Mahler is a Romantic era composer. If I heard him, it would have been by accident. Even in when I was listening heavily to the local classical station, I don't think I heard him. The one thing I think is a fact is that Mahler did get inspiration from Beethoven's Fourth Symphony.
The Romantic era never interested me as much as the "Classical period" music from about 1750-1830, although you cannot avoid the some of famous tunes that entered the world in that era, and made themselves so timeless you think they are older than they actually are. But I don't know much beyond the "famous highlights". Tchaikovsky has a few, like The Nutcracker, parts of the Romeo and Juliet overture, the Sleeping Beauty Waltz, Swan Lake, etc. Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto is one I like. Mendelssohn's Wedding March is also a mainstay of weddings. Schumann's "Kinderszenen". Looney Tunes probably helped keep Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in public memory.
Brahm's Lullaby might be the only tolerable thing to come out of his work. He might get the award for making a tune people don't even know he made.
The internal placement of Mozart to the top of musicians wasn't always that way in my mind. It used to be Beethoven because Beethoven was more in your face and the emotions more in your face.
It was only after listening to "JoJo"(Joanna Levesque), sing a portion of overt melisma("Sing-Off" with Conor Maynard; it was prerecorded and they autotuned a single take, but the construction of that passage was such that it was technically brilliant but it wasn't musically overdone either, that perfect balance that escapes most people and even many professionals) that began the brain worm that ultimately led to Mariah Carey and the realization that Mozart wrote in a melismatic manner but also had the sense to introduce "space" and utilize long notes.
The greatness of Mozart goes beyond the style and musical expectations of his era. It's the "lyricism" and "breath control" in the way his notes progress. An insight that can only be understood by listening to melismatic singers like Mariah Carey or JoJo.
I always had a pretty eclectic and tolerant appreciation for music. In my younger days -- teens an twenties -- I could play all or parts of two Chopin Polonaises on the keyboard, and taught myself to play guitar in various ways. But I haven't really touched either instrument now for decades.
For some reason, I enjoy playing music a lot more in my old Trooper than at home. [I posted some threads on Garage a couple years back, showing what I did with the old Trooper to make it a 21st century Android Trooper.] I just remember the days when you carried around a bunch of loose cassette tapes, cluttering the car. then, if your vehicle had a CD player, you had the same type of clutter. But the Trooper had (and still has) a 12-CD changer. It must have been almost 20 years ago I conceived of hooking up a jam-packed MP3 player to the car, but you needed a 3.5mm stereo jack on your old receiver, and eventually, the player became something loose and an annoyance. Now I can have a zillion rock-n-roll albums, just as many jazz classics, folk music and classical music on a tiny thumb drive. If i have the same library on the Android tablet I have semi-permanently installed in the center of my dashboard in front of the center vents, I can actually change albums or genres at a stop-light without effort.
So, at the beginning of the pandemic, I started buying MP3 downloads and CDs (to convert to MP3) from Amazon. Or you could ask me what I did with my first stimulus check. I had many LPs and cassette tapes, and no longer wanted to digitize them; it would be too much work, demanding too much patience. I found the Bach Guild offerings at Amazon -- everything that Mozart ever wrote for $0.99, but dated recordings which had nevertheless been good ones for stereo. Yet, you might get something like the Utah Symphony, although I found the Vienna, London and other orchestras. So, in addition to getting all the other genres beefed up on my thumb drive, I really expanded my classical recordings.
I can jump between Van Halen, the Stones, Charles Lloyd or Miles Davis, and then switch to Bach's complete works for harpsichord, just in the course of an extended errand trip in the Trooper. The neat thing about my Trooper setup: I can cue up Stones 40 Licks on the Android, have my in-dash MP3 player (it's like a little radio) set to play Chicago, and then the 12 CDs in the changer, and just switch between the sources with a single key-press on the old '95 digital receiver.
I'm always looking for an excuse to take the Trooper out on some errand run . . . .
The other thing that gives me satisfaction is the rear-view night-vision displayed on the Android tablet, while Google Maps is telling me where to go, and tunes are playing from either the Android or the other sources. Oh -- correction: to hear the Google lady, I've got to be playing music off the tablet.
Well, today I resurrected my HTPC anticipating the new Sony Bravia arriving Friday. I discovered the Cyberlink PowerDVD is a great replacement for Media Center, and will allow me to chuck my old green-button WMC remote -- because now -- my cell-phone will manage PowerDVD. Of course, in addition to the 300 movies and other DVR recordings, I've got the same library of music as with the Trooper, plus -- all my Playboy centerfolds from 1957 to 2002 . . .
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