Stockhausen

Both The Week and The Economist had featured obituaries of Karlheinz Stockhausen on Saturday. The composer, called a "genius-madman" by one and "seeker of new sounds" by the other, died in early December at 79. Both magazines pointed out that his picture appears on the famous cover of the Beetle's Sgt. Pepper's Longly Hearts Club Band. I tracked down my copy of it but couldn't figure out which one was Stockhausen. Marilyn Monroe he was not!

With his death recent, KVOD chose to broadcast his Gruppen for three orchestras and Stimmung. I listened and wondered about them. Stimmung, a sextet for unaccompanied voices, made no sense whatsover and I was glad when it was over. For Christmas I've requested Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century and I'm curious to read what Ross says about Stockhausen. I just couldn't get any enjoyment out of his music.

Not related, on Friday night I participated in a new Boulder "event" -- a group performance of Phil Klein's UnSilent Night. There were about 60-70 participants, mostly students from the CU school of music and others interested in the CU Pendulum program. Armed with boom-boxes and powered speakers attached to mp3 players, we wandered for about an hour along the Pearl Street mall, playing segments of Klein's performance piece. The sound, with percussion, bells, chorus and organ reflected off the walls of the buildings and merged with the crunch of feet on the frozen snow. We were all met with smiles of wonderment from shoppers and those wandering the decked-out mall on a cold evening. One woman came up to my wife and asked "What religion is this? It's great!". It was and let's hope it happens again next year.

Symphonies being broadcast.

I was curious about the broadcast frequencies of symphonies by some of the greatest symphonists. Here's a small table of the broadcasts of symphonies over KVOD (Denver, CO) for the years 2005, 2006 and 2007 (through yesterday):

Composers	Symphonies Composed	KVOD 2005	KVOD 2006	KVOD 2007
Beethoven	9	159	224	243
Schubert	9	139	195	156
Schumann	4	81	114	100
Mozart	42	384	451	401
Haydn	104	384	525	569
Saint-Saens	3	38	52	40
Brahms	4	63	96	80
Dvorak	9	48	99	94
Sibelius	7	56	60	66
Tchaikovsky	6	40	74	78
Mahler	10	26	12	7
Bruckner	9	14	9	3
Prokofiev	7	45	44	42
Shostakovich	15	16	35	22

Poor Mahler and Bruckner. Of course what this table doesn't show is the distribution of the broadcasts. For more details see
classicalfmradio.org and click on the button 'Show an interesting report on broadcast symphonies'.

PS: Working from a comcast connection can be a real pain. I've got a cron job which pings my comcast gateway regularly and I'm really getting a lot of dropped pings.
I sure wish there was some competition here -- and don't even mention qworst (qwest).

La Valse

One of the most played pieces on KVOD is Ravel's "La Valse", ranked 15th over the last 4 years. It's not one of my favorites, but I understand the need to broadcast it. It was written for orchestra and that's what is normally played. However, this past week I attended a concert at the University of Colorado where I heard a piano version, one that apparently Ravel arranged. I had never heard it done this way. The pianist was Vladimir Stoepel, a Russian pianist now living in Berlin. He preceded the performance with a brief explanation that Ravel was heart-sick at what had happened in World War I and wanted to reflect the coming darkness he felt was coming to Europe. It was, indeed, a dark and wrenching piece, full of power. Stoepel played with great passion. To sit and hear such a performance; to recognize the to-me syrupy themes and yet to sense the dispare was thrilling. Now if only some of the FM radio stations would broadcast this version instead of the incessant orchestra suite.

The Early Quartets Win

I've probably focused too much on orchestral music when I look at what's been playing.

On the day after Thanksgiving, rather than get wrapped up in Black Friday crap and football, I decided to take a look at Beethoven's String Quartets. I'm lucky to have the Takacs Quartet performing regularly in Boulder, very lucky. They've recorded on CD and won awards for their renditions of the Beethoven quartets. I must admit, though, that even though I love their CD's, nothing is as good as a live performance.

Anyway, here is a table of the broadcasts of the Beethoven String Quartets by KVOD for 2007 through November 24th.

KVOD Broadcasts	Beethoven String Quartet	Time in minutes
11	#01 in F Major, Op 18/1	27
7	#02 in G Major, Op 18/2	23
8	#03 in C minor, Op 18/3	24
10	#04 in A Major, Op 18/4	22
10	#05 in A Major, Op 18/5	28
12	#06 in Bb Major, Op 18/6	24
11	#07 in F Major 'Razumovsky', Op 59/1	40
1	#08 in E minor 'Razumovsky', Op 59/2	40
9	#09 in C Major 'Razumovsky', Op 59/3	32
1	#10 in E flat Major 'Harp', Op 74	32
1	#11 in f minor 'Serioso', Op 95	21
0	#12 in E flat Major [1825], Op 127	35
2	#13 in Bb Major, Op 130 with 'Grosse Fugue'	57
0	#14 in C# minor, Op 131	39
2	#15 in a minor, Op 132	43
1	#16 in F Major, Op 135	25

Now there are only 16 of them, and there are roughly 525,600 minutes each year, so why can't they all be broadcast? What about #12 and #14? And only 2 times for the great Opus 132? Interestingly they did broadcast this on Thanksgiving night, appropriately with it's 3rd movement marked by Beethoven with "Heiliger Danksgesang eine Genesenen and die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart." ("Holy Song of Thanksgiving by a Convalescent to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode", thanks Wikipedia)

So it's the early quartets, a smidge of the middle ones and short shrift to the late quartets, arguably Beethoven's finest. I just can help but wonder why a public radio station can't do better?

It's almost Thanksgiving...

and it's turning into another dismal year for some poor composers of long works. It's just hard for me to understand why a classical radio station that is listener supported finds itself totally unable to broadcast any works of length. My favorite peeve is Beethoven. His first 8 symphonies have been broadcast on KVOD anywhere from 21 times thus far in 2007 (symphony #3) to 29 times (or more) for symphonies 1,2 7 and 8. Yet symphony number 9, the mighty Chorale has only been broadcast 3 times in all of 2007 -- and one of those times was on a special series that I caught that features "Listener Requests"!!!

Then there is Mahler. 2 broadcast each for symphonies 1, 2 and 5. Poor Bruckner has had only 4 symphonies broadcast, one each for 1, 4, 8 and 9. Bruckner has had only 14 pieces broadcast in total for 2007 including smaller religious works. Ravel, on the other hand, clearly a better composer by KVOD's broadcast standards, has had 362 broadcast.

In music appreciation classes (when there were music appreciation classes!) Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique" was often the example of programmatic music. Remember the
"Dream of the Witches Sabbath" and "March to the Scaffold"! Well, the 'all classical music - all the time' stations are broadcasting individual sections and not just the whole piece. KVOD broadcast the entire thing 4 times, WQXR 9 times and KING 6 times.

I cannot understand what causes stations that broadcast round the clock to have to limit pieces based on length. Forget opera, also -- but that's another issue. I also think it somewhat disrespectful to single out individual movements for separate broadcast. But who cares, the composers are dead and not complaining. Perhaps I'm the one complaining too much.

Someone else's interesting observation

A user of my ClassicalFMRadio.org web set sent me an interesting comment supporting something that I've felt for years -- that repetiticious broadcasting is bad for everyone. Thomas, from LA but now living in Boise, commented that "In Boise, we are stuck with a full daily dose of CPRN repetition, and it is horrible! ... Think of what this will do to local orchestras who will only have patrons who want to hear 'From Bohemia's Woods and Fields', or 'In the Steppes of Central Asia', or Handel's Water Music/Royal Fireworks." I couldn't agree more.

Now, having said that, I have to observe that here in Boulder we are very lucky to have the Colorado Music Festival. The CMF music directory, Michael Christie, each summer introduces the audience to some new and very interesting composers and compositions. This July year we were lucky to have a staged performance of Goligov's Ainadamar, a wonderful opera. Additionally we were introduced to compositions by Jennifer Higdon, Dimitrije Buzarovski, Madeleine Dring, Ofer Ben-Amots, and Marjan Mozetich. This last composer, from Canada, is very accessible and tonal. Mozetich has Bassoon and Marimba Concerto, a Concerto for 2 harps and string orchestra and a violin concerto. I recommend them all, thanks to the adventuresome Michael Christie.

In search of contemporary "classical" music

The music broadcast on KVOD tends to be tepid at best. I'm listening less and playing more mp3s of my own rather than just listening to the radio. But how do you find and hear new, interesting music? Generally speaking the FM classical stations focus on only short, easy-listening classical pieces. Lots of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart ...... and Ravel? Forget long pieces, contemporary, challenging classical music.

Saturday night at 10 pm, mountain time, though, KVOD plays some contemporary pieces. I try to listen, hoping to find a few gems every once in a while. The other week KVOD broadcast Jouni Kaipainen's Cello Concerto. I'd never heard of him. While the first movement didn't do much for me, the second and third were very nice. I decided to get a copy of my own from Amazon and, after listening again, think so still. The Cello Concerto comes with his Horn Concerto No. 1. Kaipainen isn't played much on the stations I monitor. Only 3 broadcasts of each, on the 3 "networked" stations, KVOD, WBHM and KUSC, in over 3 years. Too bad.

Toensing and Responsoria

While listening to KVOD the other night I heard some very nice, quiet choral music. Somehow I missed the ending announcer's description. However, I was able to find it from ClassicalFMRadio.org. It was Responsoria by Richard Toensing.

Toensing, it turns out, was Professor of Composition at the University of Colorado here in Boulder and has just recently retired (I think). A local! I even know one of the sponsors of the CD! Since I liked the quiet tolling quality of the piece, I wanted to listen to it again by getting it from the local library. No such luck. Even the local guys don't seem to get acquired for the library CD collection. Amazon had Responsoria so I ordered it from one of their subsidiaries. It showed up promptly and I'm listening to it as I post this. Since I've put it into my mp3 repository, I've decided to donate my copy to the Boulder Public Library.

Responsoria is a setting of the Tenebrae services, the Roman Catholic Church's services of "The Offices of Matins and Lauds". Not being Catholic, nor particularly Christian, the words in Latin have little meaning or effect. But the a capella singing with muted percussion and bells is very soothing and other-worldly. It's 3 CDs, referred to as Books. All much the same, but beautiful none the less.

A new recording by Sibelius

I subscribe to the magazine, The Week, which has a nice digest of news. It also has a weekly review of new CDs, almost always including one of classical music. The other week I saw a positive review of "Kullervo", an early, large-scale symphonic work by Jean Sibelius, his Opus 7, conducted by Robert Spano. I had never heard of it, but when I checked on my broadcast history, I found that 3 stations had broadcast it. WQXR in New York had broadcast as early as February, 2004. I ordered a copy from Amazon. Since the Spano recording was done in May of 2006, the must be other recordings available, though I didn't really check.

What I wonder is are Classical FM stations acquiring new CDs any more, or are they just playing the same old ones? Sibelius symphonies are popular. In 2006, stations KING (Seattle), KCME (Colorado Springs), WUSC (Los Angeles) and WQXR (New York) broadcast all 6 of his symphonies. KVOD (Denver) broadcast all except #6. KVOD likes #2, having played it 70 times in the last 4 years. But it has never played #6. I guess they either don't like it or don't have recording.

"Kullervo" is okay but not memorable, with a thick, brooding, dark, Scandanavian sound. It's based on the Finnish "Kalevala" legends, and, unlike any of Sibelius's orchestral works, has soprano and baritone voices.