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Is reading classic scores /lit/? Anyone else here like to read along in the score to their favorite Baroque gargantua or Wagner score to look for architectonic details that only a deep reading will reveal? In short, does anyone here read scores and libretti like books?
Pic related. Notice the dotted rhythm in the bass, like a heartbeat. It's a lament, of course, from the intro to the St. Matthew Passion. But notice that the most stunning lament of the piece, Erbarme Dich, has a perfectly metronomic, clockwork bass instead. Why does lament with the most vivid pictures of heaving sobs and tears have a heartless bass? The dotted rhythms return later, in other, less arresting laments. Maybe the lifeless, machinelike bass of Erbarme Dich suggests to you the paralyzing, stone-like shock of the first stages of grief?
Also, check out the first act of Don Giovanni. Seriously, fucking Mozart knew what he was doing. Right after the Commendatore dies, the lament is a minor version of Donna Annas protests when Don Gon was chasing her. In fact, notice that she's musically taking the lead their, and he follows (he's chasing her)- everywhere else in the opera he usually takes musical command. But here, he's off his game.
>>7515987
Your passion about reading sheet music is highly contagious. It makes me a bit jelous for not being able to see it the way you do
This is a PoMo board, motherfucker!
The bass reminds me, not of a heart, but of something else throbbing, behind me
I enjoy reading original copies of musical scores as well, but most people on this board are only concerned with philosophy and novels. I think you would have a better conversation with other people who like music on /mu/ in the classical thread. They don't move that fast, but good discussion happens regularly in those threads and I'm sure you'll be able to find at least a few more people who would be interested in talking about this.
>stunning
>clockwork
>vivid
>heartless
>arresting
>lifeless
>machinelike
>paralyzing
>stone-like
Enough say-nothing adjectives in there, or could you have fit a few more? If the text of the music is excellent, why gild it with your meager words?
>>7516040
In music, those words mean a lot more than you realize. Music has an emotional element in it, that in my opinion, is not well-translated in literature.
>>7516021
Later, when Donna Anna faints, her fiance, Don Ottavio, has the body of her father removed. When she comes to, she asks where her father is. He comically and pathetically ignores her question instead answers that he's husband and father to her.
Then the horns and oboes chime in, imitating the HEEHAW sound of an ass. Hilarious.
Donna Anna is a badass, though. She recovers herself, demands he swear a blood oath to avenge her father, and then for the rest of the duet he has trouble keeping up with her, musically, as they start to obsess over how terrifying the vow is. He's so out of his depth!
Most of the men are laughable in Don Giovanni, musically- except The Don himself.
OP you are retarded
>>7516040
>Enough say-nothing adjectives in there
You have no idea what you're talking about, lurk more before you flap your fingers or get off this board
>If the text of the music is excellent, why gild it with your meager words?
Probably because most people here can't read scores
>>7516040
There's a part in Anna Karenina where Tolstoy describes Levin hating how Koznyshev has to describe everything in nature instead of just enjoying it as they walk through a meadow. I feel the same way with music reviews, or program notes, or OP's post. Always a bunch of annoying adjectives.
I either want a scientific theoretical description, or aesthetic immersion. OP is kind of in no-man's land.
I enjoy reading scores too, though. My favorite to read along with is the art of the fugue. Makes it much easier to follow the individual lines within the complexity of it all.
>>7516040
>stunning
In this context, it refers to how arresting and memorable that particular aria is: it has a lot of elements (the fact it's an alto rather than soprano, the fact that it doesn't seem to be the voice of any particular character in the passion itself, the fact it comes right after Peter's denying Christ, etc) that stand out and make you pay attention: stun you.
>clockwork
Refers to nothing more than how regular the rhythm is. "Clockwork,' related to a machine, was chosen to in opposition to the choice to described the dotted rhythms as a "hearbeat." When a rhythm is too regular, it just sounds like its "keeping time," as opposed to living or breath or ACTING with a principle of motion in itself.
The dotted rhythms were referred to as like a heartbeat (why didn't you criticize that one), because they're still regular, but they churn, move, dance slightly. They're just imbalanced enough to suggest motion, and therefore life. I dunno, music is hard to describe, but surely you'd agree syncopated rhythms as opposed to extremely regular rhythms are more "lively."
The other adjectives referring to stasis (as opposed to movement) are all just different ways of referring to the same contrast.
Don't be obtuse. Do you like /lit/ or not?
>>7516071
>Always a bunch of annoying adjectives.
>I either want a scientific theoretical description, or aesthetic immersion. OP is kind of in no-man's land.
Agreed, but we're IN that no man's land all the time, it's just more noticeable and infuriating when talking about music. You're asking either for the experience itself, without talking about it, in which case all society ceases, or you're asking for... what exactly? Just what passes muster as a proper thematic discussion? Could OP have measured the distinction between stone and life in a proportion?
I know this is /lit, but that's such a shallow use of architectonic. Yes, there's order, there are patterns which phase in and out, there are subtle mutations and shit, but don't call them architectonic. I'm an architect and that's my trigger, don't make me go back to the office at this hour.
>>7516099
I disagree. It's really only annoying when someone tries to describe an aesthetic experience like appreciation of nature or music. With literature, there are a bunch of mysteries scholars can discuss with literature, influences to be looked into, etc. This isn't that difficult for the layman. It's a little different with music. Describing music for no other purpose than describing music to me is a vain pursuit. I love doing theoretical analysis of music (especially as it comes particularly naturally to me), but enough with adjectives.
>music
>/lit/ - Literature
Take it to /mu/, although they only listen to plebian trash like hip-hop and rock. Maybe leave 4chan and join a Wagner society if you want some real discussion about this. You seem genuinely interested, so that would be my advice, leave.
Why sure, OP, reading classic scores is as close to /lit/ as you can get. After all, music is literature.
For instance, take this masterpiece. As you can see, the entry bars are highly evocative and reminiscent of the Baroque (and baroque!) approach that we know so well from the likes of Vivaldi and Corelli. Note the windswept G shifts rising up and tumbling down like a confused falcon in a foehn wind. This is a great composer at work, obviously, however...
Note the emotional appeal beginning at the fourteenth bar, almost as if it's saying, "Let there be li-ght!'", and sure enough, the B-D chord is almost a holy representation of the breadth and truth of God, or, as the composer would say, EL. E, L. Now what's the significance of that? Check this out. E is found nowhere throughout the first sartorial 16 bars of the piece, conveniently (or as I like to say, intentionally) betraying the composer's own sclerotic faith or lack thereof. L, of course, is the touchstone of modern music: L L L, Libero, Legato, Luminoso. So how do we reconcile the composer's secular approach with the presence of the "let there be light" phrasing? This piece, indeed, is essentially a wrestling match with God (EL). The lyrics indicate this fact, but I won't touch on those because I'm a scholar of music, not literature.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is, you have to have a rapaciously open mind if you want to truly understand music like some of us do; you need to rip and tear out the heart of it, look past that even, to the rebarbative gore and intransigent viscera of your favorite song, and then you might more broadly appreciate, for instance, the waxy, soporific approach of a low-decibel Radiohead or the trundling, doubling duplicity of the epistemic, inchoate, lachrymose, recalcitrant REM. But that's another tale, and I'd hate to get turgid.
>>7516185
OP here, 10/10
>>7515987
>Right after the Commendatore dies
geez, can ya use spoiler text next time?
>>7515987
go watch your nodame elsewhere fagi have to finish mine
>>7516212
And know it's a joke post but you're complaining about spoilers for the very start of the opera.
