Back then, I wonder how accurately births were recorded. There is even debate about my own birthdate!
While this Rolling Stone article deals with pop music, its analysis of the state of the CD recording industry is just as applicable to our collections of classical CD boxes. Tim Ingham: Album in Trouble, Music Business Probably Can’t Save It – Rolling Stone
I'm not sure what the point of the article is. Are they noting the decline of the "album" as a collection of songs put out at once for people to buy at once (like an LP or CD) or the decline of the "hard copy" (i.e., the physical LP or CD) or both? I can see the death of the huge sets of CDs in nice boxes with big booklets, but I suspect there always will be a market for huge, organized compilations of classical material. I can see no one wanting the entire Beatles "White Album", preferring just a few tracks therefrom, but do the young folks out there who like classical music just want a download of the first movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony? Also, is the idea of the "single" in popular music at all new? When I was growing up in the 1960s, lots of kids just wanted a popular song (on 45) and couldn't give a damn about the album it appeared on. And some didn't even want the 45. Just turn on the radio - the old version of Spotify - and you'll hear your song every 15 minutes until you got sick of it and were ready for the next "hit". As George Martin commented, the early Beatles songs were essentially designed to be forgettable - i.e., able to get over the public's attention quickly so they could get on to the next "forgettable" song.
True. I would add that the "music industry" indeed cannot "save the album". But truly creative artists that are not trying to follow the industry but are following their inner spirit CAN "save the album"
Just purchased my first classical mega box today. I got the RCA Reiner box on sale at my local 1/2 Price Books. It’s NM and I look forward to diving in Have a question though, are many of these these masterings really compressed? Only had time to listen to a few portions of a couple CDs. However the Strauss “ Heldenleben” ( CD 2) was really loud when I had my preamp set at only 8 o’clock. Are there many more like this lurking in this box?
What intrigues me about that chart in Rolling Stone, of declining album sales over the past few years, is how a big a proportion of the sales are the physical discs. Vinyl rather than CDs?
Even in the scope of pop music, the death of "album" is even more sad than than the death of the physical media (CD, Vinyl, etc). For rock this is an art disaster. I think the only way this new market behavior could spill over into classical music, would be the release of recording of isolated specific pieces (for example the release of a new recording of a whole Symphony, or a whole Piano Concerto), regardless of the number of tracks needed to accomodated it, without the need of "couplings" or "fillers". For example, if in the past a new Beethoven "album" would be comprised of two symphonies coupled together in the same CD or Vinyl, future releases would have the symphonies released one by one. I do not foresee however the releasing of single movements of a piece as stand alone releases.
Yes they are back in business after being bankrupted, and I have seen some new Vivaldi recordings from them in the last few months. As for the quality of the recordings, the three or four smaller boxes of Vivaldi I own sound good to my ears. They use a number of groups to record the instrumental music, and perhaps some of them have not been recorded as well as others, but again, I have not noticed anthing too disturbing.
All of my Naive CDs are piano recordings, these all have full dynamic range and great mastering. I like that their liner notes for the discs I have are quite detailed. The Grigory Sokolov box compiling all his Naive recordings is one of my essential box sets.
Popular records started out as singles, more or less, with a 78 having an A and B side (skipping past those one-sided Caruso 78s and Edison cylinders, or course). When LPs came along, originally in 10-inch format, they were just a collection of singles, previously issued as 78s. To me, popular music albums - the name probably originating from those books of collected 78s (beginning in the early 1940s, I think) that looked a bit like a photo album - have always been just a group of the latest stuff done by a particular artist. I never quite understood the idea of the "concept album" in rock and roll. For example, I don't get what the "concept" of Sergeant Pepper is. Often, however, popular record albums have a certain uniform feel to them simply because they represent a particular musical mode in which a popular musician has written his latest material (or maybe just the group of musicians he or she used for the relevant sessions). Bob Dylan is a good example. I have not studied classical music in depth, but I suspect there is a lot more "concept" in (say) Schubert's string quintet, which takes up an entire CD or LP. After that, however, it's just a bunch of Schubert BUT with a very similar feel and style that makes a larger collection more satisfying. If you like a few Beethoven or Bach pieces, there's a good chance you'll enjoy (or at least not hate) a big box of either. But if you love Dylan's Highway 61, you might vomit listening to Self-Portrait or even Nashville Skyline. There certainly was plenty of vomitus at Newport in 1965.
"I never quite understood the idea of the "concept album" in rock and roll. For example, I don't get what the "concept" of Sergeant Pepper is" St Pepper, good as it is, is not a good example of "concept album" in rock and roll indeed. To understand better the idea behind "concept album" one would better listening carefully to "Quadrophenia" by The Who, where all the songs in the album are connected by subject, a fictional character who suffers from " Dissociative identity disorder (DID)". Not only this album is a good example of concept album but it also is a good example of wagnerian leitmotifs being effectivelly used outside of classical music. There are other examples, The Who´s Tommy, Pink Floyd The Wall, Marillion Misplaced Childhood, to name a few.
I would buy them all if i could... but they're too expensive! I have only DGG 111 (the red one, the first) and Mercury Living Presence n. 1
Uaw, they´re back, that is a good news. Now I have hope their "Vegh" 1960´s cycle of Beethoven´s string quartets comes up again...
I believe Tommy is a musical or "opera" designed to be performed as such, rather than a "concept album". In fact, wasn't that originally released as a "live" performance with a symphony orchestra and no Who members directly involved? Perhaps I am misremembering, and perhaps it (as well as Quadrophenia) qualifies as both a concept album and a musical/opera. Had they been recorded initially rather than performed, I guess The Magic Flute and Turandot and the like would have been "concept albums". I profess little to no knowledge of the others you mention. But to name a few might be to name them all, or to name just a minuscule fraction of what rock and rollers have produced over the last 50 years.
Tommy did not start out as a stage performance, but like Who's earlier shorter multi-part "stories" Rael and A Quick One was designed for an album. Only later was it made into a movie. The original Who never performed the whole thing, but left out several songs, and they certainly did not present it as a theatre event. Only fairly recently, with two of its original members dead, did they perform the whole thing without cuts, and even then it was only semi-theatrical. Something similar is true for Quadrophenia, except that the (excellent) movie based on the album in not a musical but a more or less realistic depiction of sixties London.
Could you explain what you mean by "Wagnerian leitmotifs?" I'm not trying to be smart by asking, I've just never seen anyone but artists themselves (in what I assumed to be... elevated appreciation for their own work) making the comparison between, say, Wagner and Marillion. I'm asking as a fan of concept albums, by the by - it's just that I have a hard time avoiding the pitfall of seeing rock (yes, even progressive rock) as "low" art and classical as "high" art with a big fence between the two sides.
While pop albums (and yes, "album" was the original description of the multi-sleeved book that would hold a group of 78 rpm records), obviously lend themselves to having their hit singles streamed and the rest of their contents forgotten (as was mentioned, in the 50s and early 60s, we bought the 45 rpm singles of the tunes we wanted and rarely the whole album), I think the Rolling Stone article does have implications for classical music. While we aren't likely to stream one movement of a symphony or concerto at the expense of the remainder, if the industry is not selling CDs of pop music, the manufacturing plants will not be commercially viable producing a niche product like classical music. Without popular music to keep CD production profitable, classical music will need another method of distribution, probably either streaming or digital downloading.
What did you pay for the Reiner box at half price books, j barleycorn? Would love to find a good deal on it somewhere.
I picked those up as they came out, most of my (formerly) very smal classical collection. They were not well received at the time and are (like most Abbado) on no one’s top 10 list. However, having ‘imprinted’ on them, they are what I compare others to.
One of my first "expensive" boxsets from back in the days of vinyl A record store manager liked our discussion of Mozart and gave it to me for half price. That was back when my rent was $30 a month.
Hello, neither have I tried to make the album or the band being smart with mentioning this detail hehehe I did not mention Marillion in this regard (I had only mentioned them for relesing a Concept Album). For the usage of "wagnerian leitmotifs" I was referring only to "Quadrophenia" by The Who. What I meant is that, while the best progressive rock bands frequently used "recurring musical phrases", a technic borrowed from classical suites, they often do so just for aestetics purpose, just for bringing the music back to the known main subject previously presented. But the album Quadrophenia goes beyond that. It uses the recurring musical phrases to express different emotions, feelings, state of mind, and specially to let the listener know which of the 4 different personalities is taking over at a given moment (since the character has 4 different personalities due to his DID). For example when he asks "is it me for a moment" when one of his personalities take over (using the same musical phase or melody that had been used earlier in the album when the personality was first presented. Quadrophenia is full of this, recurring musical phases used specifically to identify to the listener emotions, feelings, state of mind and which of the 4 personalities of the character Jhimmy ia taking over at moment. A technic borrowed from Wagner. Regards, Db
