Originally posted by Rod:
Well, Beethoven's brashness is always refined, whereas Berlioz's certainly isn't, it's just a mess! Apart from this I just think the music I've heard is poor in any case.
Well, Beethoven's brashness is always refined, whereas Berlioz's certainly isn't, it's just a mess! Apart from this I just think the music I've heard is poor in any case.
I think in many ways (even similar to Beethoven in his own time) Berlioz is difficult to listen to because much of his audience do not understand what he was trying to accomplish. Several of his large scale works such as Lelio, the Requiem, Te Deum, and even L'Enfance du Crist are experimental in nature. For fun I like to listen the his Funeral & Resurrection Symphony for Wind Ensemble. Mainly because the ideas and methods are still fresh to me, even though I have had schooling in some of the avant garde works from Ives to Penderecki. But one has to have his own perspective and that says a lot for the enjoyment gotten from the work.
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