Question:
Classical Piece that Sounded like Rock?
2011-12-01 21:35:03 UTC
Just to be clear, I'm not asking about 'contemporary' classical pieces, or bands like Apocalyptica that blend two genres of music. My own research hits a brick wall because every search engine thinks I want music written in the last 50 years.

I'm trying to find the composer and title for a specific piece of classical music, except that I'm not entirely sure it actually existed. I had been told an interesting story about a piece of music (I'm sure it was described as written before 1900, perhaps 1700s) that was tremendously unpopular with audiences at the time of it's composure because of it's radical and unconventional sound. Supposedly, this piece sounded more like contemporary rock and roll than classical.

I don't remember where I heard or read this, but the thought has been with me for some time. If such a piece does exist, does anybody have any information about it?
Four answers:
petr b
2011-12-02 01:03:01 UTC
[ First, a correction: The version of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps in Disney Fantasia is a chopped-up set of various segments from the piece (butchered, really) played out of the original sequence as originally composed. Hack Job.]



There is this 'problem' I have, exactly of some teacher somewhat pandering to students with analogies of Rock Music or any pop genre to 'tie in' the immediacy of music for an audience of another time.



One most common "Rock Star" as perfoming analogy is often assigned to Franz Liszt. His piano music was, for the time, startling in its virtuoso flights, and 'effects' of rapid upward or downward sweeps of arpeggios, etc. (mega-chops, barnstorming.) Both men and women fainted from overwrought emotion (and I bet corsets and too little air from an extensively candlelit room) when hearing him play.



Liszt, knowing he had these frenzied followers, would walk to the piano, wearing expensive kid gloves, take them off, dramatically set them on the piano, play the concert, occasionally wipe the sweat from his brow with them (real - or more 'theater' shtick?) and deliberately leave them behind knowing enough fans would swarm the piano to grab the gloves; like fans of pop stars generations later fight over the performer's clothing and / or tear the articles off or to shred, all wanting "a piece of them."



That later string quartet where Beethoven really began to lose his audience is difficult to imagine described as perceived as rock, especially the overall dimension of a quartet and a salon-sized space and audience do not conjure up a real flap, even if the audience were driven out by the music.



In that context of another time, Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 was so strongly rhythm-driven, even in the slower movements, and has such a dance-like drive and feel that Richard Wagner later called it "the apotheosis of the dance."



It was generally very well-received, some saying there had never been anything so spontaneous sounding, but others were less charitable and there was, with this larger symphonic work, a larger venue and more of a critical flap. Even at the height of the later classical era (Beethoven was never a 'romantic' composer), this was a very non-restrained piece. Secondly, for some, he had shattered too many of the old expectations, and the 'politeness' of concert music. Even today, it sounds like an unihibited romp, fairly 'unbuttoned.'



Carl Maria von Weber, criticizing, it seems, "a chromatic bass line in the coda of the first movement," LOL, (academic, but that is how classical musicians often enough talk about music), cited that passage in making his case Beethoven was "ripe for the madhouse."



The third movement Scherzo is a real romp, (link three): of this movement, a 20th century conductor said, "What can you do with it? It is like a bunch of Yaks running around."



The fourth movement, Allegro, is also thriving and exhuberent, formally structured, but again, pretty 'unbuttoned' in how it behaves.



Viia an analysis, petty though it is, someone noticed at some point at least once in the final movement that the activity of all the parts yields a vertical (it is brief and coincidental) of all 12 of the chromatic pitches sounding simultaneously. Well, tsk, tsk Luigi! that is Not "Classical Polite."



So my hunch it is the highly animated Beethoven Symphony No. 7.



Try the fourth movement, or the third movement.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tei3tUY09Pc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgHxmAsINDk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrE_9sTySrw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7b1xO7K2RI&feature=related



ADD: Hector Berlioz ~ Symphonie Fantasitque, 'avante-garde' in its time, got a less than understanding reception on its first outing, then slightly revised with a 'programmatic' text added (lol) it was more succesfully launched.





Best regards.
Birdgirl
2011-12-02 06:02:18 UTC
No clue. But Beethoven did write a string quartet piece called "Grosse Fugue". "Grosse" means "big" or "grand" in German, not something disgusting, though many members of the contemporary audience might have thought so at the time. If anything, they might have thought Beethoven's deafness had finally defeated him as a composer. The piece does contain a great deal of deliberate dissonance which is nothing these days, but it must have been quite shocking when it was composed in 1825.



I wouldn't say that the piece sounds like rock, but I've recommended it myself to people who wanted actual classical music that sounded loud and strident.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro%C3%9Fe_Fuge

Parts 1 and 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n68WBx91nQE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhM6Vrd8CP4&feature=related



Another famous classical work that actually caused audiences to literally riot (punches were thrown) was the music by Igor Stravinsky for the ballet, "Rite of Spring". This was a much later work that premiered in 1913. To show how opinions and taste of what is "shocking" changes, some of the music was used in Walt Disney's "Fantasia". Below are links to an orchestra, but the "Fantasia" version is available on Youtube as well. Disney ignored the original plot of the ballet in favor of telling the story about the beginnings of the earth and the demise of the dinosaurs.

Neither sounds like rock-and-roll to me.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf0e_n49dcQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qphUZIAZn1k&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlpTZ5CtLBE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjlXYQzO7w&feature=related



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring



Note to Petr B.I did say "some" of the Stravinsky ballet music was used in "Fantasia"--but you are correct when you said it was altered and cut. Of course it had--the music used in the film was meant to take familiar classical pieces and "reimagine" them for the audience. The audiences in 1940 would have actually been more familiar with the original works than the typical movie audiences of today. The links I gave for the Stravinksy is the entire suite played by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra directed by Michael Tilson Thomas.
Jos h2o
2011-12-02 05:37:45 UTC
All I can think of would be Verdi's "Dies Irae", but it sounds more like metal.
Luke
2011-12-03 23:46:06 UTC
that is amazingly vague.


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