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In Reply to: RE: Now I know why the 4th is my least favorite... posted by krisjan on August 23, 2014 at 06:50:41
I hear keys in it (i.e., certain keys more in control than others) when I listen, but maybe that's just me. Didn't some theorist write a long time ago that even when we listen to atonal music (or, even more incredibly, 12-tone music), most of us as listeners (and I'm certainly one) will try to impose a key structure on it as we listen, even though the music itself is deliberately written to orient the listener AWAY from any sense of key structure. (There are some exceptions, such as the Berg Violin Concerto of course.) I guess I just never hear Bartok as being atonal in the sense that the composers of the Second Vienna School are atonal in some of their best known works.
Edits: 08/23/14Follow Ups:
...that exists between tonal (diatonic) music and strictly atonal music. I was probably a bit rash in labeling Bartok's #4 as "atonal" per se, but it is certainly on the continuum heading towards atonality. The recording that the OP posted simply moved it farther towards atonality than a performance by a conventional string quartet using legato instruments. I have no use for truly atonal music - it irritates me and I find NO beauty whatsoever in it. About the only positive I can muster for atonal music is that I can sometimes admire the craft in it. But, in the end, why bother?
In Bartok's quartet oeuvre, #4 is farthest down the continuum towards atonality with #3 nipping on its heels to my ears/sensibilities. I'm generally fine with the others. Go figure - musical taste is one weird phenomenon!
Of famous composers I am familiar with, Elliott Carter wins the prize as most insistently atonal. He leaves Bartok far behind, going out of his way to disorient the listener, or orient the listener away from conventional tonality / harmony. At major recitals of his music, one often sees jazz musicians in the audience. Not entirely sure why that is.
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