Shouldn’t they force him to ADD an audio track?
It took a while, but unfortunately the copyright police are now rampaging all over the YouTube classical music community. I first noticed this while checking up on the status of the embedded videos I used over at GetIntoClassical, and finding that half of them were “unavailable due to terms of use violation”. Basically, If an orchestra or record label finds out that one of their performances is on YouTube without their authorization, it’s gonna get wiped. This is really unfortunate — they are losing a wonderful way to reach a potential audience — but it’s not exactly unexpected either. Sometimes if it is not a video of an orchestra they will just disable the soundtrack.
A hilariously appropriate incident of this was just brought to my attention via the always awesome reddit:
This is a “recording” of John Cage’s 4’33″. If you try to play this video you will see that:
NOTICE: This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG. The audio has been disabled.
Hah! The joke’s on you, Warner Music Group!
Of course, this wasn’t the first time that 4’33″ has been the subject of copyright dispute. You can read about how Mike Batt was sued for infringing on the same copyright here.
Not the 9th
Beethoven is a tough little nut to crack. I remember once reading that you should get through all of Shostakovich’s string quartets before even attempting to understand Beethoven’s. Beethoven is so famous that it’s sort of overwhelming when you first start listening to classical music, because it seems like all of his music should sound amazing right away. And a lot of it doesn’t. I remember it sounding surprisingly… old fashioned. I suspect that at a lot of people claim they think the 9th is the epitome of great music, when in fact they don’t like it that much at all, they’re just playing to its reputation.
I’ve been listening to classical music for just over six years now, and I still only know a small portion of Beethoven’s stuff well. Every couple months I’ll inch into a new (“new”!) one of his pieces, either deliberately or accidentally. The latest incarnation of this was the 24th piano sonata, in particular the second movement:
This came through my headphones halfway up the march up the slope to work. It grabbed my attention because the first few bars instantly made me think of “Rule Brittania” in a somewhat cheesy fashion, and then right as I was about to skip the track it abruptly slipped into that crunchy dissonance. I love that kind of contrast, especially when it was composed such a long time ago. This is the kind of piece that makes me truly appreciate what a pioneer Beethoven was: things like the last movement of the Hammerklavier sonata, and the Grosse Fugue. Not the 9th.
On The Pitch
I wish I could tell what note the ceiling was playing when people in the apartment upstairs make the floor hum:
Unbrokenup Beethoven
Now I’m not *exactly* the first to find these — 870,083 happy campers got their noses in before I did — but the novelty of full-length classical music vids has yet to wear thin. Here’s symphony No. 6 ‘Pastoral’:
And dancey No. 7:
And No. 4:
And the in-betweeney No. 8:
There are also some chopped ones:
And the two everyone kinda ignores:
Hoorah! Beethoven symphonies for everyone!
Terzetto
This was on NPR during one of my beloved musical-accompaniments to falling asleep on top of the duvet a few weeks ago. In the interim period between over-then and over-now it had been sitting around as a note in my phone, quickly keyboarded out before all the sleepiness slipped away. Despite a total wipe of my phone, and a huge amount of hauling and installing furniture, my little nighttime notation managed to shove itself back into attention a couple of days ago: “dvorak terzetto”.
Dvorak I’ve never been crazy about. He seems too suspiciously late romantic. This is sneakily chromatic, though. It’s got some crunchy off-key sections. It reminds me a bit of the late Beethoven quartets. It’s also got a pretty sweet name — turns out a terzetto is like a trio, except instead of the plain-salted violin/viola/cello it’s configured violin/violin/viola. Which is, uhhh, pretty awesome I guess. I was hoping for a definition involving giant metal dinosaurs or something, but two violins is cool too.
The L.A. Phil. have liner notes about the piece here. And there are like ten different version on eMusic.