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how to listen to music if you don’t know your Beethoven from your Bach, Vl
by
richibi
“
The Potato Eaters
”
(1885)
Vincent van Gogh
___________
where do you start with Chopin, he is
in our Western cultural bloodstream,
as identifiable in music as, say, van
Gogh is in painting, you
don’t need
to be interested in any
kind
of art to
have
not been given
even only
a
whiff of
these iconic
artists
nearly anything I might present here
of Chopin you’ve probably already
heard somewhere
before, if only in
bits
of van Gogh, well, he goes back in
the public imagination to at least
Vincent
,
1971,
the song
, no one
doesn’t know about him, when I
heard it playing in Amsterdam at
the museum, with the first piece I
saw,
The Potato Eaters
,
dominating
the first
wall, insisting on
van Gogh’s
vision, his prophecy,
his profound
compassion, I
cried, I
understood
what art is,
see above
Chopin exerts a different kind of,
however equally potent, magic
Mozart might sound like Haydn,
Beethoven might sound like
Schubert, all of the Impressionists
sound like all of the Impressionists,
be they Ravel, Debussy, Satie, or
Saint-Saëns, to the untrained ear
but no one sounds like Chopin,
he’s, culturally, a North Star
here’s
one of his nocturnes
, the
moonlit one,
in E flat major
here’s
a polonaise
,
here’s
an
étude
,
in English, a
study,
a finger exercise,
an iconic,
here
, prestidigitation
here’s
an impromptu
, his very,
indeed,
Fantaisie-Impromptu
,
just
to get your categories going
consider
its
construction,
having
some
information
already about
fantasias, a work of the imagination
,
open to any
experimentation within
the
confines of one movement,
with
an impromptu, something
purported
to have been created on the spot,
also in one movement
the answer
requires you to
sharpen
your
aesthetic
pencil,
always a
delight – an
impromptu,
a
spontaneous
invention,
a
fantaisie,
a work of the imagination,
how do
they differ, which part is a
fantaisie,
which an impromptu,
how
do
they
nevertheless
coalesce
this exercise is the first step in
listening
enjoy
R ! chard
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Published:
February 7, 2023
Filed Under:
Amsterdam
,
Beethoven
,
Camille Saint-Saëns
,
Chopin
,
Debussy
,
Erik Satie
,
Franz Schubert
,
Haydn
,
how to listen to music if you don't know your Beethoven from your Bach
,
Maurice Ravel
,
Mozart
,
music to ponder
,
paintings to ponder
,
parsing art
,
recitals to ponder
Tags:
"Fantaisie- Impromptu" - Chopin
:
"Nocturne in E flat major" - Chopin
:
"The Potato Eaters" - van Gogh
:
Beethoven
:
Debussy
:
fantasias
:
Frédéric Chopin
:
Haydn
:
impromptus
:
Mozart
:
Ravel
:
Saint-Saëns
:
Satie
:
Schubert
:
Vincent van Gogh
One Comment to “how to listen to music if you don’t know your Beethoven from your Bach, Vl”
how to listen to music if you don’t know your Beethoven from your Bach, Vlll | Richibi's Weblog
says:
April 25, 2023 at 12:19 am
[…] follow-up exercise […]
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[…] follow-up exercise […]