Musical interlude

A chance remark on an email list, and I am doomed.

First, a disclaimer. My musical education ended more years ago that a millipede has corns. I'm talking barely-informed personal opinion, here. Be warned.

Should you ask me who my favourite (classical) composers are, the answers would be many and various and would no doubt differ somewhat depending on the day, the hour, the weather even.

I think that I might always give Bach (J.S.) pre-eminence, though. After that, I range through the ages, mostly baroque and classical, some romantic, little of yer actual contemporary although sometimes I surprise myself. (I once heard an entire modern song-cycle on Radio 3, about an Vietnamese? child, called something like "My name is Ti Ann", composer and all other details unknown, that had me moved to tears, but that is rare.)

But I have a great fondness for the some of the late Romantics, assuming that I am classifying them correctly, particularly Puccini - and Mahler. Being as it were challenged about this, I did a bit of googling, rounded up my entire collection, was going to find some of the passages that I might point to in support of my case. But I got daunted by the scope of the task, Mahler comes, you might say, on wheels. I wanted to find a section from one of the symphonies that I remembered as referring to the death of his daughter, but googling for Mahler and death brings up a googolplex of hits. Poor chap, he had something of a time of it in his life that was shorter than mine.

And in fact, one of the websites I came upon was this I make no comment on the whole of the site, haven't looked at it. This bit on Mahler I found interesting, though, and I decided that it probably explained a lot about my liking for him.

There are a lot of sites out there, and some sound files.
Indeed, I need to go hunt up my mysterious modern song cycle maybe. I continue to be amazed at how useful the internet is.

Anyhow - I like Mahler, I like Puccini, and I am beginning to get an inkling of why (not that it matters). It is something to do with their albeit rather florid but none the less effective expression of emotion, in Mahler's case I am sure absolutely genuine, but in Puccini's - well, he was a consummate showman, and may have been one of the forefathers of Lloyd Webber...but some passages from Turandot really hit the spot. And I love his through-the-night entr'actes. Does it matter? Probably not, it is surely the response in the listener that is important? Although, a thought occurs to me, if it is florid, intense emotion you are after, then go no further than the Du Pre version of the Elgar cello concerto

Mind you - I haven't yet mentioned Beethoven. And the String Quartets. There, you have intelligent, restrained and intense emotion that cuts like a scalpel blade. Brrr.

I have absolutely no clue why I have been blathering on about music like this. I shan't apologise - what else are blogs for, eh?