GMG and classical music collection - the conflict

[Mandryka]

Once a concert's finished, it's finished. Except in your memory. I very much like that way of experiencing music, it keeps it alive and fresh somehow. Of course, some recorded performances are so rich that I feel the need to go back to them.

One place where I've had to listen many many times is in music that's new to me, or in performance styles I find really challenging. I wouldn't like to count how many times I listened to Ensemble Organum doing the Machault Mass before I saw past the initial feeling of it being something too brutal. Now it's to some extent formed my tastes and expectations - at least my familiarity with it has helped me to undersand better what other performances are doing, to locate other performances in the reception history. Now that I know it better. I have it more in memory, I feel the need to hear it less often. I'm more excited by discovering what other groups are doing with the same music.

Some of Harnoncourt's stuff is also like this - the second B minor mass for example. Still exporing that one - the Bach mass is more difficult that the Machault I think.

I had a similar experience with Ferneyhough's Quartet - there I could see straight away somehow that this was a major major piece of music, but it's  so rich and strange that I must have listened to the Arditti recording many many times now, and each time it's like a new experience, maybe slightly more comfortable than before.

Another case is Gould doing the 4th partita. You know, I used to play and play that piece so often, the way he plays the sarabande is somehow etched on my consciousness. I play it rarely now - but it informes my perceptions of what others do with the same music.

I think a lot depends on what you use music for. For me I can see it's becoming a more intellectual than sensual thing.

[71 dB]

Analogue recordings from the 60's are very good sounding. Probably better than recordings from the 70's and 80's in my ears. Personal prefs though - YMMV. Some of the best sounding recordings I have heard are from the 50's. I even have a recording made live in Dresden Semperoper in October 1944 that sounds as good as many recordings made today!

We are talking about technical sound quality. Things like distortion, frequency response, noise etc.

Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius by Barbirolli. Recorded in December 1964. Are you telling me it sounds better (sound quality wise) than recordings from 70's and 80's? I don't agree. My experience is that the older the recording is the more likely it contains loud background noise, harmonic distortion and spectral colourization. Monophonic recordings are plain dull to my ears.

Analog recording reached it's apex in the 70's. Then they switched to digital. 80's was when they learned to do digital recordings, but digital technology was in it's infancy. During the 90's they perfected their craft. Recordings of today are constantly of very high quality apart from spatial distortion when listening with headphones but that issue is solved using crossfeed.

If you limit yourself to recordings made after 1970 you are missing many great recordings.

Limit? There are so many recordings done AFTER years 2000 I could never collect/listen to then all. I don't feel limited at all. 

I have a some recordings made before 1970 (mostly Elgar). Technically the sound quality of more recent recordings is superior.

[kishnevi]

This is interesting. Can you say some more?

With every listen, something new is revealed in the music.  Sometimes very subtle but still new to your ears.

[mc ukrneal]

Once a concert's finished, it's finished. Except in your memory. I very much like that way of experiencing music, it keeps it alive and fresh somehow. Of course, some recorded performances are so rich that I feel the need to go back to them.

One place where I've had to listen many many times is in music that's new to me, or in performance styles I find really challenging. I wouldn't like to count how many times I listened to Ensemble Organum doing the Machault Mass before I saw past the initial feeling of it being something too brutal. Now it's to some extent formed my tastes and expectations - at least my familiarity with it has helped me to undersand better what other performances are doing, to locate other performances in the reception history. Now that I know it better. I have it more in memory, I feel the need to hear it less often. I'm more excited by discovering what other groups are doing with the same music.

Some of Harnoncourt's stuff is also like this - the second B minor mass for example. Still exporing that one - the Bach mass is more difficult that the Machault I think.

I had a similar experience with Ferneyhough's Quartet - there I could see straight away somehow that this was a major major piece of music, but it's  so rich and strange that I must have listened to the Arditti recording many many times now, and each time it's like a new experience, maybe slightly more comfortable than before.

Another case is Gould doing the 4th partita. You know, I used to play and play that piece so often, the way he plays the sarabande is somehow etched on my consciousness. I play it rarely now - but it informes my perceptions of what others do with the same music.

I think a lot depends on what you use music for. For me I can see it's becoming a more intellectual than sensual thing.

I  really don't understand your thinking. When you go to a concert of Barenboim playing Beethoven, are you going to hear Beethoven or Barenboim (or insert player name of interest)? I go to hear Beethoven. Same with a disc  - I play the disc because I want to hear the music again (for the most part), not because I want to think about how a particular performer plays the piece. So your comment,  "But once you've heard what they do, and you've grokked the consequences, why bother to hear it again? You already know it, understand it." seems very strange to me.

I listen to it again because I want to hear the work again - because I like the music. It can be fun (and educational) to listen to other interpretations, but I don't need to. In fact, I think listening to multiple interpretations in and of itself does not add a whole lot (though voices may be a bit different). Once you've heard a piece, the different interpretations are rarely so radical that it changes your conception of the piece (as long you have a half way decent one to start with).

[Moonfish]

Reading all the posts in this thread makes it pretty clear that we all approach classical music with unique perspectives and for different reasons. Personally I listen with more of an emotional component although intellectually it is inspiring to consider the origin, perception and reason for a given composition. The spectrum of performers and their contributions simply adds to the multifaceted auditory realm we so frequently wander through. It is a lifelong fascinating musical journey - each piece a reflection of the human mind echoing through time and space - for each of us to absorb and process in our own way. I do not see a conflict, but rather a timeless musical invocation for all of us to heed and honor as an integral part of our lives.

[Artem]

I do not see a conflict, but rather a timeless musical invocation for all of us to heed and honor as an integral part of our lives.

Thank you for these wise words. It is something worth to think about.

[Mandryka]

I  really don't understand your thinking. When you go to a concert of Barenboim playing Beethoven, are you going to hear Beethoven or Barenboim (or insert player name of interest)? I go to hear Beethoven. Same with a disc  - I play the disc because I want to hear the music again (for the most part), not because I want to think about how a particular performer plays the piece. So your comment,  "But once you've heard what they do, and you've grokked the consequences, why bother to hear it again? You already know it, understand it." seems very strange to me.

I listen to it again because I want to hear the work again - because I like the music. It can be fun (and educational) to listen to other interpretations, but I don't need to. In fact, I think listening to multiple interpretations in and of itself does not add a whole lot (though voices may be a bit different). Once you've heard a piece, the different interpretations are rarely so radical that it changes your conception of the piece (as long you have a half way decent one to start with).

You can never hear Beethoven's music, because the composition doesn't determine sounds etc.

[Mandryka]

With every listen, something new is revealed in the music.  Sometimes very subtle but still new to your ears.

.


But things are more complex than I understand at the moment. When you listen to a recording it's not just the lifeless determined finite photograph (CD)  of an event (performance)  that's in the mix - you, the listener, are in the mix too. And this is what makes the recording endlessly revealing I suppose - it's what the listener brings to the event. It's like the hermeneutic ciricle.

[71 dB]

You can never hear Beethoven's music, because the composition doesn't determine sounds etc.

Beethoven must have imagined how his music sounds when it is played while composing. The sounds are at least loosely determined: "violin-like sound here, flute-like sound there etc." In my opinion music exists only as sounds. The bits on a CD are information, not music. Only when the CD is played and sounds emerge from the loudspeakers/headphones the information becames music. Same with scores. Notes on paper are not music. They are information* coded as notes. When an orchestra plays the score the information becames music. This is what I think and will always think no matter what others say.

*This information can be and often is considered art, but that doesn't make it music any more than the Mona Lisa painting.

[mc ukrneal]

You can never hear Beethoven's music, because the composition doesn't determine sounds etc.

I knew it! It was Bach all along!

[Ken B]

I knew it! It was Bach all along!

Mrs Bach, please.

[kishnevi]

Beethoven must have imagined how his music sounds when it is played while composing. The sounds are at least loosely determined: "violin-like sound here, flute-like sound there etc." In my opinion music exists only as sounds. The bits on a CD are information, not music. Only when the CD is played and sounds emerge from the loudspeakers/headphones the information becames music. Same with scores. Notes on paper are not music. They are information* coded as notes. When an orchestra plays the score the information becames music. This is what I think and will always think no matter what others say.

*This information can be and often is considered art, but that doesn't make it music any more than the Mona Lisa painting.

In general agreement, but I would propose a slight modification: it becomes music when someone actually listens to it.

[Moonfish]

Beethoven must have imagined how his music sounds when it is played while composing. The sounds are at least loosely determined: "violin-like sound here, flute-like sound there etc." In my opinion music exists only as sounds. The bits on a CD are information, not music. Only when the CD is played and sounds emerge from the loudspeakers/headphones the information becames music. Same with scores. Notes on paper are not music. They are information* coded as notes. When an orchestra plays the score the information becames music. This is what I think and will always think no matter what others say.

*This information can be and often is considered art, but that doesn't make it music any more than the Mona Lisa painting.

Hmm, that puts reading a book in a new perspective. Ha ha! So reading a book is different compared to reading music per your definition? The notes on paper, the cd, the cassette tape or an instrument being played all seem to be the different states of the same music in my mind.
It is very interesting how this thread turns so philosophical and has diverted so drastically from the content in the primary post.

[springrite]

In general agreement, but I would propose a slight modification: it becomes music when someone actually listens to it.

I always knew it was me all along at the centre of it all!

[Moonfish]

In general agreement, but I would propose a slight modification: it becomes music when someone actually listens to it.

And your post only exists if someone reads it?    0:)

[EigenUser]

And your post only exists if someone reads it?    0:)

And if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?  0:) 0:)

(You should have known where this was going to go )

[starrynight]

In the end, I held my ground, but it can be difficult do explain what we hear to others (and what we like to hear as well). It is especially hard when you cannot articulate it well either, which can be a challenge (meaning identifying what exactly you liked or disliked and why you liked or disliked it). But even that is not necessary - it is enough to know you liked it.

The internet gets criticised a lot but I think it can help develop a greater ability to articulate and debate with the more sustained discussion you can get.


As for gaps I think everybody has them, people just prioritize things differently and it should be easy enough for people to accept that.

[bigshot]

We are talking about technical sound quality. Things like distortion, frequency response, noise etc. Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius by Barbirolli. Recorded in December 1964. Are you telling me it sounds better (sound quality wise) than recordings from 70's and 80's? I don't agree. My experience is that the older the recording is the more likely it contains loud background noise, harmonic distortion and spectral colourization. Monophonic recordings are plain dull to my ears.

The best sounding recording I have ever heard was recorded in 1954... Fiedler's Gaetie Parisienne on Living Stereo. It sounds better than many recordings that were made much later. I've also heard mono recordings that were strikingly lifelike and dimensional. It's more a matter of the miking and mixing than it is the recording format.

That said, I am using speakers with a 5.1 system and pretty sophisticated DSPs to play these recordings back. A good surround system will make anything sound better than just two channels in headphones.

[bigshot]

But things are more complex than I understand at the moment. When you listen to a recording it's not just the lifeless determined finite photograph (CD)  of an event (performance)  that's in the mix - you, the listener, are in the mix too. And this is what makes the recording endlessly revealing I suppose - it's what the listener brings to the event. It's like the hermeneutic ciricle.

That's exactly it. The exciting thing about different interpretations aren't the things that are the same, it's the differences between them. Imagine if you have always lived in the same place. You look at a photo of your house, and you recognize it. And you look at a photo of the Taj Mahal and it is just a photo of a weird building. If you travel and see the world, that abstract photo can mean more to you. It can represent a time and place and feel. Music is sort of like that. With less experience, you hear tunes and rhythms... but as your experience grows, the music grows too. If it is a particularly good performance, it can be like a diamond, revealing a different facet and a different angle on the music every time you listen to it.

When I first started getting interested in classical music, I wanted one good modern recording of each work. "Who needs two different Eroica symphonies?" That was a fine approach for where I was on my journey back then. The whole repertoire was new to me. But when I got to a certain point, I started perceiving a new layer in music I was already very familiar with. That layer was the personality of the performer. It got so it wasn't just piano music playing, it was RUBINSTEIN big as life. And that Eroica symphony by Toscanini was like no other Eroica I had ever heard. That was the point where I stopped focusing on the age or format of the recording and started focusing on what a particular performer brought to the composition.

That isn't something that reveals itself right away though. It takes a lot of time and thought to get to that point. I imagine some people never get there because they don't have the time to invest, or because the music is always pretty wallpaper to them, not ideas with a vitality and life of their own.

[bigshot]

In general agreement, but I would propose a slight modification: it becomes music when someone actually listens to it.

Not necessarily. Ives' music existed and was possessed of genius long before any one listened to it. By the time people listened to it, his composing career had been over for decades.