Schuberts Ava Maria

Hi there guys, I've settled into the classical forum for a bit or r n r after all that cable talk

So my potentially dumb question is... Does Schuberts Ava maria belong to a larger piece of work than the 4 odd minutes I have on this rather excellent if condensed collection of Ava Marias and chorusesSee here

I'd love to listen to it in full if indeed there is a greater body of music it belongs to.

thanks

 

From memory, Philip, it's an isolated work, just like the more famous Gounod Ave Maria (the one based on Prelude No.1 of the Well Tempered Clavier).

Yes, much better to talk about music instead of all this cable hogwash.

 

Then I shall hunt down Gounod Ave Maria for more listening, thanks

Still working on the cantatas, not quite got the full understanding of it yet so its not as rewarding to me as other choral works, but still something to work on. Think I just like a little more thwack

 

Shouldn't be too long a hunt (hint: look at track 15 )

Then try the Dies Irae from Verdi's Requiem (particularly Riccardo Muti's recent reissue if the clip I heard from it is typical), or the place he cribbed the idea from, the Tuba Mirum from Berlioz' version of the same thing.

 

Verdi's Requiem is what started this, about 4 years ago actually, with a verson by Robert Shaw with some further choruses on the second disk to fill up space, been addicted to that power ever since.

 

Understandable, but then, to the best of my knowledge, 18th century Lutheran church services were not renowned for thwack. However, try the chorales of BWV11, BWV31 and BWV129. 11 and 31 have to do with Easter Sunday and Ascension Day, so triumphant music was required, at least triumphant music as it was understood in Bach's time. The B Minor Mass has its fair share of it.

Have you tried any Handel? Get the Coronation Anthems by Marriner /ASMF. "Zadok the Priest" is thwackish by most standards.

 

18th century Lutheran church services were not renowned for thwack - brilliant, you should use that in your sig! agreed but they have others similar do have a beauty all to themselves!

Handel, yup working on that one, have the Messiah but not the one mentioned, I will check it out, thanks.

Also taken a liking to Beethovens' Missa solemnis and some vespers by Rachmaninov (sp?)

 

Gardiner is the one for "Missa Solemnis" (Gramophone Reord of the Year).

If the Vespers is the Evening and Morning Easter Vigil music, with the extraordinary Nunc Dimittis (Nyne Oputschaei, or something like that) that descends to a low B Flat, the one to get is the old Sveshnikov/RSFSR Academy Choir one, originally from Melodiya and more recently from Le Chant du Monde. This is REALLY soulful. If necessary, kill to get it.

(P.S. Melodia/Eurodisc 259 034)

 

Good choice. For similarly thwacktastic music you really need IMO to be looking at around that kind of chronological period, ie. Romantic and up to Late-Romantic - you just don't get the same muscle with the baroque stuff (sorry tones!)

I'd second Graham's suggestion of the Berlioz Requiem, though the Berlioz is a bit of a strange work - much less approachable than the Verdi, and in the final analysis not as good either. That said, if you like the Missa Solemnis, the Berlioz has a similarly transcendental / mystical / otherwordly / weird feel to it. Robert Shaw's version of the Berlioz is very good too - though hard to find these days as AFAIK it's been deleted, must be due a reissue.

Other full-on, similarly high-octane choral-and-orchestra works you might try would include Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, Rachmaninov's The Bells, and (left-field option here) Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony, which has the most thrilling opening two minutes or so of pretty much anything ever written (it goes slightly downhill after that but it's still pretty good).

 

Its the first half of the last movement of Vaughan William's Sea Symphony that does it for me. Anyway....

If you like Beethoven's Missa Solemnis you will also like Bruckner's Great Mass in F. And the much smaller scale E-minor mass is very beautiful but less thwacks.

 

Wow thanks guys, I now have a copy of said Berlioz Requiem, (Sir Colin Davis and LSO), thanks to a hand shop in down town gothenburg.

Rather good it is to, just the one run through now but yes, thats the kinda thing that get the pulse going and bass cones moving.

So requiems it is then....

 

I feel so sorry for these folk who are satisfied with mere quantity

 

Well, after reading the above I dusted off my Missa Solemnis (Herreweghe) and gave it another try. Confirmed my initial impression, way too thwacky for me.

So I folded back to BWV 145 and 146 (Harnoncourt). Tones, I could not agree more. Quantity is not ALL

All the works mentioned in this thread were written for the glory of God, but some composers must have thought that if the choir is not 200-strong, He wouldn't hear them.

 

each to their own, might help explain why I like nice thwacky rioja though!

 

But don't get me wrong, I'll keep trying...

And I like Rioja, and Napa/Sonoma, etc. as well - When it's well made

 

Yeah, most well made wine is very drinkable, its just finding it thats a bit hard, especially over here

There's hope yet for the subtle side as I've moved from Laphroaig to Bowmore

 

Sorry - but I have to disagree with almost all of that! The Verdi is only more approachable if you happen to be an opera addict. If (like me when I first heard it) you find four fatsoes warbling away for an hour and a half a bit of a turn off, then the Verdi is about 4 minutes of glory (the Dies Irae) immured in 90 mins of mire (a view I no longer hold BTW). The Berlioz on the other hand is pretty much choral all the way through with the choir used in his own immensely colouristic orchestral manner - and therefore immediately approachable to anyone who loves the orchestral sound.

It's also way..Way..WAY more original - the Verdi being pretty much a standard opera on a religious theme (nice tenor aria in "Ingemisco", crowd scene with tiddley-pom ending for the Sanctus, couple of rather sweet sop arias too - forget the words just ATM). The Berlioz has constructs and sounds that had never been heard before (and little since too) - those famously weird flute/trombone chords in the Hostias, the kettle-drum chords in the Liber Scriptus (OK, so he'd used them previously at the other extreme of the dynamic range in the middle movement of the Symph. Fant.), the antiphonal NSEW location of the brass groups for the Tuba Mirum (only after hearing which Verdi decided to incorporate the same in his Dies Irae). There's very few more graphic depictions of a bunch of miserable wailing sinners than the Lachrymosa. The rocking virtual monotone of the choir in the Quaerens Me (? - could have got the title of that one wrong) contrasting with the increasingly impassioned orchestral arabesques - until it opens out into the glory of that final cadence - the Verdi's got nothing to compare to the imagination of that. The violin high pedals in the Santus set the mark for many such transcendental depictions of the Holy Spirit subsequently.

And surely if any piece should be other worldly it SHOULD be a Requiem - passing into the next world is the whole point FFS. The Verdi may have some nice ditties - but the Berlioz offers just so much more on almost all levels.

PS: The Shaw was reissued in August IIRC

PPS: So Alan likes most the bit of the Sea Symphony RVW admitted he probably cribbed from Geronitus . The whole thing's wonderful from beginning to end. Get either the Handley on CfP (although Shimell is almost inaduble in several passages), or I've recently got the A.Davis/BBCSO on Teldec. The critics were mostly fairly sniffy about nearly all of this latter cycle, but I think this recording/performance is a corker (along with "London" as well - which the critics really dislike - and No 6, which they did wet themselves over).

PPS: Never really got on with Bowmore - possibly more subtle than Laphroaig, but nowhere near as classy - in the way that a being hit by a house brick may be more subtle than being hit by a gold bar. Go for Lagavulin, Bunnahabhain or Talisker instead - or Bruichladdich if you crave salt.

 

Granted, it's 'a tad on the operatic side' (especially the recit. at the start of the Libera me), but then personally I can very rarely be bothered to sit and listen to an opera, whereas the Verdi is quite a regular in the old NAD. The thing about the Verdi is, like plenty of Verdi it's got lots of good tunes in, whereas the Berlioz doesn't really.

Can't honestly say I agree with the statement in bold - even by Berlioz's standards most of the Requiem is pretty stark and hollow, and as you say yourself a lot of the orchestration is downright bizarre and slightly off-putting to, for example, me.

Thoroughly agree that Verdi clearly ripped most of the best bits out of Berlioz, but in terms of actual effectiveness Verdi runs Berlioz pretty close in the Tuba Mirum and, let's face it, wins hands-down in the Dies Irae - it's easy to forget just how awesome that sounds when it's so familiar.

I also agree that the Berlioz is full of novel effects, but for me many of them just sound a bit silly - the flute/trombone chords do just sound a bit weird, and the fugato / rocking motif in the Quaerens Me (I can't remember if that's the right one either ) only just about comes off IMO, though the end of it is very good obviously.

I think they're quite hard to compare to be honest. Like most settings of the Requiem the Verdi seems to me like a human response to the text and the religious ideas it involves, whereas the Berlioz seems more like an attempt to actually evoke the religious ideas, if that makes sense. The Berlioz is certainly much more otherworldly and more original / weird, but that doesn't in itself make for a great piece of music. Like with the Missa Solemnis but less so, I find myself admiring the Berlioz without exactly loving it the way I do the Verdi.

Happened to spot it today while I was out and about - it's cheaper now too. Very good sound quality (essential in the Berlioz) and tolerable choral singing - much better than in Davis's Philips recording, for example.

 

And 147 and 148 and 149!

 

Well, I got them all, so it's only a matter of mood, or just picking one at random