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In the Forum: Musical Discussions
In the Thread: Surprising: the most interesting composer of 20 century.
Post Subject: I'll try..Posted by op.9 on: 1/23/2008
Well, I found Janacek strange and unfathomable. I was brought up on Haydn-Beethoven-Schubert-Brahms-(Mahler)-Schoenberg route... so I had no entering point for Janacek. I also loved Dvorák and Smetana... but this was no help either.. (its only now I can see the connection)
So, luckily I had an 'in at the deep end' experience with the 2nd quartet 'intimate letters' . You simply cant miss what this piece has to say. And I was with it - completely. but it went against all the 'logical understanding' I knew. Rhetoric is turned on its head! Repetition and obsession have different or even opposite meanings from the classical tradition. And there is no preparation for this. You either get it or not. Same as much (serious) new music written since 1980?
I had to throw out all sorts of preconceived ideas about how music actually works. Since then I've gradually tried to re-rationalise some of it... not always very successfully. To me, Janacek is like a compilation of all those 'special Mozart phrases' where he sums up the universe with a moment of genius. Nothing is unimportant - everything is chocked with meaning. We can easily get side tracked by the folky nature of it all - nothing really fundamentally to do with it...

any use?
op.9

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