#postromantic

[mikrokosmos]

Strauss - Overture for the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos (1912)

I keep coming back to Richard Strauss' less 'popular' operas. During his lifetime many of them were somewhat dismissed for their 'conservative' writing. It seems that Strauss was going into a more jarring and angst ridden Modernism with his operas Salome (1905) and Elektra (1908), but then betrayed that direction with the very gushy romantic Rosenkavalier (1910). I think this lower opinion of Strauss has more to do with the time he lived in rather than the music itself. Not to mention that this 'heavy/lighthearted' florid style continued through both World Wars. It's hard for me not to love his music because of it's unusual mix of being hyper-romantic and also clear and easy to follow. What Strauss did was the seemingly impossible task of synthesizing Wagner (free floating harmonies, thick orchestral textures, and long scale structure) with Mozart (clarity, grace, lyricism, and more grounded functioning tonality). This is the opening of Strauss' comic opera Ariadne auf Naxos. The confusing title for this post is due to the opera's structure; It is an opera within an opera. The opera is in two parts, first part is the prologue which gives us the backstory where a composer has been hired to stage one of his operas at some very super rich Viennese man's house. He is deeply offended to learn that the patron has also hired a burlesque dance troop to perform after his opera. Offended because (and I'm pretty sure Strauss is satirizing the Romantic-minded young artist who takes his own work too seriously) his opera, Ariadne of Naxos, is supposed to be a super serious tragedy and having a burlesque dance afterward shows how the patron and audience don't care that much for 'serious' art, and may even look forward to the half naked women more than the Grecian music-drama. The opera company and dance company argue over who gets to play first. The situation gets worse when the patron's butler informs everyone that his dinner party ended up going later than expected, and since he's paid for both acts already and wants them to perform, he decided he wants the opera and the burlesque to happen at the same time. The composer is angry but his teacher encourages him to comply. And the lead of the burlesque show, a risqué comedian named Zerbinetta, charms him into changing the opera to include scenes for her. The second part is the opera Ariadne of Naxos, where Ariadne has been abandoned on the isle of Naxos by her former lover and hero Theseus. Zerbinetta and other nymphs (the burlesque dancers) try to sing and cheer Ariadne up but they can't get her out of her depression. Zerbinetta tells her the best way to get over one man is to find another, and encourages her to flirt with a clown Harlequin. But then a stranger comes to the island, who turns out to be Bacchus the god of wine, chaos, and 'hedonism'. Ariadne and Bacchus fall in love, the end. Despite how this opera is somewhat minuscule (in comparison to all opera ever, let alone Strauss'), it is the genius combination of Wagner (a 'super-serious' philosophical music-drama based on classical antiquity where love transfigures the soul), Mozart (lighthearted comedy, flirting between men and women who don't understand each other, and an optimistic idealization of a classical pastorale) and Strauss (a metafictional story about an opera within the opera where characters discuss the nature of opera and relationship between artist and audience, the kinds of themes that would be best exemplified in Capriccio). But really the only reason I'm sharing this is because the main melody is stuck in my head, the perfect Straussian melody; optimistic and upbeat, goofy-sounding accidentals, very sentimental writing based on subtle diatonic dissonances, and coming back again and again in different waves of great orchestral writing.

[pupyzu]

･┈┈･･⟡ ∞ ⟡･･┈┈･

❝ POSTROMANTIC! ❞

only feeling romantic attraction to someone after engaging in romantic activity or entering a romantic relationship with them! ⊹ ⁺

flag/coined by me! cousin to postsexual!

[[ IMAGE ID: a flag with 7 stripes, with these colors from top to bottom: hot pink, pink, light pink, hot pink, light grey, medium grey, dark grey. ID OVER ]]

･┈┈･･⟡ ∞ ⟡･･┈┈･

[[ DNI ID: do not interact: anti-mogai, anti xenogenders, anti neopronouns, terfs/swerfs, truscum/transmed, anti kin, nsfw blog, pro ddlg/ageplay, anti blm, flop accounts, proshipper/antianti, exclusionist, panphobe/biphobe. ID OVER ]]

[ask-pride-color-schemes]

New term!! Postromantic (post meaning after) is a romantic orientation which means you like people just for the sake of liking someone AND THEN you actually like them later on. The sexual version (post sexual) is when you have sex for the sake of having sex, and the sexual attraction occurs after. Idk what the flag would look like tho.

Cool! I’ll add it to the docs later.

~  Tath

[mikrokosmos]

Rachmaninoff – Morceaux de Fantaisie, op.3 (1892)

I was going to make a post only on THE prelude today, but I remembered that I also adored the elegy, and I thought I may as well talk a bit about the full suite. “Fantasy Pieces”, again following the Romantic tradition of free-form music, was written by Rachmaninoff when he was just 19. Think of that! Usually when we talk about composers who wrote great stuff early on, we think Mozart or maybe Beethoven. But still a teenager, Rachmaninoff wrote a suite of gorgeous music, one of the pieces here would become his most popular and loved [to his chagrin]. He wrote the prelude first, and then the rest of the pieces came after, and he dedicated the suite to his teacher Anton Arensky. They are the accumulation of his studies, and show a shift towards a more mature style with craftsmanship and personality. The suite is not necessarily meant to be played as a group, and so you often hear the prelude as a stand-alone work. The opening Elegy starts off like a very darkened Chopin nocturne, and the main melody is full of the expected mourning and disturbingly tragic. This kind of darkness touches in on a lot of Rachmaninoff’s music. The melody sometimes sings out in one voice, sometimes another joins in harmony. And the music isn’t afraid to take sudden harmonic shifts. The middle section has an uplifting melody in the left hand as the right hand glitters over it. After an energetic transition, we come back to the bleak soundworld of the opening, the melody an octave lower. The coda grows louder with passionate descending thirds, and then the final bars go into the bass. The prelude is the most iconic work, and its popularity transcends the rest of the suite. Rachmaninoff was bothered by it the older he got, thinking that the love for the prelude of his teen years overshadowed ‘better’ music he wrote later. But it’s popularity is understandable. It opens with octaves going deep in the bass, part of the nickname “The Bells of Moscow”. They thunder underneath a main melody made up of thick homophonic chords, that has an almost yearning quality. The middle section is made of broken notes falling over each other chromatically, and eventually grows into a frantic passage of chords before exploding into a restatement of the opening, with dense chords slamming in the bass and then the hands jump to play the melody in full chords higher up. For clarity, the music here is written across four staffs. The intensity fills the room with immense pathos. That sounds like overkill with the adjectives maybe, but it does feel like music for an existential crisis. The music calms down a bit before dying away in softer chords, the bells ring out in the distance. After the angst of the opening, we are finally given a break in the form of the “melody”, which softly plays over gorgeous accompaniment, and as with the other works you hear premonitions of mature Rachmaninoff. Using chromaticism to murk up the harmonies, holding onto a gorgeous melody that seems to exist beyond the rhythm of the music, etc. The melody organically develops into an intense passage of chords that then break out into a pretty flourish, before coming back to the opening. The fourth movement, “Punchinella”, in reference to the same Commedia dell’arte character, is whimsical and full of joy, kind of foreshadowing Ravel’s “Alborada del gracioso”, and so with dense chords the music plays around on the keyboard. The middle section again has a main melody in the left hand while the right decorates over it, again keeping in the good mood but more genuine. Then we come back to the opening with its shifting grace notes and fun rhythm. The piece ends with staccato notes across the keyboard. The final work, the Serenade, opens with the melody alone, and comes off as “exotic” music, that is it follows folk writing scales that could be Spanish. It continues the brighter spirit that the second half of the suite has been carrying, while also dazzling with piano technique. Despite being in a minor key and ending with heavy chords, it is still a ‘happy’ piece.

Movements:

1. Elegie

2. Prelude

3. Melody

4. Polichinelle

5. Serenade

Pianist: Vladimir Ashkenazy

[fieriframes]

[Postromantic.]

[vestidonaked]

I used to guard you

[llortfiguerola]

Reciclant a la platja! ⚡️Marines 3.0 🎨&🌏 #superhunter🦸🏻‍♂️ #superplastichunter #postromantic #superjander #painting #plastichunter #reciclar #recycling 💪 (at L'Arrabassada i la Savinosa, Tarragona) https://www.instagram.com/p/CFxlc9aFkM1/?igshid=xmbbxkcmdmwo

[pieceofmndpieceofmnepeaceofmnd]