Music for photographers

Juan Valdenebro

Juan Valdenebro

Truth is beauty
Local time
11:37 PM
Joined
May 23, 2009
Messages
4,353
Hi all...


After thinking about it for a few months, finally I decided to invite RFF members to talk about some of their (our) favourite music...


Personal impressions on any kind of music from any century can find a warm place here.


Let's hope we all build a thread plenty of nice recommendations: one that lasts for months or years, and a cool place to check constantly and breathe in between our daily photographic posting...


Thank you all for sharing a universal language!
 
Jamie123 said:
And why would you spam the whole forum with links to this thread? Not a good start.
Click to expand...

Spam? I invited people from a few threads just to inform the new thread exists, and just because it's placed where many people don't come, and it was just a few minutes ago...

The whole forum?

Who are you anyway to judge other people in that superficial way?

Mr. Gandy already told me we are not allowed to post direct links to other threads. So it's been corrected.

This is a good start no matter what you say. People coming here to post aggressive opinions away from music are irrelevant. Please don't waste our time again.
 
Last edited:
I'll bite...

Coldplay: Fix You, Yellow
U2: just about anything
...and I'm diggn' The Frey right now...
 
jky said:
I'll bite...

Coldplay: Fix You, Yellow
U2: just about anything
...and I'm diggn' The Frey right now...
Click to expand...



jky,

Thanks for you post!

U2 is one of the best rock'n'roll bands of all time... I saw them live here in Barcelona. That night Bono thanked our president Zapatero for retiring spanish troops from Irak (sent by the previous president).

Even their first LP Boy is amazing for those 18 years old boys with such a new sound in the middle of punk. I also much appreciate Brian Eno's keyboards and arrangements, sometimes as important as George Martin's ones with the beatles... This year's latest interview I watched with them, had Bono saying about themselves that he's proud of their joy music. He explained that it's easier making songs that express anger, or making songs to express melancholy... But it's harder to get yourself to communicate a feeling of joy. Very interesting, and of deep significance too...


Bono has been so many times named and prized as the best singer ever... His duet with Sinatra on I've got you under my skin is amazing. (Recorded separately). His lyrics with U2 have captivated the whole world. Their last album No line on the horizon has him, at least for me, in a meditative state, and as always full of poetry and care for life. His verse “the stone was semiprecious / but we were barely conscious” is so funny and serious at the same time, and reminds me of Dylan or Cohen... Bono's incredible magnetism has helped him even to stop the bloody conflicts that for decades were daily news in their country. He also lives in love with the woman he's loved since they were teenagers.


Lucky man.
 
I play music (flute and piccolo with the local windband), and I like listening to any kind of music. Just few names: Rossini, Morricone, Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, Sidney Bechet, Bix Beiderbecke.
 
Mauro said:
I play music (flute and piccolo with the local windband), and I like listening to any kind of music. Just few names: Rossini, Morricone, Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, Sidney Bechet, Bix Beiderbecke.
Click to expand...

Lots of good names and different things...

Thanks for answering...
 
Roger Hicks said:
There is the Monty Python Spam song, part of the Spam sketch. I've always liked that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8huXkSaL7o. The lyrics are on http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/m/montypython9364/spamsong313328.html

For older music, Hildegard of Bingen is pretty good, Do you know A Feather on the Breath of God?

Cheers,

R.
Click to expand...

Roger, I give Emma Kikby and best plainchant recordings, how could I say... A bit more attention than to Monty Python's opus numbers...:) I don't really enjoy some easy jokes, at least not as much or constantly as art... Some people do have a real sense of humour, to my taste, though... Same as photographers: a few remain.

Thanks for posting! And with such a great recording!

Have you heard the real birth of polyphony from gregorian, by Notre-Dame 11th-12th century masters Leonin and Perotin, a few centuries before? Interesting and hipnotic, almost minimalist we could say! Great version by The Hilliard Ensemble.

A little closer to our times (horrible times), what about Palestrina's crystal clear masses by the wonderful Tallis Scholars? Maybe Nigra Sum?

And if we want to break all rules, get crazy, and listen to real modern music, let's go listen and talk about the biggest rebel, Claudio Monteverdi !

Cheers,

Juan
 
Last edited:
I'll add my vote to the early music offers above, and moving forward through the centuries I'll add Henry Purcell, almost anything by Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, Handel (who is underated by some). Then I tend to lose interest until the early 20th century with Vaughan Williams, Finzi, Bax and Moeran.

I always listen to music whilst I'm post processing or printing.

Rock music bored me after a while, Punk passed me by completely as did most other 'popular' music since then.
 
Juan Valdenebro said:
jky,

Thanks for you post!

U2 is one of the best rock'n'roll bands of all time... I saw them live here in Barcelona. That night Bono thanked our president Zapatero for retiring spanish troops from Irak (sent by the previous president).
Click to expand...

I met Bono in an elevator in Tacoma, Washington. What a jerk. I punched him in the mouth.

OK, I didn't punch him. But he was an incredible jerk. I had the penthouse suite in the hotel we were both staying in, and he wanted it. Tried to send the manager around to evict me. Sorry, Bono, I was there first. Try asking nicely next time.
 
Chris,

Great music you talked about... Bach, Mozart and Beethoven deserve talking for years, and listening for life !

I agree about Handel. Beethoven, during his last years, used to say Handel was the best ever... That story about the water music premiere night sailing, with never ending repetitions enjoyed until the next morning, is amazing.

He was so conscious of drama in music (drama in harmony I mean, not only in text...). Gladly he did every possible effort to bring England the best from Italy.

I share with you that feeling of loosing interest after the first romanticism... Beyond Chopin, maybe, my ears feel a bit out of place, exceptions apart...

Regards,

Juan
 
Last edited:
bmattock said:
I met Bono in an elevator in Tacoma, Washington. What a jerk. I punched him in the mouth.

OK, I didn't punch him. But he was an incredible jerk. I had the penthouse suite in the hotel we were both staying in, and he wanted it. Tried to send the manager around to evict me. Sorry, Bono, I was there first. Try asking nicely next time.
Click to expand...

Well, your story about Bono is half of the story... Maybe he thought the penthouse was reserved for him... We should listen to his version... Anyway, he's vanity could be as big and famous as Lennon's or Dylan's ones... I have a couple of friends who met him in Dublin, in a house small party. And The Edge too, while he was going to buy milk... My friends said both of them were nice and well accesible...

Thanks for sharing the story.
 
Dear Juan,

Early polyphony does indeed fascinate me, but (not being a musicologist, and given the transience of non-written music) I wonder how much we misattribute 'firsts': what would Charlemagne really have heard at court?

I've only heard one BBC radio programme on Leonin and Perotin, whom I recalled as pretty much contemporaries of Hildegard of Bingen, though I found out on checking that I had remembered the probable date of her birth (1098) as the date of her death (which was in fact 1179), so yes, I guess they were at least a century earlier. The renditions I heard were not especially good ones though. I shall have to try harder.

The trouble with modern music is, I always need a run-up. I can now listen to Ligeti with considerable pleasure, but it took me a while. Stockhausen, on the other hand, has always struck me as over-intellectuallized and not really musical. And I like modern re-interpretations of slightly less modern music such as Tomita's version of Pictures from an Exhibition, which is one of the few albums of purely instrumental music (no words) that can reliably make me laugh out loud.

On the other had, a couple of years ago, I heard a young woman singing "I will show you hidden things/Hidden things you have not known" (? Isaiah 48:6) as a mantra, the words unchanging, the music and stress varying. This was an entirely modern rendering, as far as I know, but I have never been able to find it again. Can you or anyone else point me in the right direction?

Emma Kirkby is indeed wonderful, though I have to say that in her recent BBC programme on the lute ('Luting the past') I preferred the lute music and Emma's voice separately rather than together.

Monteverdi is a bit twiddly for my taste, though not as bad as Mozart. A friend of my brother's once said, "Anything after Mozart is film music" but I find Mozart over-ornamented (heresy I know). If you're going to do that sort of thing, do it properly with a battering ram: Beethoven's "Consecration of the House", for example. Most early music is both minimalist and richly textured, and it seems to me that anything after, well, maybe Purcell, lost texture with over-enrichment. Even Purcell lost it half the time.

Cheers,

R.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom