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Underground > Radio & Music >

Chamber Music

  
 
pointless & uncalled for
10:20 / 16.10.06
It's not new, it's to old to be considered innovative by many, it doesn't have a lot of sex in it.

But is it any good?

Obviously it is, after all the entire model is pretty much the precursor to the pre dancing and susperstar popular music movement and greatly informed it's beginings.

So does chamber music do anything for you?

And why do so many people who claim to "love music" know next to nothing about it.
 
 
pointless & uncalled for
07:33 / 17.10.06
To answer my own question, as really I should here, Chamber Music holds a special place for me. When I was growing up, the sole source of music in my house was the trusty old Bush record player and Amp/tuner combo. My parents had long ago sold or given away their 60's contemporary music collection and amassed a rather impressive catalogue of classical music which ranged through requiems, symphonies, suites, opera etc. However, when I chose to sit and play some music, I was regularly drawn to chamber music.

I couldn't express why, maybe it was the way that the trios, quartets, quintets, etc filled the room and managed to roam free. Today I enjoy the artful contruction of a piece that accepts the limitations of size of orchestra and seeks to explore and examine where other boundaries may lie, engineering a fine balance between the simple and the complex.

On top of this I love the freedom that the chamber orchestra is given to invest its own interpretation in the performance. Away from the control of a conductor and tight sectioning, the expection falls away and the musicians are open to express what the piece means to them and work with a very shared vision of where it should go. This introduces a unique intimacy with the audience that invites them in fully engaging them as well as any players or storytellers.

I almost see this as a failing of pop music where there is so much expectation on the group to repeat the performances with a fine degree of exactitude ad infinitum else be criticised as not being as good as the studio version or the last time the audience heard it live. With the exception of the unplugged era of the late nineties/early millenium, pop bands and groups rarely seem free or willing to explore the potential of their own work, solely because they wrote it.
 
 
klockwerk
14:15 / 03.11.06
Chamber music, especially in the 19th century was likely one of the most influential genres of music, if not for the audience than for the composers themselves.

At any time, if you want to study the development of an 18th-19th century composer - Beethoven for example - what is your best musical resource? It's always the string quartets; the chamber works. This is the playpen where composers could experiment (perhaps not so much with instrumentation, but with the mixing of harmonies for colours) with harmonies, melodies, rhythms, forms and stuctures.

There are of course exceptions to this. Forgive me for mentioning Shostakovich in almost every post I make, but it is generally accepted that although he wrote is fair amount of String Quartets, it is his large scale symphonies which reflect his lifelong developments and new trends.

I find most chamber music, particularily string quartets of the classical period, boring. The only classical composer I can stand for chamber works is Haydn (I love Mozart's wind serenadas though). I can stand a little more Romanticism (late Beethoven) and love to appreciate "new" tangeants (Berg, Webern, Bartok).

You'll have to forgive me (again), but I can't see too many connections with modern pop music: yes, many works were performed for waltzes and other dances which were the popular form back then, but I see the beginnings of popular music today beginning in jazz and African-American music, which I can't quite relate to the chamber orchestra itself.
 
  
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