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Showing content with the highest reputation on 03/05/2024 in all areas

  1. @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu recommended me a fictional novel, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera and I happened to find a great musical example/discussion about Beethoven in it!
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  2. A few more. Here's what the book says about Mahler: Mahler had an incurable ambition to write the longest, noisiest and most expensive symphonies in the world. This he actually achieved several times and not surprisingly, it was a long time before people could be persuaded to listen to them or that impresarios felt like trying to make them do so. It was suddenly realised that Mahler had not written long, boring symphonies of the Brahms type which you have to listen to carefully from beginning to end in order not to miss the themes, but had, in fact, simply strung together hundreds of attractive little tunes, and it was possible to go into a coma for a lot of the symphony and still get involved when you came to again. It is possible to switch on the car radio in the depths of Surrey to what appears to be a Mahler symphony well in its stride and to arrive in London and find a parking place with it still going on in a forgetfully energetic way that suggests it might still be in progress at 5.30. It is quite obvious that all conductors get lost during a work like the 7th which Mr Cooke has now called the ‘Mad’. No doubt someone will prove one day that Mahler was crazy. If not, why did he go to such trouble to write so much when he achieved better results in his short symphonies like the 1st and 4th. ABOUT Bruckner: "It is generally said that Bruckner was a simple man - practically a Nature Boy, you would gather from some writers. If, after listening to one of his symphonies, you still feel that he was simple, then we must all be gibbering idiots - well, perhaps there is something in that. In fact Bruckner was as deep as the Ocean. He was also an organist and organists are far from simple men. / Another misrepresentation of Bruckner is to bracket him with Mahler. The only thing they had in common was a liking for long symphonies.....(etc) = = = = And another couple of definitions: Pentatonic: Music that can be played on bagpipes. Perfect Interval: A period of time long enough to queue up for and consume a cup of coffee. .
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