Faure's place?
Sonarrat
Requiem and the fabulous chamber music, playing through the Barcarolles and
Nocturnes, listening to the few Casadesus recordings and the Naxos CD with the
Barcarolles and the Ballade... and I just started work on the Theme and
Variations in C-sharp minor, which I'm determined to put into my repertoire.
But I have a hard time putting the man into a category. Every time I think that
he really is just a Romantic, and along with Franck among the most austere of
them all, I notice something Impressionistic. Whole-tone scales. Shimmering
textures which are subdued, not Lisztian. The occasional Wagnerian turn, as in
the 2nd Barcarolle. There are elements which seem to foreshadow Impressionism,
but none of his music is really in that idiom. He definitely seems to belong to
the absolute-music camp of Schumann and Brahms, which makes this assimilation of
alien elements puzzling. Am I just thinking too hard?
--
-Sonarrat Citalis.
Steve Molino
news:vg02bjd...@corp.supernews.com...
I generally don't worry about how to categorize a composer. The best almost
always have conflicting elements in their music that makes strict
classification difficult.
By the way, I have loved Faure for many years, the chamber and piano music
particularly. I found the qualities of the orchestral music (and also the
Requiem) to be more fleeting, but the chamber and piano music just deepens
for me as time passes.
Richard Schultz
: But I have a hard time putting the man into a category.
Why do you have to put him into a category? Why is being Faure not sufficient?
: Am I just thinking too hard?
No, but you now have an opportunity to learn something about his biography
and his place in music history that will help answer some of your questions.
(Hint: start by disabusing yourself of the notion that Wagner didn't
influence Franck and his successors. Hint #2: can you name Ravel's
teachers?)
-----
Richard Schultz sch...@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
"You go on playing Bach your way, and I'll go on playing him *his* way."
-- Wanda Landowska
Ivailo Partchev
Requiem made and played by Emile Naumoff on Sony (cheapish on Music for
You). Supplemented with some of the best Nocturnes and very enjoyable.
"Sonarrat" <sona...@postmark.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
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Matthew B. Tepper (posts from uswest.net are forged)
letters to be typed in
news:xgULa.45809$2D1.14...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net:
I agree, but I feel the core of his art is his mélodies.
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
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RMCR's most pointless, dumb and laughable chowderhead: Mark Coy.
Alan Watkins
that one should not necessarily approach music in that way.
I love his chamber music. Many years ago I heard a work by Faure I
had never heard of called the Shylock Suite......aged memory tells me
that it has at least one movement for a tenor but I've never seen it
again anywhere.
Another French composer whose place I do not know but whose ballet
music I found most imaginative is Gabriel Pierne.
Kind regrds,
Alan M. Watkins
Paul Goldstein
alanwa...@aol.com says...
Pierne also wrote a very fine violin sonata whose acquaintance I recently made.
Paul Goldstein
Steve Emerson
> But I have a hard time putting the man into a category. Every time I think
> that he really is just a Romantic, and along with Franck among the most
> austere of them all, I notice something Impressionistic. Whole-tone
> scales. Shimmering textures which are subdued, not Lisztian. The
> occasional Wagnerian turn, as in the 2nd Barcarolle. There are elements
> which seem to foreshadow Impressionism, but none of his music is really in
> that idiom. He definitely seems to belong to the absolute-music camp of
> Schumann and Brahms, which makes this assimilation of alien elements
> puzzling. Am I just thinking too hard?
Maybe.
Beyond what you say above -- late Faure is simultaneous with late Debussy and
I would say is less easily classifiable and stranger. Some is more like
post-impressionist (despite some ternary form, etc). --Faure evolved in
remarkable ways. Late nocturnes, Preludes Op 103, the piano quintets, cello
sonatas, and string quartet all cases in point.
SE.
Sonarrat
"Steve Emerson" <eme...@nospamsonic.net> wrote in message
news:emersn-EC294C....@typhoon.sonic.net...
Interesting you would say that. Let me restrict myself exclusively to the
pianistic realm for a moment... the Faure Theme and Variations I've been working
on is one of his most conventional works, written in 1897... Ravel and Debussy
were both already well on their way. Faure seems to have reacted to this new
sound by looking backward. This is a full-blooded Romantic work, very
substantial. I hear overtones of the Schumann Etudes Symphoniques, but I think
it comes closest to Brahms in spirit. Only the whole-tone scale in Var. 10
hints at Impressionism, but it plays a structural role rather than being a
simple decoration. He did use it as a decoration in later works - the Op. 103
as you mentioned, I believe - but here it has a strictly defined harmonic
purpose, and it doesn't give it that ghostly Debussy sound.
But I digress. The point is, even his latest piano works are - and I'm hoping
this is a word - retrophile. He was a product of a certain era and a certain
tradition, and his advancements seem to be more from gradual refinement of old
ideas than from assimilating new music, hence the 13 Barcarolles and 13
Nocturnes which span his entire career...
-Sonarrat.
Steve Emerson
"Sonarrat" <sona...@postmark.net> wrote:
> > Beyond what you say above -- late Faure is simultaneous with late Debussy
> > and
> > I would say is less easily classifiable and stranger. Some is more like
> > post-impressionist (despite some ternary form, etc). --Faure evolved in
> > remarkable ways. Late nocturnes, Preludes Op 103, the piano quintets, cello
> > sonatas, and string quartet all cases in point.
>
> Interesting you would say that. Let me restrict myself exclusively to the
> pianistic realm for a moment... the Faure Theme and Variations I've been
> working on is one of his most conventional works, written in 1897... Ravel
> and Debussy were both already well on their way.
Yes and no. Debussy's Estampes and Images I don't come until 1903, Preludes I
not until 1910-11.
> Faure seems to have
> reacted to this new sound by looking backward. This is a full-blooded
> Romantic work, very substantial. I hear overtones of the Schumann Etudes
> Symphoniques, but I think it comes closest to Brahms in spirit. Only the
> whole-tone scale in Var. 10 hints at Impressionism, but it plays a
> structural role rather than being a simple decoration. He did use it as a
> decoration in later works - the Op. 103 as you mentioned, I believe - but
> here it has a strictly defined harmonic purpose, and it doesn't give it
> that ghostly Debussy sound.
I've also seen an 1895 date for the the Theme and Variations.
Either way, this is much earlier than what I mean by late Faure.
String Quartet 1924
Cello Sonatas 1917 and 1921
Second Piano Quintet 1919-21
The first piano quintet has a complicated history and may not be
a-propos. Anyway it didn't premiere until 1906
Op 103 Preludes 1910-11
For an example of what I had in mind above, consider the utterly ambiguous
tonality of the f-sharp minor Nocturne Op 104 No 1. This is not what I would
call looking backward. And here's what one Philippe Mougeot says about Op 103
in some liner notes: "The writing amazingly foreshadows an entire future trend
in music, as for instance this prelude No. 1, almost completely abstract, with
disturbing flights into atonality, or the 9th, extraordinarily immaterial,
apparently composed in a sort of daze."
(Kind of a dumb phrase, that last, but when you hear the prelude it's
immediately clear what it means.)
SE.
Sonarrat
> For an example of what I had in mind above, consider the utterly ambiguous
> tonality of the f-sharp minor Nocturne Op 104 No 1. This is not what I would
> call looking backward. And here's what one Philippe Mougeot says about Op 103
> in some liner notes: "The writing amazingly foreshadows an entire future trend
> in music, as for instance this prelude No. 1, almost completely abstract, with
> disturbing flights into atonality, or the 9th, extraordinarily immaterial,
> apparently composed in a sort of daze."
>
> (Kind of a dumb phrase, that last, but when you hear the prelude it's
> immediately clear what it means.)
Just sat down and played through the works mentioned above - very interesting.
The D-flat major Prelude, with its ethereal, broadly paced melody line, makes me
think of Messiaen. The constant tonal shifts in all these pieces makes me think
of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, but he still manages to sound like he's
channeling Chopin, in particular the A minor Prelude, the F minor Ballade and
the E-flat minor Etude. I still hear a Romantic heartbeat, but my eyes have
indeed been opened. Thank you.
-Sonarrat.
Steve Emerson
"Sonarrat" <sona...@postmark.net> wrote:
> > [ f-sharp minor Nocturne Op 104 No 1; Op 103 No.1 and No.9]
> Just sat down and played through the works mentioned above - very
> interesting. The D-flat major Prelude, with its ethereal, broadly paced
> melody line, makes me think of Messiaen. The constant tonal shifts in all
> these pieces makes me think of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, but he still
> manages to sound like he's channeling Chopin, in particular the A minor
> Prelude, the F minor Ballade and the E-flat minor Etude. I still hear a
> Romantic heartbeat, but my eyes have indeed been opened. Thank you.
Delighted to be of some use. Agree about the Chopin that's there -- homage
really; i.e. they *are* "nocturnes" and "preludes".... But then he's the big
one for Debussy too, and you can even hear him in Schoenberg.
SE.
Sonarrat
I took the E minor prelude (of Faure, that is - No. 9) to my first lesson with
Gwendolyn Mok. If you didn't catch when I mentioned it, I'm transferring to San
Jose State. I don't want to go into the reasons right now, but in the past
month or so, a series of coincidences have made me believe this is definitely
the right choice. The omens are good.
Anyway, during the course of my lesson, we probed the piece a bit and picked out
a few things. Faure goes to great lengths to make bar lines vanish and to
obscure both the melodic and metric emphasis. His trademark syncopations, which
come at key points to free the melody line from the basic 4/4 meter (which is,
realistically, nowhere to be found), are also answered by larger-scale
syncopations. The first phrase starts after a two-beat lead; the second phrase,
after a three-beat lead. In the alto voice for these two phrases is an upward
scale; in the second phrase, the first note in the alto precedes the melody line
by a half-beat. Syncopations on top of syncopations on top of syncopations. No
wonder it sounds so elusive.
-Sonarrat.
Dan Koren
>
> I took the E minor prelude (of Faure, that is - No. 9) to my
> first lesson with Gwendolyn Mok. If you didn't catch when I
> mentioned it, I'm transferring to San Jose State.
Gwendolyn Mok -- good choice.
dk
Sonarrat
news:c1c5ead9.03070...@posting.google.com...
Yes, she's good. I had no idea I would be working with her when I first visited
SJSU, either - the only piano teacher listed on the website was Laurel Brettell.
(She's also the harpsichord teacher.) But when I talked with the director of
the music program, he said, 'oh, we just hired this new teacher...' A few days
later, I came and played for her while she was visiting the campus, the Aria and
the first two variations of the GVs and Chopin Etude Op. 25/2, and it all just
went extremely well. The lesson went quite well, too. I'm not quite sure why,
she hasn't said anything about it, but she's made me think I should take up
martial arts again, and this time seriously...
By the way, have you heard her HIP complete Ravel or her G major Concerto?
-Sonarrat.