Classical Music and Opera

Who likes Classical music? Who are you favorite composers?

Mine are, in chronological order, Bach, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky. Wagner is my favorite composer of Operas.

My popular music taste tends to the quirky and obscure. In classical music I like the biggies.

Bach, Handel....pretty much all the Baroque composers.

I used to be a regular at the Basically Bach series. I also went to the Totally Telleman.( That doesn't seem like the right spelling). There was one more baroque series I went to, I think it was Go for Baroque. A great musical period.

I really wish I went to hear more classical music.

Gordon, it's Telemann. :)

I've played enough of his flute stuff to know. :)

Beethoven, Tchaik, Chopin, Stravinsky, and Debussy are all my faves.

Prokofiev. He's my guy. All the way.

I'm not saying I don't like others... surely I do, but nothing gets me like Prokofiev.

M

I'm a heathen and am not a huge classical fan. I guess if I had to pick a fave I'd say Tchaikovsky...but I like pieces from all the other usual suspects. (There's a gorgeous guitar/cello Bach duet on Peter Mulvey's recent EP. Gives me chills.)

I just don't have a lot of patience for instrumentals in general...Maybe it's ADD or something. :)

Opera...don't like it really when it's single singers...that's pretty much the type of singing that my tastes are at odds with. But I do like when operas bring in the large choir sound. :) Many many voices together I like.

Blahdey blah blah

good question! i'm the same way, my favorites are the big ones like chopin (the nocturnes are beautiful), beethoven and bach. i like working to classical music when i'm in serious hack mode, lyrics distract me too much.

i hate opera, though.

loooove choral music, particularly britten and parry. and mozart's string orchestra music. also, you just gotta love anything by debussy, and handel...

and opera! OOOPERAAAAAAA! how can you not love opera?? it's so over-dramatic, like sunset beach with singing :D i loooove mozart and puccini and verdi! verdi is the don! :)
(guess who's taking opera as a career path here?)

I love Bach, Mozart and Chopin. Also quite fond of Vivaldi and Boccarini. As for opera, I'd have to say I love Verdi and Puccini as composers. I have two favourite singers - the great Swedish tenor Jussi Bjorling and Canada's Joanne Kolomyjec. To hear her sing Dvorak's "Song to the Moon" is a wonderful thing.

Has anyone besides me heard of a wonderful choral group called Solyma? They do an almost gothic sounding choral music. All of their songs are in Arabic, Greek or Hebrew. They knock my socks off. :)

opera is one of those things that i "appreciate" but don't like. the way the singers get their voices to do that is amazing to me. it takes so much skill and dedication to get your voice to do that.

on the other hand, i'm sure it takes a lot of skill and dedication for death metal singers to summon satan into their lungs, but that doesn't mean that i'm interested in listening to it. :-)

Mozart kicks my @$$. I dig the requiem and his opera stuff. Chopin is good mellow music... Bach is fun and challenging to sing... Rossini kinda did the same stuff over and over but WAY fun for singers! I get ticked off when pop singers stick too many notes in a line (Whitney, Mariah, American Idol) but in opera it is COOL!!!

That reminds me of Amadeus. The Emperor said that Mozart's music had too many notes.

oh man! i watched the ring cycle with some friends last year...it was fabulous!

And I have the 1988 NY Met/James Levine Ring cycle on DVD with newly-remastered Dolby 5.1 audio. I can't wait to find the time to watch it. I have listened to the corresponding Deutsche Grammophon CD set a few times. Nothing like Act III of Die Walkure... yum! That opera got me through college.

... and of course I said months ago in this forum that I had to get the DVD set. Man, I thought this was a new forum. ::sigh::

That was a great production. I saw that when it was broadcast on TV. I was always disappointed that the didnt' rerun it.

Dude, I love singing early renaissance music and any italian/french/english madrigal i can get my furry little hands on. If i could sing madrigals for a living then i would. I love doing opera as well. I have been in one for the past three summers and enjoy every minute of it. Not only do you get the whole complexity of music thing going but you get to watch some pretty messed up stuff (ie. Carmen and Tosca).

I'm not really good with names and such but I do listen to and enjoy a lot of clasical music... my house mate is an opera singer... and I don't like opera perse, but i do love to here her sing and i don't know if its because she sings dido's lament while cleaning the toilet or because she's my friend... who knows.

Love, love, love Bach and Handel. Mmm...Baroque. I also really enjoy Romantic piano stuff, maybe from being exposed to it so often in college. As for opera, I gotta go with Verdi and Wagner...Wagner mainly for the awesome brass writing.
As for choral music, you can't sing in a small women's choir without being exposed to and growing to love motets and madrigals. Which is probably why my new ambition in life is to become a Mediaeval Baebe.

You should be a Mediaeval Baebe. The first thing you ever sang for me was in Latin.

really? you mean the mozart? that wasn't just for you, you know. you were just there to give me a ride to allentown. :)

oh, and another thing: carmina burana - o fortuna. okay, so it's almost become a clich�, but it kicks butt, totally :)

Have you ever heard the techno remix of O Fortuna, by Apotheosis?

no, but where oh where can i get it? :D

A-men.  :)
Sang that in high school choir and loved it.

okay. sorry if this screws up the page, but i gotta try :D

<table><tr><td></td><td>

If I were a Dead Russian Composer, I would be Sergei Rakhmaninov.

||pp||

Who would you be? Dead Russian Composer Personality Test

</td></tr></table>

Do you like Copland's accessable pieces like Appalachian Spring or all of his works including the earlier atonal ones? I love his later work but not the atonal music.

eww atonal. good for practising your sightreading, and for using as a spooky film soundtrack, but that's about it. YOU CAN'T SING TO IT! grrr :D

Eh, Bartok's not tonal in the traditional sense, but I love the way he rips off a good Slavic folk song. I would say he is singable, especially in the Concerto for orchestra (but partly because I've studied it).
Berg's Wozzeck is not tremendously pleasant to listen to, but I think it's one of the most emotionally effective pieces I've ever heard. When there's that moment right before the climax and the female lead starts singing tonal music as she's praying, it sounds heartbreakingly anachronistic. You just know it's not going to work.
Other faves: medieval through Baroque, especially des Prez, Monteverdi, Gesualdo and Bach; Mozart operas and choral music; Brahms in general; Beethoven and Shostakovich string quartets.

oh my lord, i hate wozzeck with a passion. it gives me nightmares. i'm distressingly old-fashioned in my classical music tastes, except for the fact that the more modern the piece is, the more likely it is to have good brass parts.

IN my Music History III class, we ended with some of those atonal pieces, and then moved onto purely electronic music from the 1950s, which gave some of the students fits when we listened to it.

When John Cage wrote his silent piece, everyone knew that music could not possibly get more abstract than that. In terms of music coming from the ivory tower conservatory, there isn't much more room for somehting that hasn't been done yet.

This is *too* funny:

"Lawsuit Seeks to Make Silence Golden

The company that owns the rights to the music of the late American composer John Cage has announced its intention to sue British pop guru Mike Batt for copyright infringement. The company claims a track on Batt�s new album, �Classical Graffiti,� is, except for its length, exactly the same as a 50-year old piece by Cage. That might seem to be damning evidence for the plaintiff, except both �songs� are nothing but total silence! Batt�s piece is called �A One Minute Silence,� and Cage�s is called �4'33,� being the length of the silent song. Commenting on the suit, Batt quipped: �Mine is a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds.� From the British tabloid The Sun"

Have you heard anything more on the suit? John Cage is an anti-composer. He represents all that's wrong with the pseudo-intellectual approach to art.

He represents all that's wrong with the pseudo-intellectual approach to art.

Well, yeah, but it's also really funny.  :)
Isn't he the one who had the piece with the 12 radios tuned to random stations, turned on and off randomly?  :)

Except that the last dance performance I went to featured a piece set to Tom Waits and John Cage. It worked. Mostly I don't like Cage, but sometimes he just seems like what's needed.

That sounds like it could have come from the Onion!

Let me put in a vote for Brahms.

anyone have a favorite classical music venue for performing/going to see concerts in?

mmmmmm the Royal Albert Hall :) I've sung there *dances*

</i>
that is all.

oh yeah. hehe:D

actually, that might've been my fault. oops. :)

Lincoln Center, I've sung there, so there! :p

Yeah, well, me too! And Carnegie hall! So *there* there! Hah!

I saw Gella at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center :-)

Of course I'm now expecting her to tell me that I remember wrong and it was the Met or the New York State Theatre.

Ellen saw me at Avery Fisher Hall!  So there!  HA!

I saw you at Irving Plaza. Of course we were both in the audiance :-)

I've seen you at Bottom Line, Makor, Knitting Factory.....

Classical music I listen to most often: Handel's Messiah. I can sing just about all of it.
Favorite opera: Die Walkure, Levine 1988 edition or so with Hildegard Behrens and Jessye Norman. Gotta get that on DVD. Also like Turandot and Andrea Chenier.
I also love Debussy and Tchaikovsky. Debussy's "Danse sacree" and "Danse profane" are two of my favorite pieces of any sort of music.

I don't care much for the "modern" classical music. Can't stand any Shostakovich that I've heard so far. Philip Glass is best listened to as a parody by P.D.Q. Bach (except for his film soundtracks).

I'm sure there's more but I'm at work and can't think of it. :)

Favorite classical label: Mercury Living Presence.

</em> maybe that will work

as for messiah, i do like it, but what i *DON'T* like is when stupid conductors have choirs do the *EASTER* sections at *CHRISTMAS*. people, the hallelujah chorus is an EASTER piece, ok? i wish someone would tell my damn choir director that. argh. what an eeeeeediot.

i have to "learn" shostakovich's 5th and 9th symphonies for my "philosophy and the arts" (read: aesthetics) class this semester. i haven't put the cd in my computer yet. now that you say you haven't liked any, i'm a bit frightened...ugh. we're also doing mark o'connor's latest trio of works. anyone know it? like it? hate it?

as for what i actually like, i'll just say this. i generally don't like instrumental music, regardless of era/style. i'm a singer. i need voices. i'll second emilie on LOVING parry!! i did "i was glad" last semester and i hated it the first time we sang through it, but by the time the concert came around, i LOVED it! i'm not a huge fan of durufl�, which is what we did for our major work last semester (the requiem) and we're continuing this semester with the magnificat. *sigh* can't win every semester, i guess. i LOVE bach's magnificat. i did that a few semesters ago. and i could take or leave mendelsohnn's elijah, our other major work from last semester.

enough babbling. sorry. my $.02 turned into $2. :)

o/' I WAS GLAAAAAAAAAAD! o/' etc :D that one's my favorite!! *grin* i always get picked for the semichorus :D actually i have a taped recording of my choir singing it on BBC radio 3. it's way better than the choir that did it at the queen's jubilee, hehe *smugness* ;) and the bach magnificat rocks! i remember it was really tricky, though i was only 15 at the time, i think (and a crap sightreader. not that ive improved much). :D

oh, and shostakovich sucks. gah. :D

YES! I *was* glad when we sang that in high school... fucking 8 part harmony, maaaan! And then in the HaZamir chorus we sang a different song which was the same psalm in Hebrew... I still giggle about that because both were so incredibly beautuiful.

OMG, i just remembered: the best work in the entire world is britten's rejoice in the lamb. if you ever get a chance to it, then go for it, it's fantastic. soooo much fun, and so many bad jokes spawned from it too :D

That reminds me of my favorite ovinophile line from the Messiah.

All we like sheep

the chamber chorus did britten's rejoice in the lamb at the same concert as the parry and the durufl� req. but unfortunately i can't do chamber because the choir is an hour away, and they have daily 1-hour rehearsals. i just do the big, weekly, 2.5-hour-rehearsal crapchoir. oh well. it's still a choir. the director had me swing some of the chamber stuff, but not the britten. i loved listening, though. i rarely get to do that.

Shostakovich is good! I love his Festive Overture even though I can't really play parts of it, and Symphony no. 11. Mmm.
I'm also a big fan of Bach, especially the Art of the Fugue and the St. Matthew Passion. My biggest weakness is Grainger, though. It's so darn catchy! And I love Holst. He knew how to write for low brass =D Bruckner is good also. There's just so much!
There's a lot of very good modern music being written, in with all the wierd stuff. Composers are getting out of all the atonal stuff and working with more rhythmic complexities. My music and society class has been discussing this sort of thing, how in Indian and African music there's really complicated rhythms but perhaps not so much complicated harmony and melody. And now composers are putting the harmony with the rhythm and it's pretty cool. I personally like Reich and Holsinger in that respect.

Festive Overture! God, I love that piece. That and the overture from Candide were my two favorite pieces to play in concert band.

Holst...The Planets. Oh yeah.

The song I have stuck in my head right now is 'Gretchen Am Spinnerad.' Also an excellent piece.

But I'm a fan of most classical music...esp Beethoven piano and Rach. violin pieces...*drool* vocalise!!!

As for operas, the first and last one I've seen was 'Dead Man Walking' which I didn't like at all. *shrugs*

Mmmm, the Planets. Neptune is one of the most beautiful pieces written.

Bach & Mozart fill out most of my collection. Although I generally don't gravitiate to Romantic composers, I'm also partial to Mendelsohn, Beethoven, Schumann, and Chopin and Satie are some of my faves. I guess maybe I do gravitiate to romantic composers... Gottshalk, Bizet, Holst, Strauss... damn!

The only opera I like is Mozart. The Abduction from The Seraglio is my favorite.

My father is a classical nut, so I grew up listening to all sorts of stuff, I can sing/hum whole sections of stuff that I haven't a clue of the name or composer of. It is really hard to say what era I like best; it is hard to compare the mathematical precision of Bach to the tonal colours of Debussy, two different though pleasing aesthetics. I can even stand Schoenberg and contemporaries.... some of it is really nasty but some of it is not too bad.
I love voice and will happily listen to a recital that includes opera pieces but the whole overblown spectacle that is opera.... I can do without, unless it is funny. In high school we did Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, and I love the great silly works, Gilbert and Sullivan et al.

mmmmMMMMmmmm... debussy... tonal colours... *sigh* :)

and i thought opera was meant to be funny anyway. :D like la traviata. i mean, come *on*. it's ridiculous. :D

o/' a paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox, a-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha a pa-ra-dox! o/' hee :D

Well, I'm actually not that big a fan of the Classical period...I'm more of a Romantic kinda gal.  ;)

OK, I'm done being a snob.
And, my favorites are Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, D�bussy, Faur�, and Stravinsky.  I'm sure I forgot someone...but ya know.  :)

I'm not that familiar with opera, but my favorite so far is La Traviatta by Verdi.

I like beethoven and vivaldi.

Other than that, I don't know much. :)

And, opera can just go and .. umm.. be somewhere else. heh

Oh, and I hatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehate Bach.
That is all.
:)