ivancdg

I agree that there are pieces which sound pretty quirky, which can put people off a bit. But I have yet to find someone who doesn't like this one (which I can assure you has nothing to do with the playing):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSHm3ZphFlk

I'm still alive!

Actually it's a brilliant novella and I recommend everyone read it. Biting social critique of bourgeois values:

http://www.classicallibrary.org/tolstoy/ivan/1.htm

This is an interesting comment, on multiple levels.

If there is one factor on which Beethoven's reputation rests, it is his claim to being the "universal" composer, whose music speaks to all men and women. Your story seems to confirm this assertion.

From reading music history we know that different music from the past makes an impact depending on current taste and fashions. As an example, the whole paradigm of "historically informed performance practice" was, as musicologist Richard Taruskin devastatingly argued [1], not a return to "authenticity" at all but a completely modern(ist) phenomenon, based on contemporary tastes and opinions.

As I live in France, I can tell you that Beethoven is nowhere near as popular or appreciated here as, say, Mozart or Chopin. Not even close. I'm speaking about both seasoned concert attendees and novices. His music's frequent accents, forcefulness, and occasional brutality is looked poorly upon. So maybe extrapolating your experience to others is dangerous. After all, it's a small sample size :)

I agree that there seem to be composers (or, more accurately, certain works) that appeal to novices, and others which appeal to more experienced listeners or practitioners. Reicha's works seem to often fit into the second category, as his works are generally "learned" and sophisticated. Therefore the subtlety is not always picked up upon by listeners who don't have the experience and/or knowledge to realize what expectations he is thwarting. To put it more bluntly, they don't really hear what's going on, and therefore underestimate the music's complexity. It's like a musical Dunning-Kruger Effect.

The larger point, perhaps, is that your idea of a typical "novice" who would serve as a litmus test for universal music is in fact an intellectual construct which has no corresponding reality in the real world. Because we are all born into a world, and a culture, and therefore our preferences are immediately influenced.

Caveat: I don't want to make the specious claim that if we all grew up listening to Schönberg we would hum his music on the way to school, that's BS. But with experience I've come to believe that assuming Beethoven's place is in our culture is immutable is probably unrealistic. In 100 years it might be someone else...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Text-Act-Essays-Music-Performance/dp/...

“I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition." (said to Leopold Mozart, Mozart's father) ― Joseph Haydn

Also: ". . . scarcely any man can brook comparison with the great Mozart. . . If I could only impress on the soul of every friend of music, and on high personages in particular, how inimitable are Mozart's works, how profound, how musically intelligent, how extraordinarily sensitive! (for this is how I understand them, how I feel them) - why then the nations would vie with each other to possess such a jewel within their frontiers." ― Joseph Haydn

Also, a letter from Mozart to Haydn: "A father, having resolved to send his sons into the great world, finds it advisable to entrust them to the protection and guidance of a highly celebrated man, the more so since this man, by a stroke of luck, is his best friend. - Here, then, celebrated man and my dearest friend, are my six sons. - Truly, they are the fruit of a long and laborious effort, but the hope, strengthened by several of my friends, that this effort would, at least in some small measure, be rewarded, encourages and comforts me that one day, these children may be a source of consolation to me. - You yourself, dearest friend, during your last sojourn in this capital, expressed to me your satisfaction with these works. - This, your approval, encourages me more than anything else, and thus I entrust them to your care, and hope that they are not wholly unworthy of your favor. - Do but receive them kindly, and be their father, guide, and friend! From this moment on I cede to you all my rights over them: I pray you to be indulgent to their mistakes, which a father's partial eye may have overlooked, and despite this, to cloak them in the mantle of your generosity which they value so highly. From the bottom of my heart I am, dearest friend, Your most sincere friend, W. A. Mozart

I second the recommendation for Richter's book, which is a fascinating look into the mind of a pianist who musicians pretty much unanimously consider to be the greatest of the 20th century:

https://www.amazon.com/Sviatoslav-Richter-Conversations-Brun...

(not an affiliate link)

Haydn's output is huge and varied. It can take time to find the right recordings and pieces to convince you, as sometimes interpretations can be a bit pedestrian. French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is in the process of recording all of Haydn's Piano Sonatas for British label Chandos Records, and the latest Volume (no. 7) is superb.

https://www.chandos.net/products/reviews/CHAN_10998

To what extent the composers you mentioned broke completely with Beethoven (and/or the past) is arguable. All of them wrote works in sonata form, all of them wrote fugues, all of them studied counterpoint carefully. Liszt idolized Beethoven, and many of the key works of all four are unthinkable without Beethoven's example. Not to diminish the originality of their respective contributions. But the Beethoven myth was already in place when they were growing up and the legacy can be traced in all of their works.

Received wisdom dictates that every century or so, composers break with the past and do something completely new. The reality is a lot messier.

Beethoven himself is a good example. He is held up as the paragon of artistic fearlessness, not catering to audience's whims, pursuing a vision of the future, etc. In fact he was very well versed in the music of the past, including JS Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, and others whose names have been forgotten. He also did everything he could to ingratiate himself with the aristocracy who commissioned his works: i.e. his market. He followed the Y-Combinator motto: "Make things people want" in the sense that he made things his customers wanted. He forged an idiosyncratic personal style but many of its constituent elements are stolen from older styles (counterpoint, abrupt changes of texture, the unification of movements over a larger form).

I like your analogy about Romanticism reaching an impasse and Busoni picking things up from there. The path I drew above leading from Beethoven directly to the 4 Romantic composers is meant to illustrate that the historical line, now that we are reestablishing Reicha's place in history, might be drawn from him straight to the 20th century (Bartok, Stravinsky, Martinu) in his treatment of meter and the way he is comfortable with abstraction.

As for "Episode 5 Paris", believe me, it's very much on my mind. The current idea is to do a whole second series of videos, only in Paris, or perhaps one in Prague (where he was born) and the other three in Paris. After all, Reich spent 30 years of his life in Paris (1799-1802, 1808-1836) and there is tons of material, including his teaching work (his students included Liszt, Franck, Berlioz, Gounod, and many other big names). I'm hoping we can film in the vaults of the French National Library (BnF) where the manuscripts are, to show people what it's like to dig up old forgotten scores.

For the moment, it's just a daydream, until we secure funding (unlikely).

The 2nd paragraph is really the crux of the matter. Whereas Beethoven's music draws attention to its unusual features, Reicha in his memoirs states unequivocally that Haydn and Mozart are the pinnacles of instrumental music, and that it is because of their grace and good taste. So we have opposite positions on what is beautiful, hard to reconcile with our view of music history which is seen through our "Beethoven filter".

Many of the things we take for granted as Beethovenian inventions (obsessive motivic development, sonata form in symphonies and quartets, abrupt harmonic disruption, fugues in final movmeents) were pioneered by Haydn. I remember being well-versed in Beethoven and being astonished when I played through Haydn's piano works for the first time, how many things Louis had ripped off.

The wind quintets are extraordinarily well-written for their instruments, something easy to take for granted today as so many composers followed Reicha's lead.

He was not the very first to write for that ensemble, but the instant popularity of the 24 (actually 25) wind quintets led a lot more people to write for that instrumentation (flute, oboe, clarinet, French or English horn, bassoon).

The blanket statement that Beethoven's octet is a higher standard than anything Reicha wrote for quintet is a little dicey. There's a reason all wind players play Reicha. The works are sophisticated, comfortable and formally pretty quirky, with plenty of memorable moments. That said, if you don't find Haydn memorable then there's not much I can do to argue in his favor, except urge you to listen more of it.

The important point here is that the wind quintets make up a tiny proportion of Reicha's music, and that dozens of hours of music have never been recorded. Much of the music is only available in (messy) original manuscripts in France's National Library in Paris (BnF). Implication: it is hard to make generalizations about Reicha's music because we just don't know it well enough yet. Keep in mind that he composed just as much experimental music as conventional music, drawing conclusions and extrapolating from one opus to the whole output isn't a good idea.

It is indeed intriguing to imagine music history if composers had followed Reicha's lead rather than Beethoven's. There would have been a lot more metrically interesting music earlier, that's for sure.

The experimentation Reicha loved so much became popular in post World War II Europe and America. Many would argue that this led composers into a modernist dead end. But I guess if Beethoven had never happened Schoenberg wouldn't have either. But then we forfeit Wagner too...

I've been pondering a related question which I've found difficult to answer: if Beethoven's music had been lost or misplaced, would we immediately recognize it as "genius" if someone made a first recording in 2018? I'm not so sure.

Your tempo is a little slow. It's in cut time (2/2) not 4/4. OK, I'm being churlish. I recorded this piece for Chandos Records last year, so I have an opinion. Excerpt here: https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2010950

It is indeed cool that Hackily is near Reicha; he would have loved it (and Hacker News, for that matter). Music notation software has been ripe for disruption for a while. The problem is that for what most people want to do the interfaces are too complex and slow to learn.

The problem seems to be getting worse because of the desire to make possible the notation of as many far-fetched extreme cases, rather than making the core use as simple as possible.

Imagine if you were to use Finale or Sibelius (two of the best known) as a novice. Imagine you were JS Bach trying to write his first Prelude from Book one of the WTC with the software. The patterns should be faster to notate.

A tough problem, admittedly, but an important one to solve for future generations of young musicians learning the craft. Writing music by hand is still easier for simple pieces, for solo instruments.

Where I live Uber drivers often use it as a loss leader. They chat people up, and if they strike up a rapport they suggest customers contact them directly, cutting out the middle man. They can even undercut Uber, and still make more money than they do with Uber.

This especially makes sense for people who have a regular commute to the airport etc. I've experienced the same thing with Airbnb: first stay via the platform, and further stays booked directly. With Airbnb you miss out on the platform's protections. But with Uber, as the drivers are getting paid less and less, it seems easier to slide into direct contact.

It can be useful to have a private car driver you know and trust, without the anxiety of the wait, or of drivers calling you to ask where you're going, only to cancel the ride. (This happens to me regularly at the airport).

Notezilla (http://notezilla.io) is working on doing this for piano (and vocal/chamber/orchestral music).

It launched on HN a little over 2 months ago and garnered considerable interest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226607

This brings up an interesting question: if Steinway were liquidated, would the patents be up for sale?

It is my understanding that much of their unique quality comes from over 100 patents, many of which are over 100 years old [1].

Presumably a competitor could buy the patents and make significant improvements to their design.

Part of the Steinway brand is built on tremendous marketing savvy, generation after generation. But the technology remains unparalleled. As a professional pianist, I wouldn't use anything else for a recording.

Don't get me wrong, I would love for Yamaha, Fazioli or the others to make the market more competitive. But nothing compares to a Steinway in terms of sound quality and balance throughout the registers.

All the first-class piano technicians I know agree.

[1] http://www.ilovesteinway.com/steinway/parts/steinway_patents...

Edit: IvyMike and ryanhuff brought my attention to the 20 year maximum term of patent. It is surprising that Steinway's competitors still are unable to match the quality of sound. Perhaps their technicians are better?

For those that live in Europe and want a powerful search engine that includes low-cost flights (a deal-breaker for me), I recommend Azuon.

http://azuon.com/en/feature-tour

It's incredibly addictive.

Combined with airbnb you can plan some much cheaper and adventurous routes.

The payment plans are as follows:

- €7.89 for 3 months (subscription)

- €12.03 for 6 months

- €16.54 for 12 months

- €19.87 for 1-year

I've subscribed for 3 months now. It's worth every penny.

Thank you, I made the correction.

The damage has been done. The major labels (major now only in terms of increasingly dubious marketing clout) now spend most of their 'creative' energy scouting do-it-yourself musicians rather than producing great music...which was, initially, what distinguished them from the little guys.

This leveling of the playing field was supposed to be a great thing for everyone except the majors.

But as a listener, I bemoan that the output quality of the majors has dropped so much (especially in classical music). In order to get access to first class, interesting music, it is becoming increasingly necessary to do tons of research.

The bigger picture is this: would you invest in a business that celebrated not losing revenue for the first time in over a decade? I wouldn't.

Edit: thank you, pgsandstrom

Kyle Gann (the author of this essay) has written some of the best English language essays on Morton Feldman.

There's another good essay by Alex Ross, music critic at the New Yorker:

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2006/06/morton_feldman_.html

In my experience it is highly impractical to expect someone to try anything for 70 minutes before deciding if they like it. Some kind of step-wise introduction is more helpful.

It's not easy with Feldman, but I am convinced it is possible.

Here is a 2 minute excerpt of "Palais de Mari" from 1986 (for solo piano) that may help people decide whether they want to hear more: http://ivancdg.com/music/1.mp3

People have told me that this reminds them of Debussy (the Prélude "Footprints in the Snow", specifically).