DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

Even Classical music non-fans might find these interesting. Mesmerizing to watch. Full-screen mode recommended.

A few samples ...

Stravinsky's Rite of Spring:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02tkp6eeh40

Debussy's Claire de Lune, arranged for guitar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTJbLei7A2c

More Debussy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt1jfX5C1u0

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Plankton

The Claire de Lune was very nice. I DL'ed the sheet music, and will be learning it. Thnx.

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Quality Cucumber

I think these are really nice when the music has a lot of imitative counterpoint and the person making the video knows both what that means and how to make the animation reflect that fact (meaning one color to each voice). You can get an idea of the interactive melodic structure that way.

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C.jejuni

^That Great Fugue is really... quite something.


Smalin is one of my favourite YTers.

youtube.com/watch?v=APQ2RKECMW8

youtube.com/watch?v=3iKFi2DH-sA

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Quality Cucumber

^ The Chopin Fantasie-Impromptu is color-coded according to motivic material. Another nice way to do it.

And yes, Beethoven's Große Fuge is some piece of work. It's my favorite of his string quartets, after No.14.

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C.jejuni

Oh. Um. Actually what I meant is it is very hard to listen to.

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Quality Cucumber

Nobody said it was going to be easy.

Fugues are generally challenging, and Beethoven's Große Fuge is definitely in the category of "freakshow" fugues. Sharing that distinction are the fugato at the end of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony and the first movement of Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Symphony No. 41, mvt. 4


The five-subject (!) fugato starts at 10:32 and is over by 10:58.

And now my favorite fugue:

Béla Bartók - Music For Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, Mvt. 1


No animation, but some nice Spanish speaker did a little graphic analysis for us. Basically what's going on is that the strings are divided into two antiphonal groups (meaning that there are effectively two string orchestras on stage), and a single subject is presented in the key of A before each string group takes the subject in an opposite direction on the circle of fifths. (The perfect fifth is an ancient and archetypal relationship in music.) At the climax, both groups hit the key of E♭, which is a tritone away from the original key of A. (The tritone is an important interval, especially in twentieth century music, because it divides the octave into equal halves. Symmetry is a big part of 20th century harmony and melody, especially in Bartók's music. The tritone also has connotations from early church music, where it was called "diabolus in musica" ["the devil in music"] for being a pain in the ass to sing. The name has garnered romantic speculation ever since.) Anyway, after reaching the tritone, the pitch axis collapses back to its original key, A.

Ernő Lendvai claimed that this movement exhibits Fibonacci numbers, golden sections, ratios, and the golden mean. I had a composition teacher who was an adherent of this analysis. In Charles Dutoit's recording with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the performance is such that the proportions of the piece make that magical golden mean. On paper, it's very very close but not quite perfect. The subject itself is built using Fibonacci numbers, and the entrances are similarly determined, so there is that, but the third movement really has more of the Fibonacci/golden ratio stuff than the first movement.

http://mathcs.holycross.edu/~grobert...Bartok-web.pdf

I love this fugue. There's nothing else like it.

DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

^
I had never heard that Bartok piece before. It's great! Glad I clicked on it.

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33veränderungen

Just the other day in my English class, we analyzed the differences between a video of a live performance of a Brandenburg Concerto and an electronic representation of the same piece. It sounded really different, and I liked it a little less than the live performance. But it wasn't because the animated electronic version of the piece was worse; it was just different. Anything it may have lacked in sound quality had the chance to be made up for in its animated aspect. The particular animation I saw had dots of different spacing, color, and size representing different notes. It showed me a whole new way of looking at the notes and parts and organization. It was fun to look at.

Quality Cucumber

33veränderungen, you probably heard two different performances of the same piece. Unlike in pop music, classical and folk music are constantly being reinterpreted, so you will be able to find many, many, many recordings of the same Brandenburg Concerto by Bach, and each one will have different qualities and flaws. Sound quality is often worse on older recordings, owing to technological limitations. However, I encourage you to listen for the intricacies of the performance when the recording quality is not so good.

I'm a little late to responding to this. I'm glad you enjoyed the piece. Listen to the whole thing! It's an architectural marvel, if you ask me. There is so much to listen for. The fourth movement has such awesome payoff. Listen for the first movement subject coming back at 26:24, then breaking off into counterpoint, then dissolving into harmonic mush.



I - 0:00
II - 7:49
III- 15:24
IV - 22:32

I prefer Charles Dutoit's tempo, but at least this recording is pretty brisk. Dutoit is a little more stately, but he makes the rhythms sound absolutely savage.

I'm a huge Bartók fanboy. The Miraculous Mandarin is really good. This part grooves so hard:



Concerto for Orchestra is popular, but it's on the tame side for him.



The third movement, Elegia (17:30), is the best selection from the piece in my opinion. It's part of Bartók's "Night Music" repertoire, which also includes the first movement from Music For Strings, Percussion, And Celesta.

The string quartets (4 and 5 in particular) and the piano concerti are downright awesome.