Oh hey there. It's been a while. Been busy doing my own things, listening and discovering more music in my quest to find that platonic, archetypal piece that is in my head waiting to get out, and maybe even attempting (gasp) to try my hand at composing a thing or two myself.

As someone whose knowledge of music is all informal, taken from bits and pieces at my own leisure, I doubt I have anything more interesting to say that coffee hasn't already said. The passion in enjoying something like this, however, and not just music, but anything, is admirable as all hell and deserves a badge. Passionate people who are passionate about things are cool.

I really dig Shostakovich's music myself. His 5th symphony is a great one. A lot of shostakovich's music is really colored by the area and time he was living in, and you can feel it in the anger that coffee mentions in his post.

My favorite Shostakovich piece has to actually be his Second Symphony, which doesn't seem as popular as most of his others, and is a piece even he disliked, but I managed to find some beauty in it, especially in the latter half.

If anyone likes angry, ferocious pieces, I would heavily recommend Gavriil Popov's 1st Symphony. It's sad he got soviet folks angry, causing him to be more conservative in his composing.

That explosion at 5:18... Potent stuff there.

Here's something on Popov:

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/09/the_popov_disco.html

Thinking of a piece that gets me as passionate as coffee here seems like a fun idea, so I'll try that. I would say Erik Satie's Le Fils Des Etoiles is a piece that speaks to me:

I feel as though there's a secret in this piece that careful study will unravel. It feels alien and otherworldly to me, almost as if it it is out of place in history. Here's an orchestrated version arranged by Toru Takemitsu:

For whatever reason, when I think of pieces that get me passionate, I also feel compelled to post this piece:

Scriabin in general gets me excited. How many other composers have the courage to write a piece to signal the end of the world?

And of course he had to die before finishing it... They always die before finishing it!