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CLASSICAL MUSIC MEGATHREAD



DON'T BE AFRAID TO POST IN THIS THREAD

Here we can indulge in our fantasies of having fine taste in music without judging one another or fear of being judged. You could very well be Scumbag Steve and be subject to suspicion regarding your motives and honesty, but that doesn't matter in this thread. Perhaps you are a thoroughly-learned connoisseur of classical music, or perhaps you are clandestinely maintaining a phoney reputation as an internet philosopher guy. Nobody gives a fuck here, and neither should you, so lets all pretend to be sophisticated information age polymaths and talk about classical music in the most pretentious manner that we possible can.

Who is the man in the photo above? I have no fucking idea, but he looks so profoundly sophisticated that he has probably memorized the entire thesaurus, and it is your duty to attempt to be that man while you are posting in this thread.

WHAT TO POST IN THIS THREAD

In this thread you can discuss classical music and music theory with others, brag about the classical music you like, request recommendations, boast classical music you have written or played, and pretend to be a modern renaissance man.

Stylizing your posts to read as pretentious and phonily-sophisticated as possible is highly encouraged. Conversely, be sure to wrap URLs around your fancy words and terminology towards, at a bare minimum, Wikipedia articles (because some of us posting here will be pretending to be highly accomplished philosophers of music theory).

MY TASTE IN CLASSICAL MUSIC

Coincidentally, most of my favorite composers are German, and I am able to break my appreciation for classical into two fields: romantic (and German romanticism in general) and experimental.

For me, romantic music animates me with Prometheus's fire, and what is made with fire belongs in the fire. Fifty feet tall in my socks, my legs like roots; arms thirty feet to the wrist. And eyes, a skylight atop my head lightening up a whole acre of brains. Like a Greek god. Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner and Gustav Holst.

My interest in experimental music began as I took the initial steps into investigating the possibility and potentials of procedurally generated music, in particular real-time, dynamic and reactive music. Static and dynamic audio generation functionality remains one of the core tenants of my computer-assisted game design library that I have been laboring over for many years now, the Brain Damage API. Real-time and reactive music generation functionality has particular compositional requirements to ensure that the progression of the generated music is highly fluid, focused and precise in its evolution, not unlike film soundtracks which can profoundly shift the perception of a scene at the blink of an eye, or suggest impending change to the audience.

As I grappled with this highly ambitious and as-of-yet unaccomplished concept, I was fortunate enough to discover the compositions and musical theories of German composer Paul Hindemith, who employed a musical system that is tonal but non-diatonic and heavily emphasises the importance of modulation between consonance and dissonance. I have found that his theories to musical composition are particularly relevant to procedural music generation due to the constant flux that they derive from the persistent struggle to balance consonance and dissonance, which makes the sudden shifts and changes required from real-time and reactive music flow more fluidly into one another.

As for his musical works themselves, his orchestral works do share some common traits with German romanticism, but are somewhat less predictable and strangely intoxicating due to the implementation of his theories in their composition. I suppose you could consider him to be the Meshuggah of classical music. I also enjoy his piano sonatas.

WHAT I WANT TO REQUEST

Recommendations for romantic, epic and terrifying orchestral works. I don't know anything about Russian classical music aside from a handful of experiences listening to Tchaikovsky, but I would like to listen to some of that awesome Soviet march and war-mongering music, the sort of thing that a Russian tank commander would be listening to while destroying your cities and driving over the rubble.

Also, any sort of interesting piano music.

Have fun!

[noah!]

My favorite work of classical music is Saint-Saëns's Piano Concerto No. 2 but that's only because its third movement was in Mother 3. Whenever I talk to other classical buffs that Mother 3 bit inevitably slips out and then they all look disappointed. And I try to bring up Gyruss but they've already kicked me out of their house.

I don't like the classical music world. It's too hardcore. Or at least it was at the college I went to, which took everything music-related hardcorely. Every day I'd walk past the field and see the marching band practicing. Always practicing whenever classes were over. Somedays classes ended at six, somedays at two, but still practicing. Except on weekends, when the field is usually empty but sometimes it isn't. There might be a drummer who's practicing in formation, not noticing that nobody's around him. Or a sousaphonist, collapsed on the ground, not breathing. I asked a friend about it and he mentioned something about "caulkin' the 'souse" but I didn't stick around to hear the details. I really don't want to know.

[C.A. Silbereisen]

I was really interested in 20th century modernism for a while.

I like John Cage's prepared piano pieces (particularly the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano) but don't care for his later chance music/silence stuff, though some of it is interesting (and funny) from a conceptual standpoint. Morton Feldman's long, slow, quiet compositions based on individual patterns that get shuffled around and varied over time (Rothko Chapel, The Viola in my Life) are good too. I don't listen to Feldman very often though because the music requires a high degree of concentration over a long period of time to be fully appreciated.

Karlheinz Stockhausen is someone I like as well. He didn't *invent* electronic music but pretty much established it as a serious medium (as opposed to a novelty). My favorite piece is Hymnen which is basically a huge sound collage of music from all over the world. His later work, like the Helicopter String Quartet and that 7-day opera he did often just seems like excess for its own sake though.

I also have a soft spot for musique concrete (early electronic music made by manipulating tapes) as well. Pierre Henry, Luc Ferrari and Bernard Parmegiani are my faves.

[C.A. Silbereisen]

WHAT I WANT TO REQUEST

Recommendations for romantic, epic and terrifying orchestral works. I don't know anything about Russian classical music aside from a handful of experiences listening to Tchaikovsky, but I would like to listen to some of that awesome Soviet march and war-mongering music, the sort of thing that a Russian tank commander would be listening to while destroying your cities and driving over the rubble.

Also, any sort of interesting piano music.

Have fun!

I think Mussorgsky would appeal to you.

[Kramlack]

Nothing too interesting from me. In my grade 9 music class, we watched Amadeus, and Lacrimosa played around the end. That's been my go to classical theme since that day.