Classical Convert

More Hot Friday Linkage

Here’s a roundup of the poor abandoned news items this week that didn’t quite make it into posts of their own:

• Rhapsody starts selling DRM free MP3s. However the classical selection is rather limited, and their unfortunate $10/album pricing plan means that the usually cheap Naxos CDs are about 50% more expensive when purchased from them. I’ll stick with the eMusic/DG combo for now, thanks.
• In Seattle, a karaoke singer was attacked after selecting “Yellow” by Coldplay as his song of choice. The accoster — thoughtfully described by an eyewitness as “a little hippie girl” — seems to have decided that the most effective way to halt the rendition of this particular tune was a combination of verbal abuse and physical beating. Favorite comment on the story from reddit: “Charges should be dropped immediately. This was clearly self defense.”
• Geneticists pinpoint specific DNA sequences which are connected with the ability to perform certain musical tasks such as keeping a beat or identifying pitch. They found that these sequences are also involved in determining whether an individual is dyslexic, hinting that our music and language centers are closely related.
• Researchers uncover the secrets of what makes a Stradivarius sound so good. Again. No, it’s for real this time.

Tags: classical music, coldplay, rhapsody, stradivarius

Awesome Beethoven Transcriptions

Guys! After all of the mentions of transcriptions in the last week, and JonJ and Yvonne commenting that there is a well established history of transcripting stuff, I got off my internet arse and discovered several very joyous things. Firstly, the clavier-wunderkind Liszt did piano transcriptions of all of Beethoven’s symphonies — this is probably exceptionally common knowledge to all the seasoned classical listeners out there, but news to me. Secondly, there is a box-set of these available on Naxos, which is itself available on eMusic (see: cheap, good quality, DRM-free MP3s). Hooray!

So far I have listened to the ones I know the best: 6, 5, 9, 7. Only once each so far, as it all just got downloaded about an hour or two ago. Aside from noticing a bunch of stuff which apparently had been completely obscured by my ears during the myriad previous symphonic listens (key changes and modulations seem way more obvious, for example), it’s striking how similar certain sections sound to the (Beethoven) piano sonatas. I don’t yet know if that’s due to Liszt deliberately orchestrating them like that, or if it’s pure Beethoven shining through… or if it’s me trying to be clever. I’ll try and keep you posted on that one. Hopefully it’s the middle one.

Tags: beethoven, liszt, piano, symphonies, transcriptions

Silencio

We were chatting about the joy of transcriptions the other day; how they let you hear aspects of a piece which you previously missed through familiarity or sonic occlusion. Well here’s a transcription which doesn’t quite provide those advantages, but which is curious nonetheless. It’s a version of 4′33” for orchestra:

Things to watch out for: the conductor mopping his brow between movements, the audience holding off on coughing until the intervals, the blond chick on the edge of her seat.

One of my most surprising musical learning moments was when I realized that 4′33″ wasn’t a load of bullshit. It forces people to clarify and consider what their definition of music is, without strictly being a composition itself. It is sort of meta-music. I think it is quite fascinating how much of a conversation (internal or external) you can produce by simply questioning if the piece is music, and if not, why not?

But then I feel all pretentious and artsy-fartsy and have to go play Mario Kart.

Tags: 4'33", john cage, youtube