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BBC Offers Beethoven Symphonies for Download
Simon80 writes "BBC Radio 3 is making performances by the BBC Philharmonic of Beethoven's 6th to 9th symphonies available for free download for the next few days only, as the second part of a trial to 'test listeners appetite for downloads'. During the first part, the first 5 symphonies were offered, and over 650,000 people downloaded them."
The best musicians are usually too busy trying to scrape a living to play in a recording for free. Even if some musicians are willing to play for nothing, there are many other costs involved. You have to hire the music, which includes a fee payable to the estate of the composer in most cases. You have to hire a recording venue with a nice acoustic. And you have to pay someone who knows what they're doing to record it. I'm sure there are lots of classical recordings that don't recoup even these costs...
One good turn - gets all the covers.
I've always thought that Beethoven's 9th symphony (and Beethoven generally) was incredibly overrated, just because everyone has heard of Ode to Joy. I'm no aficianado, but it seems generally all over the place and 'ding-dongy' - mindless triumphalism for the flag-waving plebs.
Listen to the whole thing. The Ninth is a heck of a lot more than just the Ode to Joy.
I agree that if you only listen to the Ode to Joy, and take it out of the context of the greater work, then it is mindless triumphalism.
For this reason I really, really hate those "best of the classics"-type mix albums with the most-well-known fragments of classical music.
They're the musical equivalent to sports videos with "Greatest goals" etc. Watching an amazing goal is fun. But it is nowhere near the same experience as watching a full game at the edge of your seat, and experienceing an amazing last-minute goal in its context.
I always thought that most countries should those days invest a non-negligeable part of their cultur budget to set up huge on-line databases. I am amazed to see the cost to maintain dusty municipal libraries while I have still no way to get all those music and novels which are in the public domain.
It is still the same tune: when will people in charge realize the power of digital information. One book in a library can be read by one person at one time. It gets wear out, it can be stolen. A book in a library can be read by what ? at most 50 person a year ? How much does it cost to be stored handled, fixed ? That's ridiculous. And municipal libraries should be the place to find computer to access those database if you do not own one.
Also, for that BBC initiative, I read:
Download disclaimer:
The BBC grants you a 7-day, non-exclusive licence to download this Beethoven Experience audio.
You may not copy, reproduce, edit, adapt, alter, republish, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use this audio in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use.
So I can't give that piece of culture to my grand'ma and my little nephew ? That sucks.
--Go Debian!
I have always enjoyed the ninth. But I've always felt that the "choral Fantasy" OP.80 Fantasia in C for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra was much better. The music is better (if shorter) and the sentiment expressed by the lyrics is purer.
Exactly, thats what makes "Frazier Crane" into a sit-com. I like Classical (the 9th was great score for Clockwork Orange) but I also like Pink Floyd, Madona and Eminem. I suppose that means my musical taste is immature? So fucking what? The whole idea of music is to enjoy it's emotions not worship it's practioners.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
What I mean is, music, like wine, is an acquired taste.
True, yet early music should not be forgotten once your ear is trained. The music that you are so fond of today was built off of the music that you've 'grown out of'. The building procedure was hundreds of years long, but it is the foundation. I still love to listen to Haydn, Mozart, Shubert, Brahms, Smetana, and other baroque-early romantic composers as well as Crumb, Berg, Scrabin, and other modern composers (and everything in the middle, plus lots of jazz). What I love to do is explore both modern and CPP (common practice period) composers, and try to find any connections betweeen them. Its a wholistic effect (listening to one enhances listening to the other and vise-versa). Its good to not stray on one side of the musical spectrum. Here's an excerpt from a poem from the Tao that will hopefully reinforce my point.
When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good, other things become bad.
Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.
Therefore the master acts without doing anything, and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.
Why oil price increase equals economic trouble (Score: Interesti
They may be more concerned about gathering accurate statistics on the number of files downloaded, files per user, etc.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It probably takes a bit more coordination than the average popular music performer to make a good classical recording -- at least one that requires any significantly sized orchestra. (Conductors, venues, recording equipment, lots of performers, practicing performing together cohesively, etc etc.) I suspect that most orchestras able to pull it off simply have to be professional, because there's so much rolling infrastructure involving a lot of people and resources behind the performances that's needed to make sure that they can do it properly. Arts funding to keep these things going is never very generous, and a lot of it probably comes on the condition that the orchestra management demonstrates that it's continuing to raise money on their own by charging for what it produces.
If it helps, you might find a lot of very cheap classical CD's in certain bargain bins. I've collected a lot of Mozart, Strauss and Dvorak for about $2 per CD, which is a price I'm perfectly prepared to pay and one that I think is quite fair. In my experience, they're often left-over stock of classical performances from some years ago, but they're not low quality.
Someone who cares about details such as particular orchestras or performances might not find what they want in the bargain bins. If you're like me, however, and just wanted a general introduction before finding out more, there's a lot of very cheap classical music out there.
Speaking of world records (see the article yesterday about memorising digits of ), here we have the world's worst analogy.
Well, welcome to the classical world, then :-)
Start with Beethoven's Fifth, there was a hint here how to get it. Or just buy a nice sampler in your store and go with your taste.
The most respected artists by the masses are Monteverdi, Vivaldi, JS Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Tchaikovski, but it's all about your taste. Try and if you like, try some more.
Check the WP for some background info.
Cheers!
I love getting free, good music from the internet. The Internet Achive's Audio section is my very good friend, as is LegalTorrents. Granted, that is completely different music from this, but still it is awesome to be able to enjoy music being made by people who love making music more than making money.
As a semi-pro musician, I get really, really tired of seeing other geeks bash musicians who charge for their work.
Certainly, there are performers who do it for nothing but the money - but coincidentally enough, they usually suck royally as musicians.
A large number of musicians charge for what they do because they like to do it, and if enough people are willing to pay them for their music, they can quit their day job, and spend more time creating the art that they love to do.
What's so bad about that?
"Oh, I like geeks way better than I like humans." - Mari Sarris
I've always wondered why MP3 and other audio formats are not encoded in two passes much like variable bitrate video encoding
Probably because audio is small enough that the difference between fitting eight albums on a CD-R and fitting nine albums on a CD-R isn't very wasteful, unlike DivX video where you try to fit the entire length of a feature film (or half of one) within a tight window of 695 to 700 MiB.
From the download page at BBC:
You may not copy, reproduce, edit, adapt, alter, republish, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use this audio in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use.
Looks like personal, non-commercial use to me.
Mind the audience you're preaching to... A lot of us here write open source software that can be used freely (as in both beer and speech), so we can't see anything wrong with musicians also creating performances that can be listened to freely (at least as in beer if not speech).
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I hate the Bush administration as much as the next guy, but people need to realize that BOTH parties have been thoroughly pwned by Big Business. In these entertainment cases, the Democrats are the ones who deserve our ire.
Okay, so a philosopher, a philologist, and a philatelist walk into a bar...
I've never been a music geek, but after hearing the 9th today, I think that may change.
It is true, you have to listen to the whole thing. This was the first time I've ever done so and I can't begin to explain what a difference it makes to hear it all together in the intended order. I never really understood before that a symphony creates its own vocabulary and language as it progresses so by the end it says all sorts of things that I can't put into words.
I feel as if I've been somehow raped but in a good way. It keeps making me think of the myth where Zeus becomes an eagle and snatches Ganymede away to Mount Olympus to be his lover and cupbearer. I see it as Zeus making the boy into a god, but at a price. That's the 9th to me, Beethoven dug his talons into me, and for an hour I became a god in Beethoven's heaven and experienced joy so profound it hurt like hell. It was a truly mind altering experience.
http://www.marxist.com/
You're trying to tell me complete songs come to you as devine insperation? ... I think not.
You try to write software a line or two at a time, and the obvious argument in the other direction is that more than a few "commercially successful" songs have been based on a couple of bars.
It's not as obvious that all music has to be free right now, but musicians can certainly do better than "here's a CD, please pay $15" ... even if it's just live recordings or "b sides" for free download. Saying "I want to make a living", is not the same as "give me all your money".
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B