George J
Herefordshire member
In these strange times when we cannot meet beloved friends - I have only seen one, at a social distance of course, in the last twelve months - one is apt to get glued too much to the computer and emails as a method of conversing.
I just wrote to a friend who was curious about my love of music, and I wrote what is effectively a rambling testament on what music is for me with little aim but just an outpouring of the simple, elemental fact that without music I would not still be a fairly normally functioning human. Only friends mean more to me:
On music, well I was just born like I am. No skills learned since childhood, but something that made a seven or eight year old recognise JS Bach's "Jesu joy ..." in a transcription for organ, simply something else. I got my first four LPs for my tenth birthday. Schubert's Unfinshed, and Great C Major Symphonies, Elgar's First and Beethoven's Pastoral.
I was having piano lessons, though I was no good. I knew what I wanted, but my fingers would not do it. Extreme frustration resulted. But I taught myself to read a conductor's score, starting with the Great C Major. That was a revelation and showed me immediately how much conductors vary in approach. Also how bad recordings often are. Whole lines of music - especially violas - not even audible, let alone beautiful! That observation as a ten year old. But this love left me at school in a minority of one. Nobody understood my interest at all. Very soon I discovered Haydn, and he has been my co-favourite composer for nearly fifty years. Initially I was a great enthusiast for Elgar, Beethoven and Schubert, but more and more I learned the music of Sibelius, and Bach and now my eclectic choice of most treasured composers is Bach and Haydn at first place equal, and Sibelius running up very close. Of course I am fond of a huge amount of music from Mozart, Beethoven, even Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and a very soft spot for Greig. Loads of others.
There is a sizeable selection of music I find disturbing, not just unpleasant, but makes me feel upset. Almost all Mahler, almost all Wagner, almost all Bruckner, almost all opera. and surprisingly also almost all violent music like VW's Fourth Symphony. But I do like Stravinsky, which I cannot fathom why I would enjoy it, but it gets to me. So the music was inside, and I discovered it for myself.
As an innocent child who had never had a good discussion about any of this, there comes a sad story. We used to have Musical Appreciation lessons - forty-five minutes of gramophone replay with basic analysis and history of the music [usually symphony or concerto] in question last thing before lunch on Saturdays. Of the whole school, I was the only one who relished this. By the age of thirteen I could identify each movement of each Beethoven symphony with certainty even from only a very few seconds, and I knew them all from the conductor's score as well. Same for many other works, though Bach was strangely absent from the school LP library. So I raided the 3,000 plus 78s to discover JSB! Hence my enjoyment of Adolf Busch in the Brandenburgs. This is one rare case where first acquaintance with a recording has not been eclipsed by other more compelling ones. In the case of Busch I rank his efforts alongside those of HM Linde, and Otto Klemperer.
Well the sad story was that the music master did not like me. He preferred kids who were good at Rugger and Football, and Cricket. I loved cricket, but was hopeless because without glasses my eyesight is terrible now and was then. I hated Rugger and Football with a vengeance, and that has not changed since. I had a new LP of Beethoven's Choral Symphony - Paris Conservatoire Orchestra on Music For Pleasure - and the school library had the famous EMI recording on two LPs of Klemperer. I knew both performances, and studied the score carefully to see which one was the best. An informed, almost chapter and verse position - if you like - on which one was most faithful to the text, and then so to understand why one was more effective as a performance ...
So the music master asked me to borrow my Paris orchestra LP as it was without scratches or wear. I said that was fine, but asked why he would want to teach the music with such a terrible performance? He was apoplectic that I should dare to have a critical view of a performance as an eleven year old. I made it worse by explaining giving examples what was wrong in Paris and where Klemperer had got it right. Mainly a question of lucid balances, correct tempo relationships and clear phrasing that lends power and expression to the performance. Oh dear. I had two more years at the school and the man never spoke to me again about music.
My father hated my music appreciation also. That is another whole sad story ...
I never did play the piano well, and eventually decided to learn more of music by playing a stringed instrument. Strangely I found the double bass. I got quite good at that, playing in ad hoc pro orchestras before my left hand let me down with a repetitive strain injury from pressing down on the heavy strings. Well I learned a lot, and eventually had two pupils on the bass! One via a private music school and the other an adult who I managed to turn from Jazz to classical music! Once I got him hooked on classics, he said that he had wasted three parts of lifetime chasing second rate music. I could not possibly have commented on that to him. But it is true that I cannot stand free-form Jazz, though I do enjoy Ella Fitzgerald singing the more formal songs she did so well. Though when she does scat ... no no no. I cannot stand it.
To me the greatest music is that totally abstract ideal of non-vocal composition with no stated programme. Say a Haydn Symphony or Quartet, or a Bach Prelude and Fugue. Nothing but pure expression that is not defined in words, but is all the same powerful in the potential for uplift in mental state. That's all I find. I hate loud music. Sibelius rarely gets to sustained horrible loudness, but why does the Choral Symphony have to try to bludgeon you into Joy? If you take the Chaconne from the Second Violin Partita, this leads you a long journey from dark to light with the subtlest means.
So I cannot claim anything beyond what nature gave me, and gave me the curiosity to become a real student of the topic.
I hope that was not too much of an imposition. Best wishes from George
I just wrote to a friend who was curious about my love of music, and I wrote what is effectively a rambling testament on what music is for me with little aim but just an outpouring of the simple, elemental fact that without music I would not still be a fairly normally functioning human. Only friends mean more to me:
On music, well I was just born like I am. No skills learned since childhood, but something that made a seven or eight year old recognise JS Bach's "Jesu joy ..." in a transcription for organ, simply something else. I got my first four LPs for my tenth birthday. Schubert's Unfinshed, and Great C Major Symphonies, Elgar's First and Beethoven's Pastoral.
I was having piano lessons, though I was no good. I knew what I wanted, but my fingers would not do it. Extreme frustration resulted. But I taught myself to read a conductor's score, starting with the Great C Major. That was a revelation and showed me immediately how much conductors vary in approach. Also how bad recordings often are. Whole lines of music - especially violas - not even audible, let alone beautiful! That observation as a ten year old. But this love left me at school in a minority of one. Nobody understood my interest at all. Very soon I discovered Haydn, and he has been my co-favourite composer for nearly fifty years. Initially I was a great enthusiast for Elgar, Beethoven and Schubert, but more and more I learned the music of Sibelius, and Bach and now my eclectic choice of most treasured composers is Bach and Haydn at first place equal, and Sibelius running up very close. Of course I am fond of a huge amount of music from Mozart, Beethoven, even Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and a very soft spot for Greig. Loads of others.
There is a sizeable selection of music I find disturbing, not just unpleasant, but makes me feel upset. Almost all Mahler, almost all Wagner, almost all Bruckner, almost all opera. and surprisingly also almost all violent music like VW's Fourth Symphony. But I do like Stravinsky, which I cannot fathom why I would enjoy it, but it gets to me. So the music was inside, and I discovered it for myself.
As an innocent child who had never had a good discussion about any of this, there comes a sad story. We used to have Musical Appreciation lessons - forty-five minutes of gramophone replay with basic analysis and history of the music [usually symphony or concerto] in question last thing before lunch on Saturdays. Of the whole school, I was the only one who relished this. By the age of thirteen I could identify each movement of each Beethoven symphony with certainty even from only a very few seconds, and I knew them all from the conductor's score as well. Same for many other works, though Bach was strangely absent from the school LP library. So I raided the 3,000 plus 78s to discover JSB! Hence my enjoyment of Adolf Busch in the Brandenburgs. This is one rare case where first acquaintance with a recording has not been eclipsed by other more compelling ones. In the case of Busch I rank his efforts alongside those of HM Linde, and Otto Klemperer.
Well the sad story was that the music master did not like me. He preferred kids who were good at Rugger and Football, and Cricket. I loved cricket, but was hopeless because without glasses my eyesight is terrible now and was then. I hated Rugger and Football with a vengeance, and that has not changed since. I had a new LP of Beethoven's Choral Symphony - Paris Conservatoire Orchestra on Music For Pleasure - and the school library had the famous EMI recording on two LPs of Klemperer. I knew both performances, and studied the score carefully to see which one was the best. An informed, almost chapter and verse position - if you like - on which one was most faithful to the text, and then so to understand why one was more effective as a performance ...
So the music master asked me to borrow my Paris orchestra LP as it was without scratches or wear. I said that was fine, but asked why he would want to teach the music with such a terrible performance? He was apoplectic that I should dare to have a critical view of a performance as an eleven year old. I made it worse by explaining giving examples what was wrong in Paris and where Klemperer had got it right. Mainly a question of lucid balances, correct tempo relationships and clear phrasing that lends power and expression to the performance. Oh dear. I had two more years at the school and the man never spoke to me again about music.
My father hated my music appreciation also. That is another whole sad story ...
I never did play the piano well, and eventually decided to learn more of music by playing a stringed instrument. Strangely I found the double bass. I got quite good at that, playing in ad hoc pro orchestras before my left hand let me down with a repetitive strain injury from pressing down on the heavy strings. Well I learned a lot, and eventually had two pupils on the bass! One via a private music school and the other an adult who I managed to turn from Jazz to classical music! Once I got him hooked on classics, he said that he had wasted three parts of lifetime chasing second rate music. I could not possibly have commented on that to him. But it is true that I cannot stand free-form Jazz, though I do enjoy Ella Fitzgerald singing the more formal songs she did so well. Though when she does scat ... no no no. I cannot stand it.
To me the greatest music is that totally abstract ideal of non-vocal composition with no stated programme. Say a Haydn Symphony or Quartet, or a Bach Prelude and Fugue. Nothing but pure expression that is not defined in words, but is all the same powerful in the potential for uplift in mental state. That's all I find. I hate loud music. Sibelius rarely gets to sustained horrible loudness, but why does the Choral Symphony have to try to bludgeon you into Joy? If you take the Chaconne from the Second Violin Partita, this leads you a long journey from dark to light with the subtlest means.
So I cannot claim anything beyond what nature gave me, and gave me the curiosity to become a real student of the topic.
I hope that was not too much of an imposition. Best wishes from George
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