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Intro 3 -
Tutorial in Three Movements
1. All of the orchestras or people playing classical music are doing "covers".
They are all playing someone else's tunes - the composer's.
Because most composers died well before vinyl, let alone digital,
they had to leave music for posterity as manuscripts.
The music is simply written down on paper to be interpreted by the performer.
There are no definitive albums.
This leads to an obvious but fundamental difference from rock 'n' roll
and other music of today: there is no definitive record,
like Exile on Main Street, or Born in the USA.
There are instead, numerous covers of what the composer might have been thinking in his head.
There can be thousands of different recordings by different artists of the same music.
What's more, different recordings can sound amazingly different from one another.
This is something like comparing "live" and "studio" recordings.
It is not uncommon for two performances of a piece to sound like two different pieces, altogether.
You might have to try a few different recordings to find the one that you like best.
As a general rule of thumb,
the best recordings are usually made by the bigger city orchestras
(e.g., London, Berlin, Vienna, Chicago, New York),
or by performers from the country where the composer was born
(e.g., Austrians relishing Mozart, Czechs doing Dvořák,
or Poles playing Chopin), or by the "big name" artists
(e.g., Karajan, Solti, Richter, Bernstein, Perlman).
With time, you will find your own favourites.
2. Classical music is described by strange words.
They are not there for mystique. Classical music is dominated by the Europeans,
and not the English-speaking ones!
This means that there are some strange-looking words that refuse to roll off the tongue.
That is, unless your family happened to come from that part of Europe.
We meet people called Ngyuen more far often than Schoenberg,
Mussorgsky, Dvořák, Saint-Saëns and Britten (from Britain!).
(They are probably as common as Nguyen in their home towns.)
Then there are the track titles: Allegro ma non troppo, Scherzo, Largo, etc...
Unless you are Italian, you will be equally bemused.
Nevertheless, after hearing a few good sonatas, sonatinas, and scherzos,
you may be interested in discovering such arcane concepts as the difference
between a sonata and sonata form.
A great Largo may captivate you.
You may be itching to know what a toccata and fugue is after being shaken by
Bach's organ(!).
When this happens, then I encourage you to research further.
Countless books - not to mention, websites -
have been devoted to telling you all about the technicalities of classical music.
You'll find them lining the shelves at every good bookshop.
Listening to the Music is the concern of this website.
I am making the assumption that you want the music first and foremost.
3. Each of the recommendations in this book follows a regular form.
Below is a sample entry, complete with explanations. In this example,
the composer of this music is Beethoven. (Now, you've all heard of him, surely.)
Composer:
Firstly, there is the composer, Beethoven.
Composers, usually blokes, wrote the music.
Typically they were serious men with an undiagnosed mental illness or incurable disease,
and a big wig.
Don’t be deceived by what you see or read. These are the genii.
Throughout the book, composers' names appear first in the listings,
with the exceptions of the
Composer Profile
section that focuses on just one composer at a time.
Piece: Following the composer's name is the title of the music,
otherwise known as the piece. This symphony, no. 5 for Beethoven's, is in the musical key (a set of related notes) called
c minor.
Many pieces of classical music are actually groupings of smaller pieces - known as "movements" (below) -
that fit together as a whole.
This example is a symphony. A symphony is usually made up of four movements, is usually for the full orchestra
and is usually big, important music.
Beethoven just happened to write nine very famous symphonies.
The first movement of his symphony no.5 is probably the most famous piece of
dramatic classical music, ever!
Other popular works are the Concerto, the Sonata, and the Overture.
These are all very interesting "forms" of music,
and we'll come across most of them in the following pages.
Knowing what they actually mean is optional (see 2, above).
This symphony, no. 5 for Beethoven, is in the musical key (a set of related notes) called
c minor. (There are twenty-four possible keys:
12 major (usually bright and happy music) and 12 minor (usually sad and serious) keys.
Most rock 'n' Roll bands play their songs in one or two keys.
Catalogue Number: Following the title is the catalogue number:op.67.
This is a numbering system for each composer to keep track of what they wrote;
especially to productive ones.
Take Bach, for example, he wrote at least 1500 pieces of music in his life.
This very famous bit of music was catalogued as Beethoven's 67th piece.
Beethoven wasn't as fertile as Bach!
This is where it becomes arcane. Not all music has a catalogue number,
but many do, and these are called "opus" numbers,
abbreviated as "op.". However, as in life,
there are no rules in classical music that aren't broken.
Some composers got their own specific numbering system tacked on after the fact.
This is usually because they lived well before "op." became the standard,
or because they were lazy, or messy,
or compulsively re-organised their numbering throughout the years.
Take Beethoven, for example. He actually wrote heaps of music that he forgot to catalogue,
or felt was unworthy of a number. You'll be chuffed to know that he also wrote "WoO"
(Work without numbering) numbers, as well as "Anh." Numbers.
Good for him, but a nightmare for the cataloguers. (Interesting job that!).
Numerous cataloguers have decided to take it into their own hands
to sort out other messes in a logical and ordered way.
For example, Mozart got allocated "K" numbers (after his cataloguer, Koechel).
Schubert got "D" numbers (from Deutsch), and Bach got the monstrous-looking "BWV"
(Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis) numbers.
Pity poor old Bartok who got "op.", "Sz", and more recently, "BB" numbers!
Movement: Many pieces of classical music are made up of
several individual pieces that hang together as a whole.
In this case, the first movement,
1. is called Allegro con brio
(Fast, with brilliance - Apt, isn't it?)
Most movements have titles. These titles are usually in Italian and indicate the speed or
"tempo" of the music.
Beethoven's Symphony No.5, like many other symphonies, has four such movements.
I have put a movement number, where applicable,
to help you find the movement of interest.
Remember, however, that these are not necessarily the
track numbers on the CD.
I have also tried to use original words where possible,
because many classical CDs keep the original language of the composer
and don't translate them. Don't be put off by the cultural cringe (see 2.),
even if the label of your CD is in some hopelessly unpronounceable or
funny-looking language. I have given you enough information to identify what you want
- just check to match the words on the back of the box.
If all else fails, approach the sales counter with confidence.
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