Wiil Slocombe’s observation on needing to hire an athlete to play an athlete reminds me that even Lenny himself was not immune from this effect. I was a linguistics student at Harvard when Lenny delivered the Norton Lectures (aka The Unanswered Question). Sadly, he didn’t understand Chomsky and generative linguistics in any depth, and we linguists were writhing in our chairs over the misunderstandings and misapplications. Like Cooper trying to conduct, he had the superficialities, the terminology, almost correct but it was clear he hadn’t had time to truly understand very much and was out of his depth. So even this genius of a man makes vapid remarks. Later, much better, work on the insights linguistics can give to the study of music and vice versa was done by linguists who were also musicians, such as Ray Jackendoff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_theory_of_tonal_music, Mark Liberman http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dm/theses/liberman75.pdf, and A.D. Patel
Ooh this NTT is a very exciting one indeed! There’s so much going on, and I have a vague sense I might have heard it before, but not with any degree of certainty.
When it began, I thought it sounded very Shostakovichy, and I also noted that the main theme bore a striking resemblance to the Grosse Fuge. As it proceeded, I thought I heard bits of Latinate influence, like a Piazzola tango or something.
But of course, neither Shostakovich nor Piazzola were violinists and they certainly wouldn’t have attended the Vienna Conservatory, at age seven or any other age! (Though of course Piazzola famously studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.)
So if we’re talking prodigious young talents who might have been in the Viennese sphere of influence and gone on to write interesting chamber music for strings (I’m assuming this is a quartet, but it might be something a bit more enriched like a quintet) that have lots of influences...
Yikes, I’m coming up a bit blank. Josef Suk seems like a contender, but this music seems too gnarly for him given what I know of his output. But is the time period right? That’s tricky with this one. I could imagine it being written any time between, say, 1920 and 2020.
When I read the clue, I thought Korngold, but that’s purely a biographical take, not a musically informed opinion. But I do think this could have been someone who ended up writing film music.
I’m really at a loss to come up with an Austrian who had such eclectic tastes. Boris Blacher? Maybe it’s an East German who went on to a more dissonant style?
I suppose it’s never a good idea to discount Martinu.
At this point I’m just rambling and I don’t think I’m any closer to the goal! I might come back later and make a proper basket. Whatever it is, I’m tremendously curious to find out!
Wiil Slocombe’s observation on needing to hire an athlete to play an athlete reminds me that even Lenny himself was not immune from this effect. I was a linguistics student at Harvard when Lenny delivered the Norton Lectures (aka The Unanswered Question). Sadly, he didn’t understand Chomsky and generative linguistics in any depth, and we linguists were writhing in our chairs over the misunderstandings and misapplications. Like Cooper trying to conduct, he had the superficialities, the terminology, almost correct but it was clear he hadn’t had time to truly understand very much and was out of his depth. So even this genius of a man makes vapid remarks. Later, much better, work on the insights linguistics can give to the study of music and vice versa was done by linguists who were also musicians, such as Ray Jackendoff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_theory_of_tonal_music, Mark Liberman http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dm/theses/liberman75.pdf, and A.D. Patel
https://academic.oup.com/book/10227
That recording of Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs is very near and dear to my heart. Can’t go wrong with Lenny & Benny.
As for the NTT, I am coming up with more of a blank than Will....though the clue feels like a bit of trivia I’ve heard before, I cannot place it.
Ooh this NTT is a very exciting one indeed! There’s so much going on, and I have a vague sense I might have heard it before, but not with any degree of certainty.
When it began, I thought it sounded very Shostakovichy, and I also noted that the main theme bore a striking resemblance to the Grosse Fuge. As it proceeded, I thought I heard bits of Latinate influence, like a Piazzola tango or something.
But of course, neither Shostakovich nor Piazzola were violinists and they certainly wouldn’t have attended the Vienna Conservatory, at age seven or any other age! (Though of course Piazzola famously studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.)
So if we’re talking prodigious young talents who might have been in the Viennese sphere of influence and gone on to write interesting chamber music for strings (I’m assuming this is a quartet, but it might be something a bit more enriched like a quintet) that have lots of influences...
Yikes, I’m coming up a bit blank. Josef Suk seems like a contender, but this music seems too gnarly for him given what I know of his output. But is the time period right? That’s tricky with this one. I could imagine it being written any time between, say, 1920 and 2020.
When I read the clue, I thought Korngold, but that’s purely a biographical take, not a musically informed opinion. But I do think this could have been someone who ended up writing film music.
I’m really at a loss to come up with an Austrian who had such eclectic tastes. Boris Blacher? Maybe it’s an East German who went on to a more dissonant style?
I suppose it’s never a good idea to discount Martinu.
At this point I’m just rambling and I don’t think I’m any closer to the goal! I might come back later and make a proper basket. Whatever it is, I’m tremendously curious to find out!