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Category: Music
In pursuit of Zante serenades
The marina street front is of course fully tourist oriented, with lots of ads for cruises to island destinations for beach lovers and nature lovers. And I had to overcome yet another prejudice that night. Because depicted is Varkarola taverna , the taverna recommended to me as the best place in town to hear folk […]
Two songs of loss
I have had occasion to think, in recent times, on two songs of loss. I’ve cried to them before the loss, and I’ve thought of them ruefully after the loss, when I had no tears left. I will analyse them and discourse on them in The Other Place; and I’ll have fun doing it; and […]
The revival of bagpipes in Crete
I have written on this blog ten years ago on my discovery of the changes in the traditions around Cretan folk music this past century. These changes have taken me by surprise: if you are immersed in an (albeit commercialised) folk music tradition, you assume it was ever thus. In fact, Cretan music used to […]
Is klezmer music a dying tradition?
One of its prominent proponents is on record as saying so: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/… Andy Statman, one of the foremost Klezmer musicians in the world, knows that the time of Klezmer has passed. “Each music has its point,” He explained over the phone while working at a Mandolin camp in California. “[Klezmer] is still alive, but in […]
What cultural factors caused the ecstatic, almost religious reaction to Wagner’s operas in the second half of the nineteenth century?
This isn’t the answer, and I hope it will trigger an answer from the more knowledgeable. Notions of human-crafted art as an expression of the sublime are not particularly new. But in the 19th century, art inspired not merely “almost” religious reactions; it actually came to occupy the place of a surrogate religion. This was […]
What are your favourite pieces by Dimitri Shostakovich and why?
Impressed by Jeremy Shatan’s answer, to have included the Fourth Symphony! So Mahler, so anxious, so my favourite, and not often heard. The Cello Concerto #1 speaks well to Jeremy’s taste as well, but that piece is better known. So, skipping those two: Ninth Symphony. Jolly, quirky, Haydn on steroids, alternating with genuine lamentation in […]
What would be your choice for a Love song? See details.
https://www.quora.com/profile/Michael-Masiello-1 Oh, shut up, QCR. Masiello and Gwin. Others applaud them. I panic for them. I want it to work out, they are both good souls who have earned respite, and find it in each other; I worry that they may not work out, because the world is a cruel place. Yes, nothing ventured nothing […]
What are the best counterpoint duets?
The canonical counterpoint duets are surely Bach’s Two Part Inventions: It doesn’t get better. God bless Gerubach on YouTube. Answered 2017-05-02 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-are-the-best-counterpoint-duets/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Would you listen to a 5-hour symphony?
I sat through the 1992 revival of Einstein on the Beach, which goes for five hours, and which is much more static (as hardcore minimalist music) than a symphony would be. I had no problem sitting through the entire thing—even though the opera creators imagined you could walk in and out as you pleased. And […]
Should some of Mahler’s early symphonies be considered more collections of movements than unified statements?
does anyone regularly listen to the Third all the way through? *raises hand* In fact, the Third is so through-composed, that its original final movement, which ended up as the first movement of his Fourth, quotes the fifth movement of the Third. And the Third has a quite intentional, programmatic structure of building up from […]