Arnie Schoenberg and his Twelve Tone Hits!

[ellenkushner]

ADDED: OK, this makes me laugh so hard I have tears running down my nose. But you do have to be a bit of a classical music geek. If you've never heard of Schoenberg and thus think you might actually *like* 12-tone music, don't watch it. (Though if you're a Hitchcock fan, all bets are off.)

Comments

[fgherman.livejournal.com]

That's just wrong.

[nanne.livejournal.com]

Ouch.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Wow. You can tell just what kind of geek I am, because I listened to the whole thing, thinking, yup, that's right, oh, god, yes, spot on, weehauken, boy howdy, yup yup yup, right until they got to the Stravinsky, at which point I was all overcome with indignation and intellectual self-righteousness, because I like that Stravinsky and therefore it's not funny.

Okay, yes, it is, too.

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

XD That's the one part that made me laugh out loud...

[rosefox]

This comment makes it that much better.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Oh, come on! Seeing the Stravinsky with images of things going BANG! BANG!! BANG!!! ?

Funny.

(Hmm...you say you listened to it - are the visuals not coming through? That's what makes the whole thing!)

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Yes, I got both visuals and sounds; my classical music geekiness meant I experienced it mainly as sound, with the visuals as witty embroidery. I started snorting at the first appearance of the shower scene.

The visuals for Stravinsky were absolutely perfect.

This reminds me in a skewed way, that if you ever get the chance to see Alexander Nevsky with a live orchestral accompaniment, you should do it. Best movie music ever, really good direction, truly appalling acting, weird costuming, and whackjob wigs; adds up to an opera with only one aria.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Will do!

[theniwokesoftly.livejournal.com]

Stravinsky may not be my favorite composer (that honor is reserved for Rachmaninov), but he changed my life.

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

;o; I don't know what just happened!

[aulus-poliutos.livejournal.com]

OMG, that's hilarious.

I'm tempted to filch the little goodie and post it on the new TOR.com site. There's just the right sort of geeks hanging out in that place. :)

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Hey, it's on YouTube - just give me credit! (Actually, to be fair the credit goes to my classical musician pal Eric Mazonson, who posted it on the impenetrable FaceBook.)

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

Cheap shots all, but funny. :)

[deliasherman.livejournal.com]

Oh, honey. Clearly it's time for me to come home.

I snorked at the shower scene. And the three guys sitting on the ends of their little beds. It made 12-tone appealing.

"Alban, Arnold, and Anton."

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Who can forget those wacky guys? (And how many of them were married to Alma?)

I forgot to say that all this brilliant video editing just confirms my longtime assertion that most 12-tone music sounds like the soundtrack to a horror movie - which is why I always refused to play it on my overnight classical show on WGBH: as you may remember me saying, Who needs music that screams "They're coming to get you!" at 3 a.m.?

[theniwokesoftly.livejournal.com]

I wish I had speakers on this computer! I am one of the BIGGEST classical music geeks. I'm actually trying to get a job as a music history teacher.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Well, I think that's funny and I actually like the Second Viennese School quite a lot, albeit selectively. (Which is to say that I love Webern and Berg, and am selective about Schoenberg himself - mostly liking his quartets and unaccompanied choral music...) I did notice, to be a pedant, that work was included that isn't twelve-tone - Pierrot Lunaire for example - and of course Sacre de Printemps.

What is interesting is the extent to which many lovers of classical music still haven't been persuaded about this stuff, with one or two exceptions like the Berg Violin Concerto. I find myself still working on it after forty years of listening, but it has fascinated me so much that I learned to love some of it early and still find myself getting into bits of it.

I suppose that part of it is that I love the Romantic decadence so much - Strauss et al. - that I started early on hearing all of this in the light of that, and am such a passionate Brahmsian that the influence of Brahms on the Second Viennese School reaches out to be.

Now, if you want an inaccessible modernism, I give you the Darmstadt crowd...Except even then, I love Boulez, not as a modernist, but as a soppy French composer trying so very hard to be tough and gritty.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

LOL about Boulez! I always wondered what his problem was...

[stephanieburgis.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is wonderful! Thank you. :) (I spent a semester in Vienna back in 1998 studying Schoenberg, Berg and Webern at Schoenberg's old house, being taught by Schoenberg's last assistant and going to performances of their works almost every week - and oh, I wish I'd had this clip to watch at the time...)

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

You did?! Holy cow. You must tell me about all that sometime.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

geneeiii???

Cowboy Stravinsky!!!

All it lacked was having some of the clips be longer. Like the vacuuming one.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

ROFLMAO

Well, finally!!

Ah, yes - that's why you have to watch it at least twice - it all goes by pretty fast, and is even funnier the next time....

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I wanted the vacuuming section to go ON AND ON. I would have laughed and laughed.

Maybe I can put it on repeat....

[mantichore.livejournal.com]

Hmpf! I like the way the clip is made, great editing and wonderful deadpan commentary, but I thought the music got off lightly and didn't sound painful enough. Those short clips actually made me sit back and think: Say, that's not so bad, is it? Boulez, now: that's unbearable. A soprano wandering up and down the scale, uttering squeaks and moans on poetry that's fairly opaque to start with, while the orchestra are tuning their instruments.

Maybe they need to do another Greatest hits collection with the jolliest, swingiest, merriest tunes from IRCAM. Melodies to torture people by.