Tori Amos - To Venus and Back (venus orbiting)
Tori Amos - American Doll Posse
David Bowie - Never Let Me Down
Deborah Conway - Bitch Epic
Jars of Clay - Jars of Clay
Moloko - Do You Like My Tight Sweater?
Agnes Obel - Aventine
Simply Red - Picture Book
Third Day - Come Together
It so happened that the death of David Bowie perfectly coincided with me listening to one of his worst albums.That's not just my assessment, it's a very widely held view, even by Bowie himself.
Because of my rules about what goes into this blog, most of the albums in my extremely slow and intermittent exploration of Bowie's work don't appear here. Only the albums I've purchased "earn" a mention, and Never Let Me Down is one of the several I picked up cheaply some years ago. That was mainly on the strength of the title track which I've always enjoyed a fair amount. But the album on the whole does tend towards being tedious.
It does mark a significant milestone, however, in that it represents the end of "Bowie that I know". That's not entirely true - there are one or two later songs that I'm familiar with. But it's the end of the era where I'd be confident of knowing most of the singles. It's the end of the era where Bowie could be expected to be heard on the radio. It's the end of the 3-disc best-of I eventually purchased, before deciding to go on this fuller exploration.
So off I go into the unknown. Whether there will be any reports back here will depend on whether I purchase any of the later albums.
But while I'm here let me say this: even though my own reaction to his work is sometimes mixed, the impact of the man on popular music is undeniable. At its best his music is superb, but the greater impact was often from his stylistic choices. Every modern pop star who changes their aesthetic from album to album owes a considerable debt to Bowie.
Saturday, 19 March 2016
Tuesday, 15 March 2016
Classical Music - December 2015
Bach, J.S. - Ach wie
flüchtig, ach wie nichtig (Oh how fleeting, oh how trivial)
Bach, J.S. - Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ (You Prince of Peace, Lord Jesus Christ)
Beethoven - String Quartet No.10
Beethoven - 'Kakadu Variations' for piano trio
Brahms - Clarinet Quintet
Chopin
Handel - Keyboard Suite No.7
Haydn - Symphonies 84 and 99
Holmboe
Janacek - Mladi (Youth)
Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No.1
Schubert - Moments Musicaux
Schubert - Piano Sonata in A minor, D.784
Schumann - Papillons
Sibelius - Symphony No.4
Thybo - Concerto Breve for organ and brass quintet
Vivaldi - Beatus vir (1739 version)
It's fairly obvious that there were explosions of listening activity around certain composers in December...
The (somewhat sputtering) chronological exploration of Chopin's music reached a fairly important milestone, in a group of works that arguably helped inspire this method of exploration in the first place. Chopin completed his opuses 43 to 49 during one particularly impressive burst of activity at George Sand's house in Nohant, in the summer and autumn of 1841.
I've listened to this set of works as a unit once before, and devised a sort of concert of them in an order I find musically satisfying. It's just over an hour of music, and while not all of it would rate as Chopin's very best, none of it is bad and it does include some major highlights such as 2 of his finest nocturnes and the epic Fantaisie.
For Dvorak, I suddenly decided to listen to all of the chamber works I own, from String Quartet No.7 onwards. The starting point was not entirely arbitrary, as this involved skipping the early quartets that Dvorak half-revised or never had published, and starting around the time his career began to take off in earnest.
I'm not sure what brought this on, beyond a desire to get to know many of the pieces better, but the rewards have been excellent. Dvorak is perhaps the most naturally tuneful of all famous composers, and all of these pieces are enjoyable. I think if I was trying to introduce someone to classical music, Dvorak would be one of the first composers I would use.
And then there was Holmboe... having listened to the last of the works I'd purchased earlier in 2015 (the choral work Hominis Dies), I immediately wanted to put those works in context and began a chronological survey. In the second half of December I got through the earliest pre-opus works right through to opus 39. My enthusiasm for this slightly obscure Danish composer appears limitless.
-----------------------------------
The total number of classical works/performances I listened to in 2015 was, according to my spreadsheets, 421. This is down on the previous year, but more than 2013, and it seems likely to be near the longer-term average.
Beethoven, Chopin and (of course) Holmboe had strong years. My excursion through Bach's cantatas is not gathering momentum with only 17 entries. At this rate it will take me several more years to get to the final disc of the BIS Suzuki series, and I'm unlikely to have any memory by then of the first disc which I listened to in March 2012!
Bach, J.S. - Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ (You Prince of Peace, Lord Jesus Christ)
Beethoven - String Quartet No.10
Beethoven - 'Kakadu Variations' for piano trio
Brahms - Clarinet Quintet
Chopin
- Fantaisie in F minor
- Ballade No.3
- Allegro de Concert
- Tarantelle
- Polonaise, op.44
- 2 Nocturnes, op.48
- Prelude, op.45
- Waltz, op.70/2
- String Quartets 7 to 10
- Piano Trios 1 and 2
- Piano Quartet No.1
- String Quintet No.2
- String Sextet
Handel - Keyboard Suite No.7
Haydn - Symphonies 84 and 99
Holmboe
- Symphonies 1 to 5
- Concertos 1 to 9
- Concerto for Orchestra
- Violin Sonatas 1 and 2
- Bagatelle No.1 'Arabesque'
- Molto allegro scherzando for solo violin
- Romanian Suite for piano
- Sonatina Briosa
- Piano Suite
- Small piano pieces
- Lagerkvist songs (partial)
- Hominis Dies
- Jeg ved en urt så dejlig og bold (I know a plant so lovely and fine)
Janacek - Mladi (Youth)
Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No.1
Schubert - Moments Musicaux
Schubert - Piano Sonata in A minor, D.784
Schumann - Papillons
Sibelius - Symphony No.4
Thybo - Concerto Breve for organ and brass quintet
Vivaldi - Beatus vir (1739 version)
It's fairly obvious that there were explosions of listening activity around certain composers in December...
The (somewhat sputtering) chronological exploration of Chopin's music reached a fairly important milestone, in a group of works that arguably helped inspire this method of exploration in the first place. Chopin completed his opuses 43 to 49 during one particularly impressive burst of activity at George Sand's house in Nohant, in the summer and autumn of 1841.
I've listened to this set of works as a unit once before, and devised a sort of concert of them in an order I find musically satisfying. It's just over an hour of music, and while not all of it would rate as Chopin's very best, none of it is bad and it does include some major highlights such as 2 of his finest nocturnes and the epic Fantaisie.
For Dvorak, I suddenly decided to listen to all of the chamber works I own, from String Quartet No.7 onwards. The starting point was not entirely arbitrary, as this involved skipping the early quartets that Dvorak half-revised or never had published, and starting around the time his career began to take off in earnest.
I'm not sure what brought this on, beyond a desire to get to know many of the pieces better, but the rewards have been excellent. Dvorak is perhaps the most naturally tuneful of all famous composers, and all of these pieces are enjoyable. I think if I was trying to introduce someone to classical music, Dvorak would be one of the first composers I would use.
And then there was Holmboe... having listened to the last of the works I'd purchased earlier in 2015 (the choral work Hominis Dies), I immediately wanted to put those works in context and began a chronological survey. In the second half of December I got through the earliest pre-opus works right through to opus 39. My enthusiasm for this slightly obscure Danish composer appears limitless.
-----------------------------------
The total number of classical works/performances I listened to in 2015 was, according to my spreadsheets, 421. This is down on the previous year, but more than 2013, and it seems likely to be near the longer-term average.
Beethoven, Chopin and (of course) Holmboe had strong years. My excursion through Bach's cantatas is not gathering momentum with only 17 entries. At this rate it will take me several more years to get to the final disc of the BIS Suzuki series, and I'm unlikely to have any memory by then of the first disc which I listened to in March 2012!
Saturday, 12 March 2016
Popular Music - December 2015
Tori Amos - The Beekeeper
Tori Amos, Samuel Adamson and Cast - The Light Princess
Tim Corley - Like Stars
george - Unity
Gomez - Split the Difference
Sarah Harmer - All Of Our Names
Jars of Clay - Jars of Clay
Pearl Jam - Vs
Rachael Yamagata - EP
I'm still a bit behind, aren't I?
Well, let's just deal with the month quickly. The one thing I feel like pointing out from December's list is that I decided to (very slowly) go back through the discography of Jars of Clay. In part this was because I noticed my popular music spreadsheet said I simply hadn't listened to the first two albums since I started the popular music spreadsheet (around the time I started this blog).
And it's not that I mind their debut self-titled album. Far from it. It does, however, suffer from having a number of very similar-sounding songs. Same beats, textures, even same key.
It was a couple of the songs that didn't sound quite so similar, though, that made the album a hit. For example, while 'Flood' does resemble the album as a whole quite a bit, it's just different enough to stand out. Being in a minor key helps.
My total pop music tally for the year was 112 entries. The list consists mostly of albums, although there are a few 'greatest hits' CDs, EPs and singles in there. That's back to 2013 levels, so it's beginning to look like something of an average after a few years of keeping track of this information.
It seems... not enough. Not when own a lot more discs than that and keep buying more. And yet it does represent one work every few days, which isn't bad given the way that I listen and the amount of attention I try to pay to new music in particular. In most circumstances, music is not background, it's foreground.
Tori Amos, Samuel Adamson and Cast - The Light Princess
Tim Corley - Like Stars
george - Unity
Gomez - Split the Difference
Sarah Harmer - All Of Our Names
Jars of Clay - Jars of Clay
Pearl Jam - Vs
Rachael Yamagata - EP
I'm still a bit behind, aren't I?
Well, let's just deal with the month quickly. The one thing I feel like pointing out from December's list is that I decided to (very slowly) go back through the discography of Jars of Clay. In part this was because I noticed my popular music spreadsheet said I simply hadn't listened to the first two albums since I started the popular music spreadsheet (around the time I started this blog).
And it's not that I mind their debut self-titled album. Far from it. It does, however, suffer from having a number of very similar-sounding songs. Same beats, textures, even same key.
It was a couple of the songs that didn't sound quite so similar, though, that made the album a hit. For example, while 'Flood' does resemble the album as a whole quite a bit, it's just different enough to stand out. Being in a minor key helps.
My total pop music tally for the year was 112 entries. The list consists mostly of albums, although there are a few 'greatest hits' CDs, EPs and singles in there. That's back to 2013 levels, so it's beginning to look like something of an average after a few years of keeping track of this information.
It seems... not enough. Not when own a lot more discs than that and keep buying more. And yet it does represent one work every few days, which isn't bad given the way that I listen and the amount of attention I try to pay to new music in particular. In most circumstances, music is not background, it's foreground.
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