Marie Antoinette

[liaku]

What pisses me off most about the Bremen Marie Antoinette recording is that Weil Ich Besser Bin is such an awful song to listen to, but composition-wise, I think it's the best song on the recording.  Thomas Christ singlehandedly makes it boring as hell.  I'm actually impressed by how badly he sings it.  I almost think I could do a better rendition with the right equalizer settings, and if I think I can do better, it's a pretty damn bad performance since I can't sing for shit.  That being said, I don't really like Blind vom Licht, but it's so catchy!  I've found myself humming it lately.  In general though, I'm not too excited about this musical.  I don't think it's an Elisabeth rip-off at all; I mean, you can tell it's the same composer since the instrumentation is often similar, but certainly no one was criticizing Beethoven or Mozart for not varying their composition styles too much over their career.  I just think it's boring and the themes rather scattered--but good sets, costuming, choreography, etc can all salvage my opinion of it easily.  Also, my German is possibly worse than my Japanese, so I really have a hard time figuring out what's going on, so that might be part of why I don't like it very much.

My German is so not worse than my Japanese.  I hope.

State of the Blogger: Barnard application complete, NYU app almost complete minus one particularly stupid short answer question--but common essay needs an extra round of editing.  Part I of Columbia application sent, application fee paid.  All other essays untouched as of now.  List and Space Cowboys untouched because I suck like that.

Comments

[liaku.livejournal.com]

I'm really hoping Thomas Christ is just really bad in the studio and gives a kickass live performance, because that song deserves it.

Off the top of my head, the things it lacks: 1) sick harmonies, I absolutely love the subtleties and harmonies in Levay's work, but Marie Antoinette is very straightforward, probably in mimicry of the music from that era, 2) There's very little build up in these songs, no sort of high climax (most dramatic example of this is probably Wie Wird Man Seinen Schatten Los) or musically dramatic moment, and 3) electric guitar. I also think on this recording there's an overuse of ensemble, not that the ensemble isn't great or anything.

I had heard that Marie Antoinette was an Elisabeth rip-off before I got the recording, and I'd never listened to the Japanese version. Honestly, I think some people need to get their ears checked. Alternatively, they can take a music theory class, but while there's plenty of Levay's typical hallmarks in it, it doesn't sound like Elisabeth at all to me.

[valancystar.livejournal.com]

I also miss the three things you mentioned - I love the combination of rock-type and more classical musical music in Levay's earlier scores and I do wish this had some of that. Maybe they thought it didn't fit the era/characters, but I could have done with some revolutionary songs with electric guitar etc. Still, there's something about it that I just love, but I can see how it's not everyone's thing.

I kept being so puzzled when people were always calling it an Elisabeth copy and saying that Gefühl und Verstand is a copy of Wenn ich tanzen will. I don't think anyone would say that without the demo version floating around where Uwe and Pia sing it with Wenn ich tanzen will-ish lyrics.