Classical Music, Poetry and stuff

[Prospero]

I was once at a concert of music by Xenakis and as it finished - before the applause - a single vice rang out with the word "Rubbish."

[robertlouis]

I was once at a concert of music by Xenakis and as tit finished - before the applause - a single vice rang out with the word "Rubbish."

I was once at a performance of Verdi's Requiem at the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow, where, right from the start, the large lady in front of me began to give vent to the loudest and smelliest farts imaginable. I did feel like asking her companion to take her out before she started shitting.

Anyway, I haven't been able to listen to the piece since without feeling queasy.

BTW, anyone else agree with me that it has to the campest requiem mass of them all?

[Prospero]

RL wrote: " I did feel like asking her companion to take her out before she started shitting."

You have a bit of English in your clearly. The "Feel like" rather than actually doing anything. What kinda Scot are you!

I don't like Verdi's religious music. (I like Rigoletto simply because i had a music master who sang the whole opera to us over a few weeks at school.) Brahms Requiem on the other hand is sheer thrilling bliss.

[Stavros]

Sibelius, Xenakis -hilarious examples, in their own way.

I recall a concert of contemporary sound/music at the QEH featuring I think, Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Music No 2 -I think- I can't be sure it was this piece, but in one of them, he created 'music' by dropping a sandwich [wrapped in cling film I guess] onto the floor. Judged by its melodious consequence , it was cheese and onion...

[Stavros]

Anyway, I haven't been able to listen to the piece since without feeling queasy.
BTW, anyone else agree with me that it has to the campest requiem mass of them all?

This is tragic, Verdi's Requiem is equal to Bach's Mass in B Minor, Beethoven's Mass in D, Mozart's Mass in C, Szymanowski's Stabat Mater, and the Brahms -Verdi camp??? I think that needs an explanation...

[robertlouis]

Anyway, I haven't been able to listen to the piece since without feeling queasy.
BTW, anyone else agree with me that it has to the campest requiem mass of them all?

This is tragic, Verdi's Requiem is equal to Bach's Mass in B Minor, Beethoven's Mass in D, Mozart's Mass in C, Szymanowski's Stabat Mater, and the Brahms -Verdi camp??? I think that needs an explanation...

I'm not devaluing it in any way, I simply mean that for me at least it contains all the ingredients to make it a camp classic. I can shut my eyes and imagine Judy Garland doing the solos.

I'd agree with the peers that you named, of which the Brahms for me is special. Choosing to take Lutheran rather than Latin texts was a bold and very personal move.

I'd add the Faure for its humanism and the relatively little known Berlioz.

[Prospero]

Ah the late great Cornelius Cardew - the musical equivalent of some of the winners of the Turner prize. Like the fellow given the award for turning on and off the gallery lights.

Interesting Stavros... I've ears and soul for Bach's B Minor Mass (for me the single greatest piece of music in the world) and the Great Mass in C and Szymanowski and Penderecki's choral work and Brahms.

[robertlouis]

I grew up with oratorio as my late parents were founder members of what was to become one of the leading amateur choirs in Scotland, so I've been familiar with the great works in the canon since I was about seven. The Tallis Spem in Alium sung in the round with the audience in the middle in Glasgow Cathedral with only a few candles for illumination has haunted me all my life.

[Stavros]

There must be a point in Spem in Alium that is close to organised chaos and rampant dissonance: the genius of Tallis -who died a hundred years before Werckmeister codified the harmonic 'temperaments' (and over 500 years before Bela Tarr's amazing film Werckmeister Harmonies) -was to create a quasi-mathematical masterpiece pre-figuring most of what Werckmeister was trying to organise as theory. The result is literally beyond words, I don't know what words I could use to do justice to it.
Favourite recordings please.

[robertlouis]

RL wrote: " I did feel like asking her companion to take her out before she started shitting."

You have a bit of English in your clearly. The "Feel like" rather than actually doing anything. What kinda Scot are you!

I don't like Verdi's religious music. (I like Rigoletto simply because i had a music master who sang the whole opera to us over a few weeks at school.) Brahms Requiem on the other hand is sheer thrilling bliss.

If there's any English in me it must predate 1720, and previous to that year the family name was Swedish, so I doubt it.

Hell of an insult, Prospero. You should know better.