I Want Realtime Liner Notes
Yeah yeah, I know you know I love liner notes. Since I’ve recently been lamenting and revising my previous lament on the lack of them on a certain classical web-radio type dealie, I thought I’d finish off my current whining with a more structured post.
This is what I’d like to see: while playing my exciting and varied classical playlist (in ultra-extreme quality, with the option to download and to donate money to the composer/performer/conductor, but that’s another story) there’s a little expandable link to click, which on activation gives me a couple of options. I can find out general information about the piece (the standard “Smith’s Opus fifty was composed in blah blah blah and is in five movements”) or the composer (“Smith’s first serious exposure to music was when he began glockenspiel lessons at the age of three”). That kind of thing.
Pretty standard so far.
The cool bit would be when you dig down further. The more technical stuff that is sometimes chucked into liner notes (“the third movement starts in D and, unusually, finishes in G#”) would all be interactive – switching on this technical mode would enable something like a status bar, which would constantly update with information about what was going on in the piece (“Listen as he modulates to G#, led by the winds… now”).
Ideally you could have a couple different levels of in-depthness with this. The simplest one would indicate when the different themes were present in the piece, for example, and point out different instruments. The more serious ones would bring in more subtle things: key shifts, inversions of melodies, etc. You could even make it graphical, with colors indicating various qualities (themes, instruments, etc.)
I know if I had had something like that when i started listening it would have been fascinating, and I bet it would encourage a lot of people to start listening to classical, once they realized all of the little games and complexities going on – that its not just music which keeps on going and doesn’t have any noticeable structure. I don’t think non-classical people appreciate all the structure that’s in there, and by that I mean they aren’t aware it exists. I wasn’t.
If there was something like these hypothetical real-time liner notes which illustrated that underlying structure, I think there would be quite a few more classical converts.
October 30th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
This is a brilliant idea! Perhaps after we get out tropical hardwood enterprise going, we could set to work on getting this off the ground.
October 30th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
There is such a device (or was; the company went out of business a short while ago; and good thing, too). It is (was) called, Concert Companion, and it was being flogged by that enemy of classical music, Greg Sandow, who provided the text for the device’s commentary. It’s original intent was for use in the concert hall WHILE the concert was in progress(!). A true prole-pandering horror as I called it in several S&F posts. But I also suggested a way that horror could be transformed into a boon:
http://www.soundsandfury.com/soundsandfury/2005/04/transforming_a_.html
Background on just what Concert Companion was and was intended for originally can be read at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_Companion
ACD
October 31st, 2007 at 9:38 pm
In Queensland, Australia, the orchestra briefly tried a concert companion-like activity with real-time analytical landmarks projected on screens around the hall. They’re not doing it now, so I assume it was found too difficult or too annoying or both. I do think that something like that should be *optional*, so the idea of screens is obnoxious to me.
From time-to-time, I do come across liner notes for CDs that insert timing indications in the analytical portion of the text. (Earlier this year, I found a recording of Elliott Carter’s Cello Sonata that did this.) So when the writer describes something you know that it happens at 4:32 or between 5:16 and 6:46, and so on.
Not interactive, but along the lines you mention.
It does run the risk of the program note becoming bogged down in blow-by-blow analysis and perhaps losing sight of the forest… But for certain pieces it would be a really interesting exercise.
November 3rd, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Certainly would be a useful took in a music appreciation class – “Can’t hear the Sonata form? Well – here it is!!”
November 5th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Great comments, thanks!
It definitely seems like a mid-concert, in your face projection type dealie is not the way to go. It’s more the kind of thing that would be interesting when you can go through a piece at your own pace, maybe replaying sections and movements. I feel like if it’s done in a concert hall environment then chances are it’s going to be happening too quickly if you don’t know the piece, and if you do know the piece it will mostly just be annoying.
MM: It’d be fun to try and put something together. Incidentally the financial tree stuff seems like a logistical nightmare from what i can work out :)
ACD: It looks like you had the same idea as I, except of course you beat me by two and a half years…
Yvonne: I sort of like it when they do that – but it’s often oddly out of place. They’ll do it for one piece but not the others, and then there is a confusing mix of levels of detail.
John: I wonder if there is software which does exactly that for classes. If there is it should expand out of the classroom.
November 29th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
At the risk of offending ACD (and I know there are many people who hold strong opinions about all this), I think the Concert Companion still is a fantastic concept and (if done properly), I believe would totally open the world of classical music to new people.
I know this because a couple of years ago (long before I knew about the Companion or anything like that), I tried an experiment where I invited round to my home half a dozen friends who knew nothing about classical music but were willing to have a listen.
I handed out sheets that explained the music and broke it down in sonata form, themes, etc. with descriptions matched to paticular times on the CDs we were going to listen to. I wasn’t sure what to expect the first time, but to my amazement, I watched as this bunch of novices not only grasped the form of the music, but were absolutely rivted listening to an entire overture, Mozart violin concerto and Beethoven symphony. Half an hour long pieces, and they followed the whole thing!
Let me tell you, it is the most exhilarating thing in the world to see someone’s eyes open to music.
I think the biggest problem that we face in reproducing this in the concert hall is not the technology but:
a) Existing audiences (who’ve been fortunate enough to learn music, etc.) get very particular about what goes on in concerts and usually aren’t keen for new things. (e.g. “What’s those flashing lights on in the concert hall? Highly distracting.”) Granted, these people would have killed off surtitles as well, and in my opinion, they’re the greatest thing to happen in opera for years.
b) You can only explain so much music while it’s on the go. Really, you need about half an hour beforehand to explain to people the big picture of musical structure (sonata form, movements, etc.). Ideally, this would be perfect for a pre-concert talk. But how many good pre-concert speakers are there nowadays? Not many.
c) Far more serious, there is a severe shortage of writers who can explain music to the layperson in an interesting way, so even if you had a running commentary, would it make the music exciting or just boring. (For examples of how to make music exciting, I suggest reading George Groves’ “Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies” or David Hurwitz’ “The Mahler Symphonies: An Owner’s Manual”.) If those guys (well, George has been dead for 100 years) wrote for the Concert Companion, it would probably still be running today.