The 100th Post of 101 Classical Music CDs

Somehow it came and went and I never noticed. But my discussion of Grieg's Lyric Pieces was the 100th post here at this blog.

And so I'm going to take this opportunity, belated as it is, to thank you for reading and for sharing in this journey I'm taking through my classical music. I'm so grateful for this blog, because it's taught me an important lesson beyond the composers, the history and the music. It has taught me that there is amazing beauty and joy in life right in front of our noses--if we would just take the time to look, listen and pay attention.

But because I was too busy with life, all of the amazing classical music I owned just sat there, in a corner of our living room, dusty, forgotten and ignored. Those 101 classical music CDs were a metaphor for how I failed to appreciate the truly important things in life--and now they've become a metaphor for how I'm beginning to get it right.

Okay. Enough sentimentality. As some of you have noticed, I took a bit of a break from this blog over the past few months to travel and to work on some other writing projects--including a blog about writing I'm quietly launching.

But I'm back now--and it's time to get back to the music.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Comments

Does Bach Suck?

It's not often that you see a classical music-related comment that makes you spit out your coffee : "Bach sucks because he was not a true composer. A true composer hears the music before he writes it. Bach composed using a mathematical system of numbers which he tought[sic] his students. After his death one of his students published a book “How to write a menuet[sic] with little or no musical knowledge”. Frankly, the result of his work is not musical, the opening bars always sound musical because he copied someone else’s melody, broke it down into numbers and wrote counterpoint from it. Handel did not even like Bach, because Handel wrote music. Anyone who does like Bach does so because they are told to. For a comparison, listen to music by Frescobaldi, Rameau, or Couperin, then listen to Bach. The difference? Something that is musical throughout the entire piece, and something that is musical for 10 seconds and quickly loses interest." Once I'd finished mopping the co

Why Classical Music Writing is So Difficult to Read

Have you ever read the liner notes of a classical music CD and scratched your head wondering what the heck the writer was trying to say? Or attempted to read a classical music concert review in your newspaper and felt totally illiterate? One of the things that frustrates many people about classical music is its perceived elitism. It's unfortunate, but most of what gets written about classical music only worsens that perception. Most of the classical music writing I see out there--either in symphony concert program books, in concert reviews in major papers like the New York Times, or worst of all in the little essays in the booklets accompanying most classical music CDs--is quite simply terrible. Often, it is pretentiously written, it is full of industry jargon (yes, even the classical music industry has its own jargon), and it reads like an intellectually insecure liberal arts student's PhD thesis. There are a few reasons for this. First, there's the fundamental difficulty

Shostakovich: First Symphony

I can't help it. I just don't like Shostakovich. This is the second time I've tried my hand at a Shosty symphony, after listening to and heartily disliking his Eleventh Symphony . Unfortunately, I felt no emotional connection to his First Symphony either. The music seems random and arbitrary to me--and to be honest, I even caught myself rolling my eyes at a few of Shosty's musical devices. And as I'll show in the listener notes, it's more film score music than symphony. ********************** Leonard Bernstein and the Chicago Symphony Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 7 Deutsche Grammophone, 1989 ********************** Lucky me: I've still got three more of his symphonies left to listen to: his Second, Seventh and Twelfth. A little historical background before we get to the listener notes: Shostakovich wrote his First Symphony in 1925 at the shockingly young age of 18. It was his graduation piece at the Leningrad Conserva

101 Classical Music CDs

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