Popular Music - August 2017

Tori Amos

• Little Earthquakes
• Under the Pink
• Boys for Pele
• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• To Venus and Back (studio and live)
• Strange Little Girls
• The Beekeeper
• American Doll Posse
• Abnormally Attracted to Sin
• Midwinter Graces
• Night of Hunters
• Unrepentant Geraldines
• Gold Dust

Kate Bush - The Dreaming
Tim Corley - Like Stars
Wendy Matthews - Beautiful View
No Doubt - The Singles (1992-2003)
Katie Noonan's Vanguard - Transmutant
Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool
Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring
K T Tunstall - Eye to the Telescope

Yes, there was a little bit of a Tori Amos festival going on. As a sort of preparation for what was then her upcoming album.

However, it's worth mentioning that the "festivities" were a bit sporadic and spread across the month, which means that I did listen to other albums in between rather than being 100% committed. Sometimes I went as many as 5 days without a Tori Amos album!

And of course there was classical music as well.  Mind you, the end result is still a pop music list that is over 50% Tori Amos.

So am I a creature of habit, and is this blog inevitably boring? Well... one thing that still doesn't show up here is the exploration I do with streaming services. My rule still is that one-off listens to music that I don't own does not qualify for these blog lists. But what it does do is create the shopping list. And I think the next significant binge purchase is more likely to be popular music than classical.

Classical Music - July 2017

Bach, J.S. - Geist und Seele wird verwirret (Spirit and soul become confused)
Bach, J.S. - Gott soll allein mein Herze haben (God alone shall have my heart)
Barber - Serenade (for strings), op.1
Barber - Three Songs, op.2
Beethoven - Music to a Ritter ballet
Beethoven - 12 Minuets for orchestra, WoO 7
Bridge

• Berceuse (instrumental work, orchestral version)
• Berceuse (song)
• The Hag

Dvorak - String Quartet No.1
Dvorak - Polka in E for piano 
Haydn - Symphony No.59
Holmboe - Symphony No.7
Holmboe - Fanfare 
Mozart - Symphony No.27
Nielsen - Symphony No.2
Nielsen - Piano Trio
Rachmaninov - Etudes-Tableaux, op.39
Schoenberg - Transfigured Night
Schumann

• Violin Sonata No.3
• Papillons
• Early songs, including WoO 19 and 21 

Scriabin - Piano Sonata No.1
Scriabin - 6 Preludes, op.13 
Sibelius - Segelfahrt
Sibelius - Souda, souda, sinisorsa
Villa-Lobos - Choros 5 and 7

Most of this list represents at least one of two ideas.

The first idea is, as always, to try and listen to new purchases and so justify making the purchase. I picked up quite a few things during my overseas travel. I am one of those dinosaurs who still prefers CDs. The Beethoven and Scriabin works were bought, as were the Schumann songs.

Of course, I'm still working through the previous batch or two of purchases (such as Villa-Lobos, and Schumann violin sonatas, and Sibelius songs), but trips to other destinations are something of an exception to my general prohibition against buying more when there's already a pile of music not listened to.

The second idea is my penchant for planned surveys, particularly chronological ones. And so after I got home I started on new surveys of Barber, Bridge, Dvorak, Mozart, Nielsen, Schoenberg and Schumann. The Mozart one I am limiting to works I own, whereas for the others I am taking advantage of online services to hear works that aren't part of my collection.

The inspiration in most cases is in fact the growth of my own collection, primarily the large set of purchases I made around November 2016, as I wanted to put those works in more context. And so I will hear Barber's orchestral works, Bridge's chamber works, and Dvorak's piano works for a second time. Some of the Mozart is relatively new as well. For Schumann I will integrate my first hearing of many of the songs into this exercise (which started with very early songs most listeners are not familiar with, from before his focus on solo piano works for the whole of the 1830s). In the case of Schoenberg this is sheer curiosity because I only know 2 of his opuses.

It's all very "planned", I know, but personally I find this useful. I don't want to just listen to music, but to understand it better. This method helps me do that.

Popular Music - July 2017

Tori Amos

• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• Unrepentant Geraldines
• Scarlet's Hidden Treasures

Fiona Apple - When the Pawn...
Gomez - In Our Gun
Patty Griffin - Living With Ghosts
Sarah Harmer - All Of Our Names

There's not much to say here (despite it taking over a month to say it). The travel that weirdly stopped me listening to music in June continued to have that effect in July. So it was only later in the month that I got back into the habit of listening.

And of course it's not much of a surprise that Tori Amos was a part of my "rehabilitation", if that's an appropriate word for returning to my usual addiction after a period of withdrawal.

The most startling thing about this month, though, was that apparently this was the first time I'd listened to the whole of Living With Ghosts for about 5 years. That seems an extraordinarily long time for an album from an artist I deeply admire. Though I wouldn't say this is my favourite Patty Griffin album, it's still a good one.

Actually, I'm not entirely sure I know which is my favourite album. And I still haven't fully come to grips with the last couple...

I think a Patty Griffin focus is long overdue.

Classical Music - June 2017

Dvorak - Stabat Mater
Holmboe - Concertos 2 (for flute and piano), 4 (for piano trio), 9 (for violin and viola) and 13 (for oboe and viola)
Nielsen - Symphony No.1

Here is the proof that June wasn't just a bad month for pop music. Classical music didn't get much of a hearing either. The 4 Holmboe concertos were all on the first Sunday of the month. The Nielsen managed to make an appearance during the overseas trip, surrounded by musical desert.

And the Stabat Mater was what I listened to while trying to process news of the terrorist attack around London Bridge. Which came so soon after a bombing in Manchester. Music is one of the tools we have to process grief.

Popular Music - June 2017

Incubus - If Not Now, When?
Wendy Matthews - The Witness Tree
Wendy Matthews - Ghosts

Oh dear.

There is in fact a key reason why the list is so very short: an overseas trip. Not only did I listen to less music in the lead-up to the trip as I stressed over the preparations, I weirdly didn't listen to music during the trip. Well, very little indeed.

Music is one of my major sources of pleasure, and it's often a part of how I relax and wind down in the evenings. But for some reason this didn't apply while I was travelling, and it's not the first trip where that has happened.

It's obvious that many routines will not apply when on a trip. That's actually half the point when the trip is a holiday. I just don't really understand why the music-listening routine is one of the ones that I jettison.

Classical Music - May 2017

Barber - Fadograph of a Yestern Scene
Barber - Canzonetta (orchestral version)
Beethoven

• Symphony No.7
• String Quartet No.11, 'Quartetto Serioso'
• Piano Trio in E flat, op.97
• Allegretto in B flat for piano trio
• Violin Sonata No.10
• Piano Sonata No.26

Debussy

• (Nocturne and) Scherzo for cello and piano
• Intermezzo for cello and piano
• Khamma (piano version)

Dvorak - Humoresque in F sharp for piano
Dvorak - Lullaby and Capriccio for piano
Haydn - Symphonies 39, 41 and 58
Holmboe

• Sværm (Swarm) (string quartet version)
• Quartetto Sereno
• Haiduc 

Medtner - Theme and Variations in C sharp minor
Medtner - 2 Elegies 
Nielsen - Symphonies 1 to 6
Poulenc - Suite française (version for cello and piano)
Prokofiev - Romeo and Juliet
Rachmaninov

• Piano Concerto No.3
• Piano Sonata No.2
• 13 Preludes, op.32
• Liturgy of St John Chrysostom

Ravel - Gaspard de la nuit
Schubert - Piano sonata in B flat, D.960
Schumann

• Symphony No.4 (1851 version)
• Violin Sonata No.2
• Märchenerzählungen (Fairy Tales) for clarinet, viola and piano

Shostakovich - Cello Concerto No.2
Sibelius

• Symphony No.7
• Suite for violin and orchestra
• Tapiola
• 7 Songs, op.17

Stravinsky

• The Rite of Spring (1947 version)
• Le Chant du Rossignol
• The Soldier's Tale

Villa-Lobos - Choros No.11
Villa-Lobos - Bachianas Brasileiras No.7

The Debussy and Poulenc are from a disc of cello music that I finally acquired on the 2nd attempt. Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale was a purchase form the previous month. Otherwise this is still a lot of the same material as before, as I continue to work through purchases from late 2016.

The most notable entry here is the one for the Nielsen symphonies. After spending time in March/April getting to know the Brahms symphonies better, it was Nielsen's turn in May.

The Nielsen symphonies are certainly an interesting bunch of works, becoming less and less conventional as one works through the sequence. Not that the 1st symphony is entirely well-behaved by Classical standards, and the 6th is still in the symphonic tradition... but the latter is startlingly modern, sounding an awful lot like Shostakovich's 15th symphony. Chronologically of course, that's backwards: it's Shostakovich's symphony that resembles Nielsen's.

I've no doubt which Nielsen symphony is my favourite, and that's no.5.  There's something about the long span of the opening movement, in particular, that strikes me as a perfectly judged combination of flow and drama. But I enjoy each of them and look forward to getting to know them even better.

Popular Music - May 2017

Marc Cohn - Marc Cohn
Deborah Conway - Bitch Epic
Joni Mitchell - Shine
Nichole Nordeman - Woven & Spun
Agnes Obel - Aventine
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Sting - The Soul Cages
Tears for Fears - Elemental

Not a very large pop music list (yet again), but an interesting one because I clearly was trying to pull out some albums that I hadn't listened to for a long time.

But one of the albums on that list is quite startling to me. It seems scarcely possible that I spent nearly 5 years without listening to The Soul Cages, but that's what my magic spreadsheet is saying. And this blog is backing that up.

(Additional thought: oh my goodness, have I really been posting this blog for that long?)

I wrote about The Soul Cages back in 2011, and the things I said then are still accurate. How could they not be, given that I appear to have listened to the album twice more in 2012 before completely shelving it? There's been no real opportunity for my opinion of the album to change. All of the associations the album already held for me remain in place.

I just really, really don't listen to it very much any more. Despite considering it a masterpiece.