October 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe (Jesus called to Himself the Twelve)
• Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn (Thou true God and David's Son)
• Ein ungefärbt Gemüte (An open mind)
• Die Elenden sollen essen (The miserable shall eat)
• Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes (The heavens declare the glory of God)

Barber

• Songs, opuses 2 and 10
• Dover Beach
• Overture to The School for Scandal
• Cello Sonata
• Adagio for Strings

Beethoven

• Symphonies 3 and 4
• Piano Sonata No.23
• Triple Concerto

Bridge

• Berceuse (instrumental piece - orchestral version)
• Berceuse (song)
• The Hag
• Valse Intermezzo à cordes
• Chant d'espérance (Song of Hope)
• Serenade (orchestral version)
• Mid of the Night
• Adoration
• Norse Legend (orchestral version)
• Two Songs of Robert Bridges

Dvorak - String Quartets 1, 5, 8 and 12
Faure

• Piano Quartets 1 and 2
• Songs, opuses 18, 23, 27, 39 and 43
• Poème d'un jour
• Trois Romances sans paroles
• Ballade for piano
• Impromptus 1 to 3
• Barcarolles 1 to 4
• Nocturnes 1 to 5
• Valse-caprices 1 and 2
• Mazurka
• Elegie for cello and piano

Haydn - Piano Trio No.31
Holmboe

• String Quartets 4, 5, 10 and 16
• Symphony No.11
• Chamber Symphony No.2, 'Elegy'

Janacek

• String Quartet No.1, 'Kreutzer Sonata'
• On an Overgrown Path
• In the Mists
• A Recollection
• Variations for Zdenka

Liszt

• Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne (What one hears on the mountain)
• Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo (Tasso: Lament and Triumph)
• Prometheus
• Hungaria

Poulenc

• Trois Mouvements perpétuels
• Valse for Album des Six
• Pastourelle from L'Éventail de Jeanne (piano version)
• Two Novelettes
• Improvisations 1 to 10
• Les Soirées de Nazelles
• Novelette on a theme of Falla

Tcherepnin, A. - Piano Trio

I did mention the word 'avalanche' a little while back, right?...

Let's see.  The Bach is me still working through the box set I bought in March. Nearly at the end, now, and chronologically we're actually getting to a really interesting point: 1723,the start of Bach's tenure in Leipzig, where he wrote an... well, an avalanche of new music for performance in church.  This month, I listened to the pieces that got him the job, and the first pieces performed when he started. This is truly landmark stuff.

The new Holmboe continues with some more string quartets and Chamber Symphony No.2 which I know I liked.  Scarcely 'chamber' in terms of how it sounds.  For the string quartets... yes, it's getting a little tricky to remember which was which.  I do think I particularly liked No.5, but it's probably going to take a few goes before I know things like that for sure.

With Faure, as I mentioned last month, I went for the full-on experience, intermixing the new songs with all the instrumental music I already owned.  This month it meant I went from the 1st piano quartet, op.15 through to the 2nd piano quartet, op.45 - both marvellous works.  In between there was a strong focus on the amazing string of piano works that Faure produced from roughly 1881 to 1886.  There are just so many moments where a little turn of melody, or a harmonic shift, will give me a little buzz of pleasure.

Now, the songs!  The things I'm supposed to be listening to! The lighter songs (of which there are quite a few in this bunch) are never less than charming, but the one that really hit me was the more serious Les berceaux (The cradles). It's utterly beautiful, and I kept wanting to replay it even when I was 'supposed' to have moved on to later works.

The Bridge, Dvorak, Janacek, Liszt and Poulenc are all brand new (last month's Janacek and Poulenc weren't, and it was coincidence that I dusted off my existing recordings of those composers) and from box sets of at least 5 CDs, so there's plenty more to listen to.  With Bridge, I've decided to go chronological, which means I'm listening to his early works. And very nice they are too, but I'm effectively setting myself up to hear the deepening and darkening of his style which will apparently kick in once I'm past World War I (the pieces here are from 1901 to 1906).  With Poulenc, I'm not being chronological but taking all these piano miniatures more or less as they come on disc.

For my big new box of Dvorak's string quartets I'm jumping around, partly because of what I've read about the early quartets being somewhat long-winded.  And it's true that, while the earlier quartets are still nice, the musical material is more interesting and/or better handled in the later works.

I also had some warning about the quality of Liszt's symphonic poems, and it definitely does seem as if he gets a bit bombastic sometimes. But in general, the more I listened to these works the more I heard the structure and direction of the music, and got enjoyment out of the listening.

The most interesting find from these new boxes so far is probably the Janacek piano music, which really did repay repeated listening as I heard more of the strange subtleties and irregularities that give his work its distinctive sound.  The piece that grabbed me instantly was the 10th number from On an Overgrown Path, which is called The barn owl has not flown away!  There is something extraordinary about the fluttering figure that permeates this piece - and particularly something extraordinary about the performance of it by Paul Crossley, because I've sampled a couple of other versions online without it having quite the same impact.

My Beethoven listening took in the Eroica symphony (a name, unlike many others, given by the composer) and the 'Appassionata' piano sonata.  Both of them are every bit as amazing and extraordinary as the 'Waldstein' sonata I raved about last month, and prove it was no fluke.  As great as many of the earlier Beethoven works are, what sets these ones apart is the different world of sound.  There is more force and drama than before.

Having set myself up some kind of plan to listen to those 9 composers, I then suddenly got the urge to throw Samuel Barber into the mix. I hadn't listened to the famous Adagio for Strings for 2 or 3 years, but it's lost none of the beauty that made it an immediate 'hit' back when it was first performed on radio in 1938.  And there's much to enjoy in the other works as well.

This is one vast post, and it's basically me saying time and time again "ooh, this was good... and that was nice".  But in some ways that's the point (and I might just throw in now, that Tcherepnin piano trio is not something I enjoy and the only reason it will get replayed from time to time is that it's mercifully short). I'm trying to hunt down the GOOD stuff to add to my collection.  Despite the size of the recent purchases, I'm not just randomly adding whatever I can lay my hands on.  The 6 box sets in my latest purchase (one of which hasn't been heard yet) were whittled down from a selection of more than 100 that were available in a sale.  These were top choices, and I'd be disappointed if I wasn't getting rewards from them.

October 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• The Beekeeper
• Garlands (from The Beekeeper DVD)
• Gold Dust

Bryan Duncan - Mercy
Eskimo Joe - A Song Is A City
Patty Griffin - 1000 Kisses
Patty Griffin - Children Running Through
Missy Higgins - The Sound of White
Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns
Tears for Fears - Raoul and the Kings of Spain

I finally completed the Joni Mitchell marathon, finishing with probably my favourite album.  I don't think it had the same impact as the equivalent Tori Amos listening exercise, simply because it was so much more spread out.  However, as well as listening to Hissing I did go back and listen to all the songs again, on shuffle, over the course of several days.

It certainly was interesting to hear the major shifts in Mitchell's voice, as well as the changes in style.  Another surprise was that some songs that I'm not very fond of seemed to work better when taken out of their usual album context.  One that particularly struck me was 'Lead Balloon' from Taming the Tiger, which frankly I usually think of as going down like a lead balloon.  For whatever reason, when it came on late in the shuffle I quite enjoyed it.

Bryan Duncan's Mercy has long been one of my favourite albums, and pretty close to my number one choice from the Christian contemporary music scene.  It's just that, until now, I've never owned a copy of it.  I can't even recall what brought it to mind during October, but after many years of thinking "I really ought to get that on CD", I snapped, logged onto eBay, and bought the first good-looking copy I found.

And it didn't let my memories down.  As far as I can gather, it was the biggest success of Bryan Duncan's career (the internet isn't so great at researching slightly obscure artists that were mostly operating in earlier decades), and as much as anything I think that's down to the darkness of the album.  Now, before anyone rushes out thinking they're going to get something seriously gloomy, I am talking in relative terms.  Duncan's music is naturally bright, sometimes even jokey.  But Mercy is the album where there's an added edge to the music, and to the subject matter. There are at least two songs that are about people having faced the tragedy of death - the tender 'You Don't Leave Me Lonely', and the utterly blazing 'Faithful to You' which is one of those rare songs that has such power that I can feel the need to play it several times in a row.  Like right now...

 And even the lighter moments on this album are mature and measured.  I certainly find it to be a satisfying listen, and I expect it will appear in the lists on this blog fairly regularly from now on.

September 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Now come, saviour of the heathen)
• Christen, ätzet diesen Tag (Christians, engrave this day)
• Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn (Prepare the ways, prepare the road)
• Erschallet, ihr Lieder (Resound, you songs)

Beethoven - Symphony No.2
Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 19 to 22
Faure

• Songs, Opuses 1 to 8
• Duets, Op.10
• Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre (Since I've pressed my lips)
• Tristesse d'Olympio (Sadness of Olympio)
• L'aurore (The Dawn)
• Cantique de Jean Racine
• Violin Sonata No.1

Heller - 25 Etudes for Developing a Sense for Musical Rhythm & Expression, Op.47
Holmboe

• Kairos
• Sinfonia 2
• Chamber Symphony No.1
• String Quartets 1 to 3, 7, 8, 12 to 14
• Violin Sonata No.2
• Primavera
• Gioco
• Sonata for solo flute
• Bagatelle No.1 'Arabesque'
• Molto allegro scherzando for solo violin

Janacek - Sinfonietta
Janacek - Glagolitic Mass
Liszt - Anees de Perelinage, 1st year: Switzerland
Magnard - String Quartet
Poulenc

• Suite pour piano
• Nocturnes
• Villageoises
• Presto in B flat
• Two intermezzi
• Intermezzo in A flat
• Humoresque

The answer to that question about Holmboe's Kairos was that yes, I do like the four Sinfonias when they're all combined.  In all honestly I feel it drags a little in the centre, the problem being that Sinfonia 2, the longest, is generally at a slow pulse (although with fast episodes) and so is Sinfonia 1 before it.  The much more vigorous Sinfonia 3 provides a welcome change afterwards.

There was plenty more brand new Holmboe this month, with the string quartets being prominent.  Trying quartets from different parts of his career certainly brings out the changes in his style.  For example, quartets 7 and 8 come from a period of 'tougher' works, whereas quartets 13 and 14 are marvellously light and delicate.  I'd say those two are among the favourites thus far, along with number 2, but of course it's going to take a long time to properly digest all the different works.

Elsewhere in Holmboe's chamber music I easily warmed to the light touch of both Primavera (for flute, violin, cello and piano) and Gioco (for string trio).  Although it's not entirely clear to me why a Danish composer should be so keen on using Italian titles.  I suppose he was tapping into the previous centuries where Italian essentially was the language of music.

Elsewhere I was frequently tapping into French.  Magnard was a brand new composer to me.  His string quartet is quite dense, full of notes and full of different ideas in the outer movements especially, and it did take me several listens to get into it.  I realised that my knowledge of string quartets basically jumps from Schubert to Shostakovich and completely bypasses the Romantic period, so this was really my introduction to what a string quartet from late Romanticism would sound like.  And after several listens, I was in fact quite taken with it.

And then there's all the new Faure songs.  I bought the Hyperion/Graham Johnson collection of complete songs (although I now think it's possible they may have missed a work - outrageous!) which, rather than being purely chronological, scatters the songs thematically while keeping acknowledged 'song cycles' intact and being fairly chronological within each theme.

I have mixed feelings about this.  In the case of the early songs I have no problem, because it's known that these first 10 opus numbers were assigned fairly randomly after the fact.  But even then, the CDs sometimes separate songs that logically belong together, and there are later examples where it's clear from the series' own timeline that songs were written and published together but they still appear on separate discs.

The beauty of iTunes is that it enables me to reassign songs to new 'albums' to correct this in cases where I feel there's a benefit to hearing a group of songs together.

As for the actual songs... my goodness, but Faure could write a melody!  These early songs include some of his most popular.  And it's worth bearing in mind that 'early' in Faure's career includes works written in his 30s.  There are some teenage songs here, of variable quality, but there are also works of a quite mature composer.

Après un rêve (After a dream) deserves its fame, but the Sérénade Toscane (Tuscan serenade) in a similar style is just as wonderful.  Other songs I found bouncing around in my head hours or days after heaing them included Chanson du pêcheur (Song of the fisherman - lamenting a dead wife), L'absent (The absent one), Tristesse (Sadness) and Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre which was never even published.

Having decided to unravel the chronology and grouping of the Faure songs, I then decided I was going to listen to all my Faure in opus number order - perhaps a somewhat mad decision given how much new music I have to listen to anyway.  But he's one of my favourite composers, and thanks to this new purchase I now have recordings of much of his work.  It will be interesting to hear the gradual changes of style, and indeed it might lead me to appreciate even more the complexities of his later, more 'difficult' style as the easy soaring tunes of the earlier work start to disappear.

Let's face it, I probably just wanted an excuse to listen to the marvellous 1st violin sonata again...

Now I've written a fairly long post without even mentioning that my Beethoven listening took me as far as the 'Waldstein' piano sonata, Op.53.  The entire point of this listening in opus number order is to hear stylistic developments, and the Waldstein is, quite simply, a revelation.  Within half a minute you realise you're hearing something that is not only radical for Beethoven, it's probably unlike anything written for piano by anyone up to that point.  It is truly astonishing, and truly a masterpiece.

September 2012 - Popular Music

David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
Delirious? - Glo
Gomez - Bring It On
Jars of Clay - Furthermore: From the Studio
John Mayer - Battle Studies
Joni Mitchell

• Clouds
• Mingus
• Dog Eat Dog

Beth Orton - Daybreaker
Sting - Mercury Falling
Washington - I Believe You Liar
Rachael Yamagata - Happenstance

Not an enormous amount of pop music listening going on at the moment.  The most notable item on the list is Aladdin Sane, which I had heard before but which was officially added to my collection this month.

After having given much thought to which of the myriad David Bowie 'best ofs' to buy, and finally getting hold of one about 18 months ago, I promptly stopped listening to it because I wanted to explore his actual albums.  My curiosity about a person's body of work got the better of me, as usual.

I'm not sure exactly what I was looking for, because I actually already own several Bowie albums, none of which have yet made it onto this blog and none of which (so far) strikes me as entirely satisfactory.  I suppose I was looking for that satisfactory album, even though I had a sneaking fear that it might not exist.  Bowie himself has predicted the death of the album in the age of iTunes and shuffling playlists, and I couldn't help wonder if this was just because he was someone who actually struggled to put together a complete and coherent album.  Was he, in fact, a 'singles artist'?

So I started at the beginning and sporadically listened to Bowie albums.  REALLY at the beginning. Bowie's 1967 album is quite fascinatingly odd.  Space Oddity seemed fairly uneven, The Man Who Sold The World is strange and yet not that interesting.  Hunky Dory showed promise, but ultimately the really strong songs are the ones that already appear on my compilation.  And while I know Ziggy Stardust is supposed to be a landmark, I can't say that it does a lot for me.

I already had hopes for Aladdin Sane from the several tracks on my compilation, and it justified those hopes.  Maybe it's the amazing piano playing of Mike Garson. I'm a sucker for good piano.  But I think even in the tracks that are rockers and don't feature piano, there's something more sophisticated about this album compared to Ziggy.  So I went out and bought it.  It is now officially designated as "the David Bowie album that I like".

There could be others, as I've been terribly distracted by other music and have only got as far as Diamond Dogs - which I also quite like, but again I feel that the strongest material is on my compilation and I'm unsure that I'll gain much by having the entire album.

However, it's entirely possible that sometime circa 2018, readers of this blog will see that I have gone and bought every Bowie album.  For now, though, Aladdin Sane is the one I'm happy to reach for and think "yeah, this guy deserved his fame".

August 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - Ich hatter viel Bekümmernis (I had many afflictions) - 1720 version
Bach, J.S. - Der Himmel lacht, die Erde jubilieret (The heavens laugh, the earth rejoices)
Bach? - Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele II (Praise the Lord, O my soul, No.2)
Beethoven - String Quintet
Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 16 to 18
Heller - 25 Melodic Etudes, Op.45
Holmboe - Violin Sonata No.1
Holmboe - Sinfonias 1 to 4
Liszt - Venezia e Napoli

This list includes the vanguard of what has since become an avalanche of new classical music.  I still haven't finished that collection of Bach cantatas I bought back in March, and yet I decided to burden myself with a wealth of new Holmboe and Faure, along with a dash of Heller.  Well, alright, not really 'burden'.

One of the first purchases was Holmboe's Kairos.  No, you won't find it on the listening list above.  But in fact you will.

Kairos is a fairly rare construction of 4-pieces-in-1.  Or perhaps 4-into-1, as there's good reason to suppose that at least the first 3 were conceived as separate pieces first.  Each of these Sinfonias for strings is a single-movement work, perfectly listenable to on its own.  Which is how I listened to them during August.

A few years later, though, Holmboe wrote a fourth Sinfonia which is multi-movement, and a little bit different in character to the others.  I also listened to this on its own... but split it up and wrap it around the other three, and hey presto, you've got a single work: Kairos.

As I understand it, the concept derives from the difference betwen 'psychological' time, or the right moment (kairos in Greek) and 'chronological' time (chronos in Greek). It seems to me that Holmboe is deliberately illustrating the effect that music sounds different depending on what you've heard before it.  Which thrills me no end, because it's something I've been hammering on about for years (not least on Tori Amos forums - my apologies to anyone who's heard this broken record too many times).

The human brain really isn't terribly good at judging absolute values.  It's difficult for us to correctly judge speed, temperature, decibels, or pitch.  Whereas we're extremely good at measuring relative values.  Faster/slower, hotter/colder, louder/softer, higher/lower.

So take a block of music and put it in a different context, and it will mean something slightly different.  If the opening of a piece becomes the opening of the 4th movement, it won't come across in quite the same way.  If there's 15 minutes of music in between two movements that used to be next each other, the lead-in to the second of those movements has become completely different and will affect how it's heard.

Of course, none of this makes a huge difference to the quality of the music, but on listening to the Sinfonias as separate pieces they've got all the characteristics of Holmboe that make me so enthusiastic, particularly the sense of a line carrying right through a piece - although that's less true of the 4th, which is broken up and considerably more quirky.  Given that this is all string music, it's important that he keeps the interest up rather than having a generalised mass of sound. Each piece has changes of pace and of texture that kept me interested.

So, I like them on their own.  It remains to be seen what I'll think of them together.

August 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos - Under the Pink
Fiona Apple - When the Pawn...
Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel...
Gotye - Making Mirrors
David Gray - A New Day at Midnight
Patty Griffin - Impossible Dream
Wendy Matthews - Emigre
Wendy Matthews - The Witness Tree
Joni Mitchell

• Ladies of the Canyon
• Court and Spark
• Dog Eat Dog
• Turbulent Indigo

Powderfinger - Vulture Street
Radiohead - OK Computer
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Simply Red - Picture Book
Something for Kate - Beautiful Sharks
Something for Kate - Desert Lights
Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring

I jotted down this list at the start of September, but no thoughts to go with it. My initial reaction when looking at the list again was... did I have any thoughts?  Not a good prospect for this blog.

Then, however, the entry that jumped out at me was the last one, for The Colour of Spring.  Which it seems I may not have talked about before.  And that surprises me given how often I listen to it.

It really is one of those albums that has become so comfortable for me.  I see the title, I start hearing parts of 'Happiness Is Easy' in my head and think "yes, I enjoy listening to that".  And so I pop it on quite frequently, and always with pleasure.  The tapestry of sound weaving in and out and around my head always gives me pleasure.

I have no memory of being aware of Talk Talk in the 1980s.  They were a much later discovery for me.  The main cataylst for that was this wonderful blog, which I was introduced to via his writings on Tori Amos albums.  His description of Talk Talk intrigued me.  Here was a band that had evolved rapidly across the space of a few albums.  And I'm definitely interested in bands that evolve, rather than churning out more of the same style.  Radiohead would suggest itself as a more recent example of a band that drew me in with their ability to do different things.

Another catalyst was No Doubt's cover of the song 'It's My Life', which was one of those things I became very obsessed with around the time of first hearing it.  Those key changes between verse and chorus were so smooth, so skillful, and so utterly delicious.

It happened that The Colour of Spring was the first Talk Talk album I heard, because a work colleague lent it to me.  It's possible that it's remained my favourite of the three I have (the others being It's My Life and Spirt of Eden) simply because it was my entry point, but I think it is more that it's an album of transition between two styles.  I tend to like transitional albums.  Here, it's a move from more mainstream pop to the radical ambient work that followed.  Caught in the middle, The Colour of Spring is pop that's full of subtle little moments, interesting instruments, often a quiet sense of repose and an air of sophistication.  It adds up to an album that is highly listenable and doesn't come across as dated 1980s material. It is most definitely one of those albums that I can't see myself tiring of.

July 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt (Just as the rain and snow fall from heaven)
• Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn (Walk in the way of faith)
• Mein Gott, wie lang', ach lange? (My God, how long, ah long?)
• Komm, du süße Todesstunde (Come, thou sweet death's hour)
• Nur jedem das Seine (To each only his due)

Beethoven

• String Quartet No. 6
• Septet
• Symphony No. 1
• Piano Sonatas 11 to 15
• String Quintet

Faure - Fantasie for Piano and Orchestra

Back to the Bach after a break! Sorry, I just wanted to say that...  but yes, I re-embarked on exploring my box of cantatas.  With reasonable results, but to be honest at the moment the different pieces tend to blur into each other and I find it hard to comment on anything in particular.

With Beethoven it's easier. Probably because these pieces are more familiar, but also because I respond really strongly to many of them.  This month's listening included a group of piano sonatas where the experimentation with form is noticeable, although my favourite of the bunch is probably the most 'conventional' one in that sense, the sonata in D major Op.28 known (not unreasonably) as the 'Pastorale'.  And that was immediately followed by another personal favourite, the string quintet Op.29.

One of the more disconcerting effects of keeping track of my music listening using spreadsheets is that I can see just how long it is since I last listened to something.  And in the case of classical music, where I've been keeping records for several years, it can come as a shock.  I have memories of getting to know Op.28 that are quite specific and vivid, and it feels like it was only a short time ago, but then Excel told me I hadn't listened to it for nearly two years.  By the time I get to some later Beethoven works, I'll hit things that Excel tells me I haven't listened to in over three years.

Yet I can still hear many of them in my head.

I have more music than it seems I can sensibly listen to, but I'm continuing to add to it (more purchases on the way as I write...).  Does it really matter? I'm not sure. The more music I have, the more any given work in my collection is likely to sound interesting and fresh when I get around to revisiting it.  The fact is that I find most things in the collection rewarding, and I rarely buy anything that hasn't already been considered for a while before purchase.

I sometimes don't know what depresses/scares me more, the vast amount of great music to listen to, or the far vaster amount of mediocre music that is hiding it.

The best solution seems to be to keep listening, and keep responding, and just accept that this is how things are.  I'm just one person among billions past and present, and even if only a tiny fraction of those other people manage to produce something that amazes, moves or thrills me, there's going to be a lot of those amazing, moving, thrilling moments to find and enjoy.

And really, one of the main functions of this blog is to try and let other people know about some of those moments, to share them.  Not that this particular post is doing a particularly good job, I grant you. But I hope that people occasionally read something that makes them go and explore a new musical avenue, even if it takes several years.

July 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos - Strange Little Girls
Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel...
Joni Mitchell

• Song to a Seagull
• Blue
• For the Roses
• Hejira
• Don Juan's Reckless Daughter
• Wild Things Run Fast
• Night Ride Home
• Shine

Radiohead - OK Computer
Sixpence None the Richer - Sixpence None the Richer
Sting - The Soul Cages
Sting - Live In Berlin (DVD version)
Washington - I Believe You Liar
Rachael Yamagata - Happenstance

A tale of two albums... neither of them by Joni Mitchell despite the preponderance of her works in the list above.

Washington is, as far as I can tell, Megan Washington - and by that I mean that she appears to be operating as a solo artist, not as the lead person in a band like Bon Jovi or Van Halen.

Megan Washington has a beautiful, beautiful voice. My first encounter with it was, I think, also the first encounter for many people, when she appeared on the much beloved quiz show Spicks and Specks singing completely inappropriate lyrics in a little game called 'Substitute'. But singing them oh so well.

Part of the reason I think this helped her career is that her music shot up the iTunes charts the very next day.

I bought Washington's first full-length album, I Believe You Liar, a couple of months ago (at the same time as Gotye's Making Mirrors).  And I didn't really take much time to listen to it then.  I took a bit more time in July to sit down with the album properly.

And I'm disappointed. There's no other way to say it. It's not terrible by any means.  But THAT VOICE is most noticeable by its absence.

This is because much of the album aims for a 60s, Phil Spector Wall of Sound aesthetic. The production is thick, with Washington's voice multitracked. Even when the music is quieter, she's still multitracked more often than not. It's bright, it's fairly poppy, and it totally fails to show off her biggest musical asset.  Most of her singing comes across as merely pleasant, instead of utterly magnetic. The lyrics are nothing special, either, and fail to elevate the material.

Only the closing title track really allows me to hear the same thing I heard in that television show several years ago.

I haven't lost hope. I also bought the following Insomnia EP at the same time (which includes material that has been released on a revamped international version of I Believe You Liar) and, while I have yet to open it, it actually sounded like the better release from what I sampled before purchase.

Contrast my reaction to Liar with my reaction to, to give it the full title, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do. The new album from Fiona Apple was something I picked up this month for a number of reasons, including excellent reviews and a very cheap price for a recent release.

And where Washington disappointed me, Apple thrilled me.  Here is an album that absolutely showcases a vocalist using her instrument - and it really is treated as an instrument.  The accompanying music is sometimes little more than punctuation while Apple coos, growls and everything in between. The most frequent combination of sounds is percussion, piano and voice, and this album demonstrates pretty effectively that you don't need any more than that to create powerful music.

And yes, even though I'm generally much more about the music than the words, Apple's songwriting is also more interesting lyrically.  Her wordplay may not be to everyone's taste, but there are all sorts of surprises thrown in, rather than picking the obvious way of saying something.  I can't think of a much better way of saying how a lover makes you feel than Apple's statement, in one of the happier songs, that "he makes my heart a cinemascope screen showing a dancing bird of paradise".

All of those reviews on Metacritic making this one of the best-reviewed albums of the year are, in my humble opinion, right.  Not that I hear many albums in the year they're released.  But this is certainly right up there in terms of albums I've heard any time recently.

June 2012 - Classical Music

Beethoven - String Quartets 1 to 6
Haydn - String Quartet in E flat, Op.76/6

Again, this list isn't exactly a lot to look at! But it did mean I finally listened to all of Beethoven's Opus 18 string quartets, as I had been planning to do for three months in a row.

And in fact the one that I hadn't listened to for the longest period, No.6, turned out to be one of my favourites. I really must try to remember that in future. But they're all enjoyable works.  Full of Beethoven's energy, and at a stage in the 'early' phase of his career where you can really hear the increasing confidence.  I can well believe that publishing a group of 6 quartets was a conscious effort to put himself on the same terms as previous masters like Haydn and Mozart.  At the very least, publishing things in a group of 6 was a long-established practice at this point for producing a complete, satisfying set and displaying a range of moods.

In a sense, Beethoven is still learning what he can do.  But he is picking up the lessons very rapidly, and it won't be long before he is really pushing the boundaries of music.

June 2012 - Popular Music

Gotye - Making Mirrors
Joni Mitchell

• Blue
• Chalk Mark In A Rain Storm
• Taming the Tiger

Tears for Fears - The Seeds of Love

Technically, I was still going through the massive Tori Amos listening extravaganza in the first part of the month. But it wasn't in the form of albums, and for the purposes of this blog the relatively rare times that I engage in constructing short-term playlists or in pressing the 'shuffle' button don't count.  What's the point? How can anyone relate to the random results my particular iPhone created at a particular time?

After that, having done one career overview I decided to start on another using the same method, this time with Joni Mitchell. I haven't been going at the same pace, but it's pretty remarkable to jump from Taming the Tiger, released in 1998, back to Blue from 1971!

The latter is a fabulous album, one of Mitchell's best in my personal opinion.  Whereas something like Taming the Tiger is a real mix, with some great songs and some that really don't create any kind of response in me at all, or make me wince at how heavy-handed they are.  It's not simply a case of "old Joni is good and new Joni is bad", as my preferred albums are scattered throughout her career.  I expect that to hold up as I continue listening to all 17 studio albums.

It's interesting to note that because those albums are generally shorter than Tori Amos', it's Tori that has now released just a fraction more album music, in terms of both number of songs and in total timing.  But it's a very close run 'contest'.

And I do think they have a lot in common. Particularly in the sense of exploratory range, and that's really why I decided to do the same kind of career overview with Joni.  There's her early "folk" work, then the "jazz" phase, then after she well and truly went jazz in collaborating with Charles Mingus there's an abrupt shift to something more "pop" in the 80s followed by what I suppose is, ahem, slightly more "adult contemporary".  That one artist can navigate her way through all of that, especially with the quite radical changes in the tone and range of her voice, is a testament to her musical instincts.

May 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 (complete)
Beethoven - String Quartets 3 and 4
Telemann - Tafelmusik Volume 3 (complete)

...and that's it.

It's worth pointing out that the Bach is almost 2 hours worth of music. Which helped pass away an afternoon's work in the garden rather nicely, especially as I hadn't listened to it for a few years.  And the Telemann is over an hour.  But generally, this was a period where Classical music generally disappeared from my listening diet.  Partly this was because of the Tori Amos marathon previously mentioned (and indeed plenty of other pop music), partly it was because of other, non-musical circumstances that made me less inclined to make the extra effort involved in programming a few tracks of a CD to get a single Classical work at a time.

... nothing much to say, really. Sorry about that!

May 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Little Earthquakes
• Under the Pink
• Boys for Pele
• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• To Venus and Back (studio disc)
• Strange Little Girls
• Scarlet's Walk
• The Beekeeper
• American Doll Posse
• Abnormally Attracted to Sin
• Midwinter Graces
• Night of Hunters

Kate Bush - The Sensual World
Sheryl Crow - C'mon C'mon
The Dissociatives - The Dissociatives
Eurythmics - Be Yourself Tonight
Peter Gabriel - So
george - Unity
Gotye - Making Mirrors
Missy Higgins - On A Clear Night
Wendy Matthews - The Witness Tree
Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark
Joni Mitchell - Wild Things Run Fast
Pearl Jam - Vs
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Something for Kate - Desert Lights
Sting - Mercury Falling
Talk Talk - It's My Life
Thrice - The Alchemy Index: Fire and Air volumes
Washington - I Believe You Liar

Yes, I did.  I went even more Tori-crazy than usual.  All twelve studio albums in one month.

I certainly hadn't tried to do this in the relatively short time that there's been 12 albums.  I almost certainly have done this kind of 'career overview' before, but I'm not at all sure what the album count might have been on the last occasion.  And 12 is just one of those numbers that gives a sense of completeness and order. It just felt like time.

I should also point out that I do "career overviews" for many of my favoured musicians. I suppose that none of the others have been on this scale (for pop music at least).  Taking into account not just the number of albums but the fact that half of them are quite lengthy ones.

Rather than be chronological, I used a random number generator to choose the next album for me. By sheer chance, someone started a new 'rank the albums' thread just after I'd started, so I was also trying to judge the albums at the same time - and definitely doing that on an album basis, rather than counting highly favoured songs.

I might as well report here on the ranking.  At the top was Boys for Pele, then From the Choirgirl Hotel VERY close behind. Next pair were American Doll Posse and Scarlet's Walk, again close to each other.

The next group were virtually inseparable, but in the end I ordered them as follows: Strange Little Girls, Little Earthquakes, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, Night of Hunters and Under the Pink.

Trailing slightly behind was To Venus and Back, then The Beekeeper and lastly Midwinter Graces.

The overwhelming impression, though, was how much satsifaction and enjoyment I got even from the 'lesser' albums.  Or, to break it down further, that's 180 songs and I'd say there's really only one that I consistently don't get much pleasure out of.

What IS it about this woman? As she changes and varies her style, with arguably 4 or 5 distinct 'periods' to her career already, what is it that stays and that attracts me so much?  As best I can tell, it's her sense of musical structure and sonic colour. And it's the combination of that with her desire to change her musical language in some way on each occasion that keeps yielding rewards for me. Twelve different musical worlds to spend time in.  Twelve different palettes.

I can't see me getting tired of it.  Yes, there are periods where I don't listen to her much (for example, after this enormous binge), but each time that I return I continue to find rewards.  So I'll keep returning.


PS And it's worth mentioning that I listened to plenty of other music during the month as well.  I mean, there are another 18 albums on that list!

April 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (Weeping, Lamenting, Worrying, Fearing)
• Widerstehe doch der Sünde (Resist Sin)
• Gott ist mein König (God is my King)
• Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (God's time is the very best time)
• Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir (Out of the depths, Lord, I cry to you)
• Ach, ich sehe, itzt, da ich zur Hochzeit gehe (Ah! I see now, when I go to the wedding)
• O heiliges Geist- und Wasserbad (O bath of Holy Spirit and water)
• Himmelskönig, sei willkommen (Heaven's King, be welcome)
• Barmherziges Herze der ewigen Liebe (Merciful heart of eternal love)
• Der Herr denket an uns (The Lord has been mindful of us)
• Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut (My heart swims in blood)

Beethoven

• Piano Sonatas 9 and 10
• String quartet from Piano Sonata No. 9
• Horn Sonata
• String Quartets 1 to 3

Haydn - String Quartet in D minor, Op.76/2
Holmboe - Symphony No. 10
Schumann - Dichterliebe
Shostakovich - String Quartet No. 15
Telemann - Tafelmusik Volume 3 (complete)
Vivaldi

• Cello Concertos in C, C minor, D minor and B minor, RV 400, 401, 407 and 424
• Gloria, RV 589 with Ostro picta
• Laudate pueri in C minor, RV 600
• Salve Regina in F, RV 617

That Bach box started getting worked on in earnest. The box is basically chronological, so it dealt with a few very early cantatas before getting to ones composed in Weimar around 1713-1716.  It was a bit of a worry initially that I didn't like the Weimar ones as much as the earliest ones, because there are a lot more "non-early" works!  It did settle down a bit as I went, so hopefully the box will generally be rewarding.

Apart from that... my chronological working through Beethoven continued. Okay, working through by opus number, which isn't the same thing. But it's actually quite interesting to occasionally discover that something was not published until later. I'm deliberately avoiding looking ahead.  April was opuses 14, 17 and some of 18.

There was also my random grab-bag of Vivaldi cello concertos together with a selection of the earlier sacred vocal works. There are some lovely moments in the latter, or should I say movements, because it's often just a couple of movements within these sectional pieces that really end up standing out. I feel like I should almost start taking notes about which movements are the highlights - something I wouldn't normally countenance, but these sorts of vocal works really don't seem that integrated musically. They're integrated by the text.

April 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• To Venus and Back (studio disc)
• Scarlet's Walk
• American Doll Posse
• Night of Hunters
• Scarlet's Hidden Treasures

Melanie C - Northern Star
Crowded House - Temple of Low Men
Gotye - Like Drawing Blood
Gotye - Making Mirrors
Patty Griffin - Flaming Red
Elton John - Tumbleweed Connection
Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

April was the month that I jumped on the Gotye bandwagon.

Well, that's not strictly true, in the sense that I've had Like Drawing Blood for nearly 3 years.  So April was the month that I jumped on the bandwagon created by the massive success of his single, 'Somebody That I Used to Know' - as manifested by buying the album that it's on.

I'd been meaning to at least investigate the album for quite a while, but it just hadn't happened.  It was the news that he'd reached the number 1 spot in America (a very rare achievement for Australian artists) that finally prompted me to think, "why on earth have I still not listened?"

The first very pleasant surprise was discovering that Gotye has basically put the entire Making Mirrors album up on Youtube.  I'm not sure if I've said it here on this blog, but I'm saying it now: letting people hear your music can gain you sales, not lose them.  Because the second pleasant surprise I got was that the new album is not just good, it's better than its predecessor.  Making Mirrors plays an awful lot like Like Drawing Blood, structurally speaking, but everything is tighter and more secure.  The album has lots of interest and variety but it doesn't meander. To me it basically demonstrates the increased maturity of Gotye's musical judgement while sticking to his essential methods.

And they're very interesting methods.  The 'limited' edition of the album (which as far as I can tell is the only edition you can actually buy in Australian stores at the moment!) includes a DVD which gives a lot of insight into the way he collects and samples sounds and builds songs out of the ones that interest him the most.  It was genuinely worth watching. Whether it's whacking a musical fence and making a bass line from the available notes, sampling tiny fragments of Brazilian and Taiwanese records, or singing an entire song on one note before using technology to shove the notes into the 'correct' positions, this is a man whose techniques are at least as interesting as his results.

March 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - Christ lag in Todesbaden (Christ lay in Death's bonds)
Bach, J.S. - Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich (For you, Lord, I long)
Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 5 to 8
Faure - Piano Quintets 1 & 2
Faure - Cello Sonata No. 1
Haydn - 6 String Quartets, Op.76 (the 'Erdődy' quartets)
Holmboe - Symphony No. 9
Vivaldi - Stabat Mater

The data recording kept going, even though the writing didn't.  (Meanwhile, what the heck has Blogger done to the look of the area I compose posts in?! Aargh!)

I didn't get my hands on the new purchase I hinted at in the February Classical post until the very last day of the month.  It was a 10-CD box of Bach cantatas - specifically, the first 10 of the chronological series still being created by Masaaki Susuki and the Bach Collegium Japan.  I had a lovely walk to the post office on a nice sunny day...

Oh, right, the music.  Well, this entry covers a mere two cantatas, but the early signs were good!  It's still strange to me that I'm suddenly listening to a lot more vocal Classical music.  Dealing with the different languages is still something of a challenge, and often it's better if I just switch off and hear it purely as music.  I also re-started on some Vivaldi, wrestled my box set into some vague resemblance of chronological and thematic groups and began with the Stabat Mater (probably the earliest of his vocal works to have survived).

The main 'event' of the month was probably listening to the Haydn Op.76 for the first time in several years.  I cannot recall for certain whether my cassette copies of these were the first classical music I ever bought for myself (around the age of 16 or 17), but if not the first they were very close to it.  And there's still so much to enjoy in there.  They're the last complete set of quartets from the first master of quartet writing.

I also tackled Holmboe's Symphony No. 9 with a vengeance.  It's one of his tougher works, but once I pulled it apart and put it back together, yet again I found it very rewarding and a clear example of the way this composer writes across movements.  The second movement on its own sounds like... well, nothing much. A lot of soft whimperings and scratchings.  But once you've grasped that there's a little melodic fragment in it that's carried over from the first movement, suddenly it's like the music is holding its breath for 4 minutes before unleashing in the third movement.

I know that's all rather brief and not terribly insightful, but I do have some catching up to do...

March 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• Strange Little Girls
• Abnormally Attracted to Sin

Patty Griffin - Living With Ghosts
Patty Griffin - 1000 Kisses
John Mayer - Continuum
John Mayer - Battle Studies
Joni Mitchell - Song to a Seagull
Joni Mitchell - Taming the Tiger
Moloko - Statues
Over the Rhine - Ohio
Radiohead - Kid A
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Simply Red - Picture Book
Something for Kate - Echolalia
Thrice - The Alchemy Index: Water, Air and Earth volumes
Thom Yorke - The Eraser

In the last few months, I appear to have been going through a mix of a Patty Griffin phase with a Radiohead phase. The two have to some extent alternated.  Very different artists, but both very close to the top of the 'popular music' tree for me.

For Radiohead it's the fact that they seem capable of imagining anything and then implementing it. I don't know anyone else who somehow gives me this impression that something sounds exactly the way it does because that's exactly the way they wanted it to sound. No slips between plan and execution.

For Patty Griffin, it's the incredible power of her voice and songwriting to connect in such a human way.  All the hopes and heartaches of the world can almost bypass my ears and hit somewhere much deeper.

I know that's much to say about either of them, but it's enough. Two instances of where I am very, very glad that people have stepped into a recording studio and I get to hear the results from half a world away.

February 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• Double Violin Concerto
• Prelude and Fugue for Organ in E Flat, BWV 552
• Four Duets (for organ, but played on piano)

Barber - Canzone for flute and piano
Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 1 to 4 (2 recordings of No.4)
Beethoven - Cello Sonatas 1 & 2 (2 recordings)
Brahms - Piano Quartet No.1
Butterworth - Bredon Hill and Other Songs
Chopin

• Rondo in C minor, Op. 1
• Mazurkas, Opp. 7 and 33
• Two Nocturnes, Op. 32

Handel - Keyboard Suites, HWV 447 and 452
Mozart

• Piano Sonata No.13
• Symphony No.36, 'Linz'
• String Quartet No.17, 3rd movement

Poulenc - Theme varie
Rachmaninov - Russian Rhapsody for 2 pianos
Ravel - String Quartet
Ravel - Piano Concerto in G
Ruggieri, Giovanni Maria - Gloria
Schubert - Winterreise
Vivaldi - Ostro picta

Right. Finally did it.  Got to the end of all that classical music I bought in... September I believe it was. Was it? Yes. September.

*Exhales.*

*Rubs hands.*

Right.... now what?

Truth be told, at the time of writing this (bit of a cheat preview of March here), I'm waiting for my next purchase to arrive. Which I didn't directly plan as such, but I'd been keeping my eye out on eBay for several months for something difficult to obtain, and it turned up so I grabbed it.  Vague plans to look at the rest of my long-term shopping list were put on hold as a result.

I intend to go back over some of the September purchase again in a different way.  In particular with the Vivaldi works, I intend to listen to different kinds of groupings.  Choral works that arguably have connections to each other sometimes appeared split across different discs.  Also, I'd like to do things like listen to the various Vivaldi cello concertos I have, from several different sources, as a group.  Not least so that I can then remember if there are specific ones that I particularly like!

Meanwhile, in February I started an exercise of listening to Beethoven chronologically, or at least in order of opus number which isn't always quite the same thing.  I started doing this while not having finished my Mozart chronology (Mozart was stopping over in Linz in 1783 this month), or my Haydn loose chronology, or my Holmboe chronology.  I prefer having a few on the go anyway, as I'm liable to start finding it a genuine chore if I make myself listen to just one composer in that fashion.  With multiple lists on the go, I can switch between them.  Although occasionally I find I've imposed a rule that means I 'cannot' listen to a piece I'd like to.

And you know what? 'Early' Beethoven is pretty exciting and attractive stuff and I keep finding myself keen to listen to it.  It's not that early because he appears to have made a conscious decision to get serious with publishing and start using opus numbers in his mid-20s.  He's already begun to establish his career in Vienna and get attention.  And it's attention-getting music, with lots of little jolts and shocks scattered through it (and sometimes some quite big ones).  It's dynamic. It's got propulsion.  And it made him into one of the most famous names in Western culture.

Hmm. I also finally finally got aroud to listening to Winterreise in full.  Arguably the greatest song cycle by anyone.  Also as miserable and bleak as anyone could want.  To be honest, I find some songs in it a bit more compelling than others, partly because of the similarity in tone of many of them.  A song has to stand out in some way.

Mind you, some of the compelling ones are very compelling. I actually tend to think the success of the cycle might be in no small way indebted to the last song, 'Der Leiermann', which is incredibly haunting.  It doesn't matter how tired I am after listening to 70 minutes worth of music beforehand, I hear that final song and I can feel how it affects me.  So people file out of a performance of the whole cycle with that resonating inside their head.

February 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Little Earthquakes
• Boys for Pele
• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• Scarlet's Walk

Jimmy Barnes - Flesh and Wood
Kate Bush - 50 Words for Snow
Marc Cohn - The Rainy Season
The Dissociatives - The Dissociatives
Peter Gabriel - So
Genesis - We Can't Dance
Gomez - In Our Gun
Radiohead - Kid A
Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
Sting - ...Nothing Like the Sun
Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring
Tears for Fears - The Seeds of Love

Hmm, living in the 80s a fair bit...These lists really can surprise me sometimes.  For instance, I have this sense at the time of writing that I haven't listened to any Tori Amos for several weeks. And in fact I'm right, but I listened to several albums in the first half of February.

It's also interesting that Choirgirl is the last one I listened to, and I've listened to it at least once in each of the last 3 months after not having played it for almost half a year before that.  That's in no way because I started disliking it, but simply because it can be such a visceral and exhausting album to listen to. I'm most often drawn to it when in a dark, angsty mood and ready to let fly at the world.

I still rank it as Tori's most astonishing album, because of the way it rewrote the rules of what she was capable of.  No longer was her career 'merely' the story of a woman pouring her heart out at the keyboard. She was now in charge of much larger forces.

I listened to The Rainy Season a great deal during the month. I've said before that it's one of my favourite albums of all time, but I don't believe I've said why.  And it's because it's one of the most perfect small-scale albums I know.

Which might seem like a putdown, but it isn't.  Not everything should be grand and epic.  The Rainy Season is a collection of songs that resonates with small, intimate moments and domestic relationships. It's warm and affectionate, and a little sad as well. It feels like it belongs in a log cabin with a wood fire. And for me there isn't a false step anywhere.  Which is why, when a car chewed up my original cassette copy, I immediately went hunting for a CD version. I didn't want to be without it in my collection.

January 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - Violin Concertos 1 & 2
Bartok - Piano Concerto No. 3
Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 29
Brahms - Piano Quartet No. 2
Chopin - Three Nocturnes, Op. 15
Debussy - Pour le piano
Faure

• Violin Sonata No. 1
• Piano Quartet No. 1
• Ballade for piano

Haydn - Piano Trios, Hob XV: 27 to 29 (dedicated to Therese Jansen)
Holmboe - Sinfonia in Memoriam
Rachmaninov - Symphony No. 2
Schumann - 'Album leaf' No. 1
Sibelius - Karelia Suite
Vivaldi - Gloria, RV 589
Vivaldi - Nisi Dominus in A, RV 803

The Bach violin concertos are rather lovely.  I don't know whether I was somehow 'pre-tuned' to them by having listened to the harpischord versions a couple of months earlier (part of the same set of CDs), but I really did enjoy them quite a bit.  At some point I will have to go back and do a direct comparison between the versions of each work, to get a better idea of what Bach did to turn a violin piece into a harpischord one, because the 2 instruments are fundamentally different.  A violin can sustain its tone for as long as you want, and a harpischord most definitely cannot.

The Haydn piano trios were the last 'set' that he wrote, one of at least 4 sets from around the time of his second visit to London. They are sparkling, vibrant stuff, but then so is just about every bit of Haydn I've laid my hands on so far.  I'm sure I'll add some more to the ever-expanding shopping list. 14-odd discs worth just isn't enough, apparently...

Somewhere I read that these three Faure pieces were his 'early' masterpieces, so I decided to listen to them as a group.  The term 'early' is an interesting one: these pieces date from when Faure was in his early 30s! It's all a question of perspective, really.  For Mozart, that age is seen as when he was in the advanced stages of his career. But Faure had nearly half a century of composing left in him.

Anyway, of the three it was the violin sonata that really satisfied me.  I hadn't listened to it for a couple of years, and this time I dove into it, playing it again and again until I felt like I knew it intimately and could follow the whole thing the way I might follow a favourite pop album.  Writing this several weeks later, it's the slower 2nd movement that appears in my head, and instantly transports me to the same feelings of pleasure I was having in January.

January 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Under the Pink
• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• The Beekeeper
• American Doll Posse
• Night of Hunters

Paula Cole - This Fire
Crowded House - Together Alone
Patty Griffin - Flaming Red
Patty Griffin - Children Running Through
Jars of Clay - The Eleventh Hour
Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Ray LaMontagne - Til the Sun Turns Black
Wendy Matthews - Lily
John Mayer - Room for Squares
Nichole Nordeman - Woven & Spun
Pearl Jam - Backspacer
Sting - The Soul Cages
Tears for Fears - Elemental
Rachael Yamagata - Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart
Thom Yorke - The Eraser

Um, so. Here's the January list. Finally.

When I went back to work after Christmas, and also having done the 'year in review' here on the blog, there was a little flurry of going back to listen to albums that had appeared quite early in the blog when I realised that it was quite some time since I'd heard them.  I think, without exhaustively checking, that I might not have listened to either the Nichole Norderman or Tears for Fears albums since March last year. And I quite like both albums.

I also listened to a couple of Patty Griffin albums after realising I hadn't listened to as much Patty Griffin last year as I'd thought.  The time seems to go by quite quickly.  On the classical side of things I have pieces that I tell myself I have vivid memories of listening to, yet the spreadsheet data claims it's been a couple of years.  For the pop music, I haven't got as much data yet (and in fact not everything has been added to the spreadsheet - I tend to do bits and pieces as they're listened to) so it remains to be seen if my listening pattern is different.  I suspect it may be less evenly spread, with preferred albums listened to more frequently (yes yes, Tori, but not only Tori) and others less often.

'More frequently' may in fact translate to a couple of showings a year at most.  I do appear to have hundreds of albums. I won't know just how many until the spreadsheet is more thorough.  Meanwhile I keep wanting to add more to the collection! The experience of listening to new music is just too interesting to give up on it.

December 2011 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• 'Triple Concerto' for Flute, Violin and Harpsichord
• Triple Harpischord Concertos 1 and 2
• Oboe D'Amore Concerto in A (reconstruction - BWV 1055R)
• Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C minor (reconstruction - BWV 1060R)

Bach/Vivaldi - Quadruple Harpischord Concerto in A minor, BWV 1065
Barber

• Dover Beach
• Three Songs, Op. 10
• Unpublished songs

Beethoven - Symphony No. 6 'Pastorale'
Beethoven - Mass in C
Faure - Barcarolle No. 3
Holmboe - Symphonies 1 to 8
Holst - The Planets
Mozart - Piano Sonatas 10 to 12
Mozart - Symphony No. 35 'Haffner'
Pisendel (?) - Saraband in C
Strauss, Richard - Metamorphosen
Vivaldi

• Violin Sonatas in C minor, D minor, G minor and B flat, RV 5, 15. 28 and 34
• Laudate peri in C minor, RV 600
• Laudate peri in A, RV 602 plus revised Gloria from RV 602a
• Gaude mater Ecclesia (Rejoice, mother Church)
• Salve Regina in C minor, RV 616
• Salve Regina in G minor, RV 618
• Sanctorum meritis, RV 620
• Vos aurae per montes (You breezes through the mountains)
• Ascende laeta (Gladly climb)
• Cur sagittas, cur tela, RV 637

Nearly at the end of my bulk classical purchase - just a few Bach and Vivaldi pieces to go! Then I can start going back and remembering more of it.  As far as Vivaldi is concerned, there are a few fragments that have stuck in the mind, so it's not all been a wasted exercise.

My obsession with Vagn Holmboe flared with a vengeance this month.  The 8 symphonies mentioned above are just the things that are in my collection. I've been laying my hands on every Holmboe fragment I can find - samples on iTunes, and thanks to the Swedish record company BIS I've listened to about another 10 pieces in full online. I expect to greatly expand my Holmboe CD collection sometime soon.

Just what is it that causes me to obsess about a moderately obscure 20th century composer? It really started with what I read about him, primarily in the Penguin Guide to classical music. The qualities it talked about - his sense of structure, argument and development, plus his vague similarities to Sibelius - drew my attention, as well as the glowing terms constantly used to describe the quality, power and imagination of the music.  And then, when I finally got around to buying the set of the symphonies... I could hear what the writers had been talking about!

Not always, immediately, mind, because some of the symphonies are more accessible than others.  Only a few of the earlier ones could be regarded as 'tuneful' in any conventional sense.  But even in some of the 'non-tuneful' ones it didn't take long to hear how little pieces of music would grow and merge and swell into larger structures.  It's music that always sounds like it knows what it's doing and where it's going.

Okay, not always - I don't think every single thing is amazing. The choral Symphony No. 4 doesn't work all that convincingly.  But hits are far more frequent than misses and for a composer who's not terribly famous, it's pretty impressive stuff. And I want more of it.

Year in Review

Unlike the pop music list, the classical one is complete and tells me I've listened to... 438 different classical recordings!  There's some double-ups there, and some things that are only fragments, but it's still about 400 different classical works.

Which sounds like a lot more than the pop music list, but some of these 'works' are only a couple of minutes long while only 20 or 30 of them would be equivalent in length to a pop music album.

In terms of sheer number of compositions, Vivaldi ends up the winner - not a surprise given recent months! There are also fairly healthy doses of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Faure, Handel, Haydn, Holmboe, Mozart, Scarlatti, Schubert, Schumann and Telemann.  None of which is a great surprise to me personally. My classical collection actually isn't that enormous in terms of the composers represented.  There are certain composers for whom the collection is quite 'deep' and then many others, including some fairly famous names, aren't represented much or at all.  It's no different to pop music really, in that not every big name appeals to me. That still holds true even though, for classical music, there's been a much longer period of time over which lesser composers have been winnowed out and our culture has decided who's worth holding onto.

The spreadsheet claims I've actually managed to listen to around 40% of my classical collection during the year, which does surprise me.  I suspect it's due to how much the collection expanded during the year (with 2 big purchases, one right at New Year's and then the box sets a few months ago) and my efforts to listen to what I bought.

And I've got designs on buying more...

December 2011 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• The Beekeeper
• Night of Hunters
• Audience bootlegs - Hilversum, Netherlands 5 November 1999 (radio show), Glasgow 5 December 2001, Manchester 6 December 2001, London 7 December 2001, Berlin 9 December 2001, Frankfurt 10 December 2001

Kate Bush - 50 Words for Snow
Gomez - Split the Difference
Midnight Oil - Earth and Sun and Moon
Pink - Greatest Hits... So Far!
Radiohead - The Bends
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Seal - Seal (II)

Kate Bush's new album officially entered the library thanks to Christmas. I've already mentioned my obsession with 'Snowflake'.  Getting to know the rest of the album a little better has been great, but there's a long way to go yet.  It's extremely meditative - definitely an album for stillness and quiet time.

I rounded off the year by listening to the 'new' albums that I have - Kate Bush, Tori Amos and Radiohead.  I actually forgot all about Bjork's Biophilia - which just tells you how the app format failed to equate with buying an album for me.

I did buy other albums during the year, but they weren't 2011 albums. This is pretty typical for me really. I generally have a bit of a shopping list that extends back a few years, and often it takes me a while to figure out that something gets on the shopping list, never mind actually getting bought.  I need to have heard a few songs from an artist and the songs need to have stayed with me.

Year In Review

The pop music spreadsheet isn't entirely complete, as I hadn't started it at the beginning of the year, but it tells me I listened to 156 items during 2011.  Deduct Tori Amos singles... a few hits collections... multiple entries for multi-disc efforts... a soundtrack... it comes out as at least 134 genuine, bona fide albums that I listened to in their entirety during the year.  Not bad!

I listened to every Tori Amos studio album, not counting the one she released as a band in the 80s. No surprise there. I listened to all 3 of Fiona Apple's albums and all 8 of Kate Bush's, but only half of Patty Griffin's.  I listened to 10 Joni Mitchell albums but that still means that 7 of them didn't get an airing.  5 out of 6 albums that Roisin Murphy sings on (Moloko or solo) got played. I listened to every Wendy Matthews, Seal, Something for Kate or Talk Talk album that I own, but in all those cases I don't have a complete collection.

Already I'm looking at the list and thinking "Wow! Have I not listened to 'X' for 10 months?".  And there are a great deal many more albums - at least as many again I would think - that didn't get played.

Time to get cracking for 2012, then...

November 2011 - Classical Music

Bach - Harpsichord Concertos 5 to 7
Bach - Double Harpsichord Concertos 1 to 3
Haydn - Symphonies 102, 103 'Drumroll' and 104
Thomas Linley the younger - Music for 'The Tempest'
Mozart - Symphonies 32 to 34
Schumann

• Piano Concerto
• Waldszenen (Forest Scenes)
• Introduction and Allegro appassionato for piano and orchestra

Shostakovich - String Quartets 1 and 7
Telemann - Tafelmusik Volume 3: Concerto, Trio, Solo and Conclusion
Vivaldi

• Violin Sonata in G minor, RV 26
• Concerto for Strings in D minor ('Madrigalesco'), RV 129
• Sonata a 4 in E flat ('Al Santo Sepolcro'), RV 130
• Sinfonia for Strings in B minor ('Al Santo Sepolcro'), RV 169
• Violin Concerto in G minor, RV 202 (Op.11/5)
• Concerto for 2 violins in G minor, RV 517
• Concerto for violin and cello in B flat, RV 547
• Laudate pueri in G, RV 601
• In exitu Israel (When Israel went)
• Laudate Dominum, RV 606
• Laetatus sum, RV 607
• Nisi Dominus in G minor, RV 608
• Salve Regina in F, RV 617
• Vestro principi divino, RV 633

Lots more Vivaldi. Still going even at the time of writing - just one more CD to go!

After an abortive attempt in September, I listened to Haydn's last 3 symphonies which all premiered in London in the 1795 concert season.  It's the first time I've listened to symphony no.104 in several years. I had this idea I didn't like it much. And now, I can't imagine why I thought that.  It's certainly not inferior to its companion pieces.

It's now over a year since I listened to the first six 'London' symphonies (from the first of Haydn's two visits to the UK). I could almost start all over again... only I already have plans drawn up for listening to some more late-ish Haydn. Still 5 piano trios to go and the last full set of string quartets.

The Mozart chronological listening is also slowly crawling along, with the last 3 symphonies that he wrote before moving to Vienna.  The growth in maturity is noticeable, as Mozart was now reaching his mid-20s.

Thomas Linley the younger was Mozart's almost exact contemporary. The two met as teenagers - both being recognised as musical prodigies and so moving in similar circles - and became friends.  Mozart regarded Linley as a genius.  The reason you've probably never heard of Thomas Linley is because he was only 22 when he died in a boating accident.  Mozart died in his 30s, but he still had a chance to really establish himself as a name.  Linley didn't.

Which is a damn shame if the music he wrote for a production of The Tempest is anything to go by, and specifically the 'storm chorus', Arise! ye spirits of the storm.  It unfolds in that kind of wonderful manner where it seems inevitable, as if the music couldn't possibly be any other way.

I can still remember when I first heard it, around a decade ago.  It was back in the days that I worked in an office close to my Dad's office and took lifts with him. He always had Classic FM on in the car, which I could tolerate because at breakfast time they would have short pieces (I rarely listen to classical music on the radio as I can't stand hearing random snippets, eg 20 minutes somewhere in the middle of a Mahler symphony).  The storm chorus came on one morning and I was enthralled.

I think it was the only time that I hunted down a classical CD after hearing something on the radio. Truth be told, the rest of the CD (all of it by Linley) isn't at anything like the same level, but I'm not sure that matters. Certainly, any time that I play that one amazing track, I'm glad the music is in my collection.

November 2011 - Popular Music

Tori Amos - Night of Hunters
Tori Amos - Audience Bootleg - Glasgow, 5 December 2001
Sara Bareilles - Little Voice
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
Kate Bush - The Red Shoes
Francis Dunnery - Tall Blonde Helicopter
Joni Mitchell - Hejira
Simply Red - Picture Book
Something for Kate - Desert Lights
Tears for Fears - The Seeds of Love

I actually listened to a lot more Kate Bush than this list makes apparent.  I just didn't listen to it in album form.

It was arguably triggered by the appearance of her new album, 50 Words for Snow.  The album was available for streaming online before it was released for sale. I listened to the whole album, then became utterly obsessed with the opening track.  I don't know how often other people find a song that they just want to play over and over again for a period of a few days.  For me, finding a new song to truly obsess over might only happen once a year. 'Snowflake' was probably my biggest obsession of 2011 that actually appeared in 2011.  Earlier in the year I stumbled across Janelle Monae's song 'Tightrope' and played it to death, but I was a year late with that one.

Around the time that 50 Words for Snow appeared online, I also embarked on a sizeable period (maybe a week?) where I spent a lot of time exploring Kate's previous body of work.  A new album from someone often seems to prompt that kind of behaviour, although it's something I also venture into at other times. I am naturally a 'body of work' kind of person - liking completeness and wanting to fit individual pieces into an overall context are part of my personality.

Modern technology makes it easy to just 'shuffle' everything together, which is what I did initially. I then made a playlist of my preferred songs (about a third of the total) and shuffled that.  I can't say that I adore absolutely everything Kate Bush has done. Some of her albums strike me as a bit uneven, but if there's one thing that she can, in her best work, nail better than almost anyone it's atmosphere. On the albums I regard as weaker, the songs I still respond to are often the ones that are the most moody (and often slower, but not always).  The Red Shoes, for instance, has some slightly bland songs on it - material that was supposedly envisioned for live performance which seems to suffer on CD - but it also has 'The Song of Solomon' which positively drips with passion and is one of the sexiest songs I know.

I also spent time going through most of her videos. Here is an artist who has created their own YouTube channel and done it properly. Instead of ignoring her history (ie everything before whatever is being promoted when the channel starts) it embraces it.  It seems to have every music video, including ones I wasn't aware existed. They're not all wonderful, but it's nice to see so much material available.

And some of them are wonderful.  I was quite pleased to discover that Kate herself was specifically proud of 'Army Dreamers' because when I first saw it a couple of years ago it struck me as an exceptionally good example of a video fitting its song in tone and mood.  And 'Cloudbusting' deserves its status as a classic video.

So that's my ramble for November, slightly delayed. I know it's particularly rambling, but I'm on holidays and my brain isn't available for careful editing. I guess the point is to say that while Kate Bush isn't always someone I love, she's almost always interesting.  And worth checking out - which can be done for free, legally!