about Fernando Sor and his wonderful music for guitar.

On the radio the other day, I heard a guitar sonata that I was sure had been written by Sor - but to my astonishment and great pleasure, it turned out to have been written by yet another guitar virtuoso who lived about the same time!

His name was Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829) - born in Italy, active mostly in Vienna (where Sor was mostly active in Paris). According to a brief bio I read, along with Sor, he was the "other" great guitar virtuoso of his day...he attracted Beethoven's notice and won great acclaim not only in Vienna, but in London.

Has anyone heard of him, or played any of his music? The sonata I heard was almost indistinguishable from Sor to my ear - very nice stuff.

Originally posted by J. Lee Graham@Aug 12 2005, 03:02 AM

Earlier in the thread, we were talking about Fernando Sor and his wonderful music for guitar.

On the radio the other day, I heard a guitar sonata that I was sure had been written by Sor - but to my astonishment and great pleasure, it turned out to have been written by yet another guitar virtuoso who lived about the same time!

His name was Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829) - born in Italy, active mostly in Vienna (where Sor was mostly active in Paris).

Guess what? I just started the sonata pathetique! It's so beautifull, especially the rondo. (though parts of it actually sound humorous) Anybody got anything to add? :lol:

Trying to learn the Rachmaninov Prelude still but am going down to my true level and playing proper Grade 4 stuff, a jazzy-ish modern tune by Haughton and a Scarlatti! (K83 - it's pretty easy but sounds lovely). Hopefully when I get them done I can start working on the good stuff again. (Got a teacher that's why...)

Guess what? I just started the sonata pathetique! It's so beautifull, especially the rondo. (though parts of it actually sound humorous) Anybody got anything to add?

Inasmuch as I only ever learnt (taught myself) isolated movements of Beethoven sonatas, I'm always impressed when someone says they're working up any of them - particularly the Pathethique or the Hammerklavier. There was always at least one movement in each of the sonatas that was too difficult for me to play on the technique I was able to develop from two years of piano lessons ending when I was 10. Suffice it to say I am a good pianist, but a lousy pianist - if that makes any sense.

I only learnt the middle movement of the Pathetique. Beethoven at his melancholy, lyrical best. They say you can learn more about who a composer really is from his slow movements than you can from anything else he writes. What a spirit must have dwelt in that fragile body, tortured mind and broken heart.

Originally posted by J. Lee Graham@Aug 16 2005, 08:06 PM

Inasmuch as I only ever learnt (taught myself) isolated movements of Beethoven sonatas, I'm always impressed when someone says they're working up any of them - particularly the Pathethique or the Hammerklavier.

now here you have another pointless post by Cavatina.

Hardly. :)

What you say about Mozart...hmmm. I think I've posted elsewhere that I'd cheerfully have punched Mozart's lights out because he could be such a jerk. He was known to be cruel even to his closest friends - for example, he routinely humiliated a horn-playing friend of his in front of other people by throwing a stack of music on the floor and ordering him to pick it up...and for some reason, the man did it. He is known to have publicly bad-mouthed even his friend and influential champion Joseph Haydn, who when he heard of it didn't seem surprised in the slightest, replying with a smile, "I forgive him."

I have a big problem with people like that.

Yet I listen to some of his music - particularly the slow movements, like the Adagio from the Gran Partita, K 361, or any of 80 or 100 others - and I hear the reflection of a spirit as beautiful as any that ever walked the earth.

I don't know how it can be possible, but Mozart's behaviour seems almost the product of some deep-seated insecurity. In my experience, only people who are really afraid that they're not half as good as they think they are behave as he did. As great as he was - and he surely knew it - he must have tortured himself inside over some perceived failures. Was it that his mother died while with him on a concert tour to Paris? Or that he broke his father's heart by not staying in Salzburg and taking up the family business as music-mongers to the Prince-Archbishops? Or was he just plain scared inside, and this was his way of hiding it? We may never know. But despite his childish and often vicious behaviour to the people in his life, his music shows us who he really was.

Originally posted by J. Lee Graham@Aug 17 2005, 12:36 AM

Yet I listen to some of his music - particularly the slow movements, like the Adagio from the Gran Partita, K 361, or any of 80 or 100 others - and I hear the reflection of a spirit as beautiful as any that ever walked the earth.

Easily one of my favorite Mozart pieces. I had the pleasure of hearing this performed live, with the instruments as they were in his day, by Tafelmusik in Toronto, and I was overcome by the beauty. I have no reason to believe that this music isn't the deepest reflection of this genius's soul. Which brings me to...

I don't know how it can be possible, but Mozart's behaviour seems almost the product of some deep-seated insecurity.

Violin: Vivaldi's Violin Concerto in A minor

Piano: David Lanz new age arrangement of "What child is this"