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how to listen to music if you don’t know your Beethoven from your Bach, lV
by
richibi
“
Fantasy
“
Sergey Solomko
________
trying to find a quick piece, nothing
ostentatious, like a symphony, or a
concerto, nor even a sonata, that
would
get in the way of my point,
the difference between, by way of
the intermediary, and transformational,
Chopin, Mozart and Prokofiev, I found
the
fantasia
, the only musical form
that was carried forward, among them,
during
the intervening years,
a good
hundred and fifty, Mozart,
1756 – 1791,
Prokofiev, 1891 – 1953,
Chopin, 1810 –
1849
what’s a
fantasia
, a musical form
consisting of one movement,
no breaks, but with, otherwise,
unlimited compositional liberties,
see above,
only
circumscribed by
the temper of
the times
Western music has since its
Classical
inception, and even
earlier, had a trinity of
commandments,
that regulated,
even defined, what was meant
to be music, tempo, tonality,
and repetition, the history of
music in the
West is
the
chipping away at those
conventions
here’s Mozart,
Fantasia in C
minor, K.475
,
establishing the
form, but also the foundation,
the grammar, that aspirants
would
follow in the footsteps
of so great a master, children
and grandchildren of their
erudite elder
Chopin followed, here’s his
Fantasy in F minor, Op.49
,
in this instance, a historical
moment you won’t want to
miss, when
Van Cliburn
, an
enemy American at the time,
played it
for
Nikita Kruschev
,
First
Secretary of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union
then, in
Moscow, and
tempered thereby,
for
an incandescent moment
–
ticker-tape parades in New York
City ensued
– the
very Cold War
reliving it
, I cried
the greatest difference between
Mozart
and
Chopin
, I thought,
was volume, a consequence
of the development of the piano,
Mozart
never gets as loud, also
tempo was much more expanded,
again a development of the piano,
neither was repetition with
Chopin
so much in evidence, but shrouded,
less manifest
also
Chopin
wears his heart on
his sleeve, idiosyncratically
with
Prokofiev
, his
Fantasia on
Themes from Scheherazade
tests tonality, gives us musical
conjunctions that are askew,
discordant, though completely
in syncopation with his own,
testy and unsettled,
times
compare
,
consider
,
enjoy
R ! chard
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Published:
January 29, 2023
Filed Under:
Chopin
,
grammar
,
how to listen to music if you don't know your Beethoven from your Bach
,
Mozart
,
music to ponder
,
paintings to ponder
,
parsing art
,
Prokofiev
,
recitals to ponder
Tags:
"Fantaisie in F minor (Opus 49)" - Chopin
:
"Fantasia on Themes from Scheherazade" - Prokofiev
:
Nikita Kruschev
:
Van Cliburn
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