Saturday, January 17, 2015

How to Use the Music Salon

The idea of the Music Salon is to talk about and listen to interesting music. The talking about part is pretty easy and I am blessed with a number of commentators that make a real contribution to the blog. The listening part is also pretty easy. I can find nearly everything I want to post on YouTube. But there is a big negative, unfortunately. Except for those very few clips that I have created myself and that have never been posted on YouTube, everything that I link to on YouTube is in danger of disappearing sooner or later. If you go back and look at posts that are a few months old (or older), you may well find that all of the clips have disappeared!

Sometimes if I notice that an older post is getting a lot of attention, like the one on the Bach Chaconne, I will go back and put up new clips. But mostly I don't notice or don't have the time. In recent years I have tried to always indicate what I am posting in the immediate text, as in "here is a recording of the P. D. Q. Bach sonata for sewerflute as performed by Dennis Brain". If this information is provided, but the link is missing, then you can provide it for yourself by simply going to YouTube and searching for that piece and performance. Unfortunately, before I realized that this would be a problem, I often put up clips without any identifying text, assuming that the clip itself would be enough. But not if it disappears! So some of the older posts have rather enigmatic blanks. Sorry about that!!

In any case, with my recent posts I always say what clip I am putting up so you can find it on your own. This is useful because the Music Salon is intended to be a resource that can be used over the long term. Most of what I post is not linked to the events of the day so could be read years later. I hope!

Let's listen to something. How about a piano sonata by Prokofiev? This is the

Sonata no.7 Opus 83 played by Khatia Buniatishvili at the Verbier Festival:



Some commentators liked it and some did not.

UPDATE: A commentator just provided some useful information about a technical problem with YouTube links on his iPad. This would seem to be a good place to ask if anyone else is having any problems. Just leave me a comment below and thanks in advance.
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8 comments:

  1. Mark RabnettJanuary 17, 2015 at 9:32 AM

    I very much enjoy your insightful comments on music and musicians, and I really appreciate the work you put into maintaining your blog. I read it regularly. There appears to be a technical problem, however, since none of your YouTube links appear on my iPad. I read many other blogs with YouTube links that I can access easily on my tablet. So there must be something wrong with your coding. I hope you can provide a fix. It would greatly enhance my reading experience.

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  2. Bryan TownsendJanuary 17, 2015 at 9:49 AM

    Mark, thanks so much for the compliment and even more for the technical feedback. I will see if this is something Blogger can fix. I confess that I don't have an iPad so haven't checked, though I have viewed the blog on a Chromebook as well as various desktops without seeing any problems.

    So, a big Chopin fan, huh?

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  3. Nathan ShirleyJanuary 17, 2015 at 10:14 AM

    This is why-http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_and_Adobe_Flash_controversy

    This is the (not ideal) fix-https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/blogger/rDnsnH9bhpk

    I'd recommend petitioning Blogger to make videos bypass iframes by default and embed them automatically. Likely others already are.

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  4. Bryan TownsendJanuary 17, 2015 at 11:13 AM

    Thanks, Nathan. Very illuminating. It seems I would have to do a great deal of reworking of how I post videos. This article seemed to be the clearest: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2013/10/youtube-hosted-videos-may-not-be.html

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  5. UnknownJanuary 21, 2015 at 5:57 AM

    Thank you for sharing this strong recording of Prokofiev 7. What a masterwork!

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  6. Bryan TownsendJanuary 21, 2015 at 11:46 AM

    Thanks, Grisha and welcome to the Music Salon!

    I am slowly getting converted into being an admirer of Prokofiev.

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  7. Nathan ShirleyFebruary 1, 2015 at 12:29 AM

    I notice your recent videos work on my phone now (Android). Does that mean you've started embedded them? YouTube just announced they're moving towards HTML5 for video, and away from Flash. That should help standardize things.

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  8. Bryan TownsendFebruary 1, 2015 at 7:29 AM

    After doing some research, I discovered that the problem arose from an Apple policy about Adobe Flash on their mobile platforms. So I wasn't sure what to do and ended up doing nothing. Maybe, as you say, the big guys are working towards some kind of solution. I'm not a technical wizard so I didn't see an easy solution I could adopt. I barely have time to do the posts! So if the clips are working on your Android phone, I'm delighted. I just checked and they work fine on my iPhone. I don't have an iPad, so I can't check that. They work on my ChromeBook, though.

    ReplyDelete