h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: An Alpen Symphony - by Richard Strauss - A1022969
Author: Gnomon [Front Page Author] - U151503

An Alpine Symphony - a piece of orchestral music that is easy to understand.

Like it Gnomom. I can't read music, but next time this CD is on at home I shall drag this out and put the two together.

I really enjoyed reading this.
Like its subject, it reveals a lot more than it suggests.

Gnomon, this is a very interesting entry, but I think there are some slight intonation problems - it strikes one or two chords that are not quite in tune

>Despite its title, it is not a symphony in the normal sense of the word.

-- I think this needs amplifying, particularly in view of the fact that you mention Beethoven's so-called Pastoral Symphony as associated with this genre, and I think most people would say that the Pastoral *is* a symphony. Even though it is not in the strict classical form, it is always called a symphony and numbered among his symphonies.

I think this also raises the question of why Strauss called the Alpine a symphony, while he didn't call his earlier tone poems symphonies.

>Tone poems attempt to paint a picture in musical terms, using purely the instruments of the orchestra.

-- Not necessarily the orchestra - think of those wonderful tone poems for piano solo by eg Ravel, Debussy and Scriabin.

>Eine Alpensinfonie is Strauss's last and longest tone poem, but probably the easiest to understand.

-- Young people are usually given Till Eulenspiegel and Don Quixote, even Heldenleben, as being easier to understand. For one thing they are shorter. For another, they depict discrete and very vivid events in musical terms which are easy to relate to those events. I think they are much easier to follow and much more graphic and overtly descriptive, and so easier to get the hang of. As you point out, with Alpensinfonie 'it is almost impossible to follow them exactly unless you have the score and are an expert reader of music', which seems to contradict the notion of ease of understanding, and is not the case with the others I mentioned.

So if you are sticking by this statement, I think you need to amplify it also.

>Program Music

-- Typo alert - this should of course be Programme, passim.

>The technical term for this sort of a work is 'Program Music'. The music is intended to illustrate a story...

-- If you are talking about Program(me) Music as a 'technical term', then this is not the meaning. (Worth mentioning that the term Programm-musik was first used by Liszt.) Programme Music is music which is intended to evoke ideas, emotions or mental pictures, rather than to narrate a story of the beginning-middle-and-end variety. That's why Beethoven's Pastoral is Programme Music, as is Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, and both Mendelssohn's and Beethoven's 'Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage', and Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique - to mention but a few. You'll recall that in Handel's Messiah there's a 'Pastoral Symphony' which is also Programme Music.

I think you have really sort of made this point yourself, in a roundabout way, in your final paragraph.

>But is Eine Alpensinfonie really program music?

-- Yes it is, and in my understanding of the term there would be no need even to ask this question.

Thanks Bels for your comments. I realised it was Alpine rather than Alpen immediately after submitting it, and corrected it, so there was no need for your subject line.

I'll have to consider your comments about Programme Music. Thanks for pointing out my error. I'll read up on it and combine your comments with something of my researches. But not tonight. I'm just back from four days in Prague and need a while to recover.

No sweat.

> there was no need for your subject line

-- I know!

This is totally off-topic, but what is Prague coming to these days? I set off for Prague last summer but was turned away because of the floods. These days I hear it has been invaded by British lager-louts (Plzen-louts?) and stag parties arriving by the Easyjet-load. But maybe Easter is a good time to be there?

Bels

I still haven't got around to updating this, so don't anybody pick this entry for the moment! I'll try and look into it over the weekend.

Bels, Prague is beautiful at Easter. I certainly didn't see any British lager louts, although the place is packed with tourists. They've done a great job of recovering from the floods. I've heard that the metro was out of service from August to January, but it's back in operation now. The only evidence I saw of the floods were:

- plaster had been removed from the wall of some old buidings near the river up to the height of about four feet

- the entire ground floor of the Smetana museum, which is situated on the river (the river flows under it), was being rebuilt, while all the exhibits are packed into the first floor, making it very crowded.

Bels, I have made some changes to the entry, based on your comments. I would very much appreciate it if you would take another look through it and let me know what you think.

Anybody else is of course welcome to comment too!

A fine piece of work. Looks good to me.

If I had a further comment or two, it would be these:

>There are no sung words, although they often make use of explanatory titles.

-- I'm pretty sure there are tone poems, and there is Programme Music, utilising sung words. I can't think of a good example at the moment (it'll probably come to me later), but for safety I suggest you delete the bit about sung words. In that sentence you can also get rid of the 'often', unless you want to go into the business of explanatory titles added later, as in Moonlight and Raindrop, which you probably don't.

>there are no breaks or movements ... Strauss divided the music into 22 separate sections, each with a descriptive title

-- So there *are* movements! I suggest you delete 'or movements'. Absence of breaks is not absence of movements.

Minor points, I know, but you did ask!

Thanks, Bels. I'll try and work those points in today at lunch time. I also want to rework the sentence about arriving at the summit. On listening again to the work last night, I realised that the arrival at the summit is accompanied by dramatic music. It's just impossible to say exactly when they arrive at the summit without a detailed look at the score (or the tracklist on your CD player).

So I haven't managed to get back to Prague since it was behind the Iron Curtain. It was very grim then, with blackmarketeers and armed police/militia everywhere - and the coffee was terrible, though of course the beer was very good. You had to go across into Hungary for a good cup of coffee, though of course Hungarian beer was terrible, so you couldn't win. In Prague I once had to spend ages trying to figure out which of 'Muzy' and 'Zeny' meant Gentlemen and which meant Ladies, for fear of being arrested if I got it wrong.

You'd hardly recognise the place now, then!

I've done those changes now. I didn't get them done at lunch time because my internet connection broke.

So that means it might not get picked till tomorrow. Still, that's life...

Your Guide Entry has just been picked from Peer Review by one of our Scouts, and is now heading off into the Editorial Process, which ends with publication in the Edited Guide. We've therefore moved this Review Conversation out of Peer Review and to the entry itself.

If you'd like to know what happens now, check out the page on 'What Happens after your Entry has been Recommended?' at EditedGuide-Process. We hope this explains everything.

Thanks for contributing to the Edited Guide!

Yay!

Thanks, everybody, for your comments, particularly Bels.

The pleasure's all mine.

Terrific stuff