GMG and classical music collection - the conflict

[71 dB]

I am most certainly with you on this 71dB.

Good to know.   

Let me be clear what I'm saying. Having access to lots of music is good. Owning it these days is a bit silly.

You made yourself clear, but I don't care if you think it's silly. 

[Jay F]

In the great majority of cases, music isn't really the sort of thing that it makes sense to own (Like film and books.) You hear it once, twice -- but then there really is no need to hear it again.

Few things have made me say "I couldn't agree less" more emphatically than this assertion. I agree with you on movies, as I only watch 95% of them one time, but music? No, that's the opposite. I'm sure I've listened to some recordings more than a thousand times (Mahler, Linda Ronstadt, Beethoven, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Miles Davis), on some combination of LP, cassette, CD, and my current preference, lossless files from my downloaded CDs (which I am not getting rid of).

[otare]

When things get to voices, they become even more personal. There are many Callas recordings that are considered the 'best' by virtually everyone. Her voice drives me nuts. I don't know why others can't hear what I hear, but they don't (or can ignore it).

I agree completely about Callas. I don't like her voice at all. Nasal and throaty (is that a word?). She may have played the roles very well on stage, but her voice gets on my nerves.

[otare]

I have never bought into the Spotify model. I like to have the physical medium available. I do rip my CDs and on one of my systems I play music from the harddisc on my server, but I have noticed that when I do this my mode of listening changes. I am not so focused and have a tendency to jump around and not listen to whole works. The easy availability of tracks makes it so easy to change to something else if your attention wanders. When I play CDs I always finish a work completely before I switch to something else - the medium makes me focus more on what I am hearing, and "forces" me to play something through. This makes me listen to things I would not listen to if I was streaming from the net. And so actually broadens my horizon, because I listen to a work that I don't like at first, but which gets the chance to grow on me during the performance. And so maybe I get back to that work on a later date, something I would never do if I was streaming it, because my first impression ("I don't like it") would stay with me, instead of "I dodn't like it at first, but it grew on me. I'll definitely try it again at a later date".

Anyway - that's my personal opinion. My only problem with owning CDs is that they take up so much space, space I don't really have available any more

[71 dB]

I agree completely about Callas. I don't like her voice at all. Nasal and throaty (is that a word?). She may have played the roles very well on stage, but her voice gets on my nerves.

I like Callas' voice, but she lived 50 years too early. Most of her recordings are monophonic I believe and contain a lot of hiss and distortion. That gets on MY nerves. Opera singing with strong harmonic distortion is one of the most annoying thing I now. 

[otare]

By the 50s the recording quality was actually very good. Just listen to the Mercury recordings from 1958 or thereabout. Hiss and distortion is the least problem (to me) of recordings from this period.

[71 dB]

By the 50s the recording quality was actually very good. Just listen to the Mercury recordings from 1958 or thereabout. Hiss and distortion is the least problem (to me) of recordings from this period.

Yeah, perhaps the last recordings are "tolerable", but I think everytime I hear Callas' singing somewhere I am horrified by the sound quality. I don't listen to recordings pre 70's often for the sound quality reason. Chamber music isn't affected as badly as larger orchestral works and operas imho.

[otare]

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!



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

[Mandryka]

Few things have made me say "I couldn't agree less" more emphatically than this assertion. I agree with you on movies, as I only watch 95% of them one time, but music? No, that's the opposite. I'm sure I've listened to some recordings more than a thousand times (Mahler, Linda Ronstadt, Beethoven, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Miles Davis), on some combination of LP, cassette, CD, and my current preference, lossless files from my downloaded CDs (which I am not getting rid of).

Yes I'm sure I've listened to Mahler and Beethoven many times, and I expect I will continue to do so. But my point was about particular performances, not about pieces of music - the particular rather than the universal.

I think that a pretty small percentage of performances repay multiple repeated listening. Only the deepest do - deep either because they do something with the music which it's not easy to understand, or deep because they express strange and disturbing ideas and feelings.

An example of the former may be Sofronitsky's first Chopin Barcarolle recording (I'm imagining the look of Scherzian's face as he reads that.) An example of second may be Casals playing the intro to the 6th cello suite (Bach)

To do either of those things takes a remarkable performer, a visionary. And there aren't many.

The others may all do things that are worth hearing - surprising ideas about tempo or voicing or articulation. 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.

[Bogey]

It would be interesting to go through all my classical music and to see which cds have had 3 or more listens.  I have a decent library (others here blow mine away), and I understand time is a factor when they get to be large. 

Almost, if not all, my soundtracks all have hit +3 marks and some are probably approaching +100 for listens. 

[Sammy]

I think that a pretty small percentage of performances repay multiple repeated listening.

On the contrary, I feel that every recorded performance deserves multiple listening.  There are so many recordings where my opinion of the performance rose greatly with repeated listening; if I had given up after one or two hearings, I would have been making poor decisions.

[prémont]

On the contrary, I feel that every recorded performance deserves multiple listening.  There are so many recordings where my opinion of the performance rose greatly with repeated listening; if I had given up after one or two hearings, I would have been making poor decisions.

This is completely according with my opinion. The number of recordings, which prove more rewarding with repeated listening, is with the current standard of recordings very great.

[Mandryka]

This is completely according with my opinion. The number of recordings, which prove more rewarding with repeated listening, is with the current standard of recordings very great.

I think this is more true of earlier music, and in contemporary music,  where you still have a major rôle being played by scholar/performers, who have thought about the style, the meaning, and are trying to put that across in the performance. In 18th and 19th century music, and early 20th century, where you basically have a stronger presence of hacks and entertainers, less so.

[prémont]

I think this is more true of earlier music, and in contemporary music,  where you still have a major rôle being played by scholar/performers, who have thought about the style, the meaning, and are trying to put that across in the performance. In 18th and 19th century music, and early 20th century, where you basically have a stronger presence of hacks and entertainers, less so.

Generally I agree with this, even if I think there are some exceptions to your 18th-19th century statement - e.g. Beethovens string quartets and piano sonatas, particularly the later ones.

[bigshot]

I find the more I listen, the more I hear. When I first started getting interested in classical music, I had a very narrow view of what an "acceptable" performance was. If anything strayed outside of that, I dismissed it out of hand. As I got a couple of decades of listening and thought under my belt and got some experience, my tastes broadened and I was able to discern things that I never even considered in my ignorant days. The straying from the beaten path became something I actively looked for to find fresh interpretations.

Now, I find a huge range of great performances from the present and past... too many to absorb all of them. The general level of quality and taste in classical music performance is quite high, and it always has been. The only cardinal sin I see in performance today is the pursuit of acceptability in interpretation. That results in a lot of conservative, bland and predictable performances. It's ironic that what I used to value is now what I see as the problem.

[Jay F]

The others may all do things that are worth hearing - surprising ideas about tempo or voicing or articulation. 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.

None of this is true for me.

[bigshot]

One other thing... I think what opened my mind to the things in music I had been missing and got me to consider the possibilities of interpretation was opera. There's a myriad of different ways of approaching just about any opera, and none of them are "correct". Each approach reveals a different facet of the drama or music. When I realized that through opera, I applied it to pure music. That's when chamber and solo music suddenly came alive for me. All that time, I had been focusing on the composer and work and wanting to find a performer who faded into the background. Now I see performer, work and composer as all being equal things. The three work together to bring the music to life.

There are so many great performers (and even more mediocre listeners!)

[Sammy]

The others may all do things that are worth hearing - surprising ideas about tempo or voicing or articulation. 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.

Wow, that really sounds weird to me.  You appear to be saying that a performance you understand is not worth bothering with anymore.  So, let's assume that I understand Tureck's performances of Bach's WTC.  Let's just dump Tureck and move on - that's nuts.

[kishnevi]

IMO a good performance can never be completely understood.

[Mandryka]

IMO a good performance can never be completely understood.

This is interesting. Can you say some more?