The Italian easy-listening composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi has been signed by the Hollywood talent agency, CAA, Billboard reports.
Einaudi is the first classical composer this century to achieve top 15 album sales.
He records exclusively for Decca.
We hear that Stephen Rose, former head of…
The steady departure of cherished professors at the…
There have been some irreparable losses. Germany mourned…
The prolific international conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, diagnosed…
Session expired
Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page.
A student of Berio.
His early works signalled something quite promising ( you can hear some of them on YouTube) but sadly he sold-out. Insipid beyond belief.
What is insipid? The fact that he didn’t continue on in a compositional trajectory of esoteric, quasi-serial, 20th century music that is only accessible to other composers, or people who ready the program notes carefully??
We have enough of those composers doing that now. What we don’t have enough of are people exactly like Einaudi – artists with a serious, classical background, using their talents to cross over and inspire others, and to ignite the popular music world with something more than 4 chords and appalling lyrics.
Not particularly…..I don’t think innovation is necessarily the watchword here, so I’ve not articulated my thoughts very well.
I would say, that there’s music which on the surface isn’t wildly different from Einaudi which (for me) comes from somewhere deeper. Even as accompaniment to choreography I found Einaudi hard to tolerate.
“…to ignite the popular music world with something more than 4 chords and appalling lyrics”… How are there more than 4 chords in Einaudi’s soup? Maybe a business genius, but a cultural zero.
So do tell us what constitutes a “cultural plus?”
“do tell us what constitutes a “cultural plus?” Hard to think you can’t imagine an answer to this question, since opening any music dictionary would provide you with hundreds of names of great musicians whose output makes any listening of Einaudi’s music a total loss of time.
So lets have some names who come into the category of “cultural plus”………….I await your response with baited breath for the pleasure of being educated by such an illustrious and knowledgeable musical encyclopaedia !
…what can I say? heard of these people, for example? (This list, or a different one…)
https://www.discogs.com/fr/lists/The-50-Greatest-Composers/1571
Extreme simplicity, and using only four chords is not a problem. Ideally, it would be nice if it was allied with a modicum of imagination. Even within an easy-listening/film music context there are composers who I are much more elevated than Einaudi.
Also banal beyond all human comprehension.
Absolutely, and I’d never bracket him together with the likes of Glass and Nyman,both of whom are considerably more innovative.
Do give a listen to one of the greatest instrumentalists in the world, David Childs, playing one of Einaudis compositions. It would seem the Brass Band world doesn’t have the snotty nosed arrogance of those who pronounce on behalf of the classical fraternity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAm1UgMh6A8
Thanks for the YouTube link .
However, I hesitated at the point where David Childs made an extraordinary distinction between contemporary music which audiences will enjoy ( Karl Jenkins, Einaudi etc) and music which will never see the light of day. How is he able to make patronising assumptions about what audiences enjoy? A far greater pronouncement than anything I’ve said here!
And you can always tell the pompous middle classes as they insist of using the word “absolutely” when it should simply be “yes!”
What does being middle class has to do with knowledge of music and taste? By the way, which class do you consider to belong to – just asking?
Mistaken on that count as it happens.
You assert that David Childs makes patronising assumptions about what audiences enjoy, I would venture to suggest that as a professional musician of world standing, who performs all over the world to audiences, I would have thought that he was simply reflecting what brings in the audiences and what they enjoy. Lets be honest, if you saw Harrison Birtwistle or Xenakis as featured composers on a programme you would have to go out and drag people in at gunpoint. But I suppose you can sit in your little ivory tower and make pronouncements about one of the greatest musicians in the world……….do tell us what your audiences have responded to as I am assuming you are a professional musician.
Einaudi and Jenkins will have broader mass appeal than Xenakis or Birtwistle for sure. I’d hazard a guess that they have more mass appeal than a great deal of Beethoven and Brahms as well.
I’m a constituent of an audience and I don’t want to be spoken about on his behalf.
In answer to your question about what audiences respond to, this guys’s YouTube channel specialises in the more difficult end of New Music and has a huge audience. Please have a look.
They can’t all be specialists, and they’re not all of an ivory tower persuasion?! Me neither, for that matter.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IFxVmaYzz-M
Classical composer????Ahem…..
How to tell if someone hates classical music:
A) Oh, do you like classical music?
B) Oh yes.
A) What is your favourite?
B) Well, um, Carmina Burana, Pachelbel Cannon and Einaudi.
Any more?…