12th July 2024
Dvořák - Symphony No. 9 in E minor "From the New World"
Symphony, Romantic, Czech, 1893
I didn't lie, this isn't an album.
I've had a mild interest in exploring classical music, mostly symphonies and concertos, because I like things that are big and complicated and epic.
I haven't listened to many symphonies, but this one has historically been my favourite. This is also like the only one I remember ever listening to, probably because I haven't really listened to others fully from start to back (while I've listened to this multiple times). The fact that this is the only symphony to have ever made an impression on me speaks a lot to how much I enjoy it.
If you've never listened to something like this before, I implore you, give this a try. Max volume, full screen, and bang you're in a concert hall. Except unlike a concert you don't have to sit there like 😐 for an entire hour, you can actually vibe along and make weird faces and stuff.
I feel like a lot of the stuff I'm gonna say is stuff that's more general to this type of music instead of specific to this piece, but whatever here are my thoughts.
What really stood out was how detailed and intentional everything felt. Every single moment of the piece, every instrumental part, the articulation, the volume, the instruments used, the tempo, the tune, every chord resolution, every fucking musical idea, literally everything at every moment felt like it was doing something very intentional and you could get something interesting out of it. And with that, it's incredible just how many different moods are created, how many different ways tension is created and released, how much is happening overall, it's like experiencing a story, but pure music. Outside of someone of the slower parts and some of the more repetitive parts this shit had me enraptured.
Another thing that stood out was how this entire thing is literally one really long song. Like yeah some of the albums I've listened to have continuity, but very rarely is that continuity musically. But here, ideas from earlier movements will pop up in later movements in interesting ways. Not only that, but movements exploring their own ideas in different ways is a massive part of each movement. I'm not sure if I talked about this before but I think a big part of the music listening experience actually comes from when you already know the music and so can really put your all into listening to it, but this symphony utilises this aspect of music to not to just enhance your experience on the second/third listen, but to play with your experience during the piece itself by playing with ideas differently. It's pretty cool.
Finishing this and listening to the applause at the end really made me feel like I'd watched an entire movie at a theatre, that's the kinda experience that listening to this symphony gives.
Because I always talk about my favourite and least favourite songs and stuff, these are the movements ordered from most to least favourite for me: 1, 4, 2, 3.
Also this specific performance of this symphony is my favourite performance, but it's not like I've really gone out of my way to listen to other performances. I think I just listened to this one first, and it's become the familiar, go to performance for me.
I think going forward this is gonna be my point of comparison to how I view longform classical music, at least until I get more used to this type of music.
10/10
Apparently writing this took 45 minutes. And because this is on the shorter side of the stuff I wrote, I feel like it's pretty fair to say it's a commitment of around 2 hours to fully listen to and album and post my thoughts on it here. Important info for when I actually get busy.
Dvořák - Symphony No. 9 in E minor "From the New World"
Symphony, Romantic, Czech, 1893
I didn't lie, this isn't an album.
I've had a mild interest in exploring classical music, mostly symphonies and concertos, because I like things that are big and complicated and epic.
I haven't listened to many symphonies, but this one has historically been my favourite. This is also like the only one I remember ever listening to, probably because I haven't really listened to others fully from start to back (while I've listened to this multiple times). The fact that this is the only symphony to have ever made an impression on me speaks a lot to how much I enjoy it.
If you've never listened to something like this before, I implore you, give this a try. Max volume, full screen, and bang you're in a concert hall. Except unlike a concert you don't have to sit there like 😐 for an entire hour, you can actually vibe along and make weird faces and stuff.
I feel like a lot of the stuff I'm gonna say is stuff that's more general to this type of music instead of specific to this piece, but whatever here are my thoughts.
What really stood out was how detailed and intentional everything felt. Every single moment of the piece, every instrumental part, the articulation, the volume, the instruments used, the tempo, the tune, every chord resolution, every fucking musical idea, literally everything at every moment felt like it was doing something very intentional and you could get something interesting out of it. And with that, it's incredible just how many different moods are created, how many different ways tension is created and released, how much is happening overall, it's like experiencing a story, but pure music. Outside of someone of the slower parts and some of the more repetitive parts this shit had me enraptured.
Another thing that stood out was how this entire thing is literally one really long song. Like yeah some of the albums I've listened to have continuity, but very rarely is that continuity musically. But here, ideas from earlier movements will pop up in later movements in interesting ways. Not only that, but movements exploring their own ideas in different ways is a massive part of each movement. I'm not sure if I talked about this before but I think a big part of the music listening experience actually comes from when you already know the music and so can really put your all into listening to it, but this symphony utilises this aspect of music to not to just enhance your experience on the second/third listen, but to play with your experience during the piece itself by playing with ideas differently. It's pretty cool.
Finishing this and listening to the applause at the end really made me feel like I'd watched an entire movie at a theatre, that's the kinda experience that listening to this symphony gives.
Because I always talk about my favourite and least favourite songs and stuff, these are the movements ordered from most to least favourite for me: 1, 4, 2, 3.
Also this specific performance of this symphony is my favourite performance, but it's not like I've really gone out of my way to listen to other performances. I think I just listened to this one first, and it's become the familiar, go to performance for me.
I think going forward this is gonna be my point of comparison to how I view longform classical music, at least until I get more used to this type of music.
10/10
Apparently writing this took 45 minutes. And because this is on the shorter side of the stuff I wrote, I feel like it's pretty fair to say it's a commitment of around 2 hours to fully listen to and album and post my thoughts on it here. Important info for when I actually get busy.
