HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: steve@fid.morgan.com (Steve Apter)
Subject: Re: Disc recommendations wanted
Organization: Morgan Stanley & Co., New York, NY
Distribution: rec
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 18:57:39 GMT

In article <TML.92Aug25200227@tiuhti.tik.vtt.fi> tml@tik.vtt.fi (Tor Lillqvist) writes:
>I have noted that previously when people have posted recommendations
>for contemporary music here, I often have liked the music, and bought
>the CD (if I have found it here).  For instance, I hadn't earlier
>heard of John Moran. Then somebody here mentioned his Mansion Family
>opera. I came across it a few weeks later, remembered the
>recommendation, listened to it, liked it, and bought it.
>
>Please post more recommendations for CDs with contemporary music by
>(relatively) obscure composers! Is there any magazine that specializes
>in "modern" and contemporary music, without being too theoretical? I
>have read one issue of "Wire", but it is maybe a bit too
>jazz-oriented.
>--
>Tor Lillqvist,
>working, but not speaking, for the Technical Research Centre of Finland

None of these composers really counts as obscure (else they wouldn't
be recorded, right?), and a few are bent in the conservative direction.
The selection is somewhat arbitrary, drawn from my gift-list.

1.  Anything by Rautavaara, but especially the piano concerto disk
    on Ondine.

2.  Anything by Jon Leifs, but especially the ITM disk _Visions &
    Images_.  The 6 minute _Requiem_ on the Hamrahlid Choir ITM
    CD is heartbreakingly beautiful.

3.  Magnus Lindberg, _Kraft_, _Action, Signification ..._, on
    Finlandia.  Noisy.  Very very noisy.

4.  Hartmann, _Symphonies_, Wergo (4 CDs).  Consistently more
    interesting, inventive, and beautiful than Henze.  A very
    great talent.

5.  Ladder of Escape 1-5, on Attaca (5 CDs -- from the Amsterdam
    experimentalists, a sampling of the very old and the very new)

6.  Blue Gene Tyrany, _Free Delivery_, Lovely Music (that's a
    label)

7.  Duckworth, _Time Curve Preludes_, Lovely Music

8.  Rzewski, _And the People United Shall Never Be Defeated_,
    hat Art.

9.  Kurtag, _Kafka Fragments_, Hungaraton.  Gnarly and intense.

10. Anything by Ralph Shapey, but especially the disk on New
    World containing the _Krolish Sonate_.  The brass quintet,
    also available on a New World CD is simply extraordinary.
    [raving suppressed]

11. Nancarrow, _Studies for Player Piano_, Wergo (5 CDs).
    Fast.  Very very fast.

Enjoy!





Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: lampson@tellabs.com (Dave Lampson)
Subject: Re: Korngold
Organization: Tellabs, Inc., IL
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 18:49:36 GMT

In article <1992Sep2.024631.16213@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> bobs@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Bob Sutton) writes:
>Korngold died rather prematurely (like Mozart, Mahler, Schubert).  

Huh?  Korngold lived to be 60 (1897-1957) and Mahler lived to be 
nearly 51 (1860-1911), not exactly old men, but premature?  Now,
I will agree about Schubert (1797-1828) and Mozart (1756-1791).

Well, I've picked my nit for today.  I can now go home happy knowing
I've fulfilled my purpose for yet another day.  (:-)


-- 

Dave
lampson@tellabs.com

For detailed lists of Recommended Classical CDs, Basic Repertoire and Buying
Guide access cs.uwp.edu (131.210.1.4) by anonymous FTP, or email me for info.

Contribute to the rec.music.classical biography project!  Email me your bio!

From: sec@otter.hpl.hp.com (Simon Crouch)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 08:16:20 GMT
Subject: Re: Funeral music?
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical

In rec.music.classical, jwa@vipunen.hut.fi (Jyrki J Wahlstedt) writes:


>   I hope this doesn't sound morbid, but:

>   There have been many requests for wedding music. It just came to my
>   mind, that on listening to one piece of music sometimes ago, I
>   caught myself thinking: "This is music I would like them play in
>   my funeral."

How about "Funeral Ikos" by John Tavener?

Simon.

Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: steve@fid.morgan.com (Steve Apter)
Subject: Re: Borgesian Conundra [Was:  Manners, children please...]
Organization: Morgan Stanley & Co., New York, NY
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 00:22:00 GMT

In article <17edpgINNhf@agate.berkeley.edu> maverick@cs.berkeley.edu (Vance Maverick) writes:
>In article <1992Aug25.042342.25193@uniwa.uwa.edu.au>, diarmuid@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Diarmuid Pigott) writes:
>|> [I echoed, in puzzlement, of Cage:]
>|> : Did his aesthetic have bounds?
>|> 
>|> Yes - he could not have sat down and written a serious, tonally
>|> unambiguous, conventionally orchestrated, popular symphony.
>

1.  A scheduling error is responsible for simultaneous performances
    (a very fast run through of) the Diabelli variations and 4'3" ...

2.  That 1 chance in 10 to some ridiculously large number that random
    coin-tosses will generate a note-perfect instance of the Diabelli
    Variations occurs during a performance of _Music of Changes_ ...

3.  Vance has his head rewired to cause anything played on or near a
    piano to sound like the Diabelli Variations ...

[...]
From: danielh@sequent.com (Daniel Hobbs)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: How about some JOHN CAGE suggestions?
Date: 27 Aug 92 23:02:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: sequent.1992Aug27.230214.15751
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems Inc.

In article <1992Aug24.212345.24388@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> pmy@vivaldi.acc.virginia.edu (Pete Yadlowsky) writes:
>Daniel Hobbs writes
>>Has anyone considered creating a rec.music.cage?  In spite of lots of
>>silences in his work, he threatens, at times, to overwhelm this newsgroup!
>
>And why not? Lots of people (and topics) have threatened, at times,
>to overwhelm this newsgroup. How else would you have it?  

And why?  Why should NOT a topic as perennial and inductive of loquaciousness
as Cage have his/her/its own newsgroup?  If nothing else, it would save all
the John Cage fan(atics) from having to press k every time they see another 
topic, like perfect pitch, Marilyn Horne, Beethoven, Shostokovich, Satie, 
Brahms sexual perversions as revealed in the key signatures of his lieder,
secret mathematical codes in the fourth lines of Renaissance madrigals 
written by composers whose last names start with Q, and all those other 
_really interesting_ topics.

Did I say I would have had it any other way??  Jeez, it was just a 
suGGESTion!

Dan
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Apollinian & Dionysian Music
From: ctaylor@desire.wright.edu
Date: 3 Sep 92 13:30:45 EST
Organization: Wright State University 

I am going to be teaching Nietzsche's "Birth of Tragedy" this
fall in an aesthetics class and would like to illustrate to
my students the difference between Apollinian and Dionysian
music.  I welcome suggestions.  Perhaps the list should be 
limited to music Nietzsche might have heard.  I would be interested
in specific recommended performances (eg.  the Toscanini Beethoven 
3rd. from 193x but not 195y or perhaps even the same piece by 
different performers eg: Toscanini and P. Serkin but not Cliuburn 
and Reiner in the 4th Piano C.).  
I will summarize e-mail suggestions.

Charles S. Taylor
Department of Philosophy
Wright State University
Dayton, OH

ctaylor@wsu.bitnet
ctaylor@desire.wright.edu
From: kevin@sys6626.bison.mb.ca (Kevin Scott)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: JOHN CAGE
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 92 11:53:20 CST
Organization: system 6626 BBS, Winnipeg MB

maverick@cs.berkeley.edu (Vance Maverick) writes:

> In article <c1JuPB3w164w@sys6626.bison.mb.ca>, kevin@sys6626.bison.mb.ca (Kev
> |> > Got a definition of music handy?
> |> 
> |> No definition, just the idea that something in a piece should be fixed.
> |> Fixed enough that listening to it lends it some sort of recognition.
> 
> I think this prejudice bars you from some pretty interesting musical
> experience.  Thought experiment:  you hear a brief string quartet, in
> "pointillist" idiom.  You only hear it once.  What is your reaction if
> you now learn it was
> 
> 	* a Webern piece, played from a fixed score
> 
> 	* a Morton Feldman piece of the 50's, played from a loose
> approximate score, in which players are told, for example, "Play seven
> notes in the high register within this slow beat."
> 
> 	?  Do you reject it in the second case?  Does learning the
> answer to the question change the experience you had?
> 
> |> Music and philosophy are a bad mix.
> 
> As Roger said, Cage would agree.
> 
> 	Vance

Well, let's say that I liked this particular hypothetical brief string 
quartet. Say I liked it a lot. Say I wanted to hear it again the way it 
was originally played. I couldn't do it, could I?
 
That chaotic way of thinking is what I oppose. Not that Cage did it all 
the time, but certainly things like "Fontana Mix" which sounds completely
different when interpreted by different people is so vague in concept 
that it's not surprising people were hostile with Cage.

This style of composition abandons philosophical thinking? I would have 
thought it'd embrace it, if anything.
 
KS

;--- (Kevin Scott) a user of sys6626, running waffle 1.64
;E-mail: kevin@sys6626.bison.mb.ca
;system 6626: 63 point west drive, winnipeg manitoba canada R3T 5G8
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: schissel@mace.Princeton.EDU (Eric Schissel)
Subject: Re: Sergiu Celibidache
Organization: Cornell University
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 17:24:37 GMT

In article <dgold.0jg0@basso.actrix.gen.nz> dgold@basso.actrix.gen.nz (Dale Gold) writes:
>Quoted from <1992Sep2.180530.15315@spang.Camosun.BC.CA> by dbarker@spang.Camosun.BC.CA (Deryk Barker):
>
>Do Celibadache fans think that orchestral musicians are stupid?  Let's
>grant him 20 hours to prepare Brahms 1st.  Surely his ideas about Brahms
 Or 40 to prepare Brahms' 1st (a good performance of which can make one
think one's never heard it before in one's life, even if one has)
and Brian's 4th (20 hours for each)- now there's a concert i'll buy an
airplane and concert ticket to.  If he tacks on Sessions' 6th Symphony
(the unrecorded- or the 9th, also unrecorded and judging from the scores,
neat, neat stuff both) as an encore (in relative length) wild horses
couldn't keep me away if they tried.

Sorry- just had to put my last 2cents in before i get bounced by my
old department (which was one of the best places in the world for me
when i was there but lacks combinatoricists...).
schissel@math.cornell.edu

>- dgold@basso.actrix.gen.nz
>- Korokoro, New Zealand
From: vanloon@cwi.nl (Maarten van Loon)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Bach undervalued? (was: Beethoven - overvalued?)
Date: 27 Aug 92 06:38:04 GMT
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam

In article <JWA.92Aug26190914@vipunen.hut.fi> jwa@vipunen.hut.fi (Jyrki J Wahlstedt) writes:
>In article <1992Aug25.044827.9106@usage.csd.unsw.OZ.AU> markc@hydra.maths.unsw.EDU.AU () writes:
>>No, No, I was right the first time. Beethoven comes first, then Mozart, then
>>Bach in fifth spot. After all, Mozart is in fourth.
>>>> email: vanloon@cwi.nl  Not knowing Bach = not really living
>>				       ^^^^
>>another careless mistake. This should be Beethoven.

As far as I can see, this is the best proof that Van Beethoven in
overvalued indeed.

>  Everybody has his own favourite to be the greatest composer of all. You
>  are really stupid, if you insist on Beethoven like that! 
>  Especially as I have Bach in the first place and after him I don't care...

Yes. Bach comes first. I think it's time to ask: why is Bach so undervalued?
I see relatively too less article on Bach. And after all, he was the
greatest composer ever.

Maarten
--------------------------------------------------------------------
| Maarten van Loon      |  The easiest answers are the most        |
| CWI, P.O.Box 4079     |  difficult to find                       |
| 1009 AB Amsterdam     |                                          |
| The Netherlands       |  ----------------------------------------|
| email: vanloon@cwi.nl |  Not knowing Bach = not really living    |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: alan@highlite.uucp (Alan McConnell)
Subject: More on CAGE CAGE CAGE!
Organization: Gotham Communications Research
Distribution: rec.music.classical
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 01:28:34 GMT

'Twould be a pity to let this subject die - let's keep it going
at least till Christmas.  I haven't posted yet, so it's my turn
to slosh around jet fuel and strike a few matches.

And I say:  Cage was not a _composer_.  A philosopher, surely,
an aesthete, of course, a preacher, certainly.  But not a person
who was primarily interested in "placing sounds
together"( = cum + pono, to place with - or is my etymology all
hooey).  I am going primarily by what he himself said, as quoted
by various people in this thread.

E.g. "I was with deKooning once in a restaurant and he said: 'If
I put a frame around these bread crumbs, that isn't art'.  And
what I'm saying is that it is."   It seems that Cage was interested
in seeing how the sounds mixed and sloshed around and found their
way into our ears, while a _composer_, in the common-sense way in
which I am using the term, is usually a person who has a . .
I'd have to invent an aural equivalent of "vision" . . and does
his/her best to bring that inner-ear-heard concept to audible
reality.

We all seem to react differently to this.  Some of us say, go to
it Cage baby.  Others of us say, charlatan, crank.  But if one
accepts my assertion that Cage was a "composer" only in an
extended, not-usually-accepted sense, then the argument becomes
clearer(I really mean, murkier).

And now I run for cover - - back to sci.econ, where the folks
_really_ know how to flame  ;-)
Alan McConnell

-- 
Alan McConnell             "What wondrous life is this I lead!
Pixel Analysis              Ripe apples drop about my head . ."
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: smoliar@argon.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Subject: Re: Cage's Bunnies (was Re: Manners, children please...)
Reply-To: smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Organization: Institute of Systems Science, NUS, Singapore
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 23:43:59 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.105046.29309@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> diarmuid@uniwa.uwa.edu.au
(Diarmuid Pigott) writes:
>thanks to both Mark Gresham and James Langdell for:
>: : "Three Dances for Two Prepared Pianos". 
>: :  ballet "The Seasons" 
>: : very early (1930's ?) unaccompanied clarinet sonat
>: : "The Perilous Night" for prepared piano
>
>if we can get 5, we'll set it put in the FAQ, and refuse to talk to
>Yoders all over the world until they've heard them...


If you MUST have five for a critical mass, let me add my vote for "In a
Landscape" to Vance's (all in the interest of muting Yoder, mind you).
-- 
Stephen W. Smoliar; Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore; Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Kent Ridge, SINGAPORE 0511
Internet:  smoliar@iss.nus.sg
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: steve@fid.morgan.com (Steve Apter)
Subject: Re: Music, not for air-heads
Organization: Morgan Stanley & Co., New York, NY
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 18:34:39 GMT

What kind of music can be played under water?  What does
it sound like?  Are there any compositions (in? for?) this
medium?  (I mean, apart from whale-and-bird-song pieces.)

How does the audience applaud?


Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: <None>
From: phoogenboom@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Date: 3 Sep 92 22:23:06 EDT
Organization: Wesleyan University

In article <62ln7sm.rchrd@netcom.com>, rchrd@netcom.com (Richard Friedman) writes:
> bryan@netcom.com (Bryan Higgins) writes:
> 
>>There's a tune to which is often sung the words "there's a place in France
>>where the ladies wear no pants" etc.  Can anyone identify the origin of the
>>tune?
>>-- 
> No, I don;t know the name either, but CHarles Ives uses it
> alot.  Listen to  Scherzo: Holding Your Own
> its on the Kronos White Man Sleeps recording.
> 
> You should also try to find out all the alternative
> lyrics.  Its probably so old that it can be traced
> back to some cave.

This summer a camper at my summer camp had the music to this.  It was entitled
"Snake dance tune" and had a "b" section.  I do not know what key it was in but
for the sake of argument here it is in a minor (lc=8th note; UC=quarter):
abCBA abcebcA abCBA abcebcA
cdeeeeed bcdddddc abCBA abcebcA.

I doubt this has any authoritative research behind it, however.

While we're on the subject of composers quoting childhood tunes, who out there
is familiar with "Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone," a madrigal by John
Farmer.  Near the beginning of the piece, on the words, "after her lover," one
of the voices sings the tune familiarly associated with "nyah nyah nyah nyah
nyah," to wit:

GeaGE (transposed to c major)

It is doubled at the third; I think it is a third below but I have forgotten.

Peter Hoogenboom
phoogenb@ucs.indiana.edu

Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: jfjr@mbunix.mitre.org (Freedman)
Subject: Here Comes the Bride NOT
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 15:32:25 GMT

  I am getting married in a few weeks. My betrothed has been married
before. The wedding will be in a Church (Unitarian-Universalist).
Since she has been through it before we don't want the traditional
"Here Comes The Bride" since she will not be given awy. We (the small
wedding party - bride, groom, best man, maiden of honor) will wald
down together - what music would be appropriate - for the introductory
part where people come in I have chosen the standard stuff (air on a G
string, Jesu, joy of man's etc and where sheep may safely graze - not
original choices but I know what I like). Any advice?

                                  Jerry Freedman,Jr
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: diarmuid@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Diarmuid Pigott)
Subject: Re: Manners, children please...
Organization: University of Western Australia
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 04:24:57 GMT

maverick@cs.berkeley.edu (Vance Maverick) writes:
[stuff deleted to get my post to fit into one page, but his two posts...]

Well, I think it is possible to adore the Prometheus or Extase without
believing the aesthetic of Scriabin. Heaven alone knows what Satie
actually thought, despite what he wrote about aesthetics, but Socrate
(of which Cage wrote his cheap imitation) is ethereally beautiful.

I think the best example to illustrate what I meant is Picasso. His
earlier works were exemplary in solid craftmanship (craftspersonship?).
When people said to me P was a charlatan, I would show them a repro of
his drawings of bunny rabbit and doggies and say "What do you think of
that?" "Oh..." As P's aesthetic vision developed, respect always was due to him
because of his genius, but could be demanded from art-Yoders by showing
the bunnies.

Now I do know in a landscape, and lots of other Cageiana. I have heard,
seen, read far more of Cage than perhaps I would have if I hadn't
thought he was so important, certainly more than I would have of 
Cardew, or Birtwhistle, or Stockhausen.

I admire a lot about Cage - not least his gift for PR. But can you show
me his bunnies? His doggies? His harlequin? I know his later stuff...
(Actually this is a mite rhetorical - I know the stuff in question - I
just want to see what peoplpe nominate...)

So your points (all 17) miss the point, sadly...



Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: steyn@cs.rochester.edu (Gavin Steyn)
Subject: Re: John Cage is Dead
Organization: Computer Science Department University of Rochester
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 12:45:10 GMT

In article <Btopq6.L4I@quake.sylmar.ca.us> brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
>In article <1992Aug27.133427.5441@cs.rochester.edu> steyn@cs.rochester.edu (Gavin Steyn) writes:

[various points about me misunderstanding Brian's previous post--apologies
rendered by me]

>>Cage's music ovbviously
>>has value to some people--it relaxes them, it makes them think, maybe it
>>influences their music, and so on.  
>
>I don't agree that listening to Cage has good effects on thought or composition
>ability, but that's beside the point.  To have a purpose is not sufficient
>to make a thing music.  Screwdrivers have a purpose too, but they aren't
>music.

Point taken.

>Tell me...just what thoughts so you think a Cage listener is supposed to have?
>Do you think they are good/true thoughts?

This question doesn't really make any sense for a few reasons.
  
  First, if I (or Cage) could just have written down what his music was
supposed to make you think, he wouldn't have bothered writing the music.

  Which leads us to the second point, that what music makes you feel is
often not expressible in words, and even when they are, the words will be
different for every person.  (For example, I ran across one description
of the Bach Tocatta and Fuge in D minor as "playful," but if I ask
someone who's just seen _Phantom of the Opera_, that's not the first
term they'd think of).

  Third, I rally have a problem with this equation of good and true thoughts.
They're not the same thing at all.  (Not all true thoughts are necessarily
good, and there are a lot of lies that most of us believe in to good
effect).

>Here's an interesting exercise:  Do you think that music is a kind of art?
>If so, what would you say al of the various kinds of art have in common?
>In other words, tell me what is ALIKE about music, painting, sculpture,
>literature, and dance.  Perhaps your answer will allow you to better understand
>where I get my definition from.

Unfortunately, my answer doesn't help you much at all.  My definition of
art is, loosely, "something not really necessary which makes life better."
(Yes, there are holes in this definition--since swimming at the shore falls
under it, but it's a start).  My really tight definition would be, "If
I think it's art, then as far as I'm concerned, it's art, and I don't
really care what someone else calls it," but that's a pretty useless 
definition. :-)  Either way, though, the question of value doesn't
really come into it.


Gavin Steyn
steyn@cs.rochester.edu
"So he's had the lifelong ambition of reversing the polarity of the earth?"
From: dgold@basso.actrix.gen.nz (Dale Gold)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Oboe sizes        was           Re: clarinet arcana and transposition
    <1992Sep1.001129.7083@usceast.cs.scarolina.edu>
Date: 2 Sep 92 18:38:00 PST
Organization: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Quoted from <1992Sep1.001129.7083@usceast.cs.scarolina.edu> by James B. Wilkinson <wilkins@cs.cofc.edu>:

> Oboe d'amore is pretty common.
> Is there also a bass oboe that Richard Strauss used maybe?

The dreaded Heckelphone.  The Alpine Symphony uses one as I remember,
and Salome even has a little solo which you might hear if you know when 
to listen for it.

Dale
--
- dgold@basso.actrix.gen.nz
- Korokoro, New Zealand
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical