The University of Colorado's "Pendulum" series

Last night I went to a concert of the University of Colorado's "Pendulum New Music" series, presenting the best of new music from both students and faculty. It has always been fun to hear new compositions from unknown composers and last night was rewarding.

A guest faculty composer, Ed Knight from Oklahoma City, had his "Trio for flute, viola, and piano" played for the first time. It was an interesting tonal work well worth hearing again. As it progressed I could believe that Knight would do well writing for the movies. What made this piece even more interesting was that the he went on stage and said a few words about it. The evening's program merely named the piece but Knight gave names to the 4 movements. I cannot just image an event or setting just by listening to the music, particularly one which I've never heard before. But Knight's description of the work being influence by the Internet added immensely to its appeal. "Spam", with a hint of the darkness and even a worm made the first movement come alive. While I don't know much about "Classmates.com" or "Matchmaker.com", his brief explanation put substance to the second and third movements. "Ebay bidding war", once named could be imagined musically and was realized with the final spoken word "Sold". It was much fun.

"Pendulum New Music" has always been enjoyable and it's pleasing to hear the student and faculty compositions. It is to the composition faculty's credit that the music comes off as well as it does. The students say a few words about their work and take applause afterwords. Greg Simon's "Prometheus in the Dead Zone" was exciting, but the other works by Matthew Browne and Mary Mixter should be complemented also. Kudos to all involved.

It's been a while.......

I've been still trying to find a decent replacement for my old FM radio. Since KVOD, the Denver all classical music station, essentially went off the air, I've been trying Internet stations from a few different systems. While the broadcast fare from KVOD was tepid, at least all I needed to do to hear it was turn on the radio and there it was -- oh, for the good old days.

While having breakfast the other day it dawned on me that I could listen to some classical music on my TV. Comcast has several stations, so I thought to try them out. They were pretty innocuous but okay. Then I noticed that Comcast also believes in only playing parts of a composition. If a composer only wanted his audience to hear the 2nd movement he wouldn't write a first. It's a petty peeve of mine --- if you broadcast a composer's work of art, play the entire thing!

I've been very happy with the music broadcast over the Internet using the Live365's network, particularly contemporary-classical.com which broadcasts 20th and 21st century composers. I've heard some incredible music on contemporary-classical.com that I've never heard before. Stations like KVOD never took the risk of exposing their listeners to this stuff, instead broadcasting the same old masters over and over and over. Even broadcasting 24 hours each day, they just couldn't risk contemporary music.

The contemporary-classical.com web site went off the air a week or so ago. Two musicians associated with the group "Alarm Will Sound" were staying at our house while rehearsing for a Denver performance. I was telling one of them about the music broadcast on contemporary-classical.com. Later that day I went to check out the web site and instead found a note "Will the owner of this site please contact his ISP". Since I was about to renew my annual membership with Live365, I wasn't sure I wanted to re-up if the main station I was interested in was going away. Using Live365's contact form, I asked what they knew about the site. I got no response. A few days later, still no contemporary-classical.com web site, so I sent another query. The day after the second request to Live365 I noticed that the Contemporary-classical.com web site was back up. The next day Live365 finally responded (twice, separately) and said all was fine, just clear my browser cache. Give me a break! This was not a caching issue. Anyway, I'm back and happy listening to some very interesting contemporary classical music.

Right now I'm listening to Roy Harris's Symphony #7 on Live365/contemporary-classical. Was it broadcast on any of the stations I monitor in the last 5 years? Nope. Harris's 3rd, 4th, 6th and 9th, yes, but not the 7th. Such is the state of broadcast classical music in some of cities around the country.

On the reliability of Internet Classical Music

With the demise of over-the-air classical music in Boulder, I'm now listening to more and more classical music over the Internet. It's not as easy as just turning on the radio and it doesn't work in my car, but it's better than nothing, or even worse, the talk-talk-talk news-news-news nonsense. One major downside of listening over the Internet is the technological addition of lots of rests. Rests in music are very important - they indicate that the musician(s) should to stop and wait a bit. Composers use them for emphasis, transitions, surprise and emotion. There's the famous rest in the adagio of Samuel Barber's String Quartet, opus 11, often performed as the "Adagio for Strings". The strings ascend to a tense dissonance, then stop and return in a mild tonal lower key. If my memory serves, it was played during the time of Kennedy's assassination as a reminder of how life can be cut short. Rests make music music.

But Internet music has interspersed rests where they shouldn't be. They aren't really rests, rather they are transmission breaks. I've been listening to my favorite Internet station, Contemporary-Classical.COM at night. Frequently, very frequently in the middle of some music there's a break. I know it's not supposed to be there, but there it is anyway. Sometimes it's a short one, more often not 2, 3 or more seconds -- disruptive. I don't believe it's the fault of Contemporary-Classical.COM because I hear the same "rests" in other Internet music: Pandora, LastFM, ShoutCast stations, KING live streaming and others. I'm convinced that it's the same "rests" that I see while using the secure shell, SSH, to access another system on the Internet. I'm typing away and ...... everything stops. My keystrokes don't get reflected back and I'm stuck. All too often I get a message that the remote server has disconnected my session. Since I'm somewhat familiar with the Internet technology and I monitor stuff, I see breaks in the connection from my cable modem to the Comcast router which is my gateway to the Internet. SSH breaks and so does Internet music.

On a slightly different subject, some of my initial exposure to some of these Internet music services have left me disappointed with their notion of what constitutes a classical "tune". I was startled to hear the 3rd movement of Mahler's Second Symphony ("Resurrection") played as a stand-alone fragment sandwiched between two non-related selections. The technologists who put these services together need to view classical music through other than a popular lens. Media companies push laws to protect their intellectual property but never seem to protect artistic intent. If Mahler wanted just some of his music to be played independently without context, then he would have written "tunes" and not symphonies.

Pandora

Another Internet classical music provider I've been told about is Pandora. Friends that have used it say it's good but my experience has not been so. Like all these so-called stations they use lots of JavaScript to make things work. Perhaps I'm handicapping myself by trying to protect myself, but I use FireFox with the NoScript add-on enabled. I also run under Linux and the KDE windowing system. It appears that the techies at Pandora must be MAC or Windows enthusiasts and never look at their stuff from a Linux-based browser. After telling Firefox/NoScript to allow Pandora's script, when I try to listen to something I get a funny smudge on my screen and nothing else. Certainly no music. So much for Pandora.

Many of these stations (and lots of other web sites) are using secondary web measuring tools like google-analytics, double-click and quantserv. I've got my browser configured to ignore these annoying and intrustive scripts. It's always seemed to me that sites that rely on these tracking tools are just lazy and unwilling to look at what their own servers generate in terms of logging. Why should the end user suffer additional network traffic after loading these pages which contains hidden links to other measuring sites. I'm old-fashioned I guess, but I don't approve of it.

Last.FM

I've stumbled upon another Internet classical music broadcasting system that seems pretty good, Last.FM. I haven't figured out all of its capabilities yet, but I does seem to have a lot of interesting music fitting my tastes. The pieces tend to be relatively short though I'm now listening to Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" which is 52 minutes long. The music is broadcast by a player imbedded within the Last.FM HTML page, though there are other ways to listen. If you go away from the Last.FM page you are listening to you loose the music, but if you pop into another Firefox tab, the playing continues. There is a way to use the Last.FM player in Linux, but the installation is by configuring and compiling from a tar ball. I tried installing it, but it complained about my system and wouldn't compile. Their in-page player buffers the music, so the occasional breaks I was hearing on Live365 and ShoutCast, caused by Comcast's router connectivity issues, don't appear as obvious. But if you inadvertently go to the Last.FM page playing the music and follow a link from there your music is gone.

Last.FM has "stations" which appear to be collections of similarly catalogued music. At first glance their classical listings aren't all that deep, but I've found their contemporary classical selections to be fairly extensive. I guess that shouldn't be too surprising given the nature of the site and the content.

Is the new "contemporary classical" music any good? I'm now listening to "The Storm" by Wojciech Kilar. Last.FM has a succinct biography of the composer being played, a dynamic Web 2.0 ajax feature. Kilar is a contemporary Polish composer mentioned along-side Pendereski and Gorecki. In checking on FM broadcasts, a Kilar composition was broadcast 4 times on 3 different stations over the last 5 years. The FM radio is not the way to get exposed to his music it seems.

Contemporary classical music and Geirr Tveitt

I went again to the music school at the University of Colorado (CU) for a concert Wednesday night. It was their Pendulum series, featuring contemporary music which included some student compositions and Stravinsky's "Les Noces". Some of was good, some not so good. CU's faculty and students are a great resource and most Tuesday nights find me there for recitals and performances. It's a wonderful thing to have access to such talent. To hear contemporary music "in the raw" is a great thing.

Since I can't hear my local FM station any more and since they discontinued playing any substantial contemporary music anyway, the Internet is my only source of exposure to new "contemporary classical" music other than local performances. I've been listening to contemporary music over the Internet though a site http://contemporary-classical.com/. This site is part of the Live365.com "network" which I started listening to when I had a wireless media center device. I got rid of that and now just listen to the "live365" network using one of my computers. Unfortunately, live365 got fancy and have their own "player", so I can't use my small handheld Nokia, my preferred device for listening at night,


Contemporary-classical.com introduced me to Geirr Tveitt, a Norwegian composer who lived until 1981. I've never heard of him until I came upon the end of one of his pieces being broadcast on Contemporary-classical.com. A day later I went to Amazon and ordered two of Tveitt's Cd's. As is often the case, you get additional music on the CD which you hadn't intended to buy but which came with the piece you did want. In this case, it was Tveitt's "Variations on a Folksong from Hardanger for two pianos and orchestra" from 1939. I ended up liking this much more than his Piano Concerto #4 "Aurora Borealis" which is what I ordered. I recommend the "Variations".

Tveitt's broadcasts on FM radio? Pretty skimpy. KVOD played the Piano Concerto #4 three times in the last 5 years and always late a night. KING and KUSC seem to like Tveitt much more, though, surprisingly, WQXR hasn't played him at all in the last 5 years. And my favorite "Variations"? It has not been broadcast at all by any of the stations I monitor. Too bad.

Listening to "Internet" classical music

A few weeks back I received email from someone on the KVOD staff. She had found my web site which catalogs KVOD's and other classical FM radio playlists and said she liked my site. She asked if I could get KVOD after they switched to a newer, much weaker frequency. I told her No, KVOD was too weak and that I had given up on trying to listen to it either at home or in the car. Try new stuff she suggested. Spend $350 and get a Squeezebox to hear Internet Radio! Try an HD Radio, after I buy a new one for each of my rooms where I have radios. She reminded me of George Bush after 9/11 telling us to go out and spend!

Using the internet to listen to classical music is possible, but it's a bit of a weak soup. Sure I can listen to KVOD on any of my computers, but why would I do that? The Internet makes available stations from around the world, so why listen to cow-town Denver? I've tracked their broadcasts for years and they prefer broadcasting predictable "popular" easy-listening music, almost always short. They've shrunk their broadcasts of contemporary classics and really push the pap.

So given that I have a world-wide choice of internet classical music, what's the problem? Connectivity, in a word. I'm a Comcast subscriber and have been for many years. They are okay, but while listening to internet music, I get frequent breaks in the music. It just stops for a while, then comes back. It really adds to the music, inserting 'rests' where the composer forgot to write them. ;)

I use SSH to connect to my server to maintain my web sites. All too often I'm in the middle of a session and my keystrokes stop. A high percentage of the time I'm just thrown off and I have to start all over again. I've been noticing this for years with SSH so I wrote a little perl program to ping my external router, the one that my Comcast-supplied modem is connected to. My techie friends tell me that I should always be able to ping my router and that it should always be there. Such is not my case. I've seen it go away for fairly lengthy periods of time, with the blinking lights on the modem confirming what my computer tells me. At other times it just comes and goes. In the last 10 minutes or so, 78% of the pings got through fine, and the rest of the time I had between a 20% and 100% packet loss. Fortunately I can listen to my own mp3 library and avoid these unexpected 'rests' in the music.

On the good old radio and choice

FM radios used to be a big feature of my life. Now that I'm thinking about them, I count 6 in my house and one in both of our cars. One used to be next to my bed. I faithfully listened to KVOD's classical music every night as I went to bed. Many nights I would put in earphones so as not to waken my wife and listen well into the wee hours. Sometimes my wife would shoo me into a guest room where I could listen and read. There's a nice Bose stereo system in the family room next to the kitchen where I used to listen to choral music every Sunday morning on KVOD. It's funny that so little choral music was broadcast at other times. There was a portable radio in my basement work room next to an exercise bike and a stereo system in my office. While driving KVOD was always tuned in. Now with KVOD's switch to all-talk, all-opinions, all-noise, all-the-time it all gone.

Actually KVOD can still be heard on a different frequency. It is still broadcasting classical music, just on a very very very week transmitter, probably an old tube model they dug out of some one's attic. It reminds me of my college days when I had a classical music program every Sunday night on the school station. I remember it was a 10 watt transmitter that served the local 10 or 20 blocks surrounding campus. KVOD's transmitter is probably in the same range, it seems.

In talking with other classical fans like myself, the complaint is the same. No KVOD and hence no classical music. No Metropolitan opera. There's plenty of talk, though. The station management knows the market well and acts always in the listener's best interest. Public radio needs to be competitive, so KVOD has given us a competitive choice with two public radio stations broadcasting over FM so we fortunate Coloradans can hear "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition" and the news and news and news. Two stations offering us talk and talk and talk. Isn't it wonderful. I now have a choice of two stations broadcasting public radio and, after a tumultuous few months, just two major investment banks. Such are the virtues of capitalism.

On Internet Radio Genres .....

With the demise of radio broadcasts of KVOD's classical music, I've found it necessary to go more online for music enjoyment. ShoutCast.COM is one and Live365 is another. They both might fill the bill. I'll focus on ShoutCast first.

ShoutCast is a central interface to several thousand servers running broadcasting software delivering music in all forms -- all different genres. With this clear diversity of interest in music, I began thinking of listeners' choices and usage patterns. What genres are hot and what are not? Classical music fans appear to be diminishing at concerts, so is it the same over the Internet?

To address with ShoutCast.com's data, I wrote a little perl routine to access it and save each one of the 19 different genre's top 20 "stations" page. The routine analyzed each page's HTML and extracted the number of current listeners and the number of potential slots, the maximum number of concurrent listeners an individual server can handle.

The following table, with some percentages, are what I observed:

                      Current    % of   Total    % of
Genre                  Users   Total   Slots   Total
----------------     -------   -----  ------   -----     
Alternative            14419    3.4%   74709    5.5% 
Classical              10110    2.4%   30973    2.3% 
Comedy                  1634    0.4%   10865    0.8%
Country                 8917    2.1%   48355    3.6%
Dance                  42693   10.2%  125477    9.3%
Funk                    8992    2.1%   43823    3.3%
Jazz                   14898    3.6%   49916    3.7%
Metal                   8508    2.0%   36024    2.7%
Mixed                   3338    0.8%   11996    0.9%
Pop                    52327   12.5%  136385   10.1%
Rap                    19169    4.6%   79631    5.9%
Rhythm and Blues       21522    5.1%   79925    5.9%
Rock                   52511   12.5%  147951   11.0%
Talk                    5224    1.2%   34151    2.5%
Techno                 31127    7.4%   80498    6.0%
TopTen                 80941   19.3%  201824   15.0%
World                  10723    2.6%   48000    3.6%
70s                     9401    2.2%   35881    2.7%
80s                    22273    5.3%   70788    5.3%

TOTALS                418727  100.0% 1347172  100.0%

So how does the classical music audience rank? 2.4% of all the listeners at the point where I took the measurements. I've done it at a few different points during the day and 2.4% is pretty consistent. For all of ShoutCast's total 400 thousand current listeners, that's still a pretty small audience.

You can also question what the "classical" genre designation means. On one other Internet radio site, the only "classic" music was "Classic Rock"! Sampling various "stations" I've found that very often it means "light" orchestral music or "contemporary" easy-listening piano music. Opera seems to be represented fairly well and some seem to be streamed in their entirety. As an aside, it is the world-wide Internet ShoutCasters are listening to. Sometimes the stations make announcements in their native language. Hungarian I don't understand!!

It's probably an open question whether or not classical audiences are shrinking. In my experience, they are "greying" and attendance is smaller -- but that's just my personal observation. Older people are generally less Internet savvy, so I guess the ShoutCast numbers aren't really surprising. It is interesting technology.

Shoutcast.Com also provides down loadable software to "run your own radio station". I installed and configured it on my Linux box. It works quite well. I was able to wire in my entire private collection of mp3s but I haven't decided whether I want to run it in addition to my other base application. With a radio, the announcer would choose what to broadcast. But what if you have all the control? Sometimes I like surprises, sometimes not. In my base music application, somewhat similar to iTunes but hand-grown and much older, I can either select specific composers and pieces, choose from some random selections or accept a mystery piece. That all appears to be a bit more work under ShoutCast's server, but clearly possible.

Boulder's Quartet Program Participation

This summer has been musically sterile for me. I've been boycotting the local Colorado Music Festival because of their crappy programming, with the Beethoven stunt and ukuleles and tap dancing and guitars and all.

There was a bright spot this past weekend, however. The university hosted The Quartet Program, a program started in 1970 by Charles Castleman. See http://www.quartetprogram.com for more information on the programs. Apparently this was the first time it was done at the University of Colorado, but it appeared to me to be quite successful.

On three consecutive nights I was entertained by a total of 9 different string quartets. There was little information about the participants but I would guess most were late-teens early twenties students from around the country. I was impressed by the quality and consistency of the playing. The fare was Beethoven, Schubert, Bartok, Janacek, Haydn, Borodin, Ravel, Dvorak and Debussy. All played impressively.

As I understand, there were afternoon solo string performances, too. I couldn't attend, but I suspect the quality was also very good.

I hope this will not be the last time the program spends the summer in Boulder.

Death of the old...

A few days ago I commented on the demise of contemporary classical music broadcast on KVOD. Well, my lament is louder now. For reasons only known to KVOD and public radio in Colorado, the broadcast frequency was switched earlier in July from 90.1 MHz to 88.1 mHz on the FM band. I noticed immediately a decrease in the signal strength in my car and at home. My expensive auto-seeking radio at home couldn't even find KVOD. What stayed on 90.1 FM? Talk radio -- round the clock talk radio, news, commentary and more talk.

A letter to the editor to the Boulder Camera complained that even with a new pricey high definition radio KVOD didn't come in around Boulder. Then today a similar letter from a friend, Barry Knapp, pointed out that KVOD went from a 50 kilowatt transmitter for 90.1 MHz to a "puny" 1.2 kilowatt transmitter fpr 88.1 MHz. That's okay. Folks north of Denver didn't want to hear classical music or listen to the Metropolitan opera anyway. Boulder really only wants News! "News, News, News has a kind of mystery" sings Nixon in John Adams' "Nixon in China"

So it is with great regret that we bury KVOD and forget all about it. They took away contemporary classical music and now they've taken away all classical music. Who needs Bach and Beethoven and Mozart and Brahms and some of the other great composers? KVOD already stopped broadcasting Mahler and Bruckner and anyone who was foolish to compose music longer than about 25 minutes anyway. Colorado public radio wants News!! Forget the listening audience.

People have told me that I can always "listen" over the Internet. That just doesn't work in my car, of course. Nor is it convenient at night in my bedroom. I do sometimes listen from my desktop, but with Comcast being Comcast, I also get intermittent interruptions and dropped signals on my broadband connection. Frankly I don't want to replace the radios in my car nor in my home.

The radio was neat! You pressed a button and it instantly was played was was being broadcast. It was free except for the purchase of the radio. Now what are my choices?

Forget the high definition radio that was being touted by KVOD. Based on others experiences it won't be any better and will be a waste of money. Last weekend I went to three different electronic stores looking for information and pricing about HD radios. Only one clerk knew anything about them and she said they weren't very good according to the customers that brought them back. I appreciated her honesty.

Internet radio? Somewhat acceptable for when I'm in my office and at my computer, but what about late at night when I want to read in bed? I do have a small Nokia wireless tablet which I've made work with my local MP3 collection. But can I turn it on and instantly play something? Not way. Boot time is about 2 minutes. I then have to open a browser, wait for it find my wireless network and then go to the MP3 library and select something. I could buy a small portable PC and keep it always on sitting on my night stand, but I don't want to waste electricity nor spend more money just for classical music.

XM or Sirius satellite radio? Wow! What a deal. $100 for a "boom box" without receiver, $40 for the receiver, plus $40 for one for each car. Then it is only $13 a month for home plus $7 monthly for each car. What a deal! How can I miss!!! Sirius has 3 classical broadcast streams: symphonic and chamber music, Metropolitan opera radio, and classical pops. XM apparently has 3 similar offerings. With the proposed merger of XM and Sirius does that mean 6 or 3? Ask the FCC since I'm not interested in shelling out several hundred dollars a year to replace what I was getting for free for the last 60 years.

So what am I left with? A few MP3 players and my Cd's. Amazon's MP3 download library isn't bad, but how will I hear anything new or be exposed to unfamiliar composers or works? Just take some chances I guess at 99 cents a pop. While we do have classical music in Denver and Boulder, new works aren't performed much since they might drive away audiences.

I was going to end with RIP KVOD, but why give them the benefit of peace?

Death of the new......

Saturday nights at 10 was always a good time for me. KVOD, the Denver all-classical FM station, would broadcast two hours of 'contemporary' music' -- their definition. While sometimes it was only Prokofiev or Shostokovich or Copland, other times it would be Rautavaara or Kaipainen or Del Tredici. It was new music and I hadn't heard it and I liked that!

Reviewing my private library, I believe I've also heard music by the likes of Alwyn, Andriessen, Berio, Bolcom, Ciurlionis, Corigliano, Creston, Crumb, Diamond, Feldman, Golijov, Gorecki, Harvey, Henze, Higdon, Kancheli, Kernis, Laderman, Larsson, Lauridsen, Part, Reich, Riley, Rorem, Rouse, Sallinen, Salonen, Santos, Takemitsu and Varese during those late Saturday nights. I knew about some but hadn't heard much from them, others were completely new.

The announcer had interesting things to say. One sequence went through compositions from the 1940s, then the early 1950s, then late 50s. Centennials or deaths brought an entire evening of one composer, often with longer works that seem never to be played in normal hours. It was almost always interesting and challenging.

Sometimes after listening I would get on a kick and buy CDs by guys like Rautavaara. (What a great first name Einojuhani -- so much better than Sam or Robert or Arthur!) They might be good, sometimes not. Often the CD would also have something by another unknown. Again some good some bad, but fun listening to anyway. KVOD lead the way and I followed.

All that has changed. Now KVOD broadcasts on Saturday at 10 contemporary composers like Bach, Mozart, Debussy, Puccini and some seldom-heard pieces by the new guys Friedrich the Great and Ignace Pleyel. The two hours late on Saturday are now just like the remaining 166 hours each week. There's nothing to look forward to, nothing new and unknown. Just pap, pap, and more pap!

Who knows why KVOD changed its format? Perhaps they ran out of CDs, or, more likely, perception about the contemporary. Regardless, they've lost an interested listener.

Opera Colorado's "Nixon in China"

"Nixon in China" has always been one of my favorite contemporary operas. Twice, at the Colorado Music Festival, I've seen concert performances of it, back when the CMF was a bit more adventuresome. I've had the original cast performance on CD, with James Madallena as Nixon and Carolann Page as as his wife Pat.

Opera Colorado decided more than a year ago to present it in Denver in 2008 and I looked forward to the performance. As I often do, I listened to the CD several times to "practice" before the performance. I had read about the original Houston Grand Opera staging with a 747 on stage, but I knew from reading the local reviews that this was different. Different is okay.

What surprised me the most was how the sequences played out, always different from the way I imagined it. For example, in Act 2 there is a storm, whose musical content always reminds me of Wagner and "Siegfried". For unknown reasons, I've always imagined that Pat, who interrupts this wonderful orchestral music to sing "Thank God you came.....". is alone in her room waiting for Nixon to return. It sounds that way, to me. Wrong!!! It all transpires, as per Opera Colorado's performance, as part of the long second act dance scene where Kissinger sings "whip her to death!". I was way off, clearly.

The last act also surprised me. I guess I was so enamored of the earlier parts that I forgot the slow diminuendo that ends the opera as all the characters think to themselves their own relevance. While long, it is beautiful.

Robert Orth sang Nixon, Maria Kanyova was Pat, Chen-Ye Yuan sang the role of Chou En-lai and Marc Heller was Mao. The highlight to me though was Tracy Dahl belting out "I am the wife of Mao Tse-tung". Great fun!!

Once again, a real performance with the words visible in the super-title box changed my impression and acceptance of an opera. Normally I have the words turned off so I can focus on the music and singing. I guess that's a mistake. Kudos to Opera Colorado.

Broadcasting Beethoven Piano Sonatas

Several months back I was curious about the frequency of broadcasts of Beethoven's string quartets. I chose 3 of the larger classical music radio stations: New York's WQXR, Seattle's KING and Denver's KVOD, the one I listen to frequently. I also chose these three since I calculated daily their symphony broadcasts as part of my classicalfmradio.org statistics.

Like the Beethoven symphonies, the string quartets were broadcast in a similar pattern -- long quartets broadcast less frequently than short ones. I expected similar results for Beethoven sonatas but I was somewhat surprised. Here is the table of the sonatas, their durations and the frequency of broadcasts by the 3 stations:

Beethoven Piano Sonata                     DURATION    KVOD      KING     WQXR   |
=================================================================================|
#01 in F minor, Op 2 No 1                     17:10       2       11       13    |
#02 in A Major, Op 2 No 2                     22:33      14       15        9    |
#03 in C Major, Op 2 No 3                     25:17       0       11       12    |
#04 in Eb Major, Op 7                         28:36       7       11        9    |
#05 in C minor, Op 10 No 1                    18:54      10       15       10    |
#06 in F Major, Op 10 No 2                    14:01      28       13       27    |
#07 in D Major, Op 10 No 3                    25:20       5       12        9    |
#08 in C minor Op 13, 'Pathetique'            18:28      70       47       25    |
#09 in E Major, Op 14 No 1                    14:13      41       13       25    |
#10 in G Major, Op 14 No 2                    17:00      19       16       24    |
#11 in B Major Op 22                          22:46      16       20        9    |
#12 in A Flat Major, Op 26                    11:43      11        4       14    |
#13 in E Flat Major, Op 27 No 1               15:46      17       12       17    |
#14 in C# minor, Op 27 No 2 'Moonlight'       16:21      88       57       39    |
#15 in D Major, Op 28 'Pastoral'              24:52      54       16       33    |
#16 in G Major, Op 31 No 1                    22:56       8       14        9    |
#17 in D minor, Op 31 No 2 'Tempest'          22:01      33       27       24    |
#18 in G Major, Op 31 No 3                    22:19      11       29       10    |
#19 in G minor, Op 49 No 1                     8:11      17        2       24    |
#20 in G Major, Op 49 No 2                     8:14      51        8       25    |
#21 in C Major, Op 53 'Waldstein'             22:12      53       40       20    | 
#22 in F Major, Op 54                         11:29      27        9       21    |
#23 in F minor Op 57 'Appassionata'           21:47      68       44       26    |
#24 in F# Major, Op 78 'Fur Theresa'           8:23      23        8        0    |
#25 in G Major, Op 79                         10:07      22       10       25    |
#26 in E Flat, Op 81a 'Les Adieux'            16:37      49       35       29    |
#27 in E minor, Op 90                         12:34      17       18       21    |
#28 in A Major, Op 101                        20:41      22       17       17    |
#29 in F Flat Major, Op 106 'HammerKlavier'   42:52      20       25        7    |
#30 in E Major, Op 109                        23:49      29       20       14    |
#31 in A Flat Major, Op 110                   23:13      30       25       21    |
#32 in C minor, Op 111                        29:05      14       22       10    |
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Average Length of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas 19:22                              |
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Total Performances of all Beethoven Piano Sonatas       876      626      569    |
Average Performances for all 32 Sonatas                27.4     19.6     17.8    |
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Number of Broadcast Days by the Stations in Study      1980     1698     1698    |
Average Performances per day                            .44      .36      .34    |
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I'm not sure what this tells me: a few surprises like KVOD never broadcasting his Sonata #3 in over 5 years and WQXR not broadcasting #24. Come on, even on a bad day, Beethoven was way better than most. It appears that nicknamed sonatas are broadcast more than ones without, but I guess that's not surprising. The real long one, "Hammerklavier" does get played some and you can plan on hearing one of his piano sonatas about every other day or so. Not bad, I guess.

Golijov's Oceana

Osvaldo Golijov's Oceana was performed the other night by the Pro Musical Colorado Chamber Orchestra and the Ars Nova Singers. Last summer I got turned onto Golijov, though somewhat grudgingly, by a performance by the Colorado Music Festival of his Ainadamar, which I commented on earlier. Golijov is "hot" and has several recordings of which I have a few. I've been meaning to track down his St, Mark Passion, but it's a pricey album, with only so-so reviews.

The FM stations don't seem to like him, even though he's getting big billing nationally. Only WQXR in New York and KING in Seattle have broadcast anything by him thus far this year. KVOD, my local station, continues to pretty much ignore him, though they have played some of his songs from Ayre and broadcast his Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind once in 2007. KVOD, Denver, Cow town -- I'll say no more.

Back to the performance. I have the CD and knew what to expect, but the audience didn't. While they responded admirably, I sensed a certain unease with the piece. It is sung in Spanish from poems by Neruda with a diverse orchestra and extra percussion. It was hard to grasp and follow, though I wonder if a Spanish speaker would have had a different reaction. I had earlier told my dinner hosts that I only really like the last part "Chorale of the Reef" and the performance confirmed my opinion. But let's give a big three cheers to this new orchestra and the Ars Nova for giving us something new and different. It's just too bad that you can only get music like this live and not on public radio.

One negative comment: why is it that a somewhat inconsequential performer sitting up front, the fellow playing the "Talking Drum", which seemed mute from where I was sitting, wore a white shirt while everyone else was in a tux or black dress? Didn't get the message, I guess.

Movie music

Vincent D'Indy's ''Souvenirs" was broadcast last night on KVOD in Denver. The announcer, Charles Andrews, commented that D'Indy would have been a wonderful movie composer. While I am familiar with D'Indy's "Symphony on a French Mountain Air", "Souvenirs" was new to me. As I listened I agreed with Andrews' comment and then began the mental game of imagining what movie I would be watching: a western; a forlorn big city romance; maybe a mystery; a documentary; certainly not science fiction or horror. I don't know exactly what it would be. That is music's limit. Instrumental music can't tell a tale or specify reality. Set the idea first, then music can help define it.

John Ireland

Last night I turned on KVOD and heard the end of a nice piece: John Irelands's "Orchestral Poem", a 15 minute work. The announcer commented at the end that it's too bad that we don't get to hear it more often. I've never heard it performed, but it certainly sounds like it would please an audience.

The announcer proceeded to play Brahm's "Tragic Overture". Okay, KVOD, do what you suggest. The "Tragic Overture" has been broadcast 129 times in the last 1996 days (since 2003). If Ireland's "Orchestral Poem" is that nice, how come KVOD has only broadcast it 21 times over the same 5 and a half years? For every time Ireland's work is played, you play the "Tragic Overture" over 6 times.

I suspect orchestras don't play music by John Ireland much because audiences aren't familiar with him. An English composer, Ireland (1879-1962) has a late-romantic, impressionist sound. I've just downloaded some mp3's from Amazon of his piano concerto and two symphonic studies. Amazon doesn't seem to have the "Orchestral Poem" in its catalog -- too bad. We'll see how much I like the others.

Apollo and Dionysus

Listening to KVOD last night, the announcer Charles Andrews introduced Bruno Walter conducting Beethoven's Symphony #8. KVOD has broadcast this symphony 14 times thus far in 2008, compared to only one time for Symphony #9, by the way. Andrews normally has interesting comments and insight. He said something about the Apollonian versus Dionysian characteristic of Bruno's Beethoven. Apollo represents harmony, order, and reason while Dionysus represents ecstasy and disorder. Was Andrews saying Beethoven's symphony was an example of reason conducted in a disorderly fashion by Bruno Walter? I was confused by the comment but I wondered since the performance was very good.

Later, in the middle of Bach's Violin Concerto, I noticed something that we don't often hear in Boulder -- the sound of rain. I turned off the radio and listened to its quiet trickle on the roof. Apollo and Dionysus were still wandering in my head when it dawned on me that I was right in the middle of both. The sound from the skylight was Dionysus: quiet, pleasant random rain. On my right, with the window slightly open, I could hear the steady uniform plunk of water dripping into the gutter. Dionysus in the skylight, Apollo sliding down the roof. Thank you Charles Andrews!

More on the Alaskan John Adams

In an earlier posting, I mentioned John Luther Adams, the "Alaskan" Adams, to differentiate him from John Coolidge Adams, the "California" Adams, and the more well known John Adams. John Luther Adams had been written up in an article by Alex Ross in The New Yorker. Impatiently I had downloaded some of his music from Amazon, all done by the Cincinnati Percussion Ensemble. I wasn't overly impressed by it, but I decided to wait it out and see what the mail might bring. I had also ordered Earth and Great Weather, a piece commented on by Alex Ross in his New Yorker article. Today it arrived and I'm listening to it as I write this. "Earth and Great Weather" or, as the composer calls it "Nunavlusilaqpauvlu Nan Kak Nats'aa Gweedhaa", is more of the same and, unfortunately, I'm not much impressed. In both Ross's article and in the liner notes there are references to Morton Feldman. I have but one piece by Feldman, his Piano and String Quartet with Aki Takahashi and the Kronos Quartet. Apparently like a lot of Feldman's works, it goes on and on and on -- for an hour and 20 minutes. I like it. While I wouldn't quite rate up in my top 10, I do enjoy listening to Feldman. Unfortunately, I was somewhat disappointed with the "Alaskan" John Adams.

I don't expect to hear any performances of either Feldman or Luther Adams locally, even in a town like Boulder where somewhat adventuresome music is often performed. Percussionists may know Russell Peck's "The Glory and the Grandeur" a concerto for 3 percussionists. I heard it for the first time about 10 years ago at the Colorado Music Festival, under Giora Bernstein. It was fun to listen to, and, equally important, fun to watch. Now, the Boulder Philharmonic is planning on performing it this fall. Unlike the Luther Adam's pieces I've heard, it's percussion AND orchestra, not just percussion. Perhaps that's why I like it more.

Is it performed on the radio? Not on the stations I monitor. It is available on CD since I have a copy, but do they play it. No, but perhaps that's best since you only really appreciate it in a live performance.

John Luther Adams, at first blush

Today, I got my weekly New Yorker and found an article by Alex Ross. Entitled Letter From Alaska, it is about John Luther Adams. This Adams is not to be mistaken from John Coolidge Adams, the "California" Adams of "Nixon in China", "Dr Atomic", "Death of Klinghoffer", and so forth -- the one we really listen to and appreciate. I'm a fan of contemporary music and actually saw a reference to this article earlier this week on Alex Ross's blog "The Rest if Noise". I've read Ross's book of the same name and enjoy reading his writing. I though, good, another new composer! What is he all about? Is this going to be another winner?

After finishing the article I went to Amazon and looked for "John Luther Adams" and found several hits. I looked for titles that Ross referenced and found that some that were available. A few were only available as CD's, so I ordered one "Earth and the Great Weather". I could immediately download some mp3's for only 99 cents, so I did. I patched them into my home-grown mp3 database and listened. Perhaps my choices weren't any good, but I was disappointed. There were 5 pieces, performed by the Cincinnati Percussion Ensemble. They were uninspiring and frankly boring. Dare I say it? Like tedious Edgar Varese.

Ross wrote about 20Th century composers in his book "The Rest is Noise". Prokofiev, Messiaen, Stravinsky, Sibelius, Strauss, -- all the major 20Th Century composers. He also mentioned many many composers like Varese and Feldman, two he referenced in the New Yorker article. Are they Important? I don't know. Listenable? Again, I don't know. I remember getting a record of Varese's music: Ionisation, Density 21.5, Integrales, Octandre, Hyperprism and Poeme Electronique. I still have the record, though I haven't converted it over into mp3's yet. I'm not sure it's worth the effort. Luther Adams from my first brush with him appeals much like Varese.

Morton Feldman does have his appeal. Perhaps the CD of Luther Adam's work Earth and the Great Weather will be more like Feldman than Varese. I'll have to wait for delivery to find out.

Does the radio audience get to hear John Luther Adams? Not for the FM classical stations I monitor. Looking for "Luther Adams" I found nothing with both names together. There were 1170 broadcasts of "Adams" and all appear to be the California one, not the Alaskan one. Luther was found 40 times, but were either by Martin Luther or involving Lutheran.