the old thread is fucked due to broken links and isn’t used much anymore for several years SO
new thread. there’s not a good term for this stuff (don’t get me started on “art music”) but i think there’s not a good term for a lot of categorizations applied to music so it’s fine. y’all know what i mean. music of “formal” lineage rather than “folk” or “popular” music. i don’t think there’s necessarily anything categorical about the sound contained therein, more the context and lineage. in other words, there’s no aural content that could make something be definitely classical or non-classical. it kind of depends on who made it and what they listened to and what their intent was, i think
ANYWAY
what i really wanted to say is i find that brahms sucks and i need to say this lol
as with any composer considered in the esteem brahms is, there’s a lot to like. his music is constructed very intricately and there’s a certain sweetness to it.
i just almost never feel that spark with it. it’s not “anointed” for me, shall we put it.
this is super subjective and what i mostly want from y’all (beyond the obvious: share and talk about “”“classical”“” music) as an opening salvo is to tell me i’m wrong and that such and such brahms is the hot shit
the german requiem has been the closest to convincing me brahms is … OK.
i got to 13 minutes in the below video and was 100% not feeling it. maybe they are playing it wrong!!! i mean. it’s pretty! it’s got nice counterpoint and balance and… i just don’t feel much other than “i’d not mind this being on in the background” - the dynamics are nice in the bit i heard at least, but harmonically? snooze.
but i’m also a really huge bruckner fan so i really expect my taste in this stuff is not going to be representative or even considered sane
There was a time in college where I would listen to Brahms’ symphonies 3 and 4 a lot. I liked how parts of the orchestra would dialogue with one another. They’re Mozart-esque but composed with larger orchestras in mind. Listening to him, I get the impression of someone who sees music composition as a solved problem though. Like, he doesn’t really go out into the wilderness.
i don’t think i have ever in my life had a brahms melody touch my soul. i’ve admired some of the craft of it, but it’s never caused me awe or obsession or a path to becoming lost in the music.
the beginning of the brahms’ german reqiuem is so pretty, and i am sure if i spent more time with it i’d develop an appreciation, but. he gets compared to mozart, whose requiem ate my soul in one gulp on the very first intentional listen. or bach as one of the “3 Bs” or maybe as a replacement for Berlioz, but when i listen to anything by bach my being is unmoored and my brain overloaded with incalculable brilliance. this is unfair to brahms surely, but i do want to find the pathway in, if at least to share in some of the bounty reported by brahms-appreciators
another note in my grappling with trying to appreciate brahms
i tried getting into schubert and brahms at the same time (similarly to how i tried to explore mahler and bruckner at the same time). schubert similarly resisted any compulsion by me toward his music from anything i heard unintentionally on NPR or whatever, but i quickly found much to like in his work. i’ve still yet to find that for brahms and myself. we remain at an icy distance yet.
I sang Baritone in the chorus of the Brahms requiem in school and studied some of the pieces with a really good theory prof around the same time. I’ve meant to but never really organized my thoughts on this and responding here feels like a decent place to start.
I think my issue with his work is that it ends up sounding like less than the sum of its harmonic complexities. The economy feels off and over indulgent for not a lot of payoff. There is just a lack of memorable riffs.
On the plus side - Brahms is fun to perform in an ensemble. The harmonies are clean and shift around almost too smoothly. You feel like you are doing a lot while playing stuff that feels good. It kind of feels like easy mode in a game with really good sensory feedback. I think I, and a lot of musicians with classical backgrounds, have soft spots for him for this reason.
There is a funny secret though to enjoy listening to Brahms that, I must assume, only would apply to people with higher active musical listening skills. Focus on what the low voiced instruments are doing, because they are almost always doing something interesting counter to the other voices. His father was a pro bassist, and ya gotta impress daddy.
I respect far more than most a really honest attempt to appreciate canonized artists, but at some point I think it’s ok to make your peace with a fundamental and unwavering dislike.
Brahms to me does sound like the classical version of daddy’s good little boy (nb: I know nothing about Brahms biographically). He’s got all the skills but none of the verve. His music sounds like “this sounds like classical music,” like something Zack Snyder would choose to play for a fancy rich person dinner party scene.
Totally agree with this take. I don’t know anything about Zack Snyder (just using him as an example because you mentioned him and I’m too lazy right now to think of a good example) but maybe there is like one aspect he is good at that if you focus on it you can not be bored to death. That is what it is like for me enjoying Brahms, and today is the first time I choose to listen to Brahms for the first time in :checks watch: many years.
If there’s some Brahms on though that you can’t avoid though, or you are listening to it to try and figure out something from your past, I suggest listening to the bass.
this is actually a super common disconnect when discussing this kind of work i think. classical music often gets discussed by people who play it at various levels. so, feelings about playing the work, which is also sometimes how people are exposed to it, becomes more of a factor than usual in appreciation
me, i’m like… who cares? i don’t give a shit if it sucks to play timpani for 2 bars in 40 minute work, it’s just completely disconnected from me considering the value of the written music, or the recording or performance thereof, ya know? but if you’re in an orchestra you almost can’t help but consider that
when reading about bruckner’s music, sometimes people will start talking about how much it sucks to play tremolos for 30 minutes on viola or whatever and i’m like… you are a bristle in a paintbrush. be a good bristle and distribute this paint until the performance is done!!!
edit: what i really mean is i want to read about bruckner’s music when i go to read about bruckner’s music. the music itself! what the experience of playing his music is like? different question. to me they are simply entirely separate.
Yeah, there is definitely memory of singing certain lines with the orchestra that I cannot escape the good feelings from so I have a fondness for that memory but like a lot of popular music, it is not “the good stuff” in my book.
It’s worth remembering that lots of the people in the social classes that would matter in these times would have musical training and performance experience and the only way to hear the music would be at a performance. Since Brahms stuff is relatively easy to get to sound good, more groups would perform it and sound good while doing so. It became pretty popular for a lot of reasons.
It’s funny because one thing I always insist on when speaking about classical music with people who are mostly unfamiliar with it is that you have to consider its performative context. A symphony is like a movie for your ears… assembling an orchestra is itself an act of tremendous economic excess - how many mountains has civilization had to move to get 80 people in one place at one time, all of whom have spent most of their lives training to manipulate a series of arcane instruments each of which takes a whole other expert a lifetime of training to craft, and none of it feeds anybody or builds or cleans or maintains anything…
In a time before recording, just getting to hear 80 of these highly trained people in one room at one time all playing together was itself a privilege of ecstatic proportions. This was not the way even most rich people listened to most music most of the time in their everyday lives.
So you’ve got to sit and listen to that shit! The consignment of classical music to the “background music” category in the modern world is such a tragedy in that context.
All that said: Brahms sounds like it’s written on purpose to be pleasant background music. That’s the faint praise I’ll damn it with.
hey i’m counting it. carnatic music, tm krishna is one of my fav current singers in the tradition for trying to break down the rigid caste and religious hierarchies embedded in it. he’s also just really skilled
among the many reasons conservatives hate tm krishna is his desire to bring classical art forms such as carnatic music to non-classical causes, such as interfaith understanding (he will sing hymns to jesus or allah in the carnatic style, apparently a great taboo) and social/environmental causes like the below, which bemoans the environmental destruction wreaked upon common resources by the powers that be
this is the classic ragam of carnatic music, the one everyone starts learning with, ‘maya malava gowla’ or in western music the ‘double harmonic’ scale
the double reed instrument is the nadaswaram, one of the loudest woodwinds in the world
this symphony is so good. i think it’s my favorite of the hadyn symphonies (there are so many jeez) i’ve sampled. hadyn always feels very direct and unpretentious
