Classical Convert

Realtime liner notes: More thoughts

A couple of days ago Matthew Hodge added a comment to this post about my automated liner note fantasies which I think elucidates several important points, so I’m gonna give it a post all to itself right here:

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 particular 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 riveted 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.

I think he’s bang on. Discovering the previously (to me) hidden structures of classical pieces completely knocked my uninitiated little socks off when I first discovered it, and I’m pretty sure a lot of other people would feel the same way. However, it’s also clear that there are a bunch of problems doing it in the concert hall: experienced people are likely going to get pissed off by the blinking whatevers, and for inexperienced people it’s probably going to go by too fast. I think the answer is the internet. Something like keeping score, but with many more pieces and more options. I think if one of the online classical music suppliers put something like this together, executed well, it could be very profitable for them. Do you hear me DG? Naxos?

Music I want to get my grubby mitts on

After (not really) splurging on a Naxos radio subscription, I’ve been spending my lab days sucking new music up through my ears. Absorbing it - maybe that’s a more sensical choice of words, the ear-suction imagery is a bit too disturbing. Anyway, regardless of the transferral mechanism I’ve been introduced to a whole host of new music which is now highly in demand by me. This includes:

Balada - Wikipedia page here, personal webpage here, sound samples here.

Ryabov - This guy is hard to find anything on. The Naxos page is here.

Brusa - Wikipedia page, personal page, sound samples.

I also wanna get some stuff by some not so new fellows: Myaskovsky and Glass. Or maybe we should just get around to watching that copy of Koyaanisqatsi we got on Netflix flippin’ ages ago and never returned.

Liner Notes on Naxos Radio

Aha! I just discovered that actually there are liner notes on the Naxos radio player thingy, but it’s in a not very obvious place. You have to click the identification number below the album name (and so if it’s changed since you started listening you have to click the “click here to view currently playing track” button first) and then in the new window that comes up, click “about this recording”. Not all albums have it, though.

This should be better labeled! Actually, there should just be a direct link from the player, but I already complained about that.

A Short Review of Naxos Radio

Well, I caved into yet another temptation (that’s the only way to deal with them, don’t you know) and spent the ever so princely sum of $20 for one years worth of access to naxosradio. It’s a classical music streaming service from, unsurprisingly, naxos, the much beloved, progressive and (best of all) cheap classical music label. While I have a few gripes about it, I basically love it. I’ll try and explain why:

The Good

• Variety - 81 channels of classical music goodness, each targeted toward a specific (and in some cases slightly arbitrary and esoteric) subgenre: British music, 20th century orchestral, romantic chamber music, etc.
• Quality - It’s streamed at 64Kbps which sounds very decent with my headphones at work (you can try it out for free to hear what the quality is like if you think 64Kbps sounds too low for you, you might be pleasantly surprised). It definitely sounds better then standard FM.
• Continuity - They play one CD from their catalog after another, no advertising, no talking. It makes for a very different experience from a regular radio station because you get to hear several meaty pieces from one composer, instead of multiple small-scale pieces from lots of different ones. This is great for getting to know each one well - especially valuable when you are trying to identify new composers that you like.
• Variety… again - There are a lot of composers on there who I had never heard of, particularly the extremely modern ones. Naxos is good at that. If you are especially interested in the up-and-coming classical heroes-to-be, this is a real bonus. Today I discovered Balada.

The Bad

• Media player - You need bloody windows media player to use it, which means I’m completely screwed at home, where I exclusively use Linux. I know this affects a minority of users, but it’s very frustrating and offputting for those of us who do use it.
• No skipping - You are stuck with their streams, just like a radio station. If you notice that they just played a CD you really wanted to hear, well, tough luck. Related to this is the fact that you can’t pause the stream, so if you need to run off somewhere you’re not gonna be able to pick it up again later.
• Dodgy interface - Now this is something which they could fix relatively easily. When you first start listening to a channel you get a nice window which shows the playlist with the current track highlighted. However, as the tracks change, the highlighting does not update. You have to click on an “update” link (which is weirdly slow), and then scroll down through the playlist again. Euggh.
• No liner notes - I have a real penchant for these. It’d be awesome if you could just click somewhere on the interface and it’d give you a commentary on the piece. It would be really great for beginners. You could even have different levels of notes, from a brief overview to a detailed commentary on the musical structure. Oh, I can dream. (Edit: actually, there are liner notes, you just have to get them in a roundabout way)

The Ugly

Oh come on, you weren’t expecting me to pull that hackneyed reviewing trick were you?

The Conclusioney

Totally worth it if you are around a computer for long periods of the day, and want to explore all kinds of composers you didn’t know existed, or learn the more famous pieces by the more famous guys in more depth. It’s way better than the regular radio - mostly due to hearing 60 minutes of an individual composer at a time, instead of mostly 10-15 minute pieces. Highly recommended!