WFMU has, as part of its tribute to the late Earle Hagen, forty-two versions of Hagen’s iconic saxophone-powered ballade.1
I like Herbie Fields’s version, but that vibrato is tough for me to take seriously. Don’t miss Illinois Jacquet or Boots Randolph either.
They spell it saxaphone, which I’m sure is a mistake and not an element of their style guide. ↩
The BBC website ran this headline:
Beethoven music shaped by gradual deafness, say experts.
The crux of their “study” is that Beethoven used less high notes in his middle period. The posit that Beethoven’s failing hearing strongly and uniformly influenced his middle-period compositions. After his hearing completely deteriorated, they say, he returned to using the higher frequencies.
And then, at the very end of the article, they write:
However, the researchers have admitted the findings are not conclusive as they used a limited number of Beethoven’s compositions.
A fuller picture would require a “complete and exhaustive statistical and spectral analyses of the composer’s complete catalogue”.
Basically, they “cherry-picked” pieces that fit their headline, wrote some anecdotes that may or may not be exaggerated to fill in the hypothesis, and hit [POST]. Crack journalism, right there.
Beethoven is probably the most studied composer of all time. I am not exaggerating when I say that I am shocked that a “complete and exhaustive statistical and spectral analyses of the composer’s complete catalogue” does not already exist.
[L]egend has it that [Kim Jong Il] wrote 1,500 books, all of which are stored in the state’s official library. It is also said that he wrote 6 operas, all of which are better than any in the history of music.
He also was said to have scored 11 holes-in-one in his first round of golf, so…
I’m not at all sad that he is gone. And, for once, it doesn’t make me feel icky that our government was involved in a tyrant’s death. This is good riddance of a horrible person.
Andy Baio for WIRED:
Unless you’re a huge fan of Norwegian death metal, it’s hard to see this as anything but a win for Rdio.
I must agree. Rdio is my streaming service of choice.
Dan Visconti writes:
What is the Trojan horse that draws us into the intuitive world of art, and makes for an understanding greater than rational apprehension alone can provide for? It’s the raw, sensual nature of the experience itself, which remains stubbornly indivisible, unique, and present.
So eloquent. Go read the whole thing. This is what I believe in.
From Boom’s Dungeon:
These days it seems that every young composer who writes non-tonal, athematic, dissonant music is routinely described as an avant-garde composer, even though the music does not push (let alone cross) any formal or aesthetic boundaries that are less than half a century old.
It might seem like semantics; but, Boom (Mr. Boom?) is right. That word means something, and it’s not an aesthetic.
This is from today’s amazing Chamber Music Today post:
In an age when noise and unpleasant/irrational/blurred stimuli bombard us every day, the Tallis Scholars’ sound in this sort of brightly reverberant performance space restores our belief in clarity — restores our belief in the fidelity of human communication across large distances in space and time. It is as though high signal-to-noise ratio becomes an aesthetic and cultural emblem of Civilization itself.
In ≈2000 beautifully written words the CMT guy both reviews a spectacular performance by The Tallis Scholars and explains why being a lossless-snot is not just a philosophical idea, but a physiological preference.
Then, THEN, he breaks down the misconception about the actual range of human hearing and shows, with charts, how much better 192 kS/s sound is than the current standard 44.1 kS/s.
As if that’s not enough for one post, there’s extensive links to sources and further reading. Slam dunk.
I can’t say how much I loved reading this post enough. Sure, it’s right in my wheelhouse; but, it’s also an example of what I wish more reviews were. We all know that [NameOfMusicGroup] is likely to put on a great performance — performance-reviews that call-out poor efforts are rare these days. What the CMT guy did was really listen to a performance, then spun it around in his head and came up with some very interesting comparisons to recorded music and some ideas about how we can make everything better. This post was so much better than 99% of what ends up in my RSS feed-catcher. I wish there were more like it.
Attention Saxophonists, and those who are saxophone-curious, RED ALERT! Five (5!) top-quality CDs by the great dutch headbandista are available for free download on his website. Do not hesitate. Clicky, cliky!
Alex Kall thinks every band should record binaurally.
Binaural audio is the free range organic produce of the recording industry. It doesn’t rely on harsh chemicals or fertilizers (like heavy EQ or processing) to sound right.
That’s a great analogy.
I like the idea because it forces your group to be truly good.
I know that I can’t completely remove this misinformation from the planet, and I don’t want to be a Van Hœt; but, it needs to be corrected. Like inadvertent bigotry, mispronounciations, and wearing loafers with suits, there’s no way to fix these problems without talking about them. So let’s get on with it:
Brahms, fading from liver cancer after he buried Clara Schumann, the love of his life, wrote some organ preludes based on hymns, including two settings of, “Oh World, I Must Leave Thee.”
This is (probably) not true. Not the organ preludes part; the part about Clara Schumann. You see, she was 14 years older than Johannes and she was, literally, the best pianist on the planet. Brahms said in his letters that he was affectionate towards her; but, we should think of it in a friendly mentor/mother-figure sort of way. Johannes watched her children while she was away on performance tours and such. There’s no evidence that they were more than friends. Brahms was a bachelor, and Clara was the significantly-older-than-him widow/idol. That’s all we know about their relationship. So knock it off with the Kardashianing of poor Clara.
I feel better.