Do you have a list of non boring orchestral pieces? Ones that are dramatic and exciting?
Yes. 99% of orchestral pieces are not boring lol
You need to take a deep breath and skip the classical period. Just listen to everything before and after the classical period. It's only 50 years of music. Just skip it. Just think of the classical period as a pretentious meme propagated by the infamous fuckboy Mozart. And just skip that meme. Listen to everything before 1750 and everything after 1800.
Literally just listen to everyone who isn't Mozart or Haydn. Just skip that 1% of orchestral music and listen to the other 99%. Von Bingen, Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Respighi, Saint-Saens, Holst, Mahler, Dvorak, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Bartok, Sibelius, Britten, Vaughan Williams, Ravel, Barber, Copland, Rautavaara, Tan Dun, John Luther Adams, Caroline Shaw, and hundreds of others.
If you don't have the attention span for 30 minutes of music, yes you do. Get off Tiktok. Just sit and look out the window and listen.
I promise you music was not boring for 400 years. Just open your ears and see what happens. There is music that was written hundreds of years ago that is more mystifying and soul-disturbing than anything written today.
Renaissance and Baroque music was about having a good time while innovating and developing musical instruments and theory. I could do a whole separate post about music between 1400 and 1750. But I feel like this has a little bit of everything. Fun, dance, old instruments, and fugue pattern theory.
Then there was the classical period 1750-1800 and we're skipping that. Basically the only important thing they did was develop instrumental musician technique. A lot of this music is actually very fun and challenging to play. But it doesn't grab the heart of every listener.
And then there was Beethoven.
Beethoven wrote this quartet in 1825, 2 years before his death. What were you and I doing in 1825? We were just dirt and dust when he wrote this.
He put everything into this quartet. He didn't hold anything back here. If he wasn't destitute, hungry, and financially dependent on Viennese music critics, his symphonies would've all been like this quartet. Still, even though he was holding back in his symphonies, they still managed to change the course of music history. So many musicians and composers fell in love with the romantic popular style of his symphonies. And they all made incredible, fun, exciting music. And I genuinely enjoy that romantic period.
But it took 100 years after Beethoven's death before anyone really understood his final compositions. The person who really understood what Beethoven was doing in his final years was Stravinsky. Stravinsky had wrestled with and won his own battles with critics. So he had the financial support to be more experimental. And he could take what Beethoven was doing in string quartets and expand that to a full orchestra. More than just an orchestra. A ballet. Stravinsky took the legacy of Beethoven's final years and turned that into full ballet productions. The Rite of Spring, the Firebird, Orpheus, Pulcinella, Petrushka, etcetera. It's all great fun.
This isn't a ballet. I just like this little Stravinsky piece from 1938. It sounds like something Beethoven would've written if he wasn't constrained by critics.
And now, 100 years after Stravinsky, contemporary music has come full circle. We're back to a lot of the same thinking and perspectives of the renaissance and baroque era. Having a good time while innovating and developing musical instruments and theory. Many popular contemporary composers like Caroline Shaw are extremely neo-baroque. Also, a lot of baroque music observed and emulated nature. And now we have Anna Thorvalsdottir and John Luther Adams doing exactly that.
If Vivaldi ever did LSD he would probably write something like this.
origamiaround
blakekathryn
kaledo-art
dailybridgerton
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
discoholicmusic
yousharknotpass
baratheonpilled
