As one of your (many?) Portuguese listeners, I can only be happy with your exemplification through Luís de Freitas Branco. I don't range music by nationality, but knowing the places and some of the people who knew him is always helpful to our knowledge. And a word of praise to Naxos for giving us such rare recordings.
Reger's music is bursting with oudles of densely-packed chromatic sludge ( thanks for the fascinating and very useful explanation of what this term means) which can be actually extremely exciting if one is prepared to experience music being stretched to the utmost extremes of toleration. Not to everyone's taste, of course, but he is, at least more than worthy of being listened to an open mind and with unprejudiced ears.
I really love chromaticism, especially the ways in which composers like Richard Strauss, Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Max Reger, Ferruccio Busoni and Alexander Scriabin used it.
I was just about to write that the chromaticism in the organ works of Karg-Elert and Reger is chromatic sludge to me. Tristan and Isolde is also on the limit for me as well as some Strauss. I need some contrasting diatonic section.
Sigfrid Karg-Elert wrote some of the strangest music I've ever heard. It's very full of chromaticism and it's hard to tell what even holds it together when it's playing.
Great talk. It reminds me of what one of Wagner’s critics said about all the “chromatic sludge” in the prelude of Tristan - that it reminded him of “an old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel.”
As someone who loves music but has very little understanding of it's mechanics this lecture was very helpful. I have heard people refer to diatonic music as being "white notey". Now i know what they mean. I have one of those "for Dummies" books concerning Music Theory. The best part about it is an accompanying CD with examples illusratrating what it is referring to. I hope you do more explanatory videos with musical examples;they are very helpful.
People here in the comments are calling Reger the sludge master, but I have to say it’s Joseph Marx. I love his music so much, but it’s basically just “garnish music”. Just a bunch of nice harmonies and colors without much substance. That doesn’t make it any less awesome!
I spent a month studying the Mozart g-minor string quintet, I loved the work so much. It took me a long time to like Mozart, beyond individual works (deceptively simple, he didn't seem to be doing much), but this was definitely one of the pieces that turned me around.
I can picture Schubert really being influenced by Mozart's quintets. I tried to look it up, but most of the emphasis was on Beethoven. Fair enough, but I hear a lot of Mozart in works like the Trout Quintet.
This Artificial Paradises piece sounded really nice, a concert program with a very diatonic piece, then this work, and then a very chromatic work would be perfect.
A great visual illustration of chromatic sludge or just musical sludge would be a look at almost any page of the Schoenberg Pelleas full score. The dense chromatic counterpoint makes even the busiest page of Mahler look like Cimarosa.
Thank you for the lesson on "chromatic sludge" (in itself a marvelous phrase). But, even more so, thank you for an introduction to Freitas Branco's "Artificial Paradises," a delicious morsel of music, both in exposition and when 'sludgified.'
You talk a lot about dead spots in music. I know it would be helpful for me if you did something about exactly what they are and maybe give examples of good and bad performances. Thanks for all you do.
Thanks, Dave, for making me aware of Artificial Paradises. What a masterpiece of rich invention and orchestration!. And the coupling on Naxos with the excellent Second Symphony is ideal.
Great video as always! For a future "Ask Dave" or maybe a "Music Chat", I would be interested in learning about the different schools of violin playing that you have mentioned in other videos previously.
Like others, I’m surprised by the lack of mention of Reger, lol. A few early 20th-century composers who used chromaticism to great expressive effect in their music include Arthur Honegger, Franz Schmidt, Frank Bridge (later works), and Josef Suk (later works).
You've expanded my view of chromatic sludge, as I've related it only to works like Verklaerte Nacht, where the pull of a tonal center can no longer be readily heard. It leaves one unmoored and eventually exhausted in trying to find a "tonal purpose," so to speak. I'd much rather listen to pure atonality, like Erwartung! At least it has orchestral color. I can certainly see how Tristan is sludge-like, but one always feels the pull toward a tonality. The same is true of the Branco, (and am I delighted to learn of that composer!) Mahler's late period adagio movements probably qualify, but again, these always maintain the pull of a tonal center. Great talk!
As a longtime aficionado of both Mahler and the Second Viennese School, I admit to have become a big fan of chromatic sludge. My favorite exemplars of this are the Godowsky 3 Symphonic Metamorphoses based on themes by Johann Strauss. They are basically "Künstlerleben", "Wine, Women and Song" and "Fledermaus" with olive oil poured all over it. Anybody who needs convincing as to why the Habsburg empire was doomed to collapse (and is so aversive to modern music that they can't handle Ravel), this is the perfect proof. I've been intrigued to check out Freitas Branco, of whom I've never heard before. Who knew that there were composers of chromatic sludge in Portugal!
Next time I go to the supermarket I'll look around and bring home a jar or two of chromatic sludge. Provided it doesn't contain palm oil or monosodium glutamate, I think I'll be okay. Many of the composers and works mentioned here are top listening for me. I thrive on Verklarte Nacht and Strauss' Metamorphosen, the latter of which I often enjoy coupled with Mahler's Sixth by Barbirolli.
Very insightful, and well-explained. I'm a "harmony guy", and harmonic language has always been the #1 thing I focus on. Take, for instance, two heavily "sludge-ified" composers, Franz Schmidt and Max Reger (often associated with one another). I love Schmidt's unique use of harmony; every progression, no matter how much it may "stray", seems perfectly logical. You can always sense where the music is headed, even in, eg: the extremely chromatic slow movement of the 3rd symphony. Reger, on the other hand, is so dense and illogical by comparison..especially when he purports to write in a neo-baroque manner...that I just can't take it. Now THAT's "gloopy, icky, slimy, smelly...." etc, chromaticism that perfectly illustrates your point. You might even say that Schmidt and Reger are the Good and BAD cholesterol of post-romantic Austro/Germanic music. LR
I think you forgot to mention that Freitas Branco's "Artificial Paradises" was actually inspired by Thomas De Quincy's "Confessions of an Opium Eater". That's why the "paradise" isn't real, but maybe we are not supposed to mention such things these days{?}
@@DavesClassicalGuide Thanks for your reply. You're probably right. Nevertheless, it was the inspiration for the work, and without that particular piece of inspiration, the music may not, and probably would not have come into being. I may be wrong, but in my mind, De'Quincy's "mood" was what Freitas Branco was conveying - and he did it so well!
I was listening to a Bernstein lecture, the Unanswered Question, I think it was, where I think he used a term similar to 'chromatic sludge'. I think he was finishing up with a history of tonality in Western music.
Wonderful musicology discussion! Will add my comment that most contemporary composition is ALL chromatic/atonal angst. Listen to the winners of any recent composition competition. Like biliary sludge: too much causes a colicky pain that can culminate in nausea and vomiting.
When I hear this phrase, I immediately think of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, the composer of massive (and, to my ear, impossible convoluted) piano music.
Chiming-in again -- that Luis de Freitas Branco piece is incredible. I knew nothing of him, but this seems to be an early work of his. And what an early work it is. All of the analyses I can maybe find (I can't verify that this is what they are in the Google searches) are either on J-Stor or behind another paywall, in French, or in Portuguese (my conversational Brazilian really won't cut it). Can you elaborate on this piece? In 1910, this piece seems both broadly reminiscent of his times and those just before him -- particularly with Wagner (Tristan) and DeBussy (La Mer and others). It also seems right in-step with Mahler (Das Lied von der Erde), maybe even foreseeing Holst and Barber. But I'm more of an aspirational amateur whose pastime has been finding connections where they ought not exist, so this could very well just be in my head.
Hey I liked the chromatic sludge part better than the 'gorgeous' stuff. Mozart's quintet in G minor is a masterpiece. Like much of Mozart, it's a 'love at first hear.' It's in his chamber music I feel that his genius is really given free rein. Would you say that Strauss' 'Don Juan' or ''Also Sprach Zarathustra' to be chromatic sludge? That's sludge I like! What would you say about Rachmanioff, who goes from knockout romantic gorgeous to, I don't know if it's sludge but driving frenetic craziness, sometimes at the same time? Rachmanioff's broad strokes are pretty boring to me. It's that amazing piano that makes me listen to him over and over. Just a reaction.
Thanks David. I don't mind the use of "chromaticism" if the music resolves itself harmonically. One example that comes to mind is that crunching climax in the adagio of Bruckner 9, followed by that dreamy, ethereal passage leading all the way to the end, (one of my favourite passages in all music) Btw, just goes to show how progressive Mozart was. Back in his day, that must have made his audience sit up and take note. David, would you say that Debussy was a chromatic composer?....
Hi Dave, Could you do a video in which you compare the music of J.S. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven? And if you had to choose just one of these three composers to listen to on a desert island, which one would you choose and why?
Thanks for considering. The reason I think it would valuable is that the general concensus is the the greatest composer in the history of western music comes down to one of these three men. What is the case for each one and which one is truly the greatest?
@crunchbunch77 they are all great in their own ways but too different to really put one on tip of the other. At the end of the day, it is going to be a subjective ranking. None will be objectively better than the other.
@@abehall5527 and of course there are many many equally great composers before and after those three... from Guillaume de Machaut to Monteverdi and Carissimi, from Rossini to Bartok and Stavinsky
I think that longer you listen the more you realise that listing people in order of greatness is a waste of time. You like what you like, and liking or disliking some specific composer doesn't confer any special status.
Where's Reger? Master of sludge. Some of the music is great. Other pieces (violin sonatas) sound like a car with 100,00 miles that has never had an oil change.
As one of your (many?) Portuguese listeners, I can only be happy with your exemplification through Luís de Freitas Branco. I don't range music by nationality, but knowing the places and some of the people who knew him is always helpful to our knowledge. And a word of praise to Naxos for giving us such rare recordings.
Reger's music is bursting with oudles of densely-packed chromatic sludge ( thanks for the fascinating and very useful explanation of what this term means) which can be actually extremely exciting if one is prepared to experience music being stretched to the utmost extremes of toleration. Not to everyone's taste, of course, but he is, at least more than worthy of being listened to an open mind and with unprejudiced ears.
I really love chromaticism, especially the ways in which composers like Richard Strauss, Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Max Reger, Ferruccio Busoni and Alexander Scriabin used it.
I was just about to write that the chromaticism in the organ works of Karg-Elert and Reger is chromatic sludge to me. Tristan and Isolde is also on the limit for me as well as some Strauss. I need some contrasting diatonic section.
Sigfrid Karg-Elert wrote some of the strangest music I've ever heard. It's very full of chromaticism and it's hard to tell what even holds it together when it's playing.
Great talk. It reminds me of what one of Wagner’s critics said about all the “chromatic sludge” in the prelude of Tristan - that it reminded him of “an old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel.”
lol. A Dali painting. Or worse...
That was Eduard Hanslick, who Wagner satirized in "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" in his Beckmesser character.
As someone who loves music but has very little understanding of it's mechanics this lecture was very helpful. I have heard people refer to diatonic music as being "white notey". Now i know what they mean. I have one of those "for Dummies" books concerning Music Theory. The best part about it is an accompanying CD with examples illusratrating what it is referring to. I hope you do more explanatory videos with musical examples;they are very helpful.
Mr. Hurwitz will probably say he doesn't care, but the root "chromat-" is actually not Latin, but Greek (χρώματ-). Quod est Caesaris, Caesari reddite!
Actually I do care. Thank you.
People here in the comments are calling Reger the sludge master, but I have to say it’s Joseph Marx. I love his music so much, but it’s basically just “garnish music”. Just a bunch of nice harmonies and colors without much substance. That doesn’t make it any less awesome!
I love Joseph Marx as well, but everyone criticizes his over-indulgent music. I bathe in it.
I spent a month studying the Mozart g-minor string quintet, I loved the work so much. It took me a long time to like Mozart, beyond individual works (deceptively simple, he didn't seem to be doing much), but this was definitely one of the pieces that turned me around.
I can picture Schubert really being influenced by Mozart's quintets. I tried to look it up, but most of the emphasis was on Beethoven. Fair enough, but I hear a lot of Mozart in works like the Trout Quintet.
Or Haydn.
This Artificial Paradises piece sounded really nice, a concert program with a very diatonic piece, then this work, and then a very chromatic work would be perfect.
One classic use of chromaticism is in the opening phrase of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas!"
How about Metallica's Master of Puppets?!
A great visual illustration of chromatic sludge or just musical sludge would be a look at almost any page of the Schoenberg Pelleas full score. The dense chromatic counterpoint makes even the busiest page of Mahler look like Cimarosa.
Reger is the sludge master (love his music though)
Thank you so for much answering the question! Very informative and helpful.
My pleasure!
David, I’ve missed your using musical examples. I know you have to get permission.
Thank you for the Luis de Freitas Branco piece! Found a new composer to listen to... his music is very nice.
A really good way to explain chromaticism - very inventive.
Thank you for the lesson on "chromatic sludge" (in itself a marvelous phrase). But, even more so, thank you for an introduction to Freitas Branco's "Artificial Paradises," a delicious morsel of music, both in exposition and when 'sludgified.'
You talk a lot about dead spots in music. I know it would be helpful for me if you did something about exactly what they are and maybe give examples of good and bad performances. Thanks for all you do.
Thanks, Dave, for making me aware of Artificial Paradises. What a masterpiece of rich invention and orchestration!. And the coupling on Naxos with the excellent Second Symphony is ideal.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for listening.
Great video as always! For a future "Ask Dave" or maybe a "Music Chat", I would be interested in learning about the different schools of violin playing that you have mentioned in other videos previously.
Like others, I’m surprised by the lack of mention of Reger, lol. A few early 20th-century composers who used chromaticism to great expressive effect in their music include Arthur Honegger, Franz Schmidt, Frank Bridge (later works), and Josef Suk (later works).
You've expanded my view of chromatic sludge, as I've related it only to works like Verklaerte Nacht, where the pull of a tonal center can no longer be readily heard. It leaves one unmoored and eventually exhausted in trying to find a "tonal purpose," so to speak. I'd much rather listen to pure atonality, like Erwartung! At least it has orchestral color. I can certainly see how Tristan is sludge-like, but one always feels the pull toward a tonality. The same is true of the Branco, (and am I delighted to learn of that composer!) Mahler's late period adagio movements probably qualify, but again, these always maintain the pull of a tonal center. Great talk!
As a longtime aficionado of both Mahler and the Second Viennese School, I admit to have become a big fan of chromatic sludge. My favorite exemplars of this are the Godowsky 3 Symphonic Metamorphoses based on themes by Johann Strauss. They are basically "Künstlerleben", "Wine, Women and Song" and "Fledermaus" with olive oil poured all over it. Anybody who needs convincing as to why the Habsburg empire was doomed to collapse (and is so aversive to modern music that they can't handle Ravel), this is the perfect proof. I've been intrigued to check out Freitas Branco, of whom I've never heard before. Who knew that there were composers of chromatic sludge in Portugal!
Next time I go to the supermarket I'll look around and bring home a jar or two of chromatic sludge. Provided it doesn't contain palm oil or monosodium glutamate, I think I'll be okay. Many of the composers and works mentioned here are top listening for me. I thrive on Verklarte Nacht and Strauss' Metamorphosen, the latter of which I often enjoy coupled with Mahler's Sixth by Barbirolli.
Sluuuuuurge. Love the mucking of melody. Great for Horror music!
Very insightful, and well-explained. I'm a "harmony guy", and harmonic language has always been the #1 thing I focus on. Take, for instance, two heavily "sludge-ified" composers, Franz Schmidt and Max Reger (often associated with one another). I love Schmidt's unique use of harmony; every progression, no matter how much it may "stray", seems perfectly logical. You can always sense where the music is headed, even in, eg: the extremely chromatic slow movement of the 3rd symphony. Reger, on the other hand, is so dense and illogical by comparison..especially when he purports to write in a neo-baroque manner...that I just can't take it. Now THAT's "gloopy, icky, slimy, smelly...." etc, chromaticism that perfectly illustrates your point. You might even say that Schmidt and Reger are the Good and BAD cholesterol of post-romantic Austro/Germanic music. LR
Love your good cholesterol/bad cholesterol metaphor.😄We all know where German cuisine falls on that scale!
I think you forgot to mention that Freitas Branco's "Artificial Paradises" was actually inspired by Thomas De Quincy's "Confessions of an Opium Eater". That's why the "paradise" isn't real, but maybe we are not supposed to mention such things these days{?}
I don't think it's musically relevant, frankly.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Thanks for your reply. You're probably right. Nevertheless, it was the inspiration for the work, and without that particular piece of inspiration, the music may not, and probably would not have come into being. I may be wrong, but in my mind, De'Quincy's "mood" was what Freitas Branco was conveying - and he did it so well!
I had a bad case of chromatic sludge last month, but the doctor gave me a shot and it went away 🤣
The Satie shot? ...I got one too!
Actually, I found "chromatic sludge" just last month in my toilet. I'll just leave it at that.
I was listening to a Bernstein lecture, the Unanswered Question, I think it was, where I think he used a term similar to 'chromatic sludge'. I think he was finishing up with a history of tonality in Western music.
Chromatic goulash! (Assuming I'm remembering correctly - anyway I think that description's just hilarious.)
Almost always brings a smile to my face
Wonderful musicology discussion! Will add my comment that most contemporary composition is ALL chromatic/atonal angst. Listen to the winners of any recent composition competition. Like biliary sludge: too much causes a colicky pain that can culminate in nausea and vomiting.
Yes... It's sludge... But we do kinda love it right?😅
When I hear this phrase, I immediately think of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, the composer of massive (and, to my ear, impossible convoluted) piano music.
Chiming-in again -- that Luis de Freitas Branco piece is incredible. I knew nothing of him, but this seems to be an early work of his. And what an early work it is. All of the analyses I can maybe find (I can't verify that this is what they are in the Google searches) are either on J-Stor or behind another paywall, in French, or in Portuguese (my conversational Brazilian really won't cut it). Can you elaborate on this piece? In 1910, this piece seems both broadly reminiscent of his times and those just before him -- particularly with Wagner (Tristan) and DeBussy (La Mer and others). It also seems right in-step with Mahler (Das Lied von der Erde), maybe even foreseeing Holst and Barber. But I'm more of an aspirational amateur whose pastime has been finding connections where they ought not exist, so this could very well just be in my head.
Yes, he had an early "avant-garde" phase in which he wrote a few very remarkable tone poems. Vathek is amazing too.
As a southerner, let me compliment you on your pronunciation of "sludge."
Hey I liked the chromatic sludge part better than the 'gorgeous' stuff.
Mozart's quintet in G minor is a masterpiece. Like much of Mozart, it's a 'love at first hear.' It's in his chamber music I feel that his genius is really given free rein.
Would you say that Strauss' 'Don Juan' or ''Also Sprach Zarathustra' to be chromatic sludge? That's sludge I like!
What would you say about Rachmanioff, who goes from knockout romantic gorgeous to, I don't know if it's sludge but driving frenetic craziness, sometimes at the same time? Rachmanioff's broad strokes are pretty boring to me. It's that amazing piano that makes me listen to him over and over.
Just a reaction.
Unstable like sea, full of colors too, inside.
Thanks David. I don't mind the use of "chromaticism" if the music resolves itself harmonically. One example that comes to mind is that crunching climax in the adagio of Bruckner 9, followed by that dreamy, ethereal passage leading all the way to the end, (one of my favourite passages in all music)
Btw, just goes to show how progressive Mozart was. Back in his day, that must have made his audience sit up and take note.
David, would you say that Debussy was a chromatic composer?....
Often he was.
Hindemith's Kammermusik n.7 is sludge when it solidifies.
Hi Dave, Could you do a video in which
you compare the music of J.S. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven? And if you had to choose just one of these three composers to listen to on a desert island, which one would you choose and why?
Sorry, no. I don't really see any point in making the comparison.
Thanks for considering. The reason I think it would valuable is that the general concensus is the the greatest composer in the history of western music comes down to one of these three men. What is the case for each one and which one is truly the greatest?
@crunchbunch77 they are all great in their own ways but too different to really put one on tip of the other. At the end of the day, it is going to be a subjective ranking. None will be objectively better than the other.
@@abehall5527 and of course there are many many equally great composers before and after those three... from Guillaume de Machaut to Monteverdi and Carissimi, from Rossini to Bartok and Stavinsky
I think that longer you listen the more you realise that listing people in order of greatness is a waste of time. You like what you like, and liking or disliking some specific composer doesn't confer any special status.
There's good sludge and there's toxic sludge.
When I listened to Reger's clarinet quintet, I wished I had taken a seasick pill.
Huh, I thought it was a Swedish Stoner Classical Metal band. 🤷🏻♂️
Sludgesque?
No Reger? As sludgy as sludge can be.
Where's Reger? Master of sludge. Some of the music is great. Other pieces (violin sonatas) sound like a car with 100,00 miles that has never had an oil change.
The sludgiest work I know is Reger’s piano concerto.
Yes, that is chromatic quick sand!!!
In jazz, chromatic scales are a cheat when one is lost in their improvised solo effort.