The Next Track

Doug re-watched the Woodstock movie. He'll never have to watch it again.

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Composer pianist Timo Andres joins us to discuss the Apple Music Classical app and Kirk's article about classical music that doesn't sound like classical music.

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The music

This 1976 work is one of the foundational works of minimalism. Its driving beat, or pulse, as Reich calls it, makes it a toe-tapper. This recording, on the ECM label in 1978, is the first recording by Steve Reich and Musicians. There have been many recordings since then by Reich and by other ensembles.

You can't talk about 20th-century classical music without mentioning John Cage. His music, mostly created using chance operations, was revolutionary. The pieces on this recording were composed between 1946 and 1948, before Cage adopted his Yi Jing influenced compositional approach. The revolution here is the "prepared" piano, in which screws and bolts, pieces of plastic and rubber were wedged between the piano strings, turning into a percussion ensemble.

Morton Feldman was a close friend of John Cage, but his music was very different. Many of his pieces are long - this one lasts 79 minutes - and quite. His music has slow, soft, slowly morphing phrases, and you can get lost in his sound world.

Strongly influenced by western classical music, notably Debussy, Tour Takemitsu created unique music that doesn't fit easily in any boxes. This 1990 work is a concerto for five percussionists and orchestra, and lasts about 36 minutes.

Philip Glass is one of the foundational composers of New York minimalism, and is well known for his operas and film scores. His first "opera," Einstein on the Beach, lasts about five hours, and is a summation of his various composing styles in the 1970s. This recording is from the 1984 revival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which I attended, and which has left its mark on me. If you like this, you may want to see the opera staged, and this Blu-Ray of a 2014 production in Paris is excellent.

My only atonal selection is this group of works by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. He lived in the French Alps for many years, and in this series of piano pieces, Catalogue of birds, he presents his take on songs of the different birds heard around France. Much of Messiaen's music is "difficult," but if you take the time to get into this recording, you may find it enjoyable.

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt was "discovered" in the west in 1984 when ECM released this album. The title work, from 1977, is an example of music that deconstructs, and other works on the album are also fascinating.

One of the first true minimalist works, In C "consists of 53 short numbered musical phrases, lasting from half a beat to 32 beats; each phrase may be repeated an arbitrary number of times at the discretion of each musician in the ensemble. Each musician thus has control over which phrase they play, and players are encouraged to play the phrases starting at different times, even if they are playing the same phrase." (Wikipedia) This is the first recording, from 1968, led by the composer, but it has been recorded many times since.

This work consists of 36 variations on a Chilean protest song ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! which is both highly musical and extremely difficult to perform.

Timo Andres is a young composer living in New York City. This recording is probably the most classical sounding of my selection. At its center is a "reconstruction" of an incomplete Mozart piano concerto, which is "an almost entirely new-sounding piece, which I hope will be an antidote to the studied blandness of most existing completions." This is bookended by Home Stretch, a piece "in three large sections which gradually accelerate: beginning in almost total stasis, working up to an off-kilter dance with stabbing accents, and ushering in a sturm-und-drang cadenza which riles itself up into a perpetual-motion race to the finish," and Paraphrase on Themes of Brian Eno, where Andres orchestrates some of Brian Eno's songs from Before and After Science and Another Green World. (Notes from Timo Andres's website.)

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We discuss whether remastering albums is worthwhile, why some artists re-record their albums, and how there seem to be no more standards.

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Apple has released its Apple Music Classical app for iPhone, and it's pretty good. Not perfect, but it's a big step forward. We discuss this new app and how it can be improved.

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Episode #252: Imprinting and Dilution

Creative content we discover at certain times of our lives imprints on our brains, and we forever compare other music, movies, and books to those we discovered at the right time.

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Doug moved, and we discuss 19th century technology and wires.

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On speaker placement and triangles.

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Chris Connaker from Audiophile Style joins us again to discuss some of his recent discoveries in immersive audio, and we talk about how the new HomePod sounds; better than expected.

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Special Guest: Chris Connaker.

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Apple has released a new HomePod, two years after discontinuing the original model. But is it the HomePod we want, or the HomePod we need? We discuss how it works with home automation. Also, Audio Hijack has just been updated. It's an essential app for recording audio on Macs.

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Why do so many people turn on subtitles when watching TV?

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