Great video Daniel, probably the best I've seen on Bach and the Golden Mean. Also, Mike Linton rules!

Great video! Loved the Mahler / Adams crossover!

you are great

Several factual errors in the presentation.

How the composer managed to do that, I do not know. But his music belongs to the same high and overwhelming category of compositions to which the complete oeuvres of Josquin, Monteverdi, Bach, Rameau, Mozart up to and including Ravel and Messiaen belong: Parnassos repertoire, sublime playing and singing work for and by the Muses. Gloria tibi Iohannus Adamus!

_Harmonielehre_ is roundly acclaimed to be a masterpiece, but it's too bad that Adams later went off the rails with his awful _Scheherazade.2_ and _Violin Concerto,_ both of which sound more like Boulez (only noisier) than Mahler.

The Indian model might have the most mathematically perfect face, but it's definitely not the most beautiful. There is nothing special about her face, and perhaps that's because perfection can be boring. The most beautiful faces tend to have at least one feature that is striking because it enhances the face despite not conforming to conventional beauty standards. For example, things like moles, wrinkles, exceptionally large eyes, or a very large, square jaw can easily make a face unattractive, but they can also make a face strikingly beautiful - on the right person.

Informative video. Although my tastes are almost completely atonal, this provides some good perspective. I enjoy: Elliott Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Penderecki, Kaija Saariaho, Berio, Beat Furrer, Schwantner, Joan Tower, and others. In other words, the "thorny" sounding stuff. I don't listen to much SVS music any more.

Really great podcast. The BFI has released 1963 film called Bluebeard’s Castle by Michael Powell on Blu-ray. Have you seen it. Thank you.

As fascinating as this is I do wonder if you aremetephoricly just slapping a spiral on music in the way you say people do to art

'nice work. Thanks.

Great video, it was really helpful for getting a. bit closer to this magnificent piece by Adams and trying to understand what it meant, thank you

The analysis, the historic background... everything is extraordinarily interesting, many thanks! Just came back from the 1st audition of "Harmonielehre" at the Teatro Colón, played by the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra under the outstanding, amazing young director Pablo Druker (the rest of the program featured Unsuk Chin´s "Frontispiece" and Thomas Adès´s "Concentric Paths", violin solo Alejandro Aldana). However... please dear Daniel, watch out for the pronunciation of "Harmonielehre", it should sound "harmoníiiileeere", accent on the long "i", the "e" is also long and should sound like "e" in "met" with a small dose of "i", a very German "e" !!! (best with an available German coach 😂)

Gram to codziennie w domu .

The quickest 1-D search algorithm uses the golden mean...

This thumbnail is so cringe dude

subbers

Thank you for the intriguing analysis! It inspires me as a composer. You prefaced the video by saying “It’s a pretty bold claim to call a piece of music absolutely perfect”, and I think it IS a bold claim when you don’t define what you mean by “absolutely perfect” and acknowledge that there are other possible definitions. In the conclusion you implicitly defined it by saying that there isn’t really anything you could add or remove to improve the piece or without it falling apart, and I think that’s a totally valid definition of “perfect”-but not the only one! For example, while I like the piece at hand, I enjoy others significantly more because I find them more beautiful and interesting to listen to. Just something to think about. It does not really take away from the overall quality of the analysis. (:

I love the ornaments you did in the last bar. I copy them for myself

Great discussion, thank you. Personally I love this composition. To my ear it’s the best thing Adams has done

You yourself are my golden mean. What fascinates me the more is that most of the explanation goes over my head but admire your savvy approach of all this. Somehow this makes me have the same goosebumps l have when l listen to PACHELBEL’s canon and some Gregorian chants sung in ancient abbeys. Wow !!! I’m blown away. My hat off to you !!!

Very nice presentation. I also downloaded and read your professor’s paper. Excellent! I created a similar paper in the early 1980s regarding Bach’s Gigue from Partita No. 2 in d minor, from the Partitas and Sonatas for Solo Violin. One listen, and you will hear it. I recommend the recordings of those works by Henryk Szeryng, who seemed to understand the concept of Concinnity, bringing out the golden mean points in his performance. It turns out that major major 7ths aren’t as rare as you might think in Bach - appearing quite often in his preludes and allemandes, and other such works - but they are quite often associated with something close to a Golden Mean marker. I say “close to” rather than “they are” because mathematically they aren’t exact. And are we measuring bar lines? Attacks? Releases? Somewhere in a sustained note? Does it work when a section repeats? Or maybe only when it repeats? It may be imprecise, but the work is strengthened by the presence of these markers nonetheless. I was particularly impressed with Mike Linton’s discussion of how the Golden Mean is often overlaid upon artworks in not-very-convincing ways. Wishful thinking. But it’s an odd proportion, and in the real world we deal with whole numbers, so sometimes the work can only suggest the Golden Mean, not precisely outline it. Sometimes the subject has to smile before the golden mean is achieved. (A joke based on Linton’s discussion of the GM in faces) It was altogether a very enjoyable discussion.

The absolute best version is the one by Michael Powell. My 2c. Like some magnificent bad dream....

Awesome 👍

The other day I learned Bluebeard is not a pirate. I knew he was a fairytale wife-murderer with a door that should never be opened; I just thought he was also a pirate. XD

I enjoyed that, cheers. Would love to see an analysis of John Dowland's 'Frog Galliard'

Bach's prelude in C = western harmony in a nutshell.

Nice video

What the hell is a sharp 7?

Monteverdi began the Baroque era in music. An example of his innovations would be a comparison between classic Renaissance choral music (such as from Palestrina or Josquin des Prez) and Monteverdi’s Magnificat. The Second Practice became the roots of the Baroque. Opera also drove Baroque musical innovations. Monteverdi was the first great opera composer. Listen to Adriane’s Lament (solo and madrigal versions). Besides the dissonances, Monteverdi has a very different goal from the perfect calm of the Renaissance choral composers. Monteverdi’s music brings forth emotions of ultimate agony and despair. Monteverdi set the stage for the next 150 years of classical music.

Harmonielehre is a nice word, please learn how to pronounce it!

To my ear what makes this piece perfect is the economy of means. No other piece of music conveys so much so simply. Perhaps Bach's G Maj. Prelude to his Cello Suite #1 approaches this piece in perfection. I would love to see your analysis of this piece. Both pieces touch the core of my being deeply and profoundly. <3

Wow!!! Thank you for sharing this!!'

Really enjoyed this as an adult beginner learning this piece. Great video!

I've been listening to this particular piece since I heard my pianist father play it while I was a small child. It sounds just as good and affects me the same now that I'm 97!

That's a big chord that Mahler used. I found it difficult to understand the harmonic 'justifications' just from listening to your description so I wrote it out. I think it's something like the following: C#7 (M7, nat.9, b9, #11, b13). Thanks for this really interesting video on a great piece! So much has been said about serial, atonal and 'post-tonal' music that it's refreshing to hear about a 20th century tonal piece for a change.

Surprised George Szell and Cleveland wasn’t mentioned. His complete B symphonies are always rated high. Same with Gunther Wand. To me the weight of this symphony is the 3rd and 4th movements, which are thematically connected , though the opening 1st movement motif permeates the entire symphony. To me the first movement is more of an introduction, the meat being the final movement.

Wow! This does enhance my understanding--and appreciation of Bach's music. So much of this is new to me. I wish I had more time to dig deeper! Thank you, thank you for this presentation!

lol, what do you think of this guy? kzbin.info/www/bejne/nWO8YYVndptrnqs&ab_channel=tonebasePiano

Merci good commentary. I might be one of those disillusioned with modern music since I don’t like it and will never make the effort to try. I had a season pass to the St Paul Symphony in the nose bleed section during my college days. They would play one or two modern pieces followed by a classic. They did it that way on purpose so that people wouldn’t leave when the music stopped and the cats started howling. I don’t know if they played one or two modern pieces since I caught up on my sleep from working as a night time security guard. I know that nobody complained of my snoring.

I wish you would have reviewed Claudio Abbado. I just listened to him discuss Beethoven and have listened to the 7th so far. I don't feel bad for Bernstein. He was the only music teacher that didn't shame me and he instilled a love of classical music even though I joked that I was born with two left ears. But Lenny put out a video toking with Max Schell and he put down Beethoven as mediocre. That was maybe at the time where he hadn't been laid in a while, but I was shocked. And there was another conductor that put out a video absolutely blasting Lenny for those words. So, yeah, Lenny doesn't deserve any respect on the list.

Considering Simon Rattle is my favorite living conductor, I was happy to hear him nail it, and I see you agreed. My biggest question is how much to blame the orchestral sloppiness on the conductor. In any given performance, it could be a result of unclear conducting, or it could just be an unfamiliar orchestra vs. an orchestra used to working with the conductor.

The irony being that the key feature of Bach’s music is Change which is the very anti-thesis of Perfect. It certainly aims for perfection.

Great

Very interesting analysis. There is more to Bach’s tuning than the cryptic curlicues in on the title page. If you further analyze Prelude I in C you will find that EVERY note of the 12 tone scale from C to C is used in the piece. I have read that it has been speculated that this first “perfect” piece was also Bach’s “tuning” piece to see if the harpsichord was properly tuned.

La famosa teoría de la perfectibilidad de Bach. Un impostor de cabo a rabo. Una figura absolutamente menor en su época llevada a la categoría de mito por sobre encima de varios compositores contemporáneo muy superiores a él , pero olvidados. La pieza que muestran en primer término es de Anna, su segunda esposa, algo absolutamente comprobado por la historiografia y la grafología. Qué patético resulta oír como los sordos elevan al séptimo cielo su música. Es una experiencia harto irritante soportarla.

Yes, the first Prelude is perfect in its way. But there are all kinds of perfection. I would say that Josquin's _Ave Maria_ is equally, but differently, perfect. _Suum cuique._ Cheers from overcast Vienna, Scott

I fell in love with this prelude as a little child, when I first heard Nana Mouskouri sing the Gounod version of Ave Maria: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mZy0dGqVrtx5mJY

Well done, interesting video!

Thank you, this was very informative on several levels.