Thread: The Expert Compared with the Enthusiastic Listener

The most absolute criterion known is popularity: and history shows us juts how absolute that is...

Originally Posted by Ramako

The most absolute criterion known is popularity: and history shows us juts how absolute that is...

Then The Sun is the best newspaper.

"Greatest" Lists are only ending places for the dilettante....

For the truly enthusiastic listener, they are only starting places.

Originally Posted by bigshot

Personally, I would list more than one Mozart. But I think Grieg is totally undervalued, especially as a composer for piano. The piano concerto is truly great, but Lyric Pieces and other solo piano works are pure genius. Grieg did not compose virtuoso pieces, but his compositions are often simplicity distilled into genius.

I see a lot of people repeating the bull that elitest critics have repeated so many times it's become "common hive think". A lot of this stuff isn't true. Chopin isn't just lace doilies and Mozart isn't empty filligrees. Grieg was a great composer and Rachmaninoff wasn't a hack. This stuff isn't in the music at all. It's in the words of a bunch of bull shiest artists.

Grieg's piano concerto is a very popular and terribly flawed 'lesser' piece of music. He was a master miniaturist, as you've already pointed out, and that is where one should point for Grieg as a 'great' composer - to the area where his gifts were great :-)

The Mozart / Chopin critiques you cite are not from the experts: those are opinions from the dilettantes and amateurs, which only reenforces my point. Some things, truly, are better left to the experts, the cognoscenti, 'the elitists.' :-)

People tend to speak more freely when they have no reputation at stake - such as members of this forum. Nobody will lose anything admitting they find Mozart boring on this forum.

But musicologists might be reluctant to "step out of line" with recieved critical opinion and maybe that is why you would be hard pushed to find the "experts" downgrading Mozart. Perhaps? If Mozart's greatness is unacknowledged among a significant percentage on this forum it must follow that a percentage of "experts" (performers, conductors, academics) feel the same - they just don't express it openly - fearing a backlash from their peers.

In the world of literature there are some (not many) eminent men of letters that think Shakespeare is no longer high art. Tolstoy, in his later years - attacked Hamlet - thought it a bad play.

"Expert" is derived from the root word "Experience."

If you would be a passenger in a commercial aircraft piloted by the sort of 'expert' who was auto-didact, for whom piloting was not their profession, then maybe half the supposed definitions of expert littering this thread will do for you in matters musical. Add to that commercial flight in which you are a passenger the mechanics "experts" of the same ilk who service the aircraft... then :-)

I have yet to meet a true expert in any field for whom that field was anything but their profession, including a lifetime of concentration and practiced experience in that field - in music it is almost always that lifetime includes concentrated work and 'living in' the craft from an extremely young age. The training, it is true, could have happened in any form: autodidact, trained directly as apprentice / student under masters, schooling, etc.

After all the theoretical foundation is laid, the expert gains real experience, after massive amounts of which all their knowledge of the subject operates on a very quick, canny, and near intuitive level. I can guarantee you that last two bars of Debussy's Pelleas was written by an expert composer who did not once think of the 'theory' or 'analysis' of those two bars, like, ever. That expert artist wrote those notes because they would do what he wanted the music to do, and they did not come about by any cerebral academic theoretic analysis - Debussy had absorbed theory, music, and was 'just writing,' as an expert.

All the other waffled suppositions as to the definition of expert seem to be part of a present vogue of sweetly comfortable and accommodating re-writes of definitions to match personal self-conceits. [when did it become an acceptable idea to 'just make up' one's own definitions? Was I out to lunch when that sea-change happened?]

Originally Posted by PetrB

Grieg's piano concerto is a very popular and terribly flawed 'lesser' piece of music. He was a master miniaturist, as you've already pointed out, and that is where one should point for Grieg as a 'great' composer - to the area where his gifts were great :-)

The Mozart / Chopin critiques you cite are not from the experts: those are opinions from the dilettantes and amateurs, which only reenforces my point. Some things, truly, are better left to the experts, the cognoscenti, 'the elitists.' :-)

You have ignored all the questions I and one or two others put to you following your previous negative comment about Grieg's PC. But never mind, let's have another try. Could you please elaborate on why exactly you personally consider Grieg's PC to be a "terribly flawed 'lesser' piece of music", and also could you identify which experts you are referring to who have made such negative pronouncements.

Agreed that Grieg was mainly a piano miniaturist composer, and that he may have struggled with large scale forms, which is why he didn't produce anything major beyond the PC, but it doesn't mean that the PC itself is seriously flawed in the manner you imply.

The main assessment of the work I have come across was by a resident BBC musicologist, Stephen Johnson, in a Radio 3 "Discovering Music" broadcast in December 2007. Like most of the assessments on "Dicovering Music", the one on Grieg's PC involved quite a thorough examination of the work, in discussion with a pianist and the conductor of the Ulster Orchestra. All of those involved in the discussion were enthusuastic about the work, saying that its popularity is fully justified by its quality, with no hint that it is "flawed". Nor was there any reference to any widespread negative opinion of this work held by others in the manner you suggest exists.

Therefore more information would be appreciated to back up your assertions.

Liszt and especially Rachmaninoff liked the Grieg concerto. I don't think these experts would have liked this concerto if it was a "terribly flawed lesser piece of music". But I could be mistaken. Perhaps we have an even bigger expert among us.

Originally Posted by DeepR

Liszt and especially Rachmaninoff liked the Grieg concerto. I don't think these experts would have liked this concerto if it was a "terribly flawed lesser piece of music". But I could be mistaken. Perhaps we have an even bigger expert among us.

I read somewhere that Liszt definitely liked the work, which must of itself be worth something coming from such a very good composer and a superb pianist.

Also worth remembering is the fact that Grieg was a very good pianist, so he was able to write music which stretched the ability of performers. Grieg was only 25 when the work was first produced but he went on later to refine various parts of it. The piano playing involves extensive use of both ends of the keyboard, so that it blends well with the colours of the orchestra.

I must say that this work has always been among my favourite PCs. Its main inspiration was Schumann's PC, which is why the two works are often combined on one CD. I have just played through the Grieg PC again - Steven Hough with the Bergen Philharmonic is a very good version- and it's a real delight.

I'm astonished to hear stories that it is considered by "experts" to be seriously flawed. But we await further elucidation on this matter.

Gried is not in the "official" line of descendents, taking the sacred musical blood of Bach through Schoenburg into modern times. Therefore, even if it is not flawed, it will considered lesser than something with the correct heritage.

Originally Posted by Very Senior Member

I read somewhere that Liszt definitely liked the work, which must of itself be worth something coming from such a very good composer and a superb pianist.

Also worth remembering is the fact that Grieg was a very good pianist, so he was able to write music which stretched the ability of performers. Grieg was only 25 when the work was first produced but he went on later to refine various parts of it. The piano playing involves extensive use of both ends of the keyboard, so that it blends well with the colours of the orchestra.

I must say that this work has always been among my favourite PCs. Its main inspiration was Schumann's PC, which is why the two works are often combined on one CD. I have just played through the Grieg PC again - Steven Hough with the Bergen Philharmonic is a very good version- and it's a real delight.

I'm astonished to hear stories that it is considered by "experts" to be seriously flawed. But we await further elucidation on this matter.

Grieg worked with Percy Grainger on this and he was a master pianist and composer.

Originally Posted by Ramako

Gried is not in the "official" line of descendents, taking the sacred musical blood of Bach through Schoenburg into modern times. Therefore, even if it is not flawed, it will considered lesser than something with the correct heritage.

Well bless my soul!!

Originally Posted by moody

Grieg worked with Percy Grainger on this and he was a master pianist and composer.

Who was a master composer? Grieg or the composer of English Country Garden?

Originally Posted by mmsbls

I assume the vast majority of people who post on TC are enthusiastic listeners of classical music. The term expert is not trivial to define, but for the purposes of this thread I will assume something along the lines of the following.

A person is an expert in a field if:
1) she has spent a significant amount of time both studying the field and interacting with others who study the field, and
2) others who have spent a large amount of time studying the field recognize her as having attained a superior level of knowledge and understanding of that field.

I am decidedly not a classical music expert. For a long time I have wondered why the works I love are almost always considered “great” works by experts. I think that is true of many/most listeners. While I can imagine reasons why that might be so, I believe it is far from obvious why it should be so. Some works I love such as Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto or Schubert’s Piano Quintet are, apparently not especially well composed; nevertheless, they are considered “great”. I have always believed this relationship is much less true in popular music.

Why should so much classical music loved by enthusiastic listeners also be considered “great” by music experts?

There are reasons to develop lists of great works and composers (if only for music history classes). While I think such lists ought to be created by experts, do you think it would matter if they were created by large groups of enthusiastic listeners?

I think I may have finally formed an opinion on the second of these questions, from the OP.

I'd like to see lists from both, and have the ability to compare and contrast them. If Grieg's piano concerto - or, to take a more likely example, Liszt's 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody - were on the "enthusiastic listeners" list but not on the experts list, that is a thing I'd like to know. If something - let's say (from recent discussions) Stockhausen's Helicopter Quartet - were on the experts list but not on the enthusiastic listeners list, that is also a thing I'd like to know.

This relates to a theme of (the poster known as) Sid James': the diversity of canons. (Let's pause to recognize that canons are at best informal, constantly changing, etc.... But they nevertheless exist, at least in an informal or implicit way.) I'd very much like to learn about the academic list of influences, innovations, and so on, which implies a particular canon. But I'd also very much like to learn about the ordinary listeners' enthusiasms, even if the works are not admired academically.

My listening and experience of classical music has been impoverished by the difficulty of finding out about works like Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2, Strauss's Radetzky March, and so on. The implicit and constant assumption is that those works are unworthy of discussion; and people who do not already know about them are unworthy of consideration.

That is a sin.

So let the experts make their lists - I beg them too and at the risk of making an annoyance of myself I once again BEG to be referred to a particular example or two of these expert lists that are supposedly so abundant - but let the fans make their lists as well, and let me see them all!

The British Light Classical genre is severely undervalued with critics and pompous sorts too. There's a concept that music can't be good unless it's serious with a capital S. Personally, I think the classic film composers are mor sophisticated than many modern classical composers.