Cross-posting again.

mozart's piano quartet in G is quite nice. especially the first movement. i've never been particularly affected by mozart's music, for the same reason why i thought bach was boring. both are geniuses, but there are simply "too many notes" (from movie amadeus). both feel like a kind of show-off, and neither one stirs my emotions very much. such music i would categorise into the group which cannot be appreciated until you take the score and read and enjoy all the craftiness in the structure, and is a delight to perform. but after all is music a craft or an art? the function of art... what's the form for if that art cannot stir?

but the quartet in G is actually quite angry in the first movement, (and therefore sounds like beethoven a little bit). mozart's music is too pretty, except for some of his later works. i somehow feel that this clever man wasn't alive long enough to live life proper. his life ended shortly after the hedonistic youth, which he spent crafting pretty pieces, before he could experience any of the major emotions that he potentially could have exprience had he grown to be 40, 50 or 60. minimal bitterness in his composition. no frustration. not much anguish. nothing too profound. if he'd been through what beethoven did, i'm sure he could have written something brilliant. and it's indeed a pity. nevertheless, he's a genius, and above all, an interesting person, in the world of two categories of people. ah, and all interesting people are hated, all the time.

bach, was simply too successful and rich.

Cross-posting

dawn upshaw singing yanov-yanovsky's lacrymosa is just right. just right. so hauntingly beautiful. my hair kept standing. i would really like to see the score, cos i'm sure there's special instruction for the way the voice slides. upshaw slides on purpose for most of her performances and gets away with it with her celebrity license (and i do like the way she slides.) this piece, however, is slightly different in that she has virtually no steps between any two notes. all is sliding. (ok, maybe except for 2 places.) it's creepy.

fyi, the classical italian bel canto does not allow sliding of voice from note to note, although the central feature of bel canto singing is legato, meaning joining the notes. in fact, legato singing without much sliding is a very difficult technique. i see this a very unnatural phenomenon as most cultures have sliding in their singing (the so called "vocal"-ness in singing and playing). you see, singing without sliding is like mimicing an instrument because most western instruments cannot slide (except for strings). while the western europeans spend that extra effort to sing like an instrument, other cultures try very hard to play like a singing voice. the sliding lines in many chinese, indian, middle eastern and east european instruments, show such tendencies. i used to be criticised very frequently for sliding into and out of my notes, which i then concluded to root in my exposure to chinese music, in which virtually every instrument, especially voice, slides in and out of almost everything. i like it better that way, it gives the music much more room for subtle manipulation. don't you agree. it's beautiful when you have all that pitches in between.