/lit/ - Literature

>>20407406
Classical music, it's becoming a serious addiction.

>>19380854
If you enjoyed Chopin and the French impressionists then you absolutely must listen to Gabriel Fauré; I even prefer him to Chopin and Debussy, I connect more with his lethargic and bittersweet sound. I believe he's quite underrated and underperformed.
>Proust, who knew Fauré, was, as he once wrote to him, ‘intoxicated’ by his music, and drew his inspiration for the descriptions of Vinteuil’s music from it.
>It would be more helpful for the American music-lover to say that Faure is the Brahms of France. This does not mean that he imitates Brahms in any way-but rather that he possesses a genius as great, a style as individual and a technique as perfect as that master. Moreover, he has the same penchant for chamber music and songs in preference to larger combinations, the same absolute clarity in formal texture, and the same unmistakable something which stamps a composition Faurean as it stamps one Brahmsian. One more similarity seems worth while pointing out. This Frenchman's music, in spite of its apparent simplicity, has a certain unget-at-able quality which must be disconcerting to the uninitiated. Was this not also true of Brahms? One must therefore guard against thinking that just because Faure deals only with rational harmonies, he must be enjoyed immediately or not at all. This point cannot be too greatly emphasized. Whatever is true of the difficulty encountered in grasping Schoenberg's later manner is equally true of Faure, though he be at opposite poles of the harmonic globe.
He definitely gets better with repeated listens. His early works are more romantic, but they progressively become more "troubled", sometimes bordering on modernism.
I think there are two recordings that stand out; "13 Nocturnes" and "13 Barcarolles / Theme & Variations" by Germaine Thyssens-Valentin, one of his students. Probably some of the more hidden gems of piano literature.
Here's a few of my favorites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb8bKDVFOzU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y67VNE3GQbE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqwgG47XNag
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt_EOQxwzgo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=554PwgSw790