Sung composers that you just "don't get"

[JimL]

Speaking of amateurs, I've played in orchestra where you would swear there are bagpipes. But no, it's just the oboe and bassoons playing in what could charitably be called close-enough tuning.

And just HOW do wind instruments get out of tune?

[Alan Howe]

They start that way!

[Amphissa]

Once one hears "Amazing Grace" played by a solo piper, it never sounds "right" played any other way.

Having a bit of Scot in me (from many, many generations ago), I hope someday to attend the Edinburgh Tattoo. Massed pipes accompanied by Highland drumming -- it is not so much a march as it is a swagger. Surely it must be a deafening experience!

There are many wonderful, hilarious jokes about bagpipes. Some of them can even be repeated in polite company.

The most appropriate here might be: "Bagpipes are the lost connection between noise and music" - Jim Davis

But there are others worth reprising as well.

"Bring not bagpipes to a man in trouble" - WC Fields.

"I firmly believe that distance adds enchantment to the bagpipes" - WB Yeats.

"Definition of a 'gentleman' - someone who knows how to play the bagpipes but doesn't" - Ronnie Corbett.

"Some men there are ... when the bagpipe sings...cannot contain their urine" - William Shakespeare

The Brazilians call the bagpipe gaita de foles, which is Portuguese for "screams of the tortured monkey".

"If thy neighbour offend thee, give each of his children bagpipes" - Old Scottish Proverb

One must remember that, in addition to bagpipes, the Scots also inflicted upon the world the modern game of golf. Thus, two different methods of driving men crazy. It is said that only a true Scot can enjoy both simultaneously!

It is also said that the Scots invented the bicycle, the overhead valve engine and pneumatic tires, all in the effort to devise methods to quickly escape the bagpipers, but I think they were actually just looking for ways to get to the golf course more quickly.

[Amphissa]

I'm very sorry that I've gotten us so far off course from the original topic of discussion.

[Arbuckle]

WELCH, MATTHEW   THE SELF AND OTHER (BAGPIPE AND ORCH)
MCGUIRE, EDWARD   CALGACUS (BAGPIPE AND ORCH)
AUGUSTO, AUGUSTO   LUGARNENHUMREGIONALFOLKMUSIC (BAGPIPE AND ORCHESTRA)
MALEK, JAN   BAGPIPE CONCERTO
AUGUSTO, TULIO   CTO BAGPIPE AND ORCH

[eschiss1]

I'm not, given the circumstances of the topic and the diversion. Thank you, in my honest &c.

[mbhaub]

Speaking of amateurs, I've played in orchestra where you would swear there are bagpipes. But no, it's just the oboe and bassoons playing in what could charitably be called close-enough tuning.

And just HOW do wind instruments get out of tune?

It is impossible to physically make any wind instrument that plays perfectly in tune. It's the physics of sound. Has to do with the overtone series. Every modern wind instrument is the result of years and years of experimenting and is ultimately the result of compromises to make the thing the best it can be, all things taken into account. I play bassoon, and the number of variables that effect tuning are staggering: reed width, strength, length. Bocal (that's the tube connecting the reed to the body of the instrument) materials, length, wall thickness, taper...the bassoon itself: how wide is the bore? how are the chimney's formed? How high are the key pads from the body, what is the u-tube made out of? How cold, or hot, is the room? Then there's the player: what's the embouchure like? How big is the oral cavity? And it goes on and on. To play any wind instrument in tune requires years of training, incredibly discipline to balance all of the variables, and above all a really good ear. It's not just punching buttons and out comes the sound. Not like a piano at all. Even the "simpler" brass instruments have their challenges. Watch any professional trumpet player and watch the third finger on the left hand as it constantly adjusts the 3-rd valve tuning slide to compensate for the overtone produced.  That's why listening to a great, virtuoso orchestra like the Berlin, LSO, Concertgebouw, Cleveland is so thrilling. They play flawlessly in tune. Amateurs on the other hand...well, not so much. BTW: there are some instruments that theoretically shouldn't have tuning issues: the strings (except on their lowest notes on each string) and the trombone. And in another sense no piano or organ ever plays in tune. To give you one example: on a piano the leading tone in C major is fixed by the length of the string. But if a good orchestra is playing in C, the leading tone is NOT the same pitch as the piano: it's slightly higher. Tuning is an enormously complex issue. And bagpipes are notoriously out of tune -- and there's nothing that can (or should!) be done about it.

[eschiss1]

bagpipes are in tune with each other, just not with a 440- or 415-orchestra.  that's not meant as a joke, in these post-early- (post-pre-Ives/Busoni-Haba?) days of microtonality, E. Blackwood etudes, etc. ... (Blackwood, not Finney. Both were sons of equally famous in their own other field parents of the same first name - Finney for a still-used mathematics textbook..., but that's no excuse for confusing them...)

[chill319]

I saw Glass improvise on piano for an hour or two. It took chutzpah to do what he did in public, but honestly, the musical ideas were pretty darn sparse, like events in a 10-hour Warhol film. Still, less sparse than the 90 minutes Miles Davis spent one evening practicing his trill technique in front of a rhythm section.

Eric, are you referring to Ross Lee Finney? I don't associate him with microtonality... Ben Johnston, on the other hand...his string quartets sound like meaningful music to me. I think the Harry Partch influence has kept his emotions and intellect in balance.

Circling back to the era addressed by this forum, I confess to liking early Tchaikovsky better than late. The revised second symphony sounds so fresh to me, the second string quartet so remarkably inventive. I'm more likely to play them than, say, the Pathetique or Souvenir de Florence.

[X. Trapnel]

Our contemporary lust for boredom will mystify many generations to come.

[semloh]

Alan - I like your suggestion that Glass's music sounds like it's about to introduce something, but then doesn't and instead just keeps keeping on. Pity he didn't follow  Webern's example, who at least had the decency to keep his efforts short (albeit not short enough, for some of us!).
mbhaub - our morning classical radio presenter here clearly dislikes Glass; whenever his music is played, the covert sarcasm oozes through her intros and back announcements, along with a heavy dose of apology. One reason (she has intimated) is because of the lack of respect it has for the players - and personally I would add for listeners too.
chill319 - funny you should say that, because the Souvenir de F. is one of the few pieces of Tchaik. I actually enjoy, preferably as the sextet. Perhaps that's because in my head in becomes Dvorak - whose own Op.48 Sextet is unjustly neglected.

[ArturPS]

The Brazilians call the bagpipe gaita de foles, which is Portuguese for "screams of the tortured monkey".

Being Brazilian I can say that "gaita de foles" means, literally, "harmonica with bellows".

[eschiss1]

The reference to Finney was a mistake, I meant Easley Blackwood. What Finney and Blackwood have in common includes a certain relationship to their (same-name) parents of the kind that requires each having their own Wikipedia article (like the three generations of Eugene Goossens, but in different fields instead of all in music.) And my odd-relation mind makes associations on those lines sometimes which is a fact I really need to keep behind-scenes- more...

[fyrexia]

Could not resist anymore.. dont know if i dont get it or what, but i just really hate liszt and tchaikovsky.

Tony

[X. Trapnel]

I used to hate Liszt except for the late piano pieces; then the earlier ones began to take me by stealth (it may have been the use of Un Sospiro in Max Ophuls' Letter From an Unknown Woman). The tone poems and concertos remain mostly borderline unlistenable but I still prefer Liszt at his vapid, bombastic worst to the best of Tchaikovsky (And as for the worst of Tch., Dante, had he known it, might have included the Variations on a Rococo Theme among the tortures of the damned)