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Musical Adventure 1: Bach Cello Suite No. 6, Barber's Dover Beach and Elbow's With Love

I've already been quite bad in not listening last evening to the new music that I promised, however, I have done it this morning, and I am planning on being back on track this evening, so please forgive me.  What happened last night was that I was getting some practical advice on what to listen to from my newly moved in neighbors in the dorm here- the string players with whom we will be performing chamber music.

They've suggested my first new piece- Bach's Cello Suite No. 6, which I've listened to on YouTube this morning, and have posted the link here for you to listen to as well.  My thoughts on this piece are in no particular order:

1. Wow- Rostropovich has such an amazingly rich tone color to his playing.
2. This piece is really beautiful and not boring at all for being a completely solo work (without any sort of accompaniment).
3. It kind of reminds me towards the end of the piece, of certain sections of Beethoven's Third Symphony....in that it evokes a pastoral image in my brain.

The second new piece I've listened to is 'With Love' by the british group Elbow.  There isn't any particular reason that I listened to this other than that it was the first piece that came up on pandora.com when I opened the site.  So, my thoughts of this piece are as follows:

1. I like the continuous almost ostinanto of the repeated notes in the chorus and in the background of each verse.
2. I wasn't expecting the spoken group of people's voices to appear in the chorus, but it's a nice touch.
3. I like the text, and I like their accents that come out in their singing. :)

The third new piece that I've listened to this morning is 'Dover Beach' by Samuel Barber and performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the Juilliard String Quartet, and can be found here on YouTube. My thoughts on this piece are as follows:

1. What an interesting historical context that this song has, and what a moving poem!
2. It's strange to hear Fischer-Dieskau sing in English....
3. This music evokes a lot of really dark subjects when you read the text, and even without reading the lyrics, the music itself is really heavy psychologically and has lots of overlapping textures and dense harmonies.
4. I'm not sure that I like it right off the bat, but I am going to give it a second try and see if it grows on me.


Okay, so that's it for last night's/this morning's new musical adventure. Looking forward to sharing with you another 3 musical snacks tonight at the correct time- 10pm!
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