Classical Convert

Signs Of The CD Apocalypse

The imminent death of compact discs draws nearer! On the one hand, there is this report that 48% of teenagers bought no CDs last year. None. 0. That’s up from 38% the previous year. On the other hand we have Apple getting all high and mighty about becoming Americas second largest music store, just behind Walmart. I’m predicting that with DRM free, high-quality digital music stores popping up all over teh internets, Apple is going to start feeling some pressure from the likes of Amazon and Co. pretty soon. And quite rightly so.

We just need the quality gap to close before our favorite polycarbonate pitted media altogether. That is, stores need to hurry up and start selling lossless audio files as an option. Otherwise, everyone is going to get so inured to the unquality of low bitrates that we’ll probably all start talking with compression artifacts littering our speech. Or something equally not-quite terrifying.

Tags: apple, CDs, lossless, mp3, music, retailers, walmart

Notated Earth

Who fancies playing this? Give it a click to if you’d like to see it properly…

I originally found this via Strange Maps. After some detective work which could have been eliminated simply by reading the name at the top of the image, I discovered its original source and creator is here: a guy called Jim Plakovic who has put together a bunch of similar compositions. At his store you can buy a variety of such prints, including Mozart and the 3-B’s, produced in a similar fashion but also duplicating the style of their score-writing.

I wonder how tricky it’d be to make a basic automated version of this, akin to automatic ASCII-artification.

Tags: classical music, images, prints, score, world map

An Effective Meme

via Musical Perceptions and Chandler Branch there is a list of alternative Mozart Effects doing the rounds. The original list contains tidbits such as:

LISZT EFFECT: Child speaks rapidly and extravagantly, but never really says anything important.

MAHLER EFFECT: Child continually screams - at great length and volume that he’s dying.

And via comments and editing at musical perceptions we have in addition:

RZEWSKI EFFECT: the child tells the teacher that s/he is a victim of capitalist society in 36 different ways.

BACH EFFECT: Child weaves multiple sentences into an eloquent whole that takes ages to be properly understood.

So I am going to submit:

SHOSTAKOVICH EFFECT: Child appears to work diligently, but on careful examination you find his work mostly consists of disguised remarks about how much he hates you.

Anyone else fancy a go?

Tags: classical music, joke, mozart effect, shostakovich

Underwhelming Magnetism

A few days ago I renewed my lapsed membership to my local NPR station, WSKG. I frickin’ love public broadcasting. It almost makes up for the lack of the BBC in my life, almost. Naturally, one of the completely overwhelmingly exciting (well, perhaps exaggerating just slightly here) parts of donating — aside from that warm, fuzzy, altruistic sensation — is the “free” gift. Last year I received this totally kick-arse mug:

If you can’t quite make it out, it’s all of the major composers’ signatures on it. It’s the perfect receptacle for sleepytime tea or IPAs (I think that mugs are ideal for beer consumption) two of my top beverages. It even came with an instruction sheet pointing out which name belonged to which composer for some of the more scribbly ones (Shosty, looking at you). Imagine my disappointment and cries of heartfelt anguish when I chose the car magnet and received this:

Which a brief poll of two people has confirmed as being the ugliest car magnet in the entire world. Enormous rainbow colored fiber-optic cables emitted from the globe does not particularly suggest classical music to my mind. It suggests something I am never going to put on my car. It’s my own stupid fault, I should have done the really noble thing and told them to not send me anything so that they can use all of my money for useful stuff such as, say, broadcasting. We all like our souvenirs, though. Next time I’ll go for the pocketknife.

Tags: classical music, gift, magnet, mug, NPR, WSKG

Thoughts From Last Nights Concert

Last night, total lunar eclipse night 2008, at a concert by the Alban Berg quartet:

Pre-concert: Are these chairs made from wood or cunningly crafted plastic? They’re too precisely curved to be wood I think but.. OW. The lamps under the soffit of the armrest are a) hot and b) grounded, and all the dry air has shoved far too much static on me for that not to hurt in two different ways at once. Oh, here we go…

During Haydn Op. 77 No. 1: Sonata form, you cheeky devil, you sonofagun - I can hear you the first time through now! You’re marchy today, too. I just saw you repeat the exposition, and now look at you all developing. 2nd movement: your start brings to mind in me Shostakovich SQ 13, and the rest of you is exceptionally lovely, I like your rising ripples. Huh, rising ripples sounds surprisingly filthy. The rest of you is sturdy and wonderful to watch as everything gets thrown back and forth but, sorry Haydn, you just didn’t quite do it for me this time.

Berg Op. 3: Uh-oh, 2nd Viennese school, my classical music mostly nemesis, but… oooo… this stuff sounds rather different when it’s being performed live, it’s suddenly far more appealing, why is that? I wonder if it’s because it’s more shocking to see that these are actual people, playing actual music, on instruments of all things! It’s not some kind of electronic device whirring and chirping away and generating all those odd sounds. It’s wood and guts. You lose that through a CD, don’t you? You almost forget that once upon a time, someone actually played the stuff you are listening to. The live effect is particularly overpowering during the really dramatic sections. Watching those players batter their instruments has an intensity that recordings just cannot match.

Beethoven Op. 132: I know you. You’re the string quartet that starts out like the Grosse Fugue. Then you have that bit in your first movement which sounds like Schubert’s Trout. The third movement is the really good one, this is spiritual stuff, and deliberately so. It’s amazing during a movement like this to watch the faces of those watching the performers. Us, the audience. So many heads turned upward and sideways and all heavy with contemplation and concentration. Eyes lightly lidded but clearly alive, active below. The fifth movement is almost a song, lyrical but certainly not saccharine. Stubborn. Resilient. And the ending kicks about ten kinds of arse.

Coda: Huh. the moon’s all red.

Tags: alban berg quartet, beethoven, berg, classical music, concert, cornell, haydn, review, string quartet