A Lark Ascending

If that was real opera the two principals would both look as if they'd been eating nothing but cornettos for ten years.

When you take the amount of truly wonderful music in the world and divide it by the number of years in a lifetime, you'll find that you're WAY behind schedule! Too much is never enough when it comes to music. Digital audio technology has completely changed my relationship with music in a good way. I have a Mac Mini packed with a year and a half's worth of great music. The server plays on shuffle play 24/7 through airports all over my house. I am always surrounded by music. It even plays quietly in my bedroom as I sleep. I wake up with violin concertos running through my head that I must have listened to when I was asleep. This doesn't mean that I don't take just as much time for focused listening as I used to. The opposite is actually true. I have a list of music that came up on random play that I was interested to go back and carefully listen to. Having more music than I can ever absorb fully is a liberating and satisfying experience. I'm learning about music faster than I ever did before, and I'mappreciating it more because my horizons are much wider. It's impossible to get too focused on minutia or obsessed with one composer. It's like swimming in the ocean instead of sitting in a bathtub. Oh, you can certainly enjoy music that way. And I never make any more demands on music than that it provides me with enjoyment. But classical music (and jazz) are sold in a way to make you believe that you are buying rather more than enjoyment. When you buy a Schnabel disc you are buying 'sublime artistry'. I'm not sure I'd recognise sublime artistry if it got up and bit me, but I find it hard to imagine you stand a chance tearing through a 587 CD box. But then again, if you've been told enough times that Schnabel discs are suffused with sublime artistry and you want to believe you can appreciate sublime artistry then there's a fair chance you are going to hear sublime artistry. And if you're having trouble, the liner notes will help you along the way.

These boxes are certainly winners in price terms, largely for people who are getting to know the music. I like the occasional composer based box if it's someone I'm unfamiliar with, a box containing a lot of music I don't have elsewhere (the Stravinsky plays Stravinsky box, the Delius EMI box with a lot of vocal music I didn't know) or where I'm wanting to replace crackly vinyl (largely a thing of the past as I've been through all that). I do think that most of these boxes are part of a clever marketing strategy (similar to the way they keep shuffling Miles or Pink Floyd albums). Easy money for the big companies as they just have to keep recycling the same music (sometimes with some flashy remastering). By exaggerating the 'unique' gifts of particular performers and encouraging the 'who's best?' tendency amongst connoisseurs and wannabee connoisseurs they get to shift vastly more product. After all, you really do need 20 different Beethoven cycles because they are all so different, each conductor so special! I can't help that feeling that those who gorge themselves on these banquet boxes are missing out on a wonderful experience - the slow unfolding of a composer's music over many, many years. I'm frequently guilty of getting a new enthusiasm and simply overdoing it, wanting it all now (bought way too much Brahms last year which I have yet to even begin to absorb. It's there for me to enjoy for the next 40 years but had I been less greedy I could have gradually engaged with it over ten years as I have with most other classical music). It is never as fulfilling as taking the time to explore gradually. Taking a disc and playing it again and again and letting it seep in. Yes, you can do that with individual discs in a megalopobox but the temptation is to move onto disc 345 and then 346 before you've even begun to get the jist of 344.

I never knew that. Always assumed it was from some 19thC Italian opera or operetta. You'll be telling me next that Kurt Weill wrote 'Just One Cornetto.'

Absolutely. The error behind Young's thinking is believing that most people want the best possible sound. There's only a minority who want that. Most people want good quality sound (which you can get from MP3) and that will do. For a new technology to take off it has to do something substantially different from existing technology (as LP did over 78 or CD over LP). The story of SACD illustrates that point perfectly. Loved by a minority, ignored by everyone else. It strikes me that developments in streaming audio are where the next big thing will happen. Though it may not affect those of us used to something more permanent quite as much.

Limited edition? What number was yours?

Wow! Thanks, Roger. There's a pic on Amazon: [interestingly the CD is out of stock at Amazon and costs £199 from the other supplier!) And here's the book:

Bombed in 'The Last Austerity' mid-50s Britain. But I'd say any open minded listener with a taste for Puccini could enjoy a lovely wallow in this score.

A picture I took in a Cornish maize field a couple of years back. I was lying on my back on the path!

I'm well aware of that! Though it's worth remembering that the thing about the British class system is that it is raw and exposed (people only have to open their mouths). Doesn't mean it's not there in countries that view themselves as essentially egalitarian. And snobbery does not necessarily require a class basis. The odd thing is that up to the 19thC Britain had one of the most fluid class systems in Europe. It was far easier for a successful bourgeois to rise into the aristocracy if they found the right contacts or married well than in, say, France or Spain. We often brag about the fact that (after the 17thC) we had no revolutions; but that seems to have thrown us behind. [i hasten to add that the existence of the class system here does not turn everyone born into the more privileged side into Wooster-ish toffs. I've met plenty of down to earth and socially aware people who have enjoyed the leg-up that going to the 'right' school provides. And very few of them care about opera!] ********************** Popular enjoyment of opera arias and choruses has always been there - my dad can whistle and hum loads of them based on pure enjoyment of the tunes and powerful singing. Everything from the Three Tenors to Singing Priests constantly keeps the enjoyment of those pieces current (not to mention 'Go Compare' adverts!). There's always a new 'Best Opera Album You'll Ever Need...Ever!' compilation in the charts. And there have been 'spectacular' performances of things like Aida run by a particular impressario for as long as I can remember. But 'going to the opera' retains a rather 'superior' haze around it. Not the sort of thing ordinary folk do (but then they don't go to free jazz concerts either!).

I wonder how far the British perspective is different. Most other countries have had their revolutions and have evolved at least a pretence that distinctions of wealth and ownership are based on some sort of meritocratic base. In Britain the presence of class as something inherited remains huge (look at our current government!). Where you are educated carries enormous kudos and that is based on wealth and old boyism. Enjoying opera almost feels like some sort of class betrayal.

Wonder if any jazz charts are based on the changes from 'Wozzeck'?

I suppose I'm thinking of music intended for a particular audience but rejected or ignored by that audience at the time. Classical composers like William Alwyn and Malcolm Arnold produced much music in the mid-20thC that failed to meet its market much of the time because the arbiters of what was worth promoting had decided it was conservative, unchallenging, derivative or whatever. With the passage of time that sort of judgement has diminished (apart from a few hardy souls who feel it is their duty to uphold the standards of 'art') and the music gets more of a hearing based on whether it interests or moves or not. It's certainly much easier to hear this sort of music now, often in several versions, than it was when I first started listening and the critical response to the music is far less disdainful.

I've found the term 'vinyls' a bit odd. Can't recall anyone ever saying they were going to put on 'a vinyl'; yet I see 'vinyls' used quite a bit as in 'I'd never give up my vinyls'. Back in the day vinyl was just what the 'record' or 'LP' was made from. I suppose it became used in a record collecting context as a term for the object that played the music with the arrival of CD. Doesn't bother me - living language and all that. But curious.

Dare say they got a sub out of the olympics money, but it wasn't enough for Monk, or even Pops. MG If they'd had that sort of money you could be sure it would have been spent on The Beatles.

IIRC the 'classic' version (Olivier?) only covers the first half of the book. I seem to recall some debate among academics as to whether Bronte implies Heathcliffe has an African element in his ancestry. More important, how do the new actors fare in the famous semaphore scenes, surely the most memorable parts of the novel? Must read Wuthering Heights again - a good 35 years since I read it. I recall being so gripped I polished it off in a weekend.

I was listening to a discussion on the radio this morning about the songs of John Ireland and Ivor Gurney and the comment was made that the music of such composers is greatly undervalued because they were out of synch with their time (in the case of those two, an era of increasing abstraction and moving away from standard tonality). So... Any genre, music that was cold shouldered in its own time but who you get great enjoyment from? [i'm not thinking of music that was neglected because it was ahead of its time; more music that was out of tune with its own time, perhaps working in an unfashionable style or idiom).

Even better than I remember it. The wit in this series is priceless. Farce it may be but pulled of superbly.

I know exactly what you mean by the 'changes'. You must write it. Though in Czech.

PS in fact I don't know frank but I'll look out for him... I thought he was well-known in London Guess he's been lying. 'You got some 'splainin' to do' (; No, it's a good group, mostly for Frank's arranging. Plays nice clarinet too. They play the smaller fests and normal venues like Bull's head, 606, Pizza Express. Worth hearing and if you can please say cheers from Joel. I've heard him play with a band led by Henry Lowther a few years back. He was depping for Julian Arguelles. Have a look here: http://www.jazzcds.co.uk/artist_id_587

Really disappointed. I heard it was going to be Hatfield and the North.

No need for them in London. There have already been three threads on this board about them this week.

The first of Ian Hislop's three part history of the Stiff Upper Lip. Fascinating (and typically humorous) social history. Hopefully the nation is watching and will put aside its foolish emoting over people winning dancing competitions or being evicted from wannabeastar competitions. Harrumph!

Did you get the 40th anniversary edition with Wilson's remix? The album sounds better now than it ever did. Yes. I agree. Much greater clarity.

All hail to Wilson also for consistently championing 'Lizard'. When I bought a copy in 1971 it totally bewildered me - the first side threw me completely, with little in the way of a tune to latch onto until the last track. But over a year or so it ate its way into my brain and ultimately became my favourite KC album (with Islands jostling with it for poll position). Ever since then I've seen it consistently written off, even by Fripp himself. Great to hear someone influential champion it not just as 'better than we thought' but as an utterly brilliant album. I think he's right about there being so much information in the record. Try listening to it concentrating on just the guitar (electric and acoustic). Extraordinary.