Friday Miscellanea

You would think that this might be interesting, but it really isn't: a compilation of different versions of the first two opening chords of the Symphony No. 3 by Beethoven by different orchestras and conductors from 1924 to 2011:

What we are mostly hearing are small differences in tuning (and later on, with the Early Music folks, the difference between A = 415 and A = 440) and variations in hall ambiance. Courtesy of Slipped Disc.

* * *

This next item calls for a trigger-warning: Norman Lebrecht over at Slipped Disc shamelessly posts this guaranteed clickbait: "The Bad Sex Guide to Opera." Featured are the worst sex scenes in contemporary opera productions. This blog would never sink that low just to attract more traffic. Almost that low, perhaps, but not quite that low.

* * *

I'm not sure, but I think this is depressing:

Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.

That's from this article "The Battle Is For The Customer Interface." I'm not sure what the implications for music are, but they don't seem good. Interface companies, as they deal with people in great numbers, are always erasing subtle variations in favor of a pipeline of essentially bland content. At least that's my sense of how it works with music. Uber, though I haven't used it, sounds like a terrific idea, but I am less a fan of Facebook and the streaming music services. In the battle for the music-lover's dollar, it seems that the musicians and composers are getting less and less. What do my readers think?

* * *

This, from the New Yorker, is my favorite cartoon:

* * *

The Wall Street Journal has a consumer's guide to wireless sound systems. This quote should give you an idea: "You tap on your phone or tablet and you’re grooving to any song in any room in seconds." Not me, dude, not me! I think I got my Harmon Kardon system just in time, because soon they are going to stop manufacturing systems that play CDs entirely. That's going to be another problem for those few companies that are still putting out CDs...

* * *

It is the 21st century: Clapping Music by Steve Reich is now available as an app for the iPhone.

* * *

And, in other 21st century news, "Hip-hop is the most listened to genre in the world, according to Spotify analysis of 20 billion tracks." The record for the most number of streams in a day was 9.6 million achieved by Kendrick Lamar with his new album "To Pimp a Butterfly". I looked at a couple of tracks from it and there is nothing there that I would want to post on this blog. For several reasons.

* * *

Here, from the Guardian, is Philip Clark's excursion into the weirder corners of the music world with several people of whom I have not heard before (and a couple I have). No promises, but you might find something interesting there. The odd thing for me is how often these supposedly extreme examples of music experimentation sound just like a 60s jam session aided with psychedelic pharmaceuticals:

Cool picture of Edgar Varèse, though:

Click to enlarge

* * *

Another piece of new music from Alex Ross: The Difference Engine by Dario Palermo (b. 1970) sounds just like, well, a hundred other pieces of its ilk. How to describe it? Agony in outer space? There always seems to be these random floaty sounds interspersed with unpleasant little moments. Sure, its all about the inhumanity of man to man. But, frankly, shouldn't it be a little more, well, interesting? Musically?

* * *

Neil Young is contemplating taking all his music off the streaming services because of the quality of the audio. Oddly enough, in his case, I find myself not too concerned. It seems that all we hear about lately is how one artist or another is either putting their music on such and such a service or taking it off: Prince, Taylor Swift. All this perpetual jockeying for position makes me even more reluctant to sign up for a streaming music service: the audio quality is lower and music that you supposedly "own" can disappear at any time depending on the whim of the artists or company. So you don't actually "own" anything. So what are you paying for? The "right" to have access to millions of songs you probably couldn't care less about?

* * *

Our envoi (follow the link for the definition of envoi) for today is a genuine piece of experimental music: the Symphony No. 1 in D major (W. 183) by C. P. E. Bach composed in 1775/76 in Hamburg. In this and other pieces, C. P. E. Bach (son of J. S. Bach) developed entirely new ways of structuring music using periodic phrases and motifs that could be modified according to their role in the structure: exposition, development or recapitulation. The development of techniques like these took music halfway from Baroque style to Classical style. Haydn took it the rest of the way. This is Ton Koopman conducting the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana: