Classical music selection

[Bleak&Icy]

Schubert's "Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel." Enter Margareta's troubled heart:

YouTube - Renée Fleming, Claudio Abbado-Gretchen am Spinnrade

[Bleak&Icy]

In my opinion, the most grotesquely beautiful piece of music ever written (this was the best rendition I could find on youtube, although it is far from the best I have ever heard). Listen to the sound of skeletons dancing on their own graves:

YouTube - Shostakovich Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 67. IV Allegretto

[Daisy]

Quote Originally Posted by Bleak&Icy

Listen to the sound of skeletons dancing on their own graves.

From the Introduction to Philosophy of Modern Music (1948), by Theodor Adorno (trans. Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster)

Advanced music has no recourse but to insist upon its own ossification without concession to that would-be humanitarianism which it sees through, in all its attractive and alluring guises, as the mask of inhumanity. Its truth appears guaranteed more by its denial of any meaning in organized society, of which it will have no part -- accomplished by its own organized vacuity -- than by any capability of positive meaning within itself. Under the present circumstances it is restricted to definitive negation.

[Bleak&Icy]

Quote Originally Posted by Daisy

Quote Originally Posted by Bleak&Icy Listen to the sound of skeletons dancing on their own graves. From the Introduction to Philosophy of Modern Music (1948), by Theodor Adorno (trans. Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster) Advanced music has no recourse but to insist upon its own ossification without concession to that would-be humanitarianism which it sees through, in all its attractive and alluring guises, as the mask of inhumanity. Its truth appears guaranteed more by its denial of any meaning in organized society, of which it will have no part -- accomplished by its own organized vacuity -- than by any capability of positive meaning within itself. Under the present circumstances it is restricted to definitive negation.

Skeletons----->Ossification----->Definitive Negation. Who's Ms. Clever Pants, then? ;) and .

[Daisy]

Quote Originally Posted by Bleak&Icy

Skeletons----->Ossification----->Definitive Negation.

For you, Matthew: Liszt's Totentanz, played to perfection by the great Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Dies irae!

YouTube - Liszt Totentanz - Michelangeli PART 1

YouTube - Liszt Totentanz - Michelangeli PART 2

[gveranon]

Embedding is disabled, so you'll have to click the link if you want to hear this. There's no video to see, but it really is a five-minute masterpiece. I especially like the last minute and a half, when the music sounds like it's held in suspension and at the same time it keeps stepping down and down and down and down.

YouTube - Arvo Pärt Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten

[Bleak&Icy]

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold...

YouTube - Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor (II)

Op. 110 Mov. 2 Allegro molto

YouTube - Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor (III)

Op. 110 Mov. 3 Allegretto

Performed by: Emerson String Quartet

[Bleak&Icy]

Quote Originally Posted by gveranon

There's no video to see, but it really is a five-minute masterpiece. I especially like the last minute and a half, when the music sounds like it's held in suspension and at the same time it keeps stepping down and down and down and down.

Utterly enthralling! A fine antidote to Beethoven's relentless upward energy. That last minute-and-a-half was stunning: I might have been falling in slow motion through a dream... Yet the lower he plunges us in the piece, the more at ease I feel (no, ease is the wrong word), the more at home I feel. Remarkable.

[Neurospaston]

Ever listened to the following Bleak&Icy? It's one of my favorites.

YouTube - Symphony No. 14 Shostakovich - II Mov. Malagueña Allegretto

[Neurospaston]

YouTube - Stravinsky Conducts Firebird