[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE1FzSC8DBs[/youtube]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-3h9TQ312c[/youtube]
I was on a train from Austria to Germany…
I had the delight of listening to (amongst others) these two death songs.
YouTube is horrible for classical piano, so for the first I chose a lesser version from Glenn Gould for Beethoven’s Funeral March here:
Now! This best version of Totentanz (which means dance of death in Hungarian) was based off a melody thousands of years old. This actually is the best player ever of this song:
I can go on for days about these two songs…
I’ll just leave a very interesting fact about Liszts piano transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies…
The funeral march has a passage where the thumb on the right hand plays in 3/4 time and the rest of the the fingers in ordinary march time. It’s extremely hard to play, and sublimime.
You know what’s ironic?
All the most beautiful songs in music history have been composed about death. The devil.
The best ever Liszt / Beethoven transcription of the funeral march (2nd movement of the seventh symphony) was by an Australian pianist named Leslie Howard… good luck finding that! Even better luck finding the ossai version!!
Point-counterpoint:
And then; how about this:
send this:
The link didn’t work; the title is :
Richard Strauss" Death and Transfiguration. Complex but real. Ec; give it a try.
Thanks for the above Ec. On Liszt ; also an ironic twist :
‘Les Preludes’ a short tone poem , was favored and used by Hitler as his program piece .
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJeegWrkxkY[/youtube]
Better than the Ukranian song. For obvious reasons, I suppose.
Wrong thread.
This song is the very ESSENCE of everything it means to be EUROPEAN…
Here’s one for you, Sculptor.
youtube.com/watch?v=wLAYRJv6nQc
Turn on the subtitles.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TMXA8SIdcM[/youtube]
Swedish is definitely one of the most beautiful sounding languages (strong and “Northern” sounding but very melodic as well).
Sorry, wrong thread.
Won’t happen again.
You betta not, buddy! 
Well that was weird.
An odd subject for the Eurovision. I suppose health insurance must be pretty desperate in Serbia.
But at least there are big moves to improve it and reduce corruption.
Pop music in Europe (outside the UK) is generally weak musically.
With ding dang dong, and lots of dum de dum.
Eurovision is the epitome of a trash fest with precious little worthy music being offered in the name of instant catchyness, and cheap hooks.
I grew up with this from Puppet on a String to Waterloo.
But with so much worthy music with virtuosity and structure I would rather be poked in the eye with a wooden bodkin.
My score for Eurovision NIL POINT.
Here’s what I preferred to listen to when ABBA were playing Waterloo…
youtube.com/watch?v=ZS-k02hf-hI
OR
youtube.com/watch?v=U9l23zncj08
Which is the closest I got to Pop.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1il3RFk5Okw&list=PLsd8ve3PAUKZkltlvEIdJLzTiByhMF_cF[/youtube]
“Waterloo” is a melodic but feminine song. I can’t listen to it without mentally toning down all the femininity contained within. But it’s still a melodic song.
David Bowie might be gay but his music has a masculine vibe. Unfortunately, it’s dull. Very dull. No melody whatseover. Too cold, too repetitive. Yes is better but not by much. In general, I wouldn’t consider this kind of music to be particularly good and I tend to associate it with the degeneration of the West.
I’m not going to list all of the Eurovision songs I can think of that are superior to the above three, I’ll just mention two well known Balkan entries.
Serbia & Montenegro 2004
youtube.com/watch?v=z7OvpjplJ_8
I don’t like this one that much but that violin part at 1:49 is absolutely amazing. That violin part, on its own, is better than anything I can think of Yes and David Bowie.
Bosnia & Herzegovina 2006
youtube.com/watch?v=SXlIN3mcsH4
Greek and Turkish influences at most. Zero African influences.
Does Azerbaijani count as European?
I don’t know but here’s one with a Greek:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPdlMd2NQaM[/youtube]
At around 1:15 they stop fucking around.