Popular Music - November 2016

Tori Amos

• Boys for Pele
• Night of Hunters
• Live recordings: Fort Myers 17/11/07, Melbourne 18/11/07, Clearwater 20/11/07, West Palm Beach 21/11/07, Brisbane 21/11/14

Bat for Lashes - The Haunted Man
Beyonce - Beyonce
Beyonce - Lemonade
Christine and the Queens - Christine and the Queens
Janelle Monae - Metropolis Suite II
Radiohead - Amnesiac
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Thrice - The Alchemy Index: Water and Air volumes
Rachael Yamagata - Chesapeake

There's no way around it. My popular music listening has stagnated significantly in recent months. As much as anything, this is a function of the way in which I tend to listen to popular music compared to classical music.

Popular music largely sits on my iPhone and gets taken to work. Classical music largely sits on CDs and gets played on my CD player at home. This is not a hard and fast rule, but it's most definitely the trend. To a large extent this is due to the greater effort required to get classical music into iTunes in a format I find satisfactory, with sensible metadata.

What this means, though, is that when I open up my iPhone, the same subset of my popular music collection will always be there unless I've actively done something to change what's on there. Yes, at this point someone will point out to me the existence of Apple Music and the cloud, but that's not a route I've taken. Nor am I inclined to take it. I like personal control and curation of my music.

For classical music, by contrast, all of my CDs are available in my house. The entire collection is at my disposal when listening at home.

There's also the fact that my popular music collection is still not fully catalogued in the way that the classical one is. And so I'm less likely to engage in the systematic listening, and projects, that characterise my classical listening - systems that were originally designed to stop me from listening to the same old things over and over again.

This is an elaborate way of explaining why I look at this small list of popular music works listened to in November (not including things I sampled or streamed that I don't own), and don't feel that I have anything to say about any of them.

Classical Music - October 2016

Bach, J.S.

• Liebster Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen (Dearest Immanuel, Ruler of the Pious)
• Meinem Jesum lass ich nicht (I will not Leave my Jesus)
• Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin (In Peace and Joy I Shall Depart)
• English Suites 1 to 3

Beethoven

• Symphony No.2
• Piano Concerto No.3
• The Creatures of Prometheus
• Piano Sonatas 14, 16, 17 and 18
• Violin Sonatas 8 and 9
• Variations on 'Bei Männern, weiche Liebe fuehlen' for cello and piano 

Berlioz - Sur les lagunes from Les nuits d'été
Brahms - Piano Pieces, op.118
Chopin - Fantasy on Polish Airs
Chopin - Krakowiak 
Dvorak - Biblical Songs (piano and orchestral versions)
Faure

• Violin Sonata No.1
• Piano Quartet No.1
• Nocturnes 1 to 5
• Barcarolle No.1
• Valse-Caprices 1 and 2
• Impromptus 1 to 3
• 3 Romances sans paroles
• Ballade
• Mazurka
• Fugues, op.84/3 and 6
• Songs: early Hugo settings, Opp. 1 to 8, 10, 18, 23, 27, 39/4, 51/4 and 76/1
• Cantique de Jean Racine

Gudmundsen-Holmgreen - Jubilemus
Haydn - Masses: 'Theresienmesse', 'Schöpfungsmesse' and 'Harmoniemesse'
Haydn - Missa brevis in F (1749 version and 1805 version)
Holmboe

• String Quartets 4 to 10
• Piano Trio, op.64
• Quartetto Medico
• Quartetto, op.90
• Aspects
• Brass Quintet No.1
• Violin Sonata No.3

Mozart - Piano Concertos 6, 7, 10, 13, 19, 23 and 26
Mozart - Rondos for piano and orchestra, K.382 and 386 
Nørgård / Holmboe - Sinfonia Profana (Quodlibet)
Nørholm - Love's Philosophy
Nørholm - Three songs for male choir, to words by Kierkegaard
Rachmaninov - Cello Sonata
Schubert - Piano Trio No.1
Schumann - String Quartet No.2
Shostakovich - Symphony No.3
Vine

• Symphonies 1 to 6
• Celebrare Celeberrime
• 2 movements from Knips Suite (String Quartet No.1)
• String Quartets 2 and 3

I drafted the list for October ages ago and then never went back to write any commentary for it. I'm thinking about changing the format of this blog, but I'll at least finish off 2016 properly...

The thing I remember most clearly from this list is embarking on a new exploration of Faure's songs, but going by poet rather than pure chronology. This explains the somewhat patchy list of opus numbers, but it's not all that patchy because in most cases Faure's interest in a poet was during a specific period of his own career. So for instance there is a lot of Victor Hugo very early on, but then Hugo settings disappear.

And along the way I'm listening to the instrumental music from around the same period. Any excuse to listen to such excellent music is fine by me.

Another thing I did was listen to as much Carl Vine as I could get my hands on. The above works represent recordings I own, but I also hunted down other works online. In truth, though, the discography is quite patchy, even using Vine's website as an information resource.

The music itself is also sometimes patchy in my opinion. Symphony No.5 was a massive disappointment for me, and Symphony No.6 only a partial rebound. But the first 4 symphonies have many good things in them, as do the string quartets. And I really do need to purchase a recording of at least the 1st piano sonata.

And, um... I do remember thinking those late Haydn masses are pretty great. I just can't remember much detail right now. They shall have to be listened to again!