So I remembered a quote I used to find very comforting when I’d stress over wrong notes on piano, it went something like “I played so many wrong notes tonight, I think I could make a new piece with them” I could’ve sworn Rubinstein was the one who said it, but I’ve literally been searching for days and I can’t even find any resemblance of the quote even existing! Not sure if I’m losing my mind for what

Good morning everyone, happy Wednesday, and welcome to another selection for our sub's weekly listening club. Each week, we'll listen to a piece recommended by the community, discuss it, learn about it, and hopefully introduce us to music we wouldn't hear otherwise :)

Last week, we listened to Dutilleux’s Metaboles. You can go back to listen, read up, and discuss the work if you want to.

Our next Piece of the Week is Florence Price’s Symphony no.1 in e minor (1932)

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Some listening notes from Rae Linda Brown:

Nationalism was the backdrop from which African-American composers in the 1920s and early 1930s adapted old artistic forms into self-consciously racial idioms. The affirmation of the values of the black cultural heritage had a decisive impact on Still, Price, and Dawson, who had as their primary goal the incorporation of Negro folk idioms, that is, spirituals, blues, and characteristic dance music in symphonic forms. In the orchestral music of these composers, the African-American nationalist elements are integral to the style. The deceptively simple musical structure of their orchestral music is inherently bound to the folk tradition in which they are rooted.

Florence Beatrice Smith Price was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on April 9,1887. After receiving her early music training from her mother, she attended the New England Conservatory of Music, graduating in 1906 after three years of study, with a Soloist’s diploma in organ and a Teacher’s diploma in piano. There she studied composition with Wallace Goodrich and Frederick Converse and she studied privately with the eminent composer George W. Chadwick, the Director of the Conservatory.

After completing her degree, Price returned south to teach music at the Cotton Plant-Arkadelphia Academy in Cotton Plant, Arkansas (1906); Shorter College in North Little Rock, Arkansas (1907-1910); and Clark University in Atlanta (1910-1912). In 1927, now married and with two children, Florence Price and her family moved to Chicago to escape the racial tension in the south which, by the late 1920s, had become intolerable. Here Price established herself as a concert pianist, organist, teacher and composer.

Price’s Symphony in E minor was written in 1931. In a letter to a friend she wrote, “I found it possible to snatch a few precious days in the month of January in which to write undisturbed. But, oh dear me, when shall I ever be so fortunate again as to break a foot!” The Symphony won the Rodman Wanamaker Prize in 1932, a national competition which brought her music to the attention of Frederick Stock, who conducted the Chicago Symphony in the world premiere performance of the work in June 15, 1933 at the Auditorium Theater. The Symphony won critical acclaim and marked the first symphony by an African-American woman composer to be played by a major American orchestra.

Price based the first movement of her Symphony on two freely composed melodies reminiscent of the African-American spiritual. The influence of Dvorák in the second theme is most evident. The second movement is based on a hymn-like melody and texture no doubt inspired by Price’s interest in church music. This such melody is played by a ten-part brass choir. The jovial third movement, entitled “Juba Dance,” is based on characteristic African-American ante-bellum dance rhythms. For Price, the rhythmic element in African-American music was of utmost importance. Referring to her Third Symphony (1940) which uses the Juba as the basis for a movement, she wrote “it seems to me to be no more impossible to conceive of Negroid music devoid of the spiritualistic theme on the one hand than strongly syncopated rhythms of the juba on the other.” The Symphony closes with a tour de force presto movement based on an ascending and descending scale figure.

Ways to Listen

• Leslie B. Dunner and the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble: YouTube Score Video, Spotify

• James Villani and the Manassas Symphony Orchestra: YouTube

• Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra: Spotify

• John Jeter and the Fort Smith Symphony Orchestra: Spotify

• Roderick Cox and the Chineke! Orchestra: Spotify

Discussion Prompts

• What are your favorite parts or moments in this work? What do you like about it, or what stood out to you?

• Do you have a favorite recording you would recommend for us? Please share a link in the comments!

• Have you ever performed this before? If so, when and where? What instrument do you play? And what insights do you have from learning it?

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What should our club listen to next? Use the link below to find the submission form and let us know what piece of music we should feature in an upcoming week. Note: for variety's sake, please avoid choosing music by a composer who has already been featured, otherwise your choice will be given the lowest priority in the schedule

PotW Archive & Submission Link

i've played violin since i started elementary school, and have always had knowledge towards it. however, i never really felt the need or desire to know more about it. rather, that wasn't until about a month ago, when i went to a chamber music workshop, and began to develop a stronger interest in classical music. this probably happened from constantly listening to the pieces to prepare for the weekly performances... but never mind that.

i think it's about time to finally get invested in something i've done for so long. how would you recommend learning more about classical music? also, what else should i listen to? i've really enjoyed mendelssohn's string quartets, and i really like chamber music in general.

thank you for your help.

My favourite is concerto, and I'm not quite sure why.

For me, it's Schubert's D.894 Piano Sonata and the D.887 String Quartet. Both were written in 1826 and are in the same key, but they couldn't be more different in character. The D.894 is the epitome of serenity and intimacy, while the D.887 is a tortured and dramatic masterpiece. Anyone new to these works would find it hard to believe they were composed by the same person.

What about yours?

I hate asking things like this, but it's been bugging me for quite a while. I know that Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony performed Mahler's Resurrection Symphony back in late 2022 and I always was dying to hear this performance with my own ears. I am aware that there are two video performances available of Salonen with other orchestras, but I feel like I am really missing something with the SFS performance.

Does anyone know if SFS Media is planning on ever releasing it IF it was recorded? I really just want to put this question to rest.

Hi all,

I have been searching for this video for years. I recall this young conductor so passionate at the edge of tears on this piece which is one of my favorites. I had it and just can't find it anymore. He was early thirties I reckon and it was such a beautiful rendition. If anyone has a clue I would be most thankful.

today I was talking to my Portuguese teacher about my desire to go to music college. So she said I should start reading more because there is a connection between music and (classical) literature, and it was important because at the beginning of the course, according to her, we analyzed songs more than composing them. is this right?

I need to write something for a choir a cappella, but it needs to be modern. Not too modern put something like post-romantism or sligthly modern. If you have reccomendations for listening before writing, maybe even some of your local composers, it would help me a lot. Thank you!

I am planning to apply on a composition contest. The proposition is to write a piece for a wind orchestra. Do you have any reccomendations for listening so I can kind of feel the vibe before starting composing? It would be great if the examples are from a Post-Romantic period or even modern music (but not too modern please). Thank you!

I know there's plenty of softwares for that, that can play entire symphonies from new compositions, that you can compose with, practice, etc.

But I'm thinking of something for the wide public, like Shazam, only that it breaks down which instruments are being played.

I know, I know there's plenty of room for error and confusion (like a viola or violin) and the fact that many instruments are modified, etc. Also, niche folkloric instruments. Ok, but on a more basic level, is there any cheap or free software for that purpose alone?

These are always classified in the same category to me, I'm not sure why, does anyone else feel this way? If so what other pieces fit into this category? It seems they make me feel almost the same way but they are all different but yet similar, it's hard to put in words. Are they structurally similar besides being lyrical pieces?

I am looking for a lot of requiems, like really a lot, because I wish to write one myself and I would like to listen to as many of them as I can. You can recommend your local/national composers as well, literally anything. That would help me even more since I already know about requiems of well-known composers. Thank you!!
P.S. My favorite for now is Faure's requiem :)

So I was at an organ concert in Turku yesterday, and the organist was Winfried Bönig from Cologne Cathedral.

One of the pieces in the program caught my attention: "Anonymous (Vienna, 18th century) – Vorspiel zur Fuge e-Moll von Johann Sebastian Bach". Naturally, I knew from personal experience how hard it would be to find information on such an obscure piece, and it was. After some digging, I found that Bönig (the same organist) had performed this piece several times in 2020, except it was called Einleitung instead of Vorspiel, and it was attributed to Mozart. However I couldn't find anything about in the Köchel catalogue, not even in the Anhang section.

Other than a sporadic mention on a German pipe organ forum from 2015, every search result about this piece points to Winfried Bönig. My best guess is that Bönig himself has various depths of research on this piece, so I have emailed him, but he hasn't replied yet.

Note: The "Fuge e-Moll" is certainly Bach's BWV 548 (Wedge), but this mystery piece is NOT Bach's own prelude to this fugue!

I would love for people to constructively convince me otherwise. I’ve been immersing myself in listening to Sibelius 5th symphony lately and it just doesn’t seem very great.

I love the 2nd (edit: and the violin concerto) and have long felt I ‘should’ appreciate the 5th. The 2nd seems so much more cohesive and rich. The first movement of the 5th starts with a gesture from the horns with an ascending fourth which never seems to get developed or expanded and is occasionally randomly inserted here and there as time goes on. Then there’s a bunch of basically noodling around with seconds. There’s a bassoon solo which seems like it’s supposed to be somehow cataclysmic but is more noodling around with seconds, and tuneless/ formless/ boring.

As the movement continues there just seem to be more random brief gestures that don’t seem to relate to anything else therein, and it ends with arpeggios which seem to come out of nowhere and not relate to anything that came before.

The andante seems more cohesive than the first movement but again its main “theme” seems more like a brief gesture and there isn’t any other cohesive material to flesh it out or expand it. I feel similarly about the allegretto and the last movement.

I do appreciate Sibelius’ use of tuneless looping textures as rather forward-looking towards more recent techno/ electronica. I also enjoy hearing resonances with the music of Nielsen and Mahler (I appreciate all of their symphonies and do not feel this way about any of those).

Your thoughts? What’s your favorite Sibelius symphony?

So, as may some of you know, the Korean group BLACKPINK made a song called shut down, which sampled LA Campanella by Paganini.

Unfortunately, the majority of their fans can't shut their mouths and always have to bring the song under videos of the piece.

I was unfortunate enough to witness it with my eye the other week. I was at a concert and some girls literally yelled "BLACKPINK IN YOUR AREA" at the violinist. Disgrace.

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hi everyone! im writing this right before i sleep, its way past my bedtime and i cant even see the keyboard properly so im sorry if there are any typos.

im a 21 year old uni student who's really burnt out. i struggle with anxiety and am a perfectionist. its been weeks since ive felt excitement with anything besides watching youtube videos. im trying all that i can to get better, and then suddently i remembered how much i used to like classical music when i was younger. i even had violin classes for four years bc it was a dream of mine to play, but i quit when i moved due to uni and bc i couldnt stand the idea of not playing everything perfectly, even if i was a beginner. ive been listening to "high stimulation" music nonstop and even if i still enjoy it, i feel kind of overwhelmed by it. i feel like maybe listening to classical music can help me in unwinding some bad thoughts and seeing the beauty of effort (bc the composers take a lot of effort to do their pieces and the instrument players do too).

in that sense, id like some recommendations because its been ages and i dont recall half of the composers, pieces and/or concertos i used to know. is there a playlist that compiles all the songs you like? what are the aspects of the pieces i should pay attention to? all types of songs and composers are welcome, specially the pieces that you find more exciting, thrilling or interesting. i remember i used to like pretty much all mendelssohn did, tchaikovsky's nutcracker and dvorak's symphony n. 9, if it can be of any help in your recs.

ty for the attention! :)

tldr: i wanted some song recommendations that you guys find exciting or interesting and what aspects of them i should pat attentio to, so that they can maybe help me find some sense in life again. i used to like tchaikovsky, mendehlsson and dvorak when i was younger, so it might help in what you'll think to recommend.

I will be visiting Boston in October and I've been obsessing over Mahler 8 lately. The tickets go on sale soon so I plan to buy great seats but I don't know where would be best? I know it has great acoustics anywhere but I want to get the best of the best and hear even the tiniest of details.

I've heard balconies offer better sound, but the center balcony seats seem very far away from the stage. Can anyone who's been there offer any insight? Very excited regardless, but I would love to get some feedback. Thanks