I have a lot of respect for people for different reasons. My friend Jim played his concerto in the orchestra concert today, and I can't believe how good a performer he is. Saint Saens' second piano concerto came across with incredible musicality and strength. Damned fine job. It's amazing how he just dived into the music without any seeming hesitation or performance anxiety. I've been listening to classical almost all today anyhow, and I just started considering again how it's actually slightly unusual for me to be able to enjoy it so much.

Classical music is often categorized as having no passion. I think this may be in part because people tend to listen to actual classical era classical music. I'm not overly fond of that, really. It's too elegant and lacks drive. Baroque was supposed to be equally elegant, but it has more room for expression with the rampant ornamentation encouraged. I also find that baroque era things were more often using more interesting chordal harmonies. Classical era attempts to claim some sort of simple beauty, but for the most part I find it has only a shell.

I'm listening to little fugue now, J. S. Bach, of course. (Not that that's necessarily "of course" to anyone, I guess.) This is an intersting arrangement for orchestra, and I have actual musical critique of performance, orchestration, the composition.... Well, actually not much critique other than for orchestration. Bach is largely too well-crafted to have any flaws anyone as base as I could find, and the performers seem to be rather musical. I do know what I'm talking about, though. Of course I'm not as skilled as some others, mainly I end up comparing myself to my professors, though. I have learned things, and I do feel as though my musical experience is vastly different. I question whether it's better, though. Sometimes it would be nice to turn off my ear and not care about intonation problems, balance issues, poor phrasing... But I can't because I've been indoctrinated and even upon writing that statement I mentally objected crying out, "but at the very least the phrasing! You can't have poor phrasing!" :)

I guess this will be my last round of Mussorgsky and Saint Saens for the night, because I'm sitting night desk again and I need something more snappy to keep me awake. (Go bad techno, go!) Really, though, this romantic era music is some of the most amazingly emotional stuff. It has so much power, such a voice. It's also as beautiful and elegant as classical, in my opinion. Silly era of pompousness was good for little. Yes, I'm opinionated. Just a bit. And certainly not just about classical.

I always critique the more "pop" music I listen to. (Pop for me being Cirque du Soleil, Prodigy, Siouxsie and the Banshees and all other sorts of not-really-pop things, but certainly not classical. Of course I still maintain that most techno is actually Musique Concrète. *shrug*). I don't really mean it, though, when I criticize myself for listening to these things and flippantly tell everyone I have bad taste in music. There are always reasons for listening to these musics, and I think all music has merit. Even things like Yanni. Hey! Stop throwing things.

Really, though, I think that most musical criticism is at some level invalid, because who can say that what is being expressed is insufficient? You can't tell someone their emotions aren't good enough. Granted some of this pop stuff is coming out of the mouths of people who don't feel what they're singing, but someone had some inspiration somewhere to come up with this stuff, no matter how much you may think it's cheese.

I need to write more. I say this rather often. I should be doing a lot of things. But I'm not. And tonight I'm not sleeping either. Fabulous. Well, wish me luck on staying conscious until seven.
posted by Unknown at 9:30 PM