Evidently, I'm Now Grokking Classical Composers.

[László]

Background:

In 1961 Robert A. Heinlein wrote Stranger in a Strange Land; it was a seminal book, a must-read in the college-semi-hippie milieu I circulated in back in the late '60s. The book introduced the concept of 'grok'. To grok someone was to so thoroughly empathize with/relate to that person that one merged with them.

The story:

The other day I was driving in my car, listening to some Tchaikovsky on Sirius XM's Symphony channel, minding my own business, when a particular passage suddenly became a bolt out of the blue. I already had a decent understanding of what Tchaikovsky was doing in music theory terms.

The ball lightning strike - it was no less -was that I understood why he was choosing to do certain things.

The music told me what he had to have been thinking. In other words, I was grokking one of the great orchestral masters!

This never happened to me before listening to orchestral music.

I don't know if this is a by-product of doing all that orchestral composing lately, but something damn sure happened!

 

[Black Plaid]

Knowing what to do is one thing, but knowing why is the true zen.

 

[Stephen J.]

Not what I assumed it meant.
Sounds like a nice experience.

 

[Prina]

So friggin' awesome to have Eureka moments like that when understanding takes a leap, especially in decade #8.

The odds seem pretty likely that with all those orchestral composing thoughts floating around that something would come along and crystallize a major insight.

A couple of questions:
Did the Tchaikovsky grok extend outside of the symphony?
Did it extend to "Oh, he could have done these other themes/variations/etc and they would have sounded like this but he didn't because this is better"?

 

[László]

A couple of questions:
Did the Tchaikovsky grok extend outside of the symphony?

No. It was strictly in the context of listening and thinking about the particular passage.

Did it extend to "Oh, he could have done these other themes/variations/etc and they would have sounded like this but he didn't because this is better"?

It was more of an "Aha! I see why he chose to do that!" moment.

 

[veinbuster]

Peripherally related, a while ago I suddenly found myself understanding Paginni. For the longest time, I couldn’t quite get his pieces right. I could play other work from that era with similar complexity, but his pieces just didn’t feel right to me. Then after avoiding them for quite a while, I sat down with them and had the light bulb went off: “oh, that’s what he is doing”. I still make mistakes, but when I play, I feel like I am in his headspace.

 

[aphantomvaper]

Great post! It prob happen because of your programming, knowledge, experience and driving the car gave the carrier wave of distraction for your subconscious to bubble up the understanding and realization.

I love the feeling when that happens, its very pleasant!

 

[Maertl513]

Les may remember this details from our letters. Maybe it was luck or bad luck, I was given the opportunity to attend to a humanistic gymnasium, which first appearance in the records is way earlier, than the USA. 1225. In the aftermath of the reformation, the pupils belonged in the majority to Lutharian protestants, though the city itself was (and still is) a Catholic bistum. The church close to the gymnasium is St. Michael. Itself it became protestant, but inside there is Catholic crypta of former bishop Bernward. The church is protected under UNESCO's world heritage.
The school itself had a strong domination of languages (three languages mandatory: Latin, English, French or Ancient Greek) and arts (predominately music). That lead to volunteer choir, band, musicals, orchestra opportunities aside the school curriculum.
And my school is proud to have e. g. composer Telemann as a former student or multi-Grammy winner singer Thomas Quasthoff, or pianist Ragna Schirmer.

Of course I learned that classical composers arranged their music deliberated. And not by surprise. They were capable to compose a complex full orchestral arrangement just by their minds, not needing an instrument figuring around. They were perfect aswell in the theoretical language of music. Sometimes I dared to answer the question by the teacher, why the composer composed a certain detail, by stating: Em, because he made composing for his living.
To me it is not of relevance, why something is, more relevance is the attraction of the soul.
In the period I started my relationship to my later wife, I read Tolkin's Hobbit. It was the time when Walkman were still state of the art. In my parent's audio cassette collection I found a cassette with baroque music for christmas. Manfredini, Albinoni, Torelli, Vivaldi, Corelli, Pachelbel, Bach. Their compositions amaze me until today. Later I owned a collection of violonists and pianists published by Munich's newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. In the last century Bernstein's West Side Story turned out to be aswell a large epos. I like the strengths of Mussorgski's Night on the pale mountain aswell as Pictures of an exhibition (The large gate of Kiev)...
Barber's Adagio for strings featured in the epilogue of Platoon is classic inspired music, which strikes my soul.

I like to listen to classic music, but it doesn't drives me for my own way to "compose" or arrange.
I give outstanding appreciation for those, who are able to compose in the manner of classical music.
Classical music is never outdated.

 

[RossF]

Background:

In 1961 Robert A. Heinlein wrote Stranger in a Strange Land; it was a seminal book, a must-read in the college-semi-hippie milieu I circulated in back in the late '60s. The book introduced the concept of 'grok'. To grok someone was to so thoroughly empathize with/relate to that person that one merged with them.

The story:

The other day I was driving in my car, listening to some Tchaikovsky on Sirius XM's Symphony channel, minding my own business, when a particular passage suddenly became a bolt out of the blue. I already had a decent understanding of what Tchaikovsky was doing in music theory terms.

The ball lightning strike - it was no less -was that I understood why he was choosing to do certain things.

The music told me what he had to have been thinking. In other words, I was grokking one of the great orchestral masters!

This never happened to me before listening to orchestral music.

I don't know if this is a by-product of doing all that orchestral composing lately, but something damn sure happened!

Epiphany while engrokked. Sweet! ;-)

 

[László]

Les may remember this details from our letters.

I do indeed!

Maybe it was luck or bad luck, I was given the opportunity to attend to a humanistic gymnasium, which first appearance in the records is way earlier, than the USA. 1225. In the aftermath of the reformation, the pupils belonged in the majority to Lutharian protestants, though the city itself was (and still is) a Catholic bistum. The church close to the gymnasium is St. Michael. Itself it became protestant, but inside there is Catholic crypta of former bishop Bernward. The church is protected under UNESCO's world heritage.
The school itself had a strong domination of languages (three languages mandatory: Latin, English, French or Ancient Greek) and arts (predominately music). That lead to volunteer choir, band, musicals, orchestra opportunities aside the school curriculum.
And my school is proud to have e. g. composer Telemann as a former student or multi-Grammy winner singer Thomas Quasthoff, or pianist Ragna Schirmer.

And it's awfully hard to beat starting out with Telemann!

Of course I learned that classical composers arranged their music deliberated. And not by surprise. They were capable to compose a complex full orchestral arrangement just by their minds, not needing an instrument figuring around.

Beethoven definitely used a piano to compose. Whether he actually needed to do that, I have no idea.

As I understand it, when his ear trumpets no longer amplified the piano enough to hear the notes, he put a stick between his teeth and leaned the stick against the piano to pick up vibrations.

There is some disagreement about how Bach composed; some believe that he improvised at the keyboard and then wrote it down later. There is anecdotal evidence that he may have also simply sat down and wrote out notation.

Wagner and Stravinsky composed using a piano.

I don't know how Mozart composed - he certainly conducted from behind the keyboard - but I love this probably apocryphal story:

A young musician asked Mozart how he composed a symphony. Mozart advised starting with something simpler. The young musician said,

“You were younger than me when you wrote symphonies."

Mozart replied, “Yes, but I never asked how”.

To me it is not of relevance, why something is, more relevance is the attraction of the soul.

I like to think about how and why things are done the way they are; it gives me important clues and ideas.

 

[jxe]