Influences and a Few General Thoughts on Music

Over the past 60 years I have listened to a lot of the usual DWGs: Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Brahms, and R. Strauss; the mostly German creators of the Top 100 pieces of concert music and the leaders in chamber music composition. I’ve also listened a lot to Sibelius, Rachmaninov, Respighi, Vaughan Williams, Orff, Shostakovich, and Myoshi. Having played viola in many of these masters’ works, I hold them in my fingers as well as my mental ears.

I have a deep love of American chamber and concert music, including that by George W. Chadwick, Randall Thompson, Robert Ward, Howard Hanson, William Grant Still, Alan Hovhaness, and Samuel Barber. I hesitate to list living composers beyond Peter Schickele because there has not been enough time for their quality work to be separated from the dross. I regret that so much of the recent music I hear is exceptionally unmemorable, but maybe that’s just my ears and tastes showing their limitations. Time will tell.

I’ve also enjoyed—and continue to enjoy— the music of Los Kjarcas, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Jethro Tull, Renaissance, The Rasmus, Richard O’Brien, Alan Menken, Ennio Morricone, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, Dennis McCarthy, Jay Chattaway, and Michael Giacchino, and there are several other film and TV composers who have done outstanding scores. Given the condition of underlining actions and emotions rather than continuously being at the forefront of a listener’s attention, much film and TV music impresses me as frequently rising to very high standards. Some of it is truly outstanding symphonic writing.

I divide music into three categories: pieces I gained from and am glad to have heard; pieces I found enjoyable enough and wouldn’t mind hearing again; and pieces I found a waste of my time and whose one hearing was more than enough. From the first I mentally revisit their positive aspects and hope to improve my work. From the the second I hope to learn how to entertain even when I can’t enlighten. From the third I hope to learn what to avoid. With these considerations in mind, all opportunities to hear music are valuable..