October 2011 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• Brandenburg Concerto No.6
• Orchestral Suites (complete)
• Harpsichord Concertos 1 to 4

Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 13, 17 and 31
Schumann

• Kreisleriana
• Fantasy in C
• Arabeske in C
• Humoresque in B flat
• Piano Sonata No.2
• Nachtstucke (Night Pieces)
• Liederkreis (song cycle), Op.24
• 3 Romances
• Novelette No.9, Op.99/9

Telemann

• Tafelmusik Volume 1: Conclusion
• Tafelmusik Volume 2 (complete)
• Taflemusik Volume 3: Overture, Quartet

Vivaldi

• Concertos for Strings in E minor and in B flat ('Conca'), RV 133 and 163
• Violin Concertos in E minor, in F ('for the feast of S. Lorenzo'), and in C minor ('Amato Bene'), RV 281, 286 and 761
• Cello Concerto in D minor, RV 407
• Flautino (recorder/piccolo) Concerto in C, RV 443 - 2nd movement
• Concerto for 2 violins in D, RV 511
• Concerto for 2 cellos in G minor, RV 531
• Concerto for violin and organ in D minor, RV 541
• Domine ad adiuvandum (O Lord, make haste to help)
• Dixit Dominus, RV 595
• Confitebor tibi, Domine ( I will praise you, Lord)
• Beatus vir in C (1720s version), RV 597
• Beatus vir in C (1739 version), RV 795
• Beatus vir in B flat, RV 598
• Deus tuorum militum (God, your soldiers)
• Stabat Mater
• Canta in prato, ride in monte (Sing in the meadow, smile on the mountain), RV 623
• Clarae stellae, scintillate (Bright stars, shine)
• In turbato mare irato (In an angry, rough sea)
• Nulla in mudo pax sincera (There is no unblemished peace in the world)
• O qui coeli terraeque serenitas (You are the tranquility of heaven and earth)
• Filiae maestae Jerusalem (Mournful daughters of Jerusalem)
• Non in pratis aut in hortis (Neither in meadows nor in gardens)
• Juditha Triumphans

Anonymous, adapted by Vivaldi - Credidi propter quod (I believed, therefore have...)


See? I told you there was a lot of Vivaldi!

Almost too much, actually. There's a certain sense of churning through the list just in order to say that I've checked them all out. I'm sure there will be benefit to going back and listening to these pieces in smaller thematic groups of a few pieces at a time.

Ironically, the majority of these new Vivaldi CDs look like they've been designed to provide an interesting and varied listening experience if you just press play and go through the group of pieces as presented.  But I still think I need to 'say hello' to them as individual pieces first.  They weren't originally written and presented in anything like the order that they occur on the CDs.  In the case of the sacred vocal music, the notes provided will enable me to go back and put some more accurate groups together - things that are scattered right across the series that were written/presented together originally, back in the 1720s or 1730s.

It's not as if I'm not enjoying what I'm hearing. I generally am. The quality's not totally even (purely in my personal opinion), but the thing is, I never really know before listening which piece is going to be the one that grabs me.  I suppose one of the problems with the sheer volume is that I have trouble remembering for very long afterwards either...

I remember the Concerto for 2 Cellos is a good one. There you go.

In the Schumann, the Fantasy in C was quite marvellous and I know I'll be going back to that one a lot. But it's much the same thing - so much new music means that it doesn't really register as deeply as I'd like.  But that's hopefully part of what the next few decades are for.

October 2011 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• American Doll Posse
• Abnormally Attracted to Sin
• Night of Hunters
• Silent All These Years - regular UK single, limited edition UK single
• Winter - regular UK single, limited edition UK single (recreated from other sources)
• China single
• Crucify UK single
• Cornflake Girl US single
• Audience bootlegs - Mannheim 2 December 2001, Oberhausen 3 December 2001, St Petersburg 30 September 2011, Moscow 2 October 2011

Fiona Apple - When the Pawn...
Bjork - Biophilia
Frou Frou - Details
Bruce Hornsby - The Way It Is
Nik Kershaw - Human Racing
Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue
Roisin Murphy - Overpowered
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Something for Kate - Beautiful Sharks
Something for Kate - Echolalia
Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden
Toys - Soundtrack

Hmm...

Nope. I still don't especially want to talk about Night of Hunters. Other than to say I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

I want to talk about Biophilia instead because I decided to opt in to the whole album-as-app experience.  I didn't buy Bjork's album on CD. I've only heard it on my iPhone.

Bjork is one of those artists that I'm frequently curious about but never completely connect with. I already own one album that I bought second-hand (Homogenic). I've considered buying others and sampled them repeatedly. One of the attractions is arguably that she conceives albums as based around particular ideas or sounds.

The biggest problem, I think, with Biophilia at times is that the concept is taken sufficiently literally that it hasn't necessarily translated from a concept into music with an independent existence.  Some of the songs are very, very sparse.  Mind you, sparse can be beautiful. I actually love it when a composer is able to build a musical structure out of only a few small elements.  Beethoven's 5th symphony (or at least its first movement) is arguably one of the most famous examples, with so much material drawn from the opening da-da-da-dum.  But there are pop songs, too, that manage to be incredibly clean and economical - I just wish one of them would leap to mind right now as I'm writing this.

With a number of the Bjork songs, though, it feels as if I'm just seeing the bare bones.  It's possibly not helped by the ability, in app form, to literally see those bones - in visual form.  The animations of the music are simultaneously one of the most impressive features of the app (the animations involving circles, bars and lines are quite brilliant as a means of intuitively showing musical form to people who haven't learnt musical notation) but also something of an Achilles heel. You can see exactly what's there in the music - to the point of saying in some cases, 'oh, is that all it is then'.

The quality of the apps varies considerably. Some of them are interesting in interactive mode, some of them are interesting when you just play the song, arguably only one is interesting in both cases ('Virus') and some are dull in both.

As a musical experience, though, the most frustrating thing about the app album is that you can't just play the album.  It's forever in the form of 10 separate songs, which you have to click and swipe between, and if you want to hear the songs fully you have to remember which mode will give the most straightforward rendition in each app, as it varies.  Instruments are often missing if you select the 'wrong' version.

I suppose one response is that if I wanted to listen to an album, I should have bought a CD (or a music download).  Well yes, maybe.  But if you're trying to create a new musical experience, wouldn't it be better to ensure that you don't cause people to lose their existing musical experiences? Shouldn't the new part be an addition?  Or is it just an exercise in getting more money by requiring customers to effectively buy the album twice?

I don't regret partaking in Bjork's app experiment, but I'm not sure it's going to have a great deal of staying power for me. At some point I may end up resenting the space taken up by an app that's of no 'practical' use that also doesn't do the one thing I would most like it to - provide me with music to listen to.

September 2011 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - Cello Suites (complete, 2 recordings)
Bach, J.S. - Brandenburg Concertos (complete - 2 recordings for Nos. 4 and 5)
Haydn - Symphonies 102 and 103 ('Drumroll')
Scarlatti, D. - Keyboard sonatas - K.1, 3, 9, 17, 24, 27, 213, 214, 247, 283, 284, 380, 404, 443, 519
Schubert - Piano Sonatas in A minor and in D, D. 784 and D.850
Schumann

• Papillons (Butterflies)
• Davidsbundlertanze (Dances of the League of David)
• Carnaval
• Symphonic Etudes
• Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood)

Simpson - Symphony No.10
Telemann - Tafelmusik Volume 1: Overture, Quartet, Concerto, Trio, Solo
Vivaldi

• The Four Seasons (2 recordings)
• Violin Concerto in C, RV 171
• Kyrie in G minor
• Gloria, RV 588 with introduction Jubilate, o amoeni chori RV 639
• Credo in E minor
• Dixit Dominus, RV 594
• Lauda, Jerusalem
• Magnificat in G minor (1720s version), RV 610a
• In furore iustissimae irae (In wrath and most just anger)
• Longe mala, umbrae, terrores (Away with woes, shadows, terrors), RV 629

One of the things I did this month was compare different recordings of the same music.  I don't generally aim to get multiple performances of classical music into my collection, but my fondness for box sets does sometimes mean there's a bit of overlap.  And it's interesting to hear the different approaches that various musicians will take.

Some of the comparison was deliberate (the Bach Cello Suites for example - I think Rostropovich beat Tortelier in most of them, but honours were the other way in the 3rd suite), and some of it was quite accidental as a result of my massive new purchase.  Having been alerted to a sale of box sets, I ended up with 5 of them, and a whopping 32 CDs of new classical performances to explore.

That's a pretty overwhelming delivery of new music!

By chance rather than design, most of it comes from just one generation of composers.  I've got a lot of new Bach (1685-1750) as well as second, often considerably better versions of the Brandenburg Concertos. I've got some Telemann (1681-1767) for the first time, which has proved itself highly enjoyable.  It's about time the world's most prolific composer, allegedly, got some space in the collection - 18 pieces down, only around 3,000 more to go.

And I'm suddenly drowning in Vivaldi (1678-1741), after increasing my collection by about 1500 per cent!  The new performances of The Four Seasons are exciting and dramatic.  The sacred music is a bit of a mixed bag so far, some of it I like a lot and other bits aren't really grabbing me yet.

It's actually quite educational to get such a heavy dose of the one era, which I guess I'm not as familiar with as later music.  It's definitely helping me understand a bit more about the forms and styles of the late Baroque period.  Some things that I only knew as 'Bach' I now recognise as more general.  I'm getting a better sense of what's common to the composers of the time and what's individual to each of them.

Just before buying all of that, not only was I listening to my existing versions of the Brandenburg Concertos and The Four Seasons, I happened to be spending time listening to the first half of a 2-CD collection of the amazingly inventive keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757). So it really was a month full of music from around the 1710s to 1740s or so.

As well as the avalanche of Baroque, the other purchase was Schumann piano music.  And that's been a real surprise.  I had no idea just how radical, even strange, some of his work was.  In several of the early pieces I listened to this month (written when he was in his 20s), fragments of a minute or less zip by before being replaced by something else entirely.  It's pretty startling stuff when you consider that the previous generation was often creating sonatas that developed musical ideas on a large scale - not always, but often.  So to get, say, 21 Carnival 'scenes' stuffed into 27 minutes is really quite something.

Just because someone else can't code correctly

And I wanted to the opportunity to listen to the new Florence + The Machine album, Ceremonials. The page on the Hypetrak website that was SUPPOSED to make that possible - entirely legally, as far as I understand - is missing a couple of vital pieces of punctuation in the HTML.

I've no idea how long this will continue to work.

September 2011 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• To Venus and Back (studio disc)
• Scarlet's Walk
• The Beekeeper
• Night of Hunters
• Audience bootleg - Helsinki, 28 September 2011

Kate Bush - The Dreaming
Kate Bush - Aerial
Eskimo Joe - A Song Is A City
Peter Gabriel - So
Patty Griffin - 1000 Kisses
Janet Jackson - Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814
Sting - The Soul Cages
Talk Talk - It's My Life
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Hey! This thing wasn't supposed to get this far out of date again! I drafted the list and never came back to writing something about what was on the list.

The list is short.  This is not simply because a new Tori Amos album dominated my listening... yes, yes, okay, I did listen to it quite a bit at times, but the list is also short because the pop/classical pendulum swung very much in the classical direction, for reasons that will be explained further once the classical post for September is up.  The fact that Tori's new album is itself very much in the classical direction only helped push the pendulum in that direction.

I did find time during the month to listen my 'official' favourite album of all time.  And no, it's not the Janet Jackson - which is something I hadn't listened to for ages and decided to load onto the iPhone for precisely the kind of reasons this blog exists, exploring the music collection.  The official number one is Sting's The Soul Cages.

This doesn't mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that I listen to it frequently.  It doesn't even mean that every time I listen to it I adore the experience.  It's part of the nature of music, in my view, that connection with any particular piece of music depends in part upon your emotional state when you listen to it, and while I'd like to think I'm not too bad at assessing what kind of music will 'work' for me at a particular time, there are no guarantees.

No, the number one slot was awarded, whenever it was I sat down and tried to create a ranking (far too long ago, a full revision is required rather than the occasional patching that tries to stuff extra albums into the list), because this was the album that, on the occasions when it DID connect, seemed to be most capable of providing a rich, immersive, complete experience.  Where the balance between songs contributing to the whole and songs providing their own individual areas of contrast seemed to work.  Where the sonic detail made every moment worth listening to ('Q Sound' is not just a gimmick, the album truly does sound exceptional on good equipment).

And frankly, I suspect the fact that an album with 9 tracks managed to have 2 tracks that I found totally overwhelming to the point of being physically affected was a major point in its favour.  Even having 1 track fitting that description is rare, I don't think any other has ever qualified for 2 spots on the list.  Not that there's an official list for that criterion.

Of course, thematically it's an utterly miserable album that's almost always either about water or death or both.  But hey, I respond to that kind of thing - at least, I do at times which is precisely why I don't listen to the album ALL the time.  If you don't ever respond to that kind of thing then I guess you wouldn't like it.  But if dark and moody is your thing and you've never heard The Soul Cages, I heartily recommend it.

Oh, and why am I talking about an album that came out 20 years ago (eek! I just realised this, it really IS 20 years ago now, and about 18 since I first heard it), instead of contributing to the avalanche of opinions about Night of Hunters?  Well, because I don't know just what I think about it yet. Not completely. I definitely do like it, a lot. But I'm still getting to know it and it also seems quite rich and immersive.  Anyway, most of what I think of it really developed in October, so talking about it in November about the September post would be cheating, wouldn't it? ;-)

PS Yes, I really did get to listen to a recording of a Tori Amos concert within a couple of days of the concert occurring.  From thousands of miles/kilometres away.  Ain't technology wonderful?

August 2011 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - Brandenburg Concerto No.4
Chopin - Barcarolle
Holmboe - Symphony No.5
Schubert - Piano Sonata in B flat, D.960
Simpson - Symphony No.10

Hmm. Well, this is where the difficult nature of August (remember the month of August??) shows itself.  Classical music listening disappeared for most of it.  Partly this was because of a couple of trips away and the relative difficulty of loading Classical works onto the iPhone properly - no I don't want to listen to a whole album in one go, etc etc.

Partly it was just because my stress levels never seemed to let me get back into the right kind of headspace.  It's interesting that I went for a bit of Robert Simpson.  His music is not exactly what you'd call restful.  Frequently very angular and above all it's quite dynamic, with a sense of propulsion.

That's probably true of the Holmboe symphony I went for, which I think is one of his most accessible and has a lot of rhythmic drive. Holmboe's 5th actually manages to remind me of Beethoven's 5th in some ways.  Which might make sense if somewhere in the history of the universe, someone reads this blog who's actually heard both...

August 2011 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Under the Pink
• Boys for Pele
• To Venus and Back (studio disc)
• Strange Little Girls
• Scarlet's Walk
• The Beekeeper
• Abnormally Attracted To Sin
• Midwinter Graces
• Scarlet's Hidden Treasures

Fiona Apple - When the Pawn...
Jimmy Barnes - Flesh and Wood
Kate Bush - Never for Ever
Kate Bush - The Red Shoes
Tim Corley - Anywhere But Here
The Dissociatives - The Dissociatives
David Gray - A New Day At Midnight
Patty Griffin - Impossible Dream
Missy Higgins - The Sound of White
Billy Joel - An Innocent Man
Billy Joel - River of Dreams
Nik Kershaw - Radio Musicola
Wendy Matthews - Lily
Wendy Matthews - Beautiful View
Joni Mitchell - For the Roses
Joni Mitchell - Shine
Moloko - Statues
Van Morrison - The Best of Van Morrison
Beth Orton - Daybreaker
Over the Rhine - Ohio
Pearl Jam - Backspacer
Pink - Greatest Hits... So Far!
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Tears for Fears - The Seeds of Love
Thrice - The Alchemy Index
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Wow. Did I really listen to all that?!

Okay yes, there is an enormous Tori Amos binge going on there. I basically had a phase of getting ready for her new album (Out Now!) by doing an overview of her previous body of work.  I'm insticintively a 'body of work' kind of person.  I didn't quite finish as you can see. I ran out of steam at some point, I can't recall whether it was because of a feeling of Tori overdose or because the stresses I was under just made me feel I couldn't really concentrate properly on what I was hearing.

Apart from that, and despite the stresses, I seem to have listened to a HECK of a lot over the month.  I know that several albums were covered in two car trips, but there's plenty of other exploration all over my library.  Which is good to see, that's what it's there for.  It'll be scary to find out just how many CDs I have once I finish the catalogue, it's up to a couple of hundred entries for pop and I'm nowhere near finished yet.

David Gray was one of those cases of unearthing something virtually unlistened to. I remember being terribly disappointed with A New Day At Midnight when I bought it.  Turns out it's fairly enjoyable light music for a car trip - it still doesn't seem to have anything that comes close to rivalling the highs of White Ladder, but it's certainly not a total waste of shelf space.

Beth Orton's Daybreaker is an album that truly fascinates and puzzles me.  Despite a fair amount of listening, it still doesn't feel very integrated to me.  It starts off with 4 of the most truly wonderful sonic landscapes I know. They just somehow have the right combination of detail and sweep to resonate with me personally.  And then... Beth pulls the rug out from under me.  Suddenly the album veers off into a more electronic title track, followed by folk, then country, before gradually heading back in an arc to where it started, getting there for the 10th and final track. There's nothing in the excursions that I dislike (the title track is probably my least favourite but it's still reasonable), but it just lacks something in either the production decisions or the song order to glue it all together into a single artistic vision.

And that's what I really look for in an album.  It's the combination of the individual songs, and even the touches within songs, with the big picture to make a satisfying whole.  Every song sounding the same is no good, and neither is every song sounding completely different. Despite what modern listening practice would have you believe, an album is not just a playlist slapped together by the singer which a listener can then change at their whim into their own playlist - or at least, that's not what an album should be in my view.  It's a multi-movement work, in just the same way that classical composers frequently created multi-movement works.  An album is the highest level structure in an system of sonic organisation that goes down to songs, then verse and choruses and bridges, write down to details in a single bar.

Well, the great ones are, anyway.

July 2011 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - Brandenburg Concertos 1 to 3
Beethoven

• Septet
• Symphony No.4
• Cello Sonata No.3
• Piano Sonata No.28

Brahms

• Piano Quartet No.3
• Clarinet Trio
• Clarinet Quintet

Chopin - 4 Mazurkas, Op.24
Faure

• Cantique de Jean Racine
• Ballade for piano
• Mazurka
• Nocturnes 5 and 6
• Valse-caprices 2 and 4
• Barcarolle No.2
• Piano Quartet No.2
• Impromptu No.6 (piano transcription of harp piece)
• Piano Quintet No.1
• 9 Preludes
• Cello Sonata No.1

Gorecki - Symphony No.3
Handel - Keyboard Suites, HWV 436 to 441
Haydn - Piano trios, Hob XV: 24 to 26 (set of 3 dedicated to Rebecca Schroeter)
Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time
Ravel

• Gaspard de la nuit
• Valses nobles et sentimentales
• Prelude for piano
• Piano Trio
• La Valse

Schubert

• Piano Sonata in E, D.459 ('5 Piano pieces')
• String Quartets 12 and 15
• Moments Musicaux

Schumann - Piano Trios 1 and 2
Shostakovich - String Quartet No.5
Strauss, R. - Death and Transfiguration

Beethoven, Brahms, Faure, Ravel, Schubert.  There is such an amazing history of music out there (and this is just the Western, European tradition), it seems a shame that people often only get to know the work that emerges in their own lifetime.  Although there's enough of that to keep a person fully occupied, and so much of it is good.

Faure seems to be the one, though, that can fascinate me the most. Not because I understand all his music immediately.  In fact, it's probably because his music is so elusive that it exerts such a pull. As you can see, when I start exploring his work I find it hard to stop! And yet I hadn't listened to anything for several months before that.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if I spend the rest of my life having little Faure episodes.

Ravel is right up there for me as well, which is interesting because he was Faure's pupil - though everything I've read suggests that Faure was not the kind of teacher who forced his students to write in his own voice instead of their own.

I'm just glad I live at a point where it's possible to jump in space and time and hear their work. I don't have to be in early 20th century Paris to be one of the lucky ones.  And yes, for some composers I can't hear their own interpretations in live performances, but I'm still in such a fortunate position, to be able to dip in and out of musical history like this.

This month I also listened to Gorecki's 3rd symphony, in the recording that was, against all expectations, a bona fide hit in 1992 (15 years after the music actually premiered).  For a classical recording - not a 'light' classical or 'crossover', but a standard classical-style work - to sell over a million copies is just not something that usually happens.  And who knows why it did. Some combination of the music and the zeitgeist just clicked.  But it's powerful and beautiful music, and the world is better for having it.

July 2011 - Popular Music

Okay, so August was kind of a rough month...

Not so rough that I didn't listen to music or keep notes of what it was, but I didn't really have much opportunity to sit down and reflect on the music. So if you'd care to cast your mind all the way back to July...

Tori Amos

• Under the Pink
• The Beekeeper
• American Doll Posse
• Abnormally Attracted To Sin
• Spark part 2 single (Spark/Do It Again/Cooling)
• A Piano: Disc A - Little Earthquakes Extended

Elvis Costello - Extreme Honey
Sheryl Crow - The Globe Sessions
Garbage - Garbage
Gomez - Bring It On
Gomez - Split the Difference
Sarah Harmer - All Of Our Names
Natalie Imbruglia - Left of the Middle
Jars of Clay - If I Left the Zoo
Level 42 - Running in the Family
Wendy Matthews - Ghosts
Joni Mitchell

• Clouds
• Blue
• Dog Eat Dog
• Turbulent Indigo

Moloko - Things to Make and Do
Over the Rhine - Ohio
Pearl Jam - Binaural
Pearl Jam - Backspacer
Plumb - Chaotic Resolve
Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
Radiohead - King of Limbs
Seal - Human Being
Seal - Seal IV
Something for Kate - The Official Fiction
Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring

Gosh. Is it really over a month since I listened to some of these?

I suppose the most notable thing is that I was making purchases. Natalie Imbruglia was a second-hand purchase the month before (same time as Billy Joel), which is really just a fairly light piece of pop listening but it's still enjoyable.  Gomez' first album Bring It On was a new purchase as I get so much out of the 3 I already owned. It's funny what different ordering does to your perception: I know that their debut was when they got lots of attention and the Mercury Prize, but so far I mostly hear an enjoyable band that hasn't got the sophistication of later releases or the amazing command of their resources. It's like they've bought a very fancy new car but are driving it a bit cautiously while they make sure it's all in working order.

Another new purchase was Pearl Jam's Backspacer, continuing the little PJ excursion I seem to be on. I will probably end up with all their albums now, but it's more interesting jumping around in order. I was certainly impressed with their latest. This is Pearl Jam being relatively relaxed and comfortable and, dare I say it, ever so slightly pop.

There was a nice little Joni Mitchell binge, much of it on one weekend. That's the first time since I started this that someone other than Tori has managed more than 2 entries in a month. Not enough to end Tori's dominance though (and, um, I think it gets worse in August...). I even pulled out a single this time. I listen to singles quite rarely, but I decided they deserve a database entry as much as the longer players.

This month also proved again the benefits of going back to listen to things with fresh ears. I can't remember the last time I listened to Chaotic Resolve. It always ranked as one of the more disappointing purchases I'd made.  The best tracks were the ones I already knew, and the best of all was actually a bonus - a remix of a song from a previous album.  Listening to it again, probably for the first time in a couple of years at least, I got more out of it. It's still not a classic, and I doubt I'll ever regard it as one - the music is too square, the lyrics too awkwardly obvious - but I did get enjoyment out of it and that's really the main thing. Not every album can be my favourite album ever or an intense listening experience.

And again, there was more proof of the idea that a large library of music means you can find the right thing at the right moment.  I've never had great love for Seal IV. It's sat there on the shelf, and every now and then I've looked it and asked why it couldn't be more like it's older brother Human Being.  July was the month that I discovered that, when you've spent a couple of days hearing just how shockingly horrible one human being can be by calmly massacring a teenage summer camp, an album that is as light and silvery as its cover and full of touches of hope might just be the best solution you can come up with.

June 2011 - Classical Music

Barber - Summer Music
Beethoven

• Horn Sonata
• String Quartets 6 and 11 ('quartetto serioso')
• Symphony No.7

Chopin

• Rondo in E flat, Op.16
• Impromptu No.2
• Two Nocturnes, Op.37 and Two Nocturnes, Op.55
• Polonaise in A flat, Op.53
• Scherzo No.4
• Piano Sonata No.3
• Three Mazurkas, Op.59

Handel - Keyboard Suites, HWV 436 to 439
Haydn - Symphonies 99, 101 ('Clock') and 100 ('Military')
Haydn - Piano trios, Hob XV: 24 to 26 (set of 3 dedicated to Rebecca Schroeter)
Mozart - Symphony no.31 ('Paris')
Mozart - Piano Sonata No.8 in A minor
Rachmaninov

• Piano Concerto No.1
• Suite No.1 for 2 pianos
• Etudes-tableaux (complete)

Schubert - Piano sonata in F minor, D.625 (unfinished)
Shostakovich - String Quartets 3, 8, 10 and 13

I honestly was surprised by how much classical music I listened to this month. I suppose the occasional 'theme night' can add up, especially as most of these works aren't anywhere near as long as pop music albums.  Still, many of them are 15 to 30 minutes long.

One of the things that struck me during the month was how difficult it is to accurately identify a particular work.  I keep resorting to different strategies.  Where possible I use the simplest numbering system - quartet no.3, sonata no.4 and so on - but this breaks down quite frequently (something that tends to upset my basic desire for an ordered universe).

Handel was the main difficulty this month.  My compact disc blithely told me I was listening to keyboard suites 9 through 12, but it turns out this is the numbering in one particular edition of the works - and not even the first edition.  In the 'HWV' catalogue, I happened to listen to four consecutive numbers but they appear there in the order 10, 11, 12, 9 relative to my CD's approach.

Part of the problem is that Handel may well have had nothing at all to do with the publication of these pieces.  He published his first 8 suites in response to pirate copies, and so the order is well established, but after that things get very muddy. There are things that were originally published as 'suites' that aren't (and so sometimes get counted and sometimes don't), and 2 of the suites I listened to this month were originally published with bits missing out of them.

Better systems than that one still show signs of disorder and can be misleading.  I came across a fairly minor case this month in my Haydn excursion, as it's now well established that Haydn's symphony no.101 premiered several weeks before his symphony no.100 - both, like no.99, in the 1794 concert season in London.  The numbering of some his earlier symphonies is much more random compared to the dates of composition, but at least there is only one numbering system in use for them.  For the piano trios there appear to be two radically different numbering systems still competing with one another.

I also keep having to decide whether to pay attention to the nicknames that various pieces have picked up.  I've basically decided to acknowledge the ones that are official (such as the 'Military' symphony, which was labelled as such in the concert program at its premiere, and Beethoven's 'serioso' quartet), are intrinsic to the music (the 'Clock' symphony, which sounds so much like a clock ticking that the nickname appeared more or less immediately and has just as much meaning now as it did two centuries ago), or genuinely meaningful in some other way (Mozart's 'Paris' symphony, written in that city and for that city - although it begs the question why the A minor piano sonata isn't similarly known as the 'Paris' sonata).

The other thing that struck me several times this month was birdsong.  No, I'm not going crazy. Several times this month, birds were quite audible in the background of classical recordings in the quieter moments. I think this is something apparent in the age of headphones that the recording engineers back in the 1970s or early 1980s simply didn't think listeners would ever notice.  It's also a consequence of where classical works tend to be recorded - in halls or churches rather than in recording studios expressly built for the purpose.

The 'Military' symphony also contains a few audible examples of the conductor's slightly tuneless humming. Whether Sir Colin Davis only found one particular symphony that gave him the urge to hum, or whether they just placed the microphones differently that time around, I've no idea.  While I have his recordings of all 12 of Haydn's London symphonies, they were recorded over the space of a 6-year period so there are all sorts of possible reasons why I've only noticed him in one work.

So there you have it - disordered catalogues, birdsong and noisy conductors.  Oh yes, and I'm sure I did pay attention to the actual music from time to time...

June 2011 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Little Earthquakes
• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• Abnormally Attracted to Sin
• Audience bootlegs - San Diego 20 November 2001 (2nd show), Paris 27 November 2001, Amsterdam 28 November 2001, Brussels 1 December 2001 (plus someone's attempt at faking a recording of Hamburg 29 November 2001...)

Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
The Badloves - Get On Board
Kate Bush - Never For Ever
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
Tracy Chapman - Collection
Paula Cole - This Fire
The Corrs - Forgiven, Not Forgotten
Crowded House - Together Alone
Gomez - Split the Difference
Gotye - Like Drawing Blood
Sophie B. Hawkins - Whaler
Billy Joel - River of Dreams
Maroon 5 - Songs About Jane
Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue
Beth Orton - Central Reservation
Pearl Jam - No Code
Pearl Jam - Binaural
Something for Kate - Desert Lights
Rachael Yamagata - Elephants... Teeth Sinking Into Heart

Various thoughts for this blog have zipped through my head at some point, here are the ones that stuck:

Billy Joel's River of Dreams was a second-hand purchase during the month.  Many years ago I was relying on a cassette copy of this album, I think made from my sister's legitimate CD version.  I hadn't listened to that copy for a long time, but I decided it was time to reacquaint myself with the album, and this time to do it the right way.  I think the music has survived the passage of time pretty well. In particular, the album makes a fine transition from the more aggressive and bitter sounds on side one to the gentler side two.

It's also quite fascinating to hear the song 'Famous Last Words' after all this time.  When it came out, everyone wondered whether it was Joel's way of saying he wouldn't make any more albums, and whether he'd stick to that.   18 years later, and he's been true to his word. Having run out of things he wanted to write music about, he stopped.  Good on him.

The Pearl Jam exploration continues with a return to Binaural.  I remember being excited by this one when I first listened to samples in a shop, something like a decade ago.  However, it turns out to be a rather patchy affair.  The biggest flaw is the production - rather ironically for an album with a name highlighting the special recording techniques used, the sound is often quite muddy and sucks the life out of many of the songs.  'Sleight of Hand' in particular drowns in a sea of murk.

I was inclined to blame new producer Tchad Blake, but then Wikipedia claimed that the band was actually dissatisfied with Blake's work and wanted the mixes to sound 'heavier', and so brought in their old producer.  Judging from the final results, this was not a terribly smart move!

Rachael Yamagata is a wonderful artist that one of my American friends introduced me around 6-7 years ago.  I just wish to God that she hadn't followed the exasperating trend of splitting her quieter and louder songs onto two separate discs.  It makes no sense to me, musically, to reduce contrast in this way. Contrast means interest. It means the ear is attracted by something new.  Music is fundamentally an art of judging the right balance between repetition and variation, and removing one of the options for variation tends to upset the balance.

I do listen to Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart with the songs in the presented order, but this is one of those extremely rare examples where I've also created my own shuffled version with the faster songs interspersed through the work.  In terms of pacing, the result arguably plays quite a lot like Yamagata's first album Happenstance, and that's certainly not a bad result in my book.

May 2011 - Classical Music

Brahms - Hungarian Dances (orchestral versions - complete)
Haydn - 6 String Quartets, op.71 & 74 (the 'Apponyi' quartets)
Mahler - Symphony No.8
Shostakovich - String Quartet No.3

Okay, so I listened to Haydn string quartets. A Lot.

Almost to the point of overload, actually.  But it's a perfect demonstration of how obsessive I get with completeness and order and patterns.  Opuses 71 and 74 are really one set of six quartets (not two sets of three, even though they were published that way).  And in the vast array of quartets that Haydn wrote (the number depends on your counting method) there are no less than nine of these sets of six.  Chronologically, the 71/74 set is the eigth one, dedicated to Count Anton Georg Apponyi and premiered during Haydn's second visit to London.

Yep. Music in sets. It's like a honeypot, and I'm the bee...

I've known the ninth set (the opus 76 'Erdődy' quartets) for years. They were one of my very first classical purchases, on cassette when I was teenager.  They aided me through many university exam periods.  I've owned the 'Apponyi' set for quite a few years as well, but it was only more recently that I grasped that I had another complete set and resolved to get to know them as well as the 'Erdődy' ones.  Hence, a month of repeated listening (especially the last fortnight) to the point where I had snatches of various movements ringing in my head at all hours of the day.

Mahler's 8th symphony (usually known as the 'Symphony of a Thousand') was the last of my New Year's Eve purchases to get a hearing.  It was also the most disappointing.  The first movement in particular just irritated the heck out of me.

I've been trying to work out the reason.  I briefly wondered if I could blame the particular performance (conducted by Simon Rattle), but then I also bought his performance of Mahler's 5th symphony and enjoyed it.  I was a bit relieved when Wikipedia and some other sources told me that many people who are serious Mahler fans don't like the 8th symphony at all.  It's not just me. The experts share my feelings.

One thing I often worry about with classical vocal music is the language barrier.  I always hunt out a translation (if it's not provided - shame on you EMI in this instance).  If I'm going to concentrate on the piece rather than have it as background, I'm likely to sit there with the translation in hand.  I'm never quite sure whether this helps or hinders.  There are times when it seems to help: the first time I actually knew what was being sung in Shostakovich's 13th symphony, the section about Anne Frank made my hair stand on end and it had an impact it could never have otherwise.  But with Mahler's 8th, reading the text just seemed to emphasise that it was all too vacuously happy for my tastes.

May 2011 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Boys for Pele
• To Venus and Back (studio disc - 'venus orbiting')
• Strange Little Girls
• American Doll Posse
• Audience bootleg - Canberra 16 September 2007

Blur - The Best of
Toni Childs - House of Hope
Melanie C - Northern Star
Sheryl Crow - The Globe Sessions
dc Talk - Jesus Freak
Gomez - In Our Gun
Patty Griffin - Impossible Dream
Jennifer Knapp - The Way I Am
Lifehouse - No Name Face
Wendy Matthews - Ghosts
John Mayer - Continuum
Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns
Joni Mitchell - Don Juan's Reckless Daughter
Pearl Jam - No Code
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Something for Kate - The Official Fiction
Sting - Brand New Day
Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring
Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden
Thrice - The Alchemy Index

Almost exactly 20 years ago, someone passed on to me the idea that you have a real library when there are books in it that you've never read.

Arguably I'm trying to negate that idea with this whole concept of keeping track of what I've listened to and ferreting out over time the albums that are hiding away.  But I would certainly subscribe to a couple of related ideas: you have a real music library when there are things in it that you haven't heard for so long that they can feel fresh.  And also, you have a real music library when you can find something to tap into a specific mood when you need to.

Both of those ideas were nicely demonstrated when I listened to The Official Fiction towards the end of the month.  Of the four Something for Kate albums I own, I would usually rate it as my least favourite.  As a result I hadn't listened to it for quite some time - looking at the list of track names before I played it, I found that only about half of them, maybe less, triggered a specific musical recollection.  To use a visual metaphor, the album is very brightly lit - it's full of major keys, and strings, and harmonies in thirds.  It's lit to the point where the shadows are washed out by overexposure.  My recollection of the album as a whole was that the sense of melody becomes a bit too much.

But last weekend, I was in a mood where it was exactly the right thing.  I had an 'aha' moment when I finally identified it as the one CD out of the hundreds in my house that would hit the right emotional spot, because of the unique combination of SFK's trademark earnestness and intensity with this album's particular 'brightness'.  I played The Official Fiction quite a lot over the course of a few days.

Another demonstration of the richness of a large library was No Code, which I bought in February 2010 but hadn't really got to know.  Pearl Jam are a good example of how I respond to some artists, where I know I like them but want them to make me fall in love, and they never quite do.  Actually, in Pearl Jam's case they did manage it once, with Vs.  Ever since then I've dipped into other albums in the hope of them achieving something similar.

So, when I bought No Code second-hand, listened to it once or twice and wasn't blown away, my initial reaction was to mentally sigh just a little and file it away with the other reasonably satisfying Pearl Jam albums that usually get passed over in favour of Vs.  But picking it up again this month with more focus, I started to like it quite a lot.  Where Vs thrilled me with its tightness (especially 'Animal', which is the song that turned me into a fan and which I still think is one of the most brilliant sub-3 minute songs I've ever heard), No Code is a much looser and relaxed affair.  It twists and turns in unexpected directions, and I enjoyed myself once I let the odd excursions wash over me with a sense of adventure.

Finally, another album I pulled out for the first time in at least a couple of years, maybe several more, was Jennifer Knapp's The Way I Am.  When this album came out in 2001 I was still in the closet and Jennifer was one of the rising stars of the contemporay Christian music scene.  Now I'm listening to it, and I'm out as a gay man and Jennifer is persona non grata to most of that scene because she's told the world that she's a lesbian and has been in a relationship since 2002.  It's hard not to listen and wonder how much of her struggle is present in the album - especially the title track.  It's also hard not to relate because her story has so many parallels with my own.

April 2011 - Classical Music

We apologise for the delay in transmission...

Bach, J.S. - Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin (all 6)
Bach, J.S. - 15 Sinfonias (or 3-Part Inventions)
Beethoven - Cello Sonata No.2
Beethoven - Sextet for Horns and String Quartet
Bizet - Farandole from L'Arlesienne Suite No.2
Brahms - 3 Intermezzi, op.117
Chaminade - Viens! Mon bien-aime!
Franck - Variations Symphoniques for Piano & Orchestra
Handel - Love and Hymen, Hand in Hand from the opera Hercules
Haydn - Piano trio No.31
Hindemith - Kammermusik No.7
Liszt - Anees de Perelinage, 2nd year: Italy
Mozart - Piano Sonatas 7 and 9 (K.309 and 311)
Schumann - Kreisleriana, 2nd movement
Schumann - selections from Myrthen
Sibelius - The Swan of Tuonela
Strauss, R. - Don Juan
Stravinsky - Feu d'artifice (Fireworks)

As the pop music list grew, the the classical music list shrunk - although there are a couple of fairly large items here.  The biggest listening exercise was undoubtedly the set of 6 works for solo violin by Bach.  And it was a rather enjoyable one.  I was actually a bit surprised to discover that I enjoyed the three Sonatas the most, because arguably the most famous sections are both from the Partitas - the Chaconne in No.2 and the Prelude in No.3.  Both of those are marvellous, but the works as a whole didn't attract me as much as the sonatas.

Partita No.3 in particular seemed a bit of a disappointment.  The tricky thing with classical music is that it's hard to know, without multiple versions, whether your reaction to a piece is because of the composition or because of the performance.  So, at the moment I don't know whether to blame Bach or Henryk Szeryng.  But I really should give them both praise for my enjoyment of the sonatas.

I'm still working through my New Year's Eve purchases - the Franck, Haydn, Hindemith and the Schumann songs all complete their respective CDs.  A pretty good crop on the whole. It will be interesting to see when I get back to some of them in the ordinary course of listening.  I've only got one new purchase that I still haven't listened to yet.

I'm working through my Mozart collection (essentially the piano sonatas and some symphonies) in a chronological order at the moment, albeit very slowly.  This month's stop was in Mannheim.  Soon I'll be listening to a couple of works from Paris around the time that Mozart's mother died.  I find that getting a bit of context around pieces enhances my listening experience.  It helps me get a sense of a composer's overall body of work.

I do a similar thing with popular music as well, but because it's current it's that much easier to be aware of things like chronology.  It's all too easy with a classical composer to think of their collected works falling out of the sky, fully formed.  But in reality their style developed and changed, and their contemporaries heard this before they ever heard that, or heard that already knowing this.

So, with Mozart, he's been moving from a very talented 17 or 18-year-old to a considerably more mature composer at the age of 21.  The skill with which he integrates his ideas is increasing.  Because of the small size of my current collection, it won't be all that long before he's establishing himself in Vienna.

April 2011 - Popular Music

Right, time for the next exciting instalment!

Tori Amos

• Under the Pink
• Boys for Pele
• Scarlet's Walk
• Abnormally Attracted to Sin
• Audience bootlegs - Phoenix 19 November 2001, San Diego 20 November 2001 (1st show)

The Badloves - Get On Board
Boom Crash Opera - Boom Crash Opera
Kate Bush - Lionheart
Kate Bush - The Sensual World
Toni Childs - House of Hope
City on a Hill (project) - Sing Alleluia
Frou Frou - Details
Patty Griffin - Downtown Church
Incubus - Make Yourself
Elton John - Madman Across the Water
Nik Kershaw - The Works
Nik Kershaw - To be Frank
Joni Mitchell - Night Ride Home
Moloko - I Am Not A Doctor
Roisin Murphy - Overpowered
Powderfinger - Vulture Street
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Seal - Seal [1991]
Seal - Human Being
Something for Kate - Beautiful Sharks
Sting - The Dream of the Blue Turtles
Thrice - The Alchemy Index (complete)

So much music (considerably more than last month), and so little space in which to discuss it...

Abnormally Attracted to Sin officially becomes the first album to make multiple appearances, although it's by no means the first album I listened to more than once.

I've already noticed this blog affecting my listening in ways I didn't intend.  Suddenly I find myself thinking 'oh, I can't listen to that, I listened to it last month'.  Well, why the hell not?  It's as if I think people will be bored or roll their eyes if the list has repetitions.  Whereas I seem perfectly happy to listen to something multiple times within a month, because 'no-one will know'.

The new Radiohead album happened to be an April 1 purchase.  Yes, I waited for it to come out on CD, I'm quaint like that.  I don't know exactly how many times I listened to the album, but it was in fairly high rotation the first couple of weeks as I got to know it.  The very first listen didn't give me a favourable impression, particularly for the first 3 tracks, but then that frequently happens.  Music that's complex and interesting enough to sustain my interest in the long term is often too complex to be grasped the first time around.  The opening track in particular is something that takes some unpicking.

House of Hope was the very first CD I ever owned.  In fact, I got it for Christmas before I even had a CD player, as it was known I was getting the player for my birthday.  I still find it a satisfying album, nearly 20 years later.  Age has not wearied it.  I still have the CD player as well, although it's beginning to detiorate a bit and the cassette unit is shot to pieces.

No Australian acts last month, but I seem to have made up for it this time around with a healthy dose of Australian rock.  The Badloves (okay, they're not so rock), Boom Crash Opera, Powderfinger and Something for Kate all got some airplay.

Of those, SFK would definitely be my personal favourite.  Why they haven't had more success is beyond me.  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Paul Dempsey's lyrics frequently involve sentences that go for 3 or 4 lines, and that kind of stream-of-consciousness isn't something that fits with the easy, disposable qualities that radio requires.

iListen

My not-that-old, fairly basic mobile phone decided to keel over at the end of last week. So this week, I took the plunge into modern technology and bought an iPhone.

It's met the secondary... well, in some ways it was the primary goal of also making my mp3 player redundant.  Which seemed a fraction cruel given that it was fairly young and had given good service.  But there's no doubting that the iPhone's music capabilities are equal or better in all respects.  Easier navigation, and sound quality through my Sennheiser headphones is just as good.

The only real disappointment is that the system just isn't set up for classical music.  My investigations have shown that current editions of iTunes on a computer can understand that classical afficionados are likely to want to sort music by composer, not artist.  It's also quite capable of allowing you to group movements of a work together.  There's a Classical tab that handles all of this reasonably well.

But alas, on the portable device all that functionality seems to disappear.

My mp3 player was just as clumsy with classical.  So it's not as if I've gone backwards.  Nevertheless, it does seem as if my portable CD player, which I think has been with me since the year 2000, will continue to be pressed into service.  Because it still understands better than any more modern technology how to let me select the tracks that constitute a sonata.

By the way...

This blog doesn't have to be just me writing about music.

I mean, if people want to write back...

Telling me something I listened to is great. Telling me something I listened to is awful. Ask me about something on the list.  All that's good.

It did also occur to me that it doesn't have to be just my musical diary.  If there's anyone else out there that is sufficiently motivated in their music listening to record what they're listening to, Blogger provides the facilities for a blog to have multiple authors.  Which could be quite interesting.

I'll just leave that notion out there, and toddle off to listen to some Bach. Or Radiohead. I haven't quite decided yet.

March 2011 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - Prelude in E flat minor from BWV 853, arranged for cello and piano
Barber - Medea's Dance of Vengeance
Beethoven - String Quartet No.5
Beethoven - Piano Concerto No.3 (2nd movement)
Brahms - Piano Quintet
Chopin - Funeral March in C minor
Debussy - Cello Sonata
Debussy - 12 Etudes for piano
Faure - Fantasie for Piano and Orchestra
Faure - Piano Quintet No.2
Faure - Barcarolle No.13
Faure - Cello Sonata No.2
Faure - Nocturne No.13
Handel - Keyboard Suites 6, 7 and 8
Haydn - Piano trios 29 and 30
Hindemith - Kammermusik Nos. 5 and 6
Holmboe - Symphonies 7, 12 and 13
Honegger - Cello Concerto
Mozart - Piano Sonata No.14 in C minor (2nd movement)
Schubert - Piano Sonata in A minor, D.784
Schubert - Octet in F
Schumann - Die Arme Peter op.53/3, Tragoedie op.64/3, Lehn deine Wang' op.142/2, Mein Wagen rollet langsam op.142/4
Shostakovich - String Quartet No.11
Simpson - Symphonies 9 and 11
Stravinsky - Petrushka
Tallis - Loquebantur variis linguis
Tortelier - Burlesque: Le Pitre (The Clown), 3 Duos 'Chameau-Loutres', Toccata
Vivaldi - Bassoon Concerto in A minor, RV 498

I finally finished working my way through a 20-CD collection of performances by Paul Tortelier, a Frenchman who has now massively expanded the cello section of my library.  Thanks to my catalogue I can tell you that it took exactly 368 days to listen to absolutely everything in the box.

Meanwhile, some of the other listening is from my last classical buying spree on New Year's Eve.  This was from a local music store that closed about a month later, after many years of being the premier classical music specialist in the area. Evidently the modern world with easy overseas ordering has not been kind to them.

Their sales are probably responsible for the majority of my classical collection. I bought most things on the strength of reputation and reading, rather than listening.  I'm not sure what I'll do from now on.

The collection of Schumann songs I bought, performed by Wolfgang Holzmair and Imogen Cooper, has been a particular delight. As you can see I'm now down to the 'bits and pieces' section of the discs, but it has 4 complete song-cycles and the performances are consistently wonderful.

Faure is definitely one of my favourite composers. This month, I spent an evening listening to a series of late works (the Fantasie being one of the New Year's Eve purchases).  Every one of them rich and strange and beautiful in their complexity.

The couple of one-movement excerpts are from recordings where that's all I have. I don't totally ignore the sampler discs in my library.

Late in the month I went back to my 20th century symphony friends, Holmboe and Simpson.  Holmboe in particular is someone that I occasionally have a little obsession over.  I'm looking at adding some of his other works to my collection, and in the last couple of weeks I've been doing a fair bit of research on just what else is out there.  The list-maker in me strikes again!

March 2011 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Little Earthquakes
• American Doll Posse
• Abnormally Attracted to Sin
• Midwinter Graces
• Live in Los Angeles 17 December 2001 (audience bootleg)

Fiona Apple - Tidal
David Bowie - The Platinum Collection (all 3 discs)
Marc Cohn - The Rainy Season
Harry Connick, Jr. - Star Turtle
Foo Fighters - There is Nothing Left to Lose
Amanda Marshall - Amanda Marshall
Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue
My Closest Friend - Six point five inches of pure stainless heartache
Nichole Nordeman - Woven & Spun
Talk Talk - It's My Life
Tears for Fears - Elemental

Hmm. So this is the first pop music crop...

I guess I will get this out of the way now: I'm a Tori Amos fan.  Not only do I own all her albums, I have a lot of singles, DVDs and concert recordings - the latter encouraged by the remarkable variety in her setlists.  And for the purposes of this blog, it's significant that I still listen to all the albums to a fair degree.

Most of this month's Tori listening actually happened in a fairly short burst, and it covered the 3 most recent albums plus the first one.

David Bowie's Platinum Collection was a new purchase.  He's one of those artists I've always been vaguely curious about. I bought a few albums cheaply some years ago, but none of them entirely convince me as albums - a sure sign that some kind of hits package was the answer.  This 3-disc collection does the job very nicely.

Truth be told, I actually have been listening to quite a few Bowie albums this month as well when I've had the opportunity.  But they are not things that are part of my library.  And so far, they've tended to confirm that Bowie is someone who is best represented by a compilation.

My Closest Friend is worth mentioning as an internet discovery.  I listened to one song from this EP when I was doing some music reviewing, liked it, then discovered that this Swedish group was giving away electronic copies absolutely free.  I'm not actually sure the EP is available anymore. Which is a pity, because it's worth hearing.

Of the other things here... well, for now I'll just mention that Ruby Blue made my top 10 list for the last decade, and The Rainy Season is still on my top 10 list for all time.  Not that the list has been formally revised for a few years.

Introduction

This blog is the result of a few things about me coming together.

First of all, I am naturally a list-maker. When I want to get something organised in my head, making some kind of list or catalogue is one of the mechanisms I'm drawn to.

Secondly, I am something of a completist. If I have part of a set, I want the rest of the set. Or, at the very least I want to know about the rest of the set, so that I know what's missing.

And finally, I am very passionate about music. Lots of music.

So, how did that lead to a blog?

Well, it didn't directly lead here. It led to me starting to catalogue my music collection. I began cataloguing the classical part back in the middle of 2009. I started doing this out of a sense of frustration that I wasn't really listening to my collection. In the periods that I was in the mood for classical, I would struggle to remember what I'd listened to during the last classical phase, and I kept feeling as if I was listening to the same small portion of my library repeatedly without exploring the rest.

So, the purpose of beginning the catalogue was to record what I was actually listening to. That way, I could push myself to listen to different things, things that I might not have heard for a while, and things that I hadn't really got to know.

It worked a treat. For starters, it made me realise just how much I had in my personal music library. The classical catalogue currently has about 950 recordings of 'works' in it. It covers everything I own except a few sampler CDs that haven't been added yet. Those works range in length from just 41 seconds to 165 minutes. And during the last two-and-a-half years, I still haven't listened to about a third of those works.

It also led me to listen to new things, or things that seemed new, which I always find a particularly exciting musical experience. So, for example, while I knew the Sibelius symphonies, I hadn't ever paid much attention to the additional Sibelius pieces that filled the CDs, and when I listened to En Saga it was with no real knowledge of it. Turns out that I love En Saga.

In late February 2011, I decided to start taking the same approach to my popular music. I generally would say that I listen to popular more than classical (although the whole cataloguing exercise had increased the proportion of classical listening), but again I've had a sense that I'm only accessing a small part of my collection. I had no problem with the true favourites being played more often, but I really wanted to be able to identify what I hadn't listened to for a while.

And then it hit me. I was now going to be keeping track of pretty much everything I listened to. At least, everything I deliberately chose to listen to. Not the random bits of music on the radio or television, but every time I selected something out of my library.

From that notion, a blog was born. A place to share my musical journey.

Whether or not anyone actually wants to read about what I'm listening to, I've no idea. I guess I will find out.
The primary 'rule' for my catalogue (and therefore for my blog entries) is that I only record things that I listen to in their entirety. If I get interrupted partway through, it's not counted as a listen to the work. Also, for popular music, a 'work' is usually an album. I am very much an album person. I believe that the art of arranging a groups of songs into a particular order is part of the art of music, and I suspect that most of the musicians who manage to get into my library think along those lines.

My intention is to post on a monthly basis and look back at what I've been listening to. That seems often enough to keep the blog going, but without taxing myself too much. Less time than that would mean that I would sometimes be trying to post when I'd listened to very little.

The idea that I'd go an entire month without listening to something complete sends a shiver down my spine.