I was raised in a house that was filled with classical music.  Everything from The Merry Widow to The Mikado to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.

I listen to the Sirius Classical music channel in my car and as I was driving to a medical appointment this morning they were playing the 1812 Overture.  I sat in the parking and phoned the receptionist and said I would be a bit late.  I wanted to hear the end of it.

The 1812 Overture is one of my favorites.  I listen to it every chance I get.

One 4th of July weekend in Denver down at Larimer Square the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra played it.  What was unique about it were the real cannons they had as part of it.  They had brought some 105mm howitzers up from Fort Carson.  The were in a parking lot overlooking Cherry Creek less than a bock away.  Those bass drums playing the cannon part were accompanied by those howitzers firing blanks.  It was wonderful and had a real effect on the crowd.  And the Chapel at Araria Campus accompanied the bell ringing sequence.  

Tchaikovsky wrote the 1812 overture to celebrate the Russia's successful defense and driving out Napoleon in 1812.

If you have 15 minutes to spare here is a rendition of it with full cannon.

To me it beats watching a bare chested guy with a purple Mohawk and a guitar screaming obsenties from a stage.

Noel

 

I was raised in a house that was filled with Country and Western music. From Roy Acuff to Hank Williams and everything in-between. Every time I hear Your Cheatin' Heart or You Are My Sunshine it reminds me of my heritage and my childhood as expressed in a truly American style of music.

Edited February 17, 20215 yr by W2DR
kant spel

Oh come on... you can't beat The Soul Cages. 😁

Sure you can. Sting can't hold a candle to Tom, Gerry, and the Monarchs.

1 hour ago, W2DR said:

I was raised in a house that was filled with Country and Western music. From Roy Acuff to Hank Williams and everything in-between. Every time I hear Your Cheatin' Heart or You Are My Sunshine it reminds me of my heritage and my childhood as expressed in a truly American style of music.

Me too.🙂

4 hours ago, birdguy said:

To me it beats watching a bare chested guy with a purple Mohawk and a guitar screaming obsenties from a stage.

Amen and Amen!

2 hours ago, W2DR said:

Sure you can. Sting can't hold a candle to Tom, Gerry, and the Monarchs.

 

Never heard of them. 😁

Not surprised by that. That's the name of a rock band from California that I played piano with in the late 1950's. Just me and Jerry Lee 🙂 .

Edited February 18, 20215 yr by W2DR
kant spel

10 hours ago, birdguy said:

I was raised in a house that was filled with classical music.  Everything from The Merry Widow to The Mikado to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.

Radetzky March.  The Blue Danube.  All of that, so good.

I was raised with both classical and country.  My parents record collection wasn't that extensive on the classical side though.  We did have the full 1812 Overture and the Blue Danube. My mom had a collection she got from Readers Digest and my dad had Glen Campbell and John Denver.  Always loved John Denver.

My own personal bent was towards Pink Floyd.  If you like long instrumentals, try some Pink Floyd -- such as 'Echoes'...but be prepared for odd 'trip' parts in the middle.  

Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss works for me. Or to the uneducated, the opening music to 2001: A Space Odyssey. 😉

Probably the most plagiarised piece of music in the last 50 years.

Another Great (with a capital G) is Anton Bruckner.  Bruckner's 4th Symphony -- the beginning theme, and the final movement -- are great

Bruckner has often been compared to Richard Wagner (of Ride of the Valkyries and more) but Bruckner is different than Wagner -- more mystical and sometimes repetitive, but there are subtle differences with each repeat.  And Bruckner's horn sections can't be beaten.

Another version shows Emperor Napoleon vs. the prayers of Russia's Orthodox Christians.

 

I just want to take a moment and post something from the younger generation, this generation grew up listening to their Grandparents Stories, and that inspires from them music like this

 

You do know Tchaikovsky actually hated his 1812 Overture, right? He described it as: "very loud and noisy and completely without artistic merit; obviously written without warmth or love," 🤣

What he was actually complaining about really, was that he became most well-known for it when he preferred the melodic stuff he liked to create - and did so more often - and so he was dismayed that people seemed to prefer the brash and bombastic 1812 Overture to his more subtle and melodic works which feature intricate and clever melodies that often use the rarer instruments of the orchestra. You know the ones: Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty Waltz, etc.

But part of his disappointment beyond the apparent preference of audiences to the 1812 Overture centred in people's lack of appreciation of his more melodic works, was that when he'd originally penned the 1812 Overture, he had envisioned it being spectacularly premiered in the square of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which had been commissioned in 1812 by Tsar Alexander to commemorate the victory of the Russian army over Napoleon's forces at the Battle of Borodino; this being the turning point in the French invasion with their armies commencing their retreat soon afterwards. And that spectacular premiere was indeed the original plan.

A problem was that the Cathedral wasn't finished in time for the premiere, which was intended to be part of the 1881 celebrations of the 25th anniversary of Alexander II's coronation. However, a bigger problem was that Alexander was assassinated in early 1881 (ironically in an explosion), so that kind of put the dampeners on the whole project. As a result, Tchaikovsky's piece was premiered in a big marquee next to the unfinished Cathedral later in 1881, without the cannons and brass bands which would have originally been part of the musical arrangement. The Cathedral wasn't actually completed until 1883.

Beyond those historical issues which marred the tune's reason for its commissioning, some of the problem was also because Tchaikovsky was unaware at the time that it was - and still is - pretty much impossible to fire the trigger of a muzzle-loader cannon and have it ignite at a precise moment for musical timing, even with percussion cap ignition; so although it is sometimes performed with real cannons these days, the off-beat delay on the percussion of the cannons, which have become kind of a signature of the crescendo, was not really what Tchaikovsky had in mind when he wrote the piece: He had originally figured on using an electrical panel to remotely trigger the cannons in time with the music, which is nothing if not novel as an idea and really does give you an idea of how creative he was musically and willing to try new things.

This inventiveness is one of the reasons why you can be sure that musical snobs are so full of it in terms of dissing modern music; I'm willing to bet that Tchaikovsky, Mozart etc would be absolutely thrilled with modern synthesizers, drum machines, sequencers and multitrack NLEs; if you sat them in front of my Roland Jupiter 8, I reckon you wouldn't be able to drag them away from it. And I bet you they'd love my Fender Telecasters too. The reverse is also true of course; anyone who is into music who says they don't like classical stuff is full of cack as well, for exactly the same reasons.

The 1812 Overture is a rousing piece of music for sure and I guess Tchaikovsky would have liked it more if history had been different and explosions were a bit more cooperative in when they chose to go off, but I tend to agree with him that his other stuff is much better musically. So if you ask someone 'in what year was the 1812 Overture written?' if they say anywhere near the 1880 date which it actually was written, you'll know they are a fan of his stuff. If they say 1812, you'll know they just like the loud bangs. 🤣

 

Edited February 20, 20215 yr by Chock