My not-that-old, fairly basic mobile phone decided to keel over at the end of last week. So this week, I took the plunge into modern technology and bought an iPhone.
It's met the secondary... well, in some ways it was the primary goal of also making my mp3 player redundant. Which seemed a fraction cruel given that it was fairly young and had given good service. But there's no doubting that the iPhone's music capabilities are equal or better in all respects. Easier navigation, and sound quality through my Sennheiser headphones is just as good.
The only real disappointment is that the system just isn't set up for classical music. My investigations have shown that current editions of iTunes on a computer can understand that classical afficionados are likely to want to sort music by composer, not artist. It's also quite capable of allowing you to group movements of a work together. There's a Classical tab that handles all of this reasonably well.
But alas, on the portable device all that functionality seems to disappear.
My mp3 player was just as clumsy with classical. So it's not as if I've gone backwards. Nevertheless, it does seem as if my portable CD player, which I think has been with me since the year 2000, will continue to be pressed into service. Because it still understands better than any more modern technology how to let me select the tracks that constitute a sonata.
Saturday 16 April 2011
Wednesday 6 April 2011
By the way...
This blog doesn't have to be just me writing about music.
I mean, if people want to write back...
Telling me something I listened to is great. Telling me something I listened to is awful. Ask me about something on the list. All that's good.
It did also occur to me that it doesn't have to be just my musical diary. If there's anyone else out there that is sufficiently motivated in their music listening to record what they're listening to, Blogger provides the facilities for a blog to have multiple authors. Which could be quite interesting.
I'll just leave that notion out there, and toddle off to listen to some Bach. Or Radiohead. I haven't quite decided yet.
I mean, if people want to write back...
Telling me something I listened to is great. Telling me something I listened to is awful. Ask me about something on the list. All that's good.
It did also occur to me that it doesn't have to be just my musical diary. If there's anyone else out there that is sufficiently motivated in their music listening to record what they're listening to, Blogger provides the facilities for a blog to have multiple authors. Which could be quite interesting.
I'll just leave that notion out there, and toddle off to listen to some Bach. Or Radiohead. I haven't quite decided yet.
Tuesday 5 April 2011
March 2011 - Classical Music
Bach, J.S. - Prelude in E flat minor from BWV 853, arranged for cello and piano
Barber - Medea's Dance of Vengeance
Beethoven - String Quartet No.5
Beethoven - Piano Concerto No.3 (2nd movement)
Brahms - Piano Quintet
Chopin - Funeral March in C minor
Debussy - Cello Sonata
Debussy - 12 Etudes for piano
Faure - Fantasie for Piano and Orchestra
Faure - Piano Quintet No.2
Faure - Barcarolle No.13
Faure - Cello Sonata No.2
Faure - Nocturne No.13
Handel - Keyboard Suites 6, 7 and 8
Haydn - Piano trios 29 and 30
Hindemith - Kammermusik Nos. 5 and 6
Holmboe - Symphonies 7, 12 and 13
Honegger - Cello Concerto
Mozart - Piano Sonata No.14 in C minor (2nd movement)
Schubert - Piano Sonata in A minor, D.784
Schubert - Octet in F
Schumann - Die Arme Peter op.53/3, Tragoedie op.64/3, Lehn deine Wang' op.142/2, Mein Wagen rollet langsam op.142/4
Shostakovich - String Quartet No.11
Simpson - Symphonies 9 and 11
Stravinsky - Petrushka
Tallis - Loquebantur variis linguis
Tortelier - Burlesque: Le Pitre (The Clown), 3 Duos 'Chameau-Loutres', Toccata
Vivaldi - Bassoon Concerto in A minor, RV 498
I finally finished working my way through a 20-CD collection of performances by Paul Tortelier, a Frenchman who has now massively expanded the cello section of my library. Thanks to my catalogue I can tell you that it took exactly 368 days to listen to absolutely everything in the box.
Meanwhile, some of the other listening is from my last classical buying spree on New Year's Eve. This was from a local music store that closed about a month later, after many years of being the premier classical music specialist in the area. Evidently the modern world with easy overseas ordering has not been kind to them.
Their sales are probably responsible for the majority of my classical collection. I bought most things on the strength of reputation and reading, rather than listening. I'm not sure what I'll do from now on.
The collection of Schumann songs I bought, performed by Wolfgang Holzmair and Imogen Cooper, has been a particular delight. As you can see I'm now down to the 'bits and pieces' section of the discs, but it has 4 complete song-cycles and the performances are consistently wonderful.
Faure is definitely one of my favourite composers. This month, I spent an evening listening to a series of late works (the Fantasie being one of the New Year's Eve purchases). Every one of them rich and strange and beautiful in their complexity.
The couple of one-movement excerpts are from recordings where that's all I have. I don't totally ignore the sampler discs in my library.
Late in the month I went back to my 20th century symphony friends, Holmboe and Simpson. Holmboe in particular is someone that I occasionally have a little obsession over. I'm looking at adding some of his other works to my collection, and in the last couple of weeks I've been doing a fair bit of research on just what else is out there. The list-maker in me strikes again!
Barber - Medea's Dance of Vengeance
Beethoven - String Quartet No.5
Beethoven - Piano Concerto No.3 (2nd movement)
Brahms - Piano Quintet
Chopin - Funeral March in C minor
Debussy - Cello Sonata
Debussy - 12 Etudes for piano
Faure - Fantasie for Piano and Orchestra
Faure - Piano Quintet No.2
Faure - Barcarolle No.13
Faure - Cello Sonata No.2
Faure - Nocturne No.13
Handel - Keyboard Suites 6, 7 and 8
Haydn - Piano trios 29 and 30
Hindemith - Kammermusik Nos. 5 and 6
Holmboe - Symphonies 7, 12 and 13
Honegger - Cello Concerto
Mozart - Piano Sonata No.14 in C minor (2nd movement)
Schubert - Piano Sonata in A minor, D.784
Schubert - Octet in F
Schumann - Die Arme Peter op.53/3, Tragoedie op.64/3, Lehn deine Wang' op.142/2, Mein Wagen rollet langsam op.142/4
Shostakovich - String Quartet No.11
Simpson - Symphonies 9 and 11
Stravinsky - Petrushka
Tallis - Loquebantur variis linguis
Tortelier - Burlesque: Le Pitre (The Clown), 3 Duos 'Chameau-Loutres', Toccata
Vivaldi - Bassoon Concerto in A minor, RV 498
I finally finished working my way through a 20-CD collection of performances by Paul Tortelier, a Frenchman who has now massively expanded the cello section of my library. Thanks to my catalogue I can tell you that it took exactly 368 days to listen to absolutely everything in the box.
Meanwhile, some of the other listening is from my last classical buying spree on New Year's Eve. This was from a local music store that closed about a month later, after many years of being the premier classical music specialist in the area. Evidently the modern world with easy overseas ordering has not been kind to them.
Their sales are probably responsible for the majority of my classical collection. I bought most things on the strength of reputation and reading, rather than listening. I'm not sure what I'll do from now on.
The collection of Schumann songs I bought, performed by Wolfgang Holzmair and Imogen Cooper, has been a particular delight. As you can see I'm now down to the 'bits and pieces' section of the discs, but it has 4 complete song-cycles and the performances are consistently wonderful.
Faure is definitely one of my favourite composers. This month, I spent an evening listening to a series of late works (the Fantasie being one of the New Year's Eve purchases). Every one of them rich and strange and beautiful in their complexity.
The couple of one-movement excerpts are from recordings where that's all I have. I don't totally ignore the sampler discs in my library.
Late in the month I went back to my 20th century symphony friends, Holmboe and Simpson. Holmboe in particular is someone that I occasionally have a little obsession over. I'm looking at adding some of his other works to my collection, and in the last couple of weeks I've been doing a fair bit of research on just what else is out there. The list-maker in me strikes again!
Monday 4 April 2011
March 2011 - Popular Music
Tori Amos
David Bowie - The Platinum Collection (all 3 discs)
Marc Cohn - The Rainy Season
Harry Connick, Jr. - Star Turtle
Foo Fighters - There is Nothing Left to Lose
Amanda Marshall - Amanda Marshall
Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue
My Closest Friend - Six point five inches of pure stainless heartache
Nichole Nordeman - Woven & Spun
Talk Talk - It's My Life
Tears for Fears - Elemental
Hmm. So this is the first pop music crop...
I guess I will get this out of the way now: I'm a Tori Amos fan. Not only do I own all her albums, I have a lot of singles, DVDs and concert recordings - the latter encouraged by the remarkable variety in her setlists. And for the purposes of this blog, it's significant that I still listen to all the albums to a fair degree.
Most of this month's Tori listening actually happened in a fairly short burst, and it covered the 3 most recent albums plus the first one.
David Bowie's Platinum Collection was a new purchase. He's one of those artists I've always been vaguely curious about. I bought a few albums cheaply some years ago, but none of them entirely convince me as albums - a sure sign that some kind of hits package was the answer. This 3-disc collection does the job very nicely.
Truth be told, I actually have been listening to quite a few Bowie albums this month as well when I've had the opportunity. But they are not things that are part of my library. And so far, they've tended to confirm that Bowie is someone who is best represented by a compilation.
My Closest Friend is worth mentioning as an internet discovery. I listened to one song from this EP when I was doing some music reviewing, liked it, then discovered that this Swedish group was giving away electronic copies absolutely free. I'm not actually sure the EP is available anymore. Which is a pity, because it's worth hearing.
Of the other things here... well, for now I'll just mention that Ruby Blue made my top 10 list for the last decade, and The Rainy Season is still on my top 10 list for all time. Not that the list has been formally revised for a few years.
- Little Earthquakes
- American Doll Posse
- Abnormally Attracted to Sin
- Midwinter Graces
- Live in Los Angeles 17 December 2001 (audience bootleg)
David Bowie - The Platinum Collection (all 3 discs)
Marc Cohn - The Rainy Season
Harry Connick, Jr. - Star Turtle
Foo Fighters - There is Nothing Left to Lose
Amanda Marshall - Amanda Marshall
Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue
My Closest Friend - Six point five inches of pure stainless heartache
Nichole Nordeman - Woven & Spun
Talk Talk - It's My Life
Tears for Fears - Elemental
Hmm. So this is the first pop music crop...
I guess I will get this out of the way now: I'm a Tori Amos fan. Not only do I own all her albums, I have a lot of singles, DVDs and concert recordings - the latter encouraged by the remarkable variety in her setlists. And for the purposes of this blog, it's significant that I still listen to all the albums to a fair degree.
Most of this month's Tori listening actually happened in a fairly short burst, and it covered the 3 most recent albums plus the first one.
David Bowie's Platinum Collection was a new purchase. He's one of those artists I've always been vaguely curious about. I bought a few albums cheaply some years ago, but none of them entirely convince me as albums - a sure sign that some kind of hits package was the answer. This 3-disc collection does the job very nicely.
Truth be told, I actually have been listening to quite a few Bowie albums this month as well when I've had the opportunity. But they are not things that are part of my library. And so far, they've tended to confirm that Bowie is someone who is best represented by a compilation.
My Closest Friend is worth mentioning as an internet discovery. I listened to one song from this EP when I was doing some music reviewing, liked it, then discovered that this Swedish group was giving away electronic copies absolutely free. I'm not actually sure the EP is available anymore. Which is a pity, because it's worth hearing.
Of the other things here... well, for now I'll just mention that Ruby Blue made my top 10 list for the last decade, and The Rainy Season is still on my top 10 list for all time. Not that the list has been formally revised for a few years.
Sunday 3 April 2011
Introduction
This blog is the result of a few things about me coming together.
First of all, I am naturally a list-maker. When I want to get something organised in my head, making some kind of list or catalogue is one of the mechanisms I'm drawn to.
Secondly, I am something of a completist. If I have part of a set, I want the rest of the set. Or, at the very least I want to know about the rest of the set, so that I know what's missing.
And finally, I am very passionate about music. Lots of music.
So, how did that lead to a blog?
Well, it didn't directly lead here. It led to me starting to catalogue my music collection. I began cataloguing the classical part back in the middle of 2009. I started doing this out of a sense of frustration that I wasn't really listening to my collection. In the periods that I was in the mood for classical, I would struggle to remember what I'd listened to during the last classical phase, and I kept feeling as if I was listening to the same small portion of my library repeatedly without exploring the rest.
So, the purpose of beginning the catalogue was to record what I was actually listening to. That way, I could push myself to listen to different things, things that I might not have heard for a while, and things that I hadn't really got to know.
It worked a treat. For starters, it made me realise just how much I had in my personal music library. The classical catalogue currently has about 950 recordings of 'works' in it. It covers everything I own except a few sampler CDs that haven't been added yet. Those works range in length from just 41 seconds to 165 minutes. And during the last two-and-a-half years, I still haven't listened to about a third of those works.
It also led me to listen to new things, or things that seemed new, which I always find a particularly exciting musical experience. So, for example, while I knew the Sibelius symphonies, I hadn't ever paid much attention to the additional Sibelius pieces that filled the CDs, and when I listened to En Saga it was with no real knowledge of it. Turns out that I love En Saga.
In late February 2011, I decided to start taking the same approach to my popular music. I generally would say that I listen to popular more than classical (although the whole cataloguing exercise had increased the proportion of classical listening), but again I've had a sense that I'm only accessing a small part of my collection. I had no problem with the true favourites being played more often, but I really wanted to be able to identify what I hadn't listened to for a while.
And then it hit me. I was now going to be keeping track of pretty much everything I listened to. At least, everything I deliberately chose to listen to. Not the random bits of music on the radio or television, but every time I selected something out of my library.
From that notion, a blog was born. A place to share my musical journey.
Whether or not anyone actually wants to read about what I'm listening to, I've no idea. I guess I will find out.
The primary 'rule' for my catalogue (and therefore for my blog entries) is that I only record things that I listen to in their entirety. If I get interrupted partway through, it's not counted as a listen to the work. Also, for popular music, a 'work' is usually an album. I am very much an album person. I believe that the art of arranging a groups of songs into a particular order is part of the art of music, and I suspect that most of the musicians who manage to get into my library think along those lines.
My intention is to post on a monthly basis and look back at what I've been listening to. That seems often enough to keep the blog going, but without taxing myself too much. Less time than that would mean that I would sometimes be trying to post when I'd listened to very little.
The idea that I'd go an entire month without listening to something complete sends a shiver down my spine.
First of all, I am naturally a list-maker. When I want to get something organised in my head, making some kind of list or catalogue is one of the mechanisms I'm drawn to.
Secondly, I am something of a completist. If I have part of a set, I want the rest of the set. Or, at the very least I want to know about the rest of the set, so that I know what's missing.
And finally, I am very passionate about music. Lots of music.
So, how did that lead to a blog?
Well, it didn't directly lead here. It led to me starting to catalogue my music collection. I began cataloguing the classical part back in the middle of 2009. I started doing this out of a sense of frustration that I wasn't really listening to my collection. In the periods that I was in the mood for classical, I would struggle to remember what I'd listened to during the last classical phase, and I kept feeling as if I was listening to the same small portion of my library repeatedly without exploring the rest.
So, the purpose of beginning the catalogue was to record what I was actually listening to. That way, I could push myself to listen to different things, things that I might not have heard for a while, and things that I hadn't really got to know.
It worked a treat. For starters, it made me realise just how much I had in my personal music library. The classical catalogue currently has about 950 recordings of 'works' in it. It covers everything I own except a few sampler CDs that haven't been added yet. Those works range in length from just 41 seconds to 165 minutes. And during the last two-and-a-half years, I still haven't listened to about a third of those works.
It also led me to listen to new things, or things that seemed new, which I always find a particularly exciting musical experience. So, for example, while I knew the Sibelius symphonies, I hadn't ever paid much attention to the additional Sibelius pieces that filled the CDs, and when I listened to En Saga it was with no real knowledge of it. Turns out that I love En Saga.
In late February 2011, I decided to start taking the same approach to my popular music. I generally would say that I listen to popular more than classical (although the whole cataloguing exercise had increased the proportion of classical listening), but again I've had a sense that I'm only accessing a small part of my collection. I had no problem with the true favourites being played more often, but I really wanted to be able to identify what I hadn't listened to for a while.
And then it hit me. I was now going to be keeping track of pretty much everything I listened to. At least, everything I deliberately chose to listen to. Not the random bits of music on the radio or television, but every time I selected something out of my library.
From that notion, a blog was born. A place to share my musical journey.
Whether or not anyone actually wants to read about what I'm listening to, I've no idea. I guess I will find out.
The primary 'rule' for my catalogue (and therefore for my blog entries) is that I only record things that I listen to in their entirety. If I get interrupted partway through, it's not counted as a listen to the work. Also, for popular music, a 'work' is usually an album. I am very much an album person. I believe that the art of arranging a groups of songs into a particular order is part of the art of music, and I suspect that most of the musicians who manage to get into my library think along those lines.
My intention is to post on a monthly basis and look back at what I've been listening to. That seems often enough to keep the blog going, but without taxing myself too much. Less time than that would mean that I would sometimes be trying to post when I'd listened to very little.
The idea that I'd go an entire month without listening to something complete sends a shiver down my spine.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)