University Challenge Watch

That's an oxymoron. All classical music has a distinct beat/metre. There's nothing ancient and cobwebby about it either. That's a perception not a reality. There are current contemporary composers (admittedly some particularly over the last sixzty years are not to my taste either but their works are not for mass reception).However no one is going around to say sculptures by Scopas or Cellini are that, a Giotto fresco, or any old architectual structure. These works are some of the greatest creations of the human mind. They are the apex of musical creation in terms of sheer complexity in all the various parameters that govern music. We should if we had a decent education system particularly in respect of music teaching and playing be conscious of what the levels of complexity are and aspire to them. The masses are mired now in mediocrity and while in the past popular music aspired to genuine creativity and meaning in structure and lyrics, instrumentation it most of it now certainly on the popular radio stations is real drivel.

JS Bach is a musical giant. His works indeed many others notably Bartok have an intrinsic mathematical structure. Indeed one cosmologist commented on sending the Goldberg Variations on the Voyager Golden Disc describing it along the terms of boasting to any aliens that may encounter the spacecraft of our intellectual greatness.

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Some key works for @Clive_ofthe_Kremlin:

A revolution in the symphonic form the Eroica from who else but that giant Beethoven. A man of the people, profound in every way. As he said to those ignorant French officers when asked to play for them like some itinerant musician by his then patron Prince Lichnowsky he said rightfully so. There may be a thousand princes but there will only be one Beethoven.

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After the initial successes with the Ballet Russes and impresario Serge Diaghilev in Paris namely The Firebird and Petrouchka the young Igor Fyodorovich turned away from his Rimsky-Korsakov inspired orchestration and scoring into The Rite. The varying pounding rhythms laid the structure for the first time, the sound was deafening given the size of the orchestra and the choreography from the great Nijinsky was to contemporary eyes bizarre, angular, awkward.

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Olivier Messiaen a great organist and the most notable post war French composer used a variety of influences in this reflecting a trend from the start of the 20th century to incorporate all sorts of influences into scores. For him it included references to other composers, jazz scoring and the use not of the classical modes but classical Indian ones all linked by discrete themes, motifs and rhythms as structural blocks.

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Well in a round about way it has something.... We'll be discussing famous Koch's next.

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Questions on Philip Glass and a poor knowledge of Russo-Turkic relations. Shame for Ella she was the best player.

 

Unless Piotr was a time traveller. Poor Prokofiev on his return from America and Dmitri who rarely set foot outside the Soviet Union composed numerous works to celebrate this and that including the October Revolution. And also the failed 1905 uprising in one of the greatest symphonies of the twentieth century his eleventh The Year 1905.

It's full of patriotic folk song quotes on freedom and the finale is shattering but ends unresolved in G neither major or minor. Does evil still triumph ? The percussion section is immense and an amazing sight to see in action. I went to see the LPO under Jurowski perform this back in 2017. How the time flies. Dmitri also made mention to a friend that this was also a remembrance of the crushing of the Hungarian protesters in 1956 much like the innocents gunned down in their hundreds by the Tsar's troops in 1905. It was written in 1957.

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