Drive time today, radio on the classical channel, just happened to tune it during the middle of an orchestral piece. After about 20 seconds I decide that the size of the orchestra, phrase shapes, harmonic language etc. etc. make this a Mozart work -- but I don't know it -- never heard it. The announcer chimes in at the end " .. and that was the overture to "Cosi Fan Tutti" by Wolfgang Mozart....". My reaction is shock -- "How could I not know this piece?"
Have you ever been surprised by a piece of music that is obviously "in the canon" as it were, and you were arrogantly confident that you "knew 'em all" -- yet you had never heard it? own up now -- what was the piece and the occassion -- and were you as surprised at yourself as I was -- or am I just too insufferable? :-)
2009-03-18T18:23:46Z
Keelan J -- there are no wrong answers, my friend. Thanks!!
2009-03-19T06:20:52Z
Halfwen -- If it makes you feel better, with Baroque, if if's not Bach, Handel or Vivaldi, most of the time I'm clueless. :-/
2009-03-19T06:23:51Z
Mamianka -- I love that. We used to do sort of the same thing, except we would say "That's Majevskis' Sympathy in Asia Minor". Oh how witty we are -- :-P
2009-03-19T11:10:46Z
Hmmm.... I can't decide whether to give BA to the ones who made the most egregious errors, or to the ones that had the best stories. Schumiszt, yours are without doubt the most "off-the-mark" -- confusing Mozart with Rach?? Bartok with Scarlatti?? Whoa! -- chalk it up to youth :-)
AndMr. S -- a close second, mixing up Hindemith with Debussy -- although I confess I am not all that familiar with more than a couple of H's works. In all honesty to the both of you, I have been guilty of much worse.
I shall wait...
Mamianka2009-03-18T19:38:31Z
Favorite Answer
Hey - it happens to all of us. In this house, we have a stock answer - anytime there is ANYTHING playing that we do not know, we say "Bartok - Concerto for Orchestra". It could be *Baroque* - it's just the stock answer that means - heck, you don't expect us to know it ALL do you?
I had a professor much like John Houseman's character in paper Chase when I was in grad school. Terrorized all of us. He gave the HARDEST listening tests ever - so very may columns to fill in for such a HUGE listening assignment. I despaired - so I added another column - "measure number".
The person to survive was my husband. This man knows STUFF - and his knowledge of musicology is only surpassed by his knowledge of baseball. He is a walking *bar bet* font of knowledge. On our first date (we are married 36 years), there was that *silence* - and he was writing. I asked him WHAT. He sheepishly said "I am listing the works of Schoenberg chronologically." Yeah - that';s why I married him, alright . . .
So - if we cannot name something, it's either "Bartok . . " - or "Dad? What is this?"
I play or at least have heard everything Chopin wrote. I hum his waltzes, hear his piano concertos in my head and I feel very confident that if I did hear an unfamiliar work of his, I would be able to name him as the composer. That's what I thought anyway.
One day driving around I was listening to an unfamiliar piano work and was not paying too much attention at first. Later as I began to really listen I realized I did not know this piece and tried to identify the composer, I settled on John Field. How surprised I was when the radio announcer said "You have just heard the Chopin Sonata no. 1". How could I not know this piece? Very humbling.
When I lived in Knoxville, the classical station had a "Monday Evening Music Quiz." A composition was played unannounced, callers were invited to call in with guesses regarding the identity of the composer, and the names of those guessing correctly were announced.
I made some hits, but I made some misses, too. Sometimes I didn't even get the right time period. They played a flute composition by Debussy, and I guessed that it was by Hindemith.
Hafwen, that's okay. At least the composition you identified was in the warhorse category.
Mamianka, I'm glad your husband isn't in this forum. He sounds like a fierce competitor for Top Contributor status.
Well this happens to me sometimes when I listen to metal. Like i would be shocked to hear say a ensiferum song and know who it was too and yet didn't know it. Also it wouldn't even be a new song. That happens a lot though to metal heads and it's great. For classical though i never did listen to it that much but I do enjoy it time to time since classical music is a big influence in certain death metal and other sub genres of metal. i would listen to classical music more if there was better classical music radio stations where I live, but they don't play that much good stuff. Well right now though I am putting some Beethoven on my mp3 player. I hope I answered this right.
A favorite pastime of mine is "name that tune." Yikes, it was the beautiful second movement to the 1st Rachmaninoff concerto...
So, I had no idea what it was (of course I had listened to that concerto a million times... grrr... my memory isn't as good as it used to be...) so I though, oh! Mozart, he wrote a lot of piano concertos!
oops...
Completely wrong.
I get lots of bizarre ideas when playing name that tune...
Another disastrous mistake was (I'm feeling similar to mamianka now...) was mistaking a (oh no!) Bartok improvisation with a (uh oh...) Scarlatti sonata... (how could I?)
oops...
The worst part is that I was very confident that I knew what it was...