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Posted: |
Aug 25, 2014 - 11:46 PM
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By: |
Regie
(Member)
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I watched this 2008 concert during lunch today and tried to look at it objectively. It's not my kind of music.
It struck me that Rieu has tapped into something interesting here with his kitsch extravaganzas of sound and light. He's firstly representing an essentially white-bread cultural version of what it means, or once meant, to be European - which contrasts with the rapidly changing nature of Europe courtesy of multiculturalism. I saw no non-white people in his vast audience.
Secondly, the music is a return to the past for many of these audiences of Rieu; a resplendent golden era when European culture was in the ascendent and its cultural significance linked to the glorious days of Empire and Imperial cities like Vienna. The music of a by-gone hegemony. And music now for the masses, as opposed to the affluent music-lovers of the past.
Lastly, the collective singing, rocking, dancing and embracing to the music is a kind of 'comfort' in an increasingly alienating world. Rieu went to great pains to talk about the importance of music as a curative; a harbour in troubled times. The audience sang along - many even cried - and that's when I realized there was also a strongly Dutch, patriotic element to the proceedings. There's nothing wrong with that, of course.
He's a clever self-promoter and marketer of his own product. The music is never discordant or remotely jarring; never asks the audience to really LISTEN, merely to sing along and clap.
I dislike this music intensely as well as its anodyne treatment. I couldn't help wondering why audiences would settle for "Oh Fortuna" sung by a chorus of elderly men and porcelain-doll-liveried women when they could have any Beethoven symphony from the Vienna Philharmonic. This is music I'd literally die for!!
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Posted: |
Aug 26, 2014 - 12:47 PM
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By: |
Tall Guy
(Member)
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I watched this 2008 concert during lunch today and tried to look at it objectively. It's not my kind of music.
It struck me that Rieu has tapped into something interesting here with his kitsch extravaganzas of sound and light. He's firstly representing an essentially white-bread cultural version of what it means, or once meant, to be European - which contrasts with the rapidly changing nature of Europe courtesy of multiculturalism. I saw no non-white people in his vast audience.
Secondly, the music is a return to the past for many of these audiences of Rieu; a resplendent golden era when European culture was in the ascendent and its cultural significance linked to the glorious days of Empire and Imperial cities like Vienna. The music of a by-gone hegemony. And music now for the masses, as opposed to the affluent music-lovers of the past.
Lastly, the collective singing, rocking, dancing and embracing to the music is a kind of 'comfort' in an increasingly alienating world. Rieu went to great pains to talk about the importance of music as a curative; a harbour in troubled times. The audience sang along - many even cried - and that's when I realized there was also a strongly Dutch, patriotic element to the proceedings. There's nothing wrong with that, of course.
He's a clever self-promoter and marketer of his own product. The music is never discordant or remotely jarring; never asks the audience to really LISTEN, merely to sing along and clap.
I dislike this music intensely as well as its anodyne treatment. I couldn't help wondering why audiences would settle for "Oh Fortuna" sung by a chorus of elderly men and porcelain-doll-liveried women when they could have any Beethoven symphony from the Vienna Philharmonic. This is music I'd literally die for!!
It's not my kind of thing either, but there'll always be a market for this kind of music, whether it's Rieu, or James Last, or Richard Clayderman or Katherine Jenkins. Cosy, unthreatening, easy-listening pap (as I see it). Its most successful practitioners will make fortunes. In my mind, it's a small step to boy or girl bands, who cater for a similar mindset of audience only 40 years younger.
There's a parallel to be expounded with religion, were we allowed to do so hereabouts 
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Posted: |
Aug 26, 2014 - 2:04 PM
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By: |
Regie
(Member)
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It fascinates me because I'm a music lover. I suspect Rieu's audiences would put hand on heart and say THEY TOO are music lovers and who am I to say they don't qualify? It's not just the cultural significance of Rieu's brand of music, to which I earlier referred, but the rapt audiences and their delighted responses.
To what does this 'speak'? Trying to rise above cynicism to find the key to these concerts and their audiences is what interests me. I wonder if any serious research has been conducted on the phenomenon of 'crossover'/light music, the concert extravaganza and mass audience engagement. There has been a resurgence of interest in this, and on quite a large and global scale, which I think shouldn't be ignored. We do live in the era of BIG everything, but I think this only partly explains the success of Rieu because, if one takes a look, age is quite disparate amongst audience members.
Sopranos like Katherine Jenkins (Sarah Brightman et al) have sweet, mellifluous voices but they seldom have power and this is why they don't inhabit the opera houses. All have microphones because they cannot be expected to project their voices down the equivalent of two city blocks, but the quality of these voices lends itself to the light repertoire. Verdi is trotted out, but always those choruses which are so familiar. I often wonder whether audiences would react differently if they were presented with more demanding repertoire/serious music in that cosy, non-threatening environment of the Rieu concert.
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Musical snobbery and elitism? On a forum dedicated to the likes of John Williams, John Barry, Goldsmith, Horner, Zimmer and Giachino?
Funny.
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How is this different from John Williams and the Boston Pops though, or the Hollywood Bowl, with Seth McFarlane crooning, and JW doing the same anecdotes he's done time and again?
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Lo and behold, Rieu's Maastricht 3 concert was on today at lunchtime. It had 400 brass band players and Rosza's march from the chariot race in "Ben Hur" was played - easily the best piece of music at the event. I had to turn the concert off after a while as it drove me up the wall.
It started with Rieu announcing that he was a grandfather, and the whole proceedings were saturated with the usual cloying appeal to sentiment.
Good luck to him that he's made all that money out of his shows, but he's starting to look more than faintly ridiculous in that get-up he wears. No, I'm over it!
I wouldn't want to be too elitist about him: he is after all a populariser and that's of value. His persona is very NW Europe Eurovision 1970s for sure, but at least he's more engaging than the likes of Last, and
he tampers less with the material than Mant.
But I'll probably get (rightly) rebuked for racial stereotyping if I say there's a sort of Germanic Straussian (Johann) psyche going on. Amsterdam to the Rhine. They used to say that the German psyche, though hyper-rational, is underneath very susceptible to emotional appeals hence, dare one say it, the effectiveness of the Nuremberg rallies. All strutting and jackboots on the outside, all mushy Black Forest gateau sentimentality underneath. Heidi and heavy metal.
That's why that Parade of the Charioteers creeps me out with 400 players. It is NOT some goose-stepping Nazi thing, but a beautiful quasi-archaic piece full of evocations of nodding horses, jingling harnesses, whirling wheels and pagan inflation, all cleverly delineated in the music in shape and texture. BUT NOT NAZI PLEASE!Many performances are too brisk. IT'S FOR HORSES. It's not a footmarch.
Call me a national stereotyper if you must, but 400 players is bad taste in this.
The OST and the Kloss Volume 2 album and, y'know, the oft-maligned Padberg get it right. FLUID, not jerky. Festive, not tyrannical.
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