Classical music offers what everyone secretly wishes metal would: an unbroken cultural tradition untamed by the modern whore, untouchable by the mediocre tools who seem to thrive in our industrial cities.

Here's a few favorites:

1. Brahms, Johannes - Get your Romanticism on. Flowing, diving, surging passages which storm through tyrannical opposition to reach some of the most Zen states ever put to music. 4 Symph. (2CD)

2. Respighi, Ottorino - Italian music is normally inconsequential. This has an ancient feeling, a sense of weight that can only be borne out in an urge to reconquest the present with the past. Pines, Birds, Fountains of Rome

3. Saint-Saens, Camille - Like DeBussy, but with a much wider range, this modernist Romantic rediscovers all that is worth living in the most warlike and bleak of circumstances. Symph. 3

4. Bruckner, Anton - Writing symphonic music in the spirit of Wagner, Bruckner makes colossal caverns of sound which evolve to a sense of great spiritual contemplation, the first "heaviness" on record.Romantic Symphony

5. Schubert, Franz - A sense of power emerging from darkness, and a clarity coming from looking into the halls of eternity, as translated by the facile hand of a composer who wrote many great pieces before dying young. Symph. 8 & 9

6. Paganini, Niccolo - Perhaps the original Hessian, this long-haired virtuoso wore white face paint, had a rumored deal with the devil, and made short often violent pieces that made people question their lives and their churches. 24 Caprices

Excerpted from one of my blog posts at Metal Blog. For more information, see the original metal/classical fansite, The Dark Legions Archive.

Classical music is great. I'm a huge fan of early classical music, specifically the Baroque and Classical era. I like some of the Romantic composers but for some reason I've always perfered Baroque...

LOL

Only Classical music is Classical. Baroque is Baroque and Romantic is Romantic.
[/douchebaggery]

I prefer Romantic music but the simplicity and catchiness of Baroque era music is fantastic. Think Handel or Monteverdi.

haha yea, it's funny how the generic term for all of it is "Classical Music" and yet there's a whole bunch of eras.

I took a class on Baroque music first semester last year and it ruled. I had a great teacher (world renowned, supposedly. He ruled at the [forte]piano and harpsichord).

Baroque music is basically where all modern music stemmed from.

IMHO nothing can top "Symphonie Fantastique" by Hector Berlioz

I have yet to check out Berlioz. I need to get on that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonie_fantastique

Actually, most classical fans accept the generic use now, but will specificy "the classical period" when they mean that type of music.

Edvard Greig is another good one to check out.
Vivaldi, Handel, Bach.
The problem with classical music (if you call it a problem) is that Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, etc. have the ultimate spotlight when it comes to it. A lot of people who aren't really deep into classical music don't really delve deeper into other composers. There's so many, and so many awesome ones.

Penderecki
Bartok
Ligeti
Xenakis
and OF COURSE P.D.Q. Bach

Bartok is the shit.

Liszt shitting all over y'all.

I heard John Williams pwns every composer that ever existed. Is this true?

GUSTAV HOLST FTW

That's why we share the MP3s...

http://www.corrupt.org/transcendence/forum/index.php?board=1.0

I went from being a metalhead who had a couple classical albums to a classical and metal listener. The two musics are really similar: like metal, classical strings together a series of riffs to tell a story.

My favorite composers are:

* Franz Schubert
* Ottorino Respighi
* Gustav Faure
* Anton Bruckner
* Camille Saint-Saens
* Ludwig van Beethoven
* Robert Schumann

All of these dudes are extremely "metal": stormy, powerful, dark and lawless music.

Some of my transition was inspired by the Talk Classical metal forum and "Classical Music for Metal Fans".

Anyone else listen to classical?

It's hilarious checking out that forum and finding such a contrast - here we find metalheads who all have a huge respect for classical music, who are educated about it and have listened to it, and at that forum are people who are supposedly above everyone else because they're classical music purists, don't understand metal and berate and belittle everyone who has something to say about it. I love it.

I've listened to a lot of Franz Schubert, Mozart (Agnus Dei especially), you can't find music better than that really.

^^ that was me. DYA thinks he owns my PC.

From that forum:
"Metal is the worst genre of pop music. Funk, hip-hop and reggae are the best."

I just called him out:

http://www.talkclassical.com/5763-getting-metal-fans-involved.html

I went and read those two threads, how can you even discuss music with people who dismiss everyone who doesn't play classical or jazz as lacking in musicianship?

It is funny to see classical music geeks trolling against metal heads.

I consider my love of metal to have been born from my love of classical. Dmitri shostakovich, and Bela bartok being my respectful 1&2. Hey, anyone wanna do a trip to the berkshires to Tanglewood to see the BSO?

meeeeeeeeeeeeee

let's do it man... let me look at some dates..

Ok, this is the best one all summer. We should take the day off and go out there early, it's fucking amazing out there. Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich... it's gonna be some seriously fucking amazing stuff. Both of these particular pieces are among my favs too.

August 14 2009, Friday 8:30 PM

Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich

Koussevitzky Music Shed
Lenox, MA

Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
Yefim Bronfman, piano

RACHMANINOFF
Piano Concerto No. 3
SHOSTAKOVICH
Symphony No. 5

fuck it, that whole weekend looks good... you in?

August 15 2009, Saturday 8:30 PM

Beethoven, Liszt and Ravel
Koussevitzky Music Shed
Lenox, MA

André Previn, conductor
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

BEETHOVEN
Symphony No. 4
LISZT
Piano Concerto No. 2
RAVEL
La Valse
August 16 2009, Sunday 2:30 PM

All-Brahms Program
Koussevitzky Music Shed
Lenox, MA

Kurt Masur, conductor
Garrick Ohlsson, piano
Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra

BRAHMS
Piano Concerto No. 2
BRAHMS
Symphony No. 2

Lenox, damn that's out there. Count me in Jimbo, let's leave as early as possible. It's at this place

And it takes an hour shooting down the pike.

oh i've been there many times. It's fucking awesome. There's a cheap motel we can hit up about a 10min walk from the place. They sell full bottles of redwine to drink on the grass, and you can smoke weeds all day and not be bothered.

Edward Elgar has some of the most beautiful Cello concertos.

I recommended his Cello Concerto in E Minor - Op. 85

dudes if you guys are really planning a trip like that inform me, i would love to see that. that sounds like a phenomenal weekend.

consider yourself informed. I'll buy tickets this weekend, call me and we can figure out details.

that trip does sound intriguing.

I was just having this discussion last week with some lady I work with:
classical music is very intense live. seeing all the different instruments performing their parts, the passion, the musicianship. it's an awesome experience

And hearing all the little clicks and clacks really makes a difference too. Not to mention at Tanglewood the overall atmosphere couldn't be any nicer. I think all in all Tanglewood is 2 square miles (including parking) so while not watching performances you can walk and look at some of the most beautiful scenery in NE.

i'm in.

word, i spoke to Jon a couple hours ago and he's all in too. So we'll all take that Friday off (the 14th of August) and we'll drive up early and see the show friday, the rehearsal sat morning, the show saturday, the show sunday afternoon, and then head back to the city.

Me too. Without classical, I never would have understood death metal.



They're pretty irritating about it. A selection:

wow, we agree 100% on something.

It happens. Quantum physics proven right yet again?