My great-nephew, four years old, said to his father, listening to classical music on the car radio:

"Dad, this music doesn't have any people in it!"

Cheers!

Haha that's excellent

LOL!

And now I know why I don't like vocal music that much: People!

Instrumental music is a purer art.
No people.

You would get along very well with my parents. My mom can't stand opera singers, and my dad is an architectural photographer - no fickle moving subjects!

OP: That is simultaneously a little depressing and incredibly profound. No voices = no humans, although I'm sure he'll be learning about instruments soon, but on the other hand, think about it: how alien would it be to someone who had only ever heard music through via the human voice? How bizarre would the oboe sound, or the bassoon, or baroque strings!

+1. Kind of. I think. Maybe. (We're not disagreeing). The human voice brings a warmth of contact that no instrument can bring. Instrumentals can be sublime, but when you add a well tuned voice or choir, Ka-blam!, instant identification with the best of intimate human sound!

Although, here's a story~~Shortly after my son was born (months, in fact) when we lived in Massachusetts, where we listened to Morning Pro Musica with Robert J. Lurtsema every morning without fail, which started every morning, without fail, with bird songs... (our TV reception was always snowier than that in the link, until we got cable... but we listened to Morning Pro Musica on the radio, which was clear enough from Boston...)... on April 1st, Robert played a trick on us, and played whale songs instead of bird songs. I was holding my son in the crook of my arm at the time, and remember the look in my infant son's eyes when he heard the whale songs. His eyes got wide and pensive at the same time, like he had heard that sound, somewhere before. Then, it occurred to me, that that is what life sounds like when you are in the womb.

http://youtu.be/xo2bVbDtiX8

Just sayin'.

--Andy

Does anyone at his house play an instrument with some frequency? I am guessing not, but it would be interesting if that guess was incorrect.

I am guessing that if anyone plays an instrument, it is played at some frequency.

I’m betting the prize of a fictional wagon-load of Spanish doubloons to the first nerd chappie who detects the origin of the OPs topic ...

“Out of the mouths"
(of babes and sucklings ... no googling!)

Matthew 21:16--Jesus, referencing Psalms 8:2 (RSV). Or, did you have something else in mind?

(Had to consult the concordance column to find the Psalms reference... sorry!)

Wonderful!

Actually, I was considering starting a thread about recordings that capture the artist's breathing. I've heard it in both violin and piano concertos. Personally, I find it extremely compelling. It makes the music seem more alive and personal. You can hear their emotions through the rhythm of their breathing. Thoughts?

Depends on the placement of the microphones, the context, and the overall soundscape. Sometimes it can be intimate and compelling, sometimes irritating and distracting. Just my opinion.

Of course I'm biased, but WHOA...

I agree. Nothing beats a good piece of music sung in 4-part harmony, like Bach motets (Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 227 is my favorite - partly because I sang it in school). Or even 40-part harmony like Tallis's Spem in alium.

I was kidding!!

A little bit anyway.

Reminds me of the remark made by Debussy along the lines of "the problem with opera is too much singing".

You are not the only one actually...I have never enjoyed human voices in classical music. Soul and Jazz yes, but no opera for me...

I don't mind it too much if it's in a foreign language.

I never listen to music sung in my own language. The silly words bother me less in English even if I very well understand them...

Ah, that explains why his Pelléas et Mélisande isn't one of my favorite operas . Too much singing.

Faure's and Sibelius's Pelléas et Mélisande and Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande are much better, because they obey Debussy's dictum.....

I like Gilbert & Sullivan.

I didn't like opera when I was 4, although I liked instrumental music... Now I do like opera, although the plots are usually a bit silly. I just like the music.

I'm such a piano bigot that I skip over the orchestral parts when I listen to recordings of piano concertos.

YESSSSS!!

Those are words that are pretty cool.

BTW, a kewpie doll to anyone who can come up with the rhyme to "About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot of news" who doesn't already know it and without looking it up.

Actually I take it back. Anybody who would get it, I wouldn't believe that they didn't already know it or look it up.

...to think that I'd always imagined that G & S is an acquired taste that only the British could acquire (like Marmite)..........

when words are put to music it no longer is left to the imagination of the listener,
I much prefer instrumental music...

Of course piano is my favorite but opera has some of the [ if not the] most beautiful melodies....I just wish the vibrato could be less in most cases.

I wish I could say the piano is the best but I really believe it is second fiddle to the human voice. Pianos can sound and feel similar[ I hate saying that] but the human voice is always individualistic. Well, at least the spirit behind the voice....maybe the same is true for playing the piano.

rada

Marmite?? A small rodent?

Well I've never heard the song or know which opera it's from. But the obvious rhyme is



hypotenuse

So that's what a kewpie doll looks like!

What is the actual line of the song?

[....About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news......]

".....With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse"!

www.marmite.com
I'd put on here a funny picture from Google, but my computer skills aren't up to it....

The next prize will be for someone who can "hum a fugue."

I couldn't find someone humming a fugue, but I did find one voice explaining three in the fashion of a din, afore performing said fugue:

Brilliant!

Maybe PartyPianist can? He/She had the following quote in his/her signature: "You play it & I'll hum it". However, you have to play it first...

I feel quite the opposite about it. I find the sound of breathing to be distracting and completely at odds with the sound of the music.

The first time I heard such a thing was in a recording of a classical guitar piece. I thought the recording engineer must have miscalculated the microphone placement, to allow the breathing to intrude upon the music that way. But perhaps it was deliberate. I hope this does not become a trend.

I'm not a personal fan of hearing an instrumentalist breathe unless their instrument requires using the breath (woodwind, brass, things like that).

Sharp intakes of breath seem to be endemic among some pianists - you can often hear it in recordings by e.g., Pollini (who comes close to grunting at times....) and Brendel (who also hums occasionally, unfortunately, always out of tune). Pollini's grunting is audible in the concert hall too. I've never been to a Brendel recital to know whether his humming is of Gouldian proportions......

The first time I'd ever heard any pianist breathe aloud was actually my last teacher (who also did radio broadcasts, mostly partnering singers and instrumentalists), but he never encouraged me to emulate him.....

+1

Don't mistake the sound of calloused fingertips sliding on guitar strings with that of breathing; there is sometimes an uncanny resemblance between the two.

Regards,

I've heard both Brendel and Pollini live many times and never heard any humming or grunting. Of course, in Carnegie Hall even if one is sitting in the 10th row of the orchestra any extraneous sounds from the pianist might dissipate in the large space. Recordings might catch things that no one can hear in a live concert.

In London's 2500-seat Royal Festival Hall, which is the only venue Pollini plays in London these days (except when he takes part in all-Nono chamber concerts, which don't attract huge audiences), he allows the organisers to put on 'students' platform seats' on the left of the piano, which are sold to young people for about $10. (Normal seat prices range from $15 to $80). His solo concerts are always sold out, so boosting the capacity to some 3000 with the addition of the students' and choir seats no doubt helps to pay for the transportation of his own personal concert grand (a Hamburg Steinway-Fabbrini).

The front students' seats are as close as 10 feet away from him, so the lucky students who get seats on the keyboard side have a pretty close-up view of his hands and feet - and also get all the sound effects . I was never young enough to qualify as a 'student' (even when I was young ), but I usually buy the next cheapest tickets, for the choir seats on the raised tier behind the students' seats, where I get an even better view of his hands from my higher position slightly further away. But not far away enough not to hear his periodic sharp intakes of breath and grunting when he is in full cry......

Thanks. I'll keep this in mind. I thought I knew the difference but perhaps I was mistaken.