The organ

[whipped guy]

"Intonance"! LOL! I posted that in the last moments of my nightly hour-long or so easing off into slumberland, when the grasp of vocabulary and indeed most everything has grown wispy.

 

Anyway! I was thinking about this bit from the Shuppanzigh Wiki...

 

Beethoven's quartets introduced many new technical difficulties that cannot be completely overcome without dedicated rehearsal. These difficulties include synchronized complex runs played by two or more instruments together, cross-rhythms and hemiolas, and difficult harmonies that require special attention to intonation.

 

...and the thought occurred that, in somewhat like manner, one of several to my ear greatly beautiful things about the Carters' performances is the odd-sounding yet beautiful harmony that their three, all very different, voices achieve together. Most particularly Pa, whose voice is much the weakest technically, but he manages and applies it with high artistry and intelligence.

 

That bio I referenced above tells how, once their first two or three recordings had caught fire and their commercial career took off, he realized they would soon churn through all the material they knew. So he and a friend, a black man also deeply versed in Appalachian folk music, set out traveling and exploring throughout the region to discover and document all the songs that they could -- for performance, and also for the express sake of preserving a slice of culture whose both historic and artistic value the three Carters, and their black friend (can't recall his name right now), were all quite consciously aware of and alive to.

Well if you had only put the word "string" before the word "quartet" then I probably would have slept easier last night because Beethoven indeed did pepper his string quartets with difficult harmonies and complex rythms. Not to mention if you had used the word intonation. So instead I was tossing and turning wondering about the term "intonance". Perhaps it was from the French I kept thinking with every toss...

 

And while I was anything but experiencing a night of being on a "Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage" (shades of being tormented by Goethe via LvB ) there was Mr. Smith "easing off into slumberland"!

 

At any rate, it's not his most popular composition, and supposedly Goethe was not impressed by how his words were set or more likely was annoyed that Beethoven had the audacity to set them to music as when Beethoven sent him the score he never responded.

 

[AdamSmith]

LMAO! So sorry to have induced insomnia! I know the feeling!

 

Obvious actually though:

 

Intonance must simply be the opposite of dissonation!

 

[AdamSmith]

P.S. Goethe has always seemed to me like a dour stick in the mud personally, and your anecdote confirms it.

 

Say what we will of temperamental Ludwig van, he had a droll & ever lively sense of humor!

[AdamSmith]

Goethe didn't even get his own jokes!

 

Bloom points out that when the vast Rhine Maidens rise up and proceed to make fun of how tiny is whatsisname's key that is the MacGuffin to the whole tortuous rigmarole, it's obviously a penis joke.

 

Yet one that humorless old Johann Wolfgang was, almost certainly, unconscious of!

[AdamSmith]

It really took the great genius of Trakl to come along, well into the 1900s, and at last yank German literary art out of its swampy sump and into the twentieth century proper.

[+ g56whiz]

"Do you believe that I think about your miserable fiddle when the muse strikes me?"

 

Every singer who's ever sung a note of LvB knows that he treated the human voice similarly.

[AdamSmith]

It really took the great genius of Trakl to come along, well into the 1900s, and at last yank German literary art out of its swampy sump and into the twentieth century proper.

Together with Kafka.

 

Electroshock therapy!

[AdamSmith]

These people knew their art beyond anything derived from them since.

 

To look this deeply into that heartfelt, but simple, Methodist hymn, and draw out this -- I will dare say it, and mean it -- almost Beethovenian depth of aesthetic insight in their performance here is simply beyond any praise.

[AdamSmith]

Perhaps it was from the French I kept thinking with every toss...

P.S. If, every time anything French intrudes into the mental life, one instantly moves to delete it, and swap in something -- anything! -- Italian instead, life instantly grows a thousand times more bearable, and pleasurable, and facilita!

 

 

With the sole exceptions of Cavaille-Coll and Franck! And Mallarme and Baudelaire and Rimbaud. The rest can take a walk! Hugo I just don't have the stamina for, and that having trudged through every word. Glorious yes but still ze French Goethe for my money.

 

The one exception in prose is the divine Proust, who after all gave us a vast prose poem which is also a clinical psychological treatise light-years ahead of our dear Uncle Siggy! Bury me with Temps Perdu in the casket!

[+ sync]

These people knew their art beyond anything derived from them since.

 

To look this deeply into that heartfelt, but simple, Methodist hymn, and draw out this -- I will dare say it, and mean it -- almost Beethovenian depth of aesthetic insight in their performance here is simply beyond any praise.

 

AdamSmith I am always impressed with the references and validations within your in-depth analyses and appraisals of music. But, on a personal note, if what I heard in the above video were being performed across the street from me, my only inspiration would be to close my windows and raise the volume of my TV.

[AdamSmith]

AdamSmith I am always impressed with the references and validations within your in-depth analyses and appraisals of music. But, on a personal note, if what I heard in the above video were being performed across the street from me, my only inspiration would be to close my windows and raise the volume of my TV.

Indeed personal taste is the only foundation for judgment.

 

One man's mead is another man's poisson!

[AdamSmith]

and raise the volume of my TV.

...although the admission of actually watching television...!

 

http://www.hogueprophecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/IntercourseThePenguin.jpg

 

[AdamSmith]

Lyrics & chords rend & ravish my heart.

http://hymnary.org/page/fetch/FHOP/337/low

[+ sync]

Indeed personal taste is the only foundation for judgment.

 

One man's mead is another man's poisson!

"Mead," love it.

[AdamSmith]

"Mead," love it.

Something fishy about that!

[whipped guy]

P.S. If, every time anything French intrudes into the mental life, one instantly moves to delete it, and swap in something -- anything! -- Italian instead, life instantly grows a thousand times more bearable, and pleasurable, and facilita!

 

 

With the sole exceptions of Cavaille-Coll and Franck! And Mallarme and Baudelaire and Rimbaud. The rest can take a walk! Hugo I just don't have the stamina for, and that having trudged through every word. Glorious yes but still ze French Goethe for my money.

 

The one exception in prose is the divine Proust, who after all gave us a vast prose poem which is also a clinical psychological treatise light-years ahead of our dear Uncle Siggy! Bury me with Temps Perdu in the casket!

 

It is interesting how many Italian composers seemed to have a need to go to Paris for acceptance. These include Cherubini, Spontini, Paisiello (a favorite of Napoleon), Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi among others. Interestingly it was the Italians who probably wrote some of the greatest French comic (Le Comte Ory, La Fille du Régement) and Grand Operas (Guillaume Tell, Don Carlos). Come to think of it the two main exponents of both genres Offenbach and Meyerbeer were both German! Come to think if it it was probably the French who lured foreign composers to Paris so as to get a better piece of the action! I guess there was a reason that they had a theatre named the "Théâtre Italien"!

Indeed personal taste is the only foundation for judgment.

 

One man's mead is another man's poisson!

Totally agree and one need not feel guilty for things that bring the greatest pleasure in life. As I mentioned above when comparing Mahler to Johann Strauss Jr., think about whose compositions have given the most pleasure over the years. Still, some can love both, one or the other, and still others none of the above... I had an aunt who absolutely hated all forms of music... silence was her pleasure.... and...

 

...although the admission of actually watching television...!

 

http://www.hogueprophecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/IntercourseThePenguin.jpg

 

[whipped guy]

Lyrics & chords rend & ravish my heart.

http://hymnary.org/page/fetch/FHOP/337/low

I have always liked this piece. Ironically I associate it with the TV program referenced below which was religiously watched by my parents when I was a kid. Seeing the music in print reveals some complex rhythms and even the contrapuntal "Oh, come, come, come, etc" underlying "Come to the church etc." melody. Quite impressive so I looked up Wm.S. Pitts. He was born in NY state was a physician and did have some formal music training in his youth. Wikipedia gives the history of the song and the church.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Pitts

 

http://i.onionstatic.com/avclub/4203/74/16x9/960.jpg

[AdamSmith]

Sto ridendo a crepapelle!!!!! Why did that just make me literally burst into laughter!!!!

I always get the blame...

 

http://image.aladin.co.kr/Community/mypaper/pimg_787603133285091.jpg

 

...but I did try to warn him about those strawberries!

 

 

[whipped guy]

The Little Church "a cappella"...

 

[whipped guy]

I always get the blame...

 

http://image.aladin.co.kr/Community/mypaper/pimg_787603133285091.jpg

 

...but I did try to warn him about those strawberries!

 

 

You really want to kill me Mr. Smith...

 

 

Perhaps this guy meets his demise from eating some bad pineapple upside down cake...

 

http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1380652349l/18619272.jpg

[AdamSmith]

Very nice a cappella!

 

And poor old Welk! He was a fixture in our household growing up too. As with about every family in America with a TV. He gets a bad rap! He had great skill in arranging and leading, and attracting and training talent.

 

And generally high standards of taste in what music he selected. Granted a little polka can go a long way, of course he had to program enough schmaltz to draw the viewers and please the sponsors. But then he snuck that audience a lot of very good music they otherwise would've had no idea of.

 

A-one-ah!

[AdamSmith]

You really want to kill me Mr. Smith...

 

 

Perhaps this guy meets his demise from eating some bad pineapple upside down cake...

 

http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1380652349l/18619272.jpg

LMMFAO!!! :D

[+ g56whiz]

Come to think of it the two main exponents of both genres Offenbach and Meyerbeer were both German!

 

And even that ultimate German composer Wagner spent some time in the city of lights - copying parts for Donizetti I believe. And now you know where the flute obligato over the Pilgrim's Chorus in Tannhäuser comes from.

[+ WilliamM]

...but I did try to warn him about those strawberries!

 

Am I really the only person here who has seen Britten's "Death in Venice" in person?

[+ sync]

The Little Church "a cappella"...

 

 

Much better, especially third from the left in the back row.