Ah Tutti Contenti @ahtutticontenti - Tumblr Blog

hello everybody!

i know my presence here has been suuuuper super super spotty and i apologize for that. you all are really wonderful and i’ve been sad to not have been contributing to the cool stuff that goes on here!

i’ve kind of relocated to zauberflotes, which still features classical music but also other topics i’m really fond of— lang and ling, science, and other fun stuff.

feel free to follow there, drop a message if you’d like to chat! i love you all!

maya47000

Moonlight sonata

sonateharder

(via don’t shoot the pianist » Blog Archive » Interdisciplinary Relations)

theangryviolinist-deactivated20

"that was a breath" crying

maddiebkhandige

"A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or without rhythmic nuances, and it will still be great music. That’s how music should be written, so that no-one, no matter how philistine, can ruin it."  

Dmitri Shostakovich (via maddiebkhandige)

#in my sidebar!!

Eh Eh (There's Nothing Else I Can Say) - Mozart concerto style

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today i arranged lady gaga's eh eh in the style of a mozart piano concerto

don't ever let anyone tell you mozart would hate pop music

#non classical music #lady gaga #eh eh (nothing else i can say)#shamelessly based on piano concerto in eb op 22 #mozart

I never understood one thing and I thought maybe you could enlighten me? I don't get the wordplay from Beethoven into Baethoven... I know I've been playing and loving the piano for ages but I don't get it... Thanks in advance!

no problemo!! so as you know ludwig van beethoven is one of the most influential composers of all time but hey there are a lot of composers out there so why beethoven?

first off he was born right on the heels of the success of our favorite little shit wolfgang amadeus mozart, and ludwig’s dad was real savvy and tried to market his kid like mozart had been marketed as a child prodigy, and he lied on advertisements for ludwig’s performances about his age. some hold that his dad was a brutal teacher who left ludwig in tears at the piano and when ludwig got to finally go to vienna to study with mozart, did he even get to meet him? nope.

his dad and mom soon died of alcoholism and severe illness respectively and while he’s dealing with supporting his family, guess who else dies?? the little shit who took vienna by storm, mozart, whom ludwig always aspired to study with. so ludwig goes to study with joseph haydn and is effectively tasked with “receiv[ing] Mozart’s spirit through Haydn’s hands.” the whole music community is watching to see how u fill the Mozart Vacuum, ludwig. no pressure.

so beethoven wrote with a mozarty flair for a while and cranked out a couple symphonies and piano sonatas but by age 26 the man started to lose his hearing. as a musician this was his bread and butter and he suffered immensely. some anecdotes about that:

it physically hurt his ears in the beginning to even have a conversation

his doctor told him to go live in the small village of Heiliganstadt in Austria to get away from everything and just come to terms with it

suicide letters. beethoven wrote to his brothers lamenting his condition and how he’d considered killing himself but had since resolved to stay strong for the sake of his art, and saw the whole damn thing as a challenge (“I will seize Fate by the throat. It will not wholly conquer me!”)

he tried to hear with this thing?? can you even imagine having to hold this to your ear all the time?

he lost the ability to hear the higher frequencies first, so when his friends would come around he would always be thundering extra-loudly on the low keys of the piano, and he’d remark, “isn’t it beautiful?”

he had to carry little notebooks with him all the time so people could write what they wanted to say to him. they estimate that he went through 400 of them

at the end of the premiere of his ninth symphony the crowd gave him overwhelming, thunderous applause, but someone had to go up to him and spin him around to face the audience because he couldn’t hear it.

and while he did all this, beethoven completely revolutionized the way music was going. his works turned from mozarty and light to absolutely brutal, stormy, violent and often very tortured (but not always) as his deafness grew and he dealt with love life trouble, the death of his brothers, and his own other illnesses. his ventures into the extremely emotional marked the beginning of a whole new era in classical music— the Romantic period.

beethoven pushed right through some of the biggest most insurmountable difficulties that human beings can face. he was a hell of a man and we love him today for it

and that my friend (besides “bee-” being a homophone) is why he is TOP BAE

#classical music #beethoven #sorry #i got carried away #nicknick11love

fin-du-temps-deactivated2015043

Satie

can we talk about how the impressionists dealt with each other

when debussy accused erik satie's pieces of having no form, satie turned around and wrote this

three pieces in the form of a pear

#classical music #satie #debussy

izumikouhei-deactivated20150629

Leonard Bernstein conducting “Overture to Candide” with the London Symphony Orchestra, December 13, 1989 (x)

nicknick11love

To all my dear friends who claim that classical music is boring…

de-es-ce-ha

Opening and closing bars of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 17 in D Minor, “The Tempest”

bubblerifle-deactivated20151225

Adjectives for Mahler rehearsals

GERMAN – ENGLISH

Langsam – Slowly

Schleppend – Slowly

Dampfer auf – Slowly

Mit Dampfer – Slowly

Allmahlich in das Hauptzeitmass ubergehen – Do not look at the conductor

Im Anfang sehr gemaechlich – In intense inner torment

Alle Betonungen sehr zart - With more intense inner torment

Getheilt (geth.) – Out of tune

Von hier an in sehr allmaehlicher aber stetiger Steigerung bis zum Zeichen – From this point on, the spit valves should be emptied with ever-increasing emotion

Hier ist ein frisches belebtes Zeitmass eingetreten – Slowly

Haupttempo – Slowly

Noch ein wenig beschleunigend – Slowing down but with a sense of speeding up

Immer noch zurueckhaltend - With steadily decreasing competence

Sehr gemaechlich – With indescribably horrific inner torment

Etwas bewegter, aber immer noch sehr ruhig – Somewhat louder, though still inaudible as before

Alle Betonungen sehr zart – With smallish quantities of fairly mild inner torment

Gemaechlich – Intermission

Ganz unmerklich etwas zurueckhaltend - Slowly

Etwas gemaechlicher als zuvor – Slowly

Von hier ab unmerklich breiter werden – As if wild animals were gnawing on your liver

Ohne cresc. – Without toothpaste

Immer noch etwas zurueckhaltend – Slowly

Vorwaerts draengend – Slowly

Hauptzeitmass - Slowly

Allmaehlich etwas lebhafter – Screaming in agony

Ohne Nachschl(age) – Without milk (sugar)

Kraeftig bewegt – Slowly

Mit dem Holze zu streichen – Like a hole in the head

Mit Parodie – Viola solo

Sehr einfach und schlicht, wie eine Volksweise – Slowly

Daempfer ab - Eyes closed

Ploetzlich viel schneller – Even more ploddingly

Den ersten Ton scharf herausgehoben – Do not play until the buzzer sounds

Am Griffbrett – As if in tune

Aeusserst zart, aber ausdrucksvoll – Radiantly joyful, despite the itching

Wieder zurueckhaltend - Increasingly decreasing

Noch breiter als vorher – Better late than never

Nicht eilen – No eels

Allmaehlich (unmerklich) etwas zurueckhaltend – Much faster (slower) than conductor

Lang gestrichen – Heads up

Lang gezogen – Heads back down

Die werden allmaehlich staerker und staerker bis zum (fp) - In the event of a water landing, your seat cushion may be used as a flotation device

wondyrs

To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.

Beethoven (via a-castle-of-dreams)

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so i did this arrangement of lady gaga's alejandro for string quartet/ensemble in the style of a tango

#non classical music #lady gaga #alejandro

micdotcom

Because both hands are required to be equally active for pianists’ to master their instrument, they have to overcome something innate to almost every person: right or left-handedness. In most people, the depth of the brain’s central sulcus is either deeper on the right or on the left side, which then determines which hand is dominant. But when scientists scanned the brains of pianists, they found something different: Pianists had a demonstrably more symmetrical central sulcus than everyone else — though they were born right or left-handed, their brains barely registered it. Because the pianists still had a dominant hand, researchers speculated that their equal depth was not natural, but resulted because pianists are able to strengthen their weaker side to more closely match their dominant side.

Science shows pianists’ brains are more robust (via micdotcom)