music history - da, da, da, duh

[jab (imported)]

Western composers who write music similar to eastern masters have, to my knowledge, so far failed to produce anything like the real deal.

Listen to the "world music" program 7, from the radio show I cite elsewhere in this thread. They point to Debussy and his attempts to recreate the sounds of the eastern music and tribal bells that he heard in the Paris Exhibition in 1889, and say that he was creating something "new" that was not simply aping the non-western music but influenced by it.

There is some mixing-and-matching that goes on.

Please forgive me, however, when I leave the room upon hearing certain intervals. I draw the line at quarter-tones, and my molars ache.

A-436 is bad enough.

[Dave (imported)]

If you want eastern sounds in music, start with Mozart and his Turkish marches.

Or how about Verdi opening the Suez Canal with AIDA?

I have vinyl of Ravi Shankar and I've heard Gandolfi's more oriental and zen like "The Garden of Cosmic Speculation"

And there are lots of other examples of references to eastern or oriental music in the literature.

[Dave (imported)]

...

Please forgive me, however, when I leave the room upon hearing certain intervals. I draw the line at quarter-tones, and my molars ache.

A-436 is bad enough.

If any of you wonder about quarter tones:

I heard a live performance of Krzysztof Penderecki's "threnody for the victims of hiroshima" which is a powerful piece of music. A threnody is a lament or a dirge and if you consider the atomic blast at Hiroshima, the music is well suited for the terror involved.

Beware, it's jarring to hear the first time...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzOb3UhPmig

or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F

fBVYhyXU8o

It's a string orchestra of roughly 39 to 52 strings instruments onstage and it's just as spectacular to watch.

[Riverwind (imported)]

If we're going to get THAT far off topic................

Have you boys been listening to the "13 Days When Music Changed Forever", a series of one-hour broadcasts from the SF Symphony that's been airing recently?

The most recent is:

Program 09: May 29, 1913: Premiere of "The Rite of Spring"

The first was:

Program 01: February 24, 1607 - The Premiere of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo

And everything inbetween's been pretty swell. (okay, "Program 07:

May 6, 1889: The Birth of 'World' Music" was not my favorite.)

It'll go onto your "serious music queen" iPod playlist, I'd bet.

I remember when I lived and worked in the bay area, they had a first class Classical Music station, when I moved to St Louis they had one as well, here in the twin cities, its not so good, as a matter of fact I set up my PC to stream in the St Louis station.

I miss not having a good classical music station that I can put on the radio.

River

[jab (imported)]

I miss not having a good classical music station that I can put on the radio.

Load iTunes onto your machine (assuming you have a net connection) and then go to one of the stations like the Youngstown Ohio or Tulsa Oklahoma or everything-in-Boston or... for some fine programming.

Don't forget the BBC all-night, every-night classical music. I think that's BBC Radio 3, and it's quite good.