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."

Comments

Earlier Performances?

[Josuah]

So, where can I get the earlier performances? I assume someone might have them available for download somewhere. Thanks. :)

I've always wondered why there isn't more of this

[nurhussein]

Free classical music downloads. Sure, the recording of the performance is still copyrighted, but aren't there any "free classical performers" out there?

Re:Hmmm

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Many classical forms have become pompous, whiny and annoying to modern ears. I, for example, can't stand any Vivaldi, Haendel, Beethoven. I've enjoyed them all, mind you, when I was younger, but I've grown out of it. These days, I enjoy Mahler, Rachmaninoff, or Franck much more, and I'm getting to be really fond of Ligeti, Xenakis and all the really modern composers.

I believe music is like wine: when you start drinking some, you prefer the sweet, easy-going ones. Then as your tastebuds develop, you start getting more and more into wines that you once thought were bitter and undrinkable, and you start "understanding" them more. What I mean is, music, like wine, is an acquired taste.

Re:This is good but should go farther

[Znork]

So, if I download it ten times, do I have ten legitimate copies I can spread to friends?

Re:I've always wondered why there isn't more of th

[FeatureBug]

I think you're missing something. There are many equally brilliant classical musicians who are not professional performers. Some live too far away from major cities which are the only places you have any chance of finding a job in performing classical music. Some give up because rates of pay for classical artists in many places is not high.

The main reason for all of this: supply of classical musicians vastly exceeds demand. On the supply side, music schools, universities and conservatories worldwide are graduating thousands of performers of classical music every year. On the demand side, you can count the number of classical music professional orchestras in most countries in the low single digits; the reality is that the market for classical music concerts is much smaller than the market for popular music concerts.

However, what this means for the future of open-licensed freely downloadable recordings of classical music is less clear. There is no shortage of brilliant musicians already employed full-time in other paying jobs like music teaching who might consider getting together with others to perform classical works under some sort of open licence, like one of the Creative Commons licences . I suspect that as more people become aware of the open-licensing phenomenon in other media, more classical music performers will help create a similar bandwagon for classical music recordings.

Aside: Heritage of CDs

[tezza]

The rumour has it that Beethovens Ninth was a factor for the 74 minute length of a CD. It's a nice theory.

I think a better factor was that the disc diameter had to be able to fit within 5 1/4 inch disc drive bays, and then that manufacturing technology at the time only permitted a certain spiral density.

Still having a musical heuristic to validate its use as a musical storage format is a good idea.

Re:A warning to audiophiles

[MikkoApo]

Variable Bit Rate was first. VBR means mp3s are encoded with variable bitrate where encoder makes guesses about the needed bitrate based on the content. This allows the encoder to allocate more bits for the parts which really need better quality.

After a while people noticed that the changes in the bitrate were in some cases too audible and reduced the illusion and immersion of the encoded audio.

So, Average Bit Rate tries to avoid that by keeping the variable bitrate somewhere around the specified bitrate.

Re: Hmmm

[Black Parrot]

> I reckon the 9th Symphony 67 minutes.

It depends on the pace set by the conductor. I have copies ranging from 59'43 to 69'34.

> Incidentally all of Beethoven's symphonies are very long.

And longer than expected at the time. Famously, during the premiere performance of the 3rd, someone in the audience shouted that he'd "give a kreutzer" for it to be done and over with.

Re:What about sound quality of classical downloads

[TheRaven64]

Not an Apple troll. I've been using AAC for a couple of years longer than Apple...

For encoding classical music, AAC is far better than the alternatives. Ogg Vorbis is close, but last time I checked had some issues with harpsichords (not sure if they're fixed now, but encoding, say, a Brandenbug Concerto would result in some quite unpleasant distortions).

If you have a license for the Dolby Pro codec, then you will find it's quality to be superb. If not, the only source of music encoded with it that I know of is iTMS. The PsyTEL AAC encoder is also very good (close to the Dolby Pro encoder, passing it in some areas), but the last time I looked it was Windows-only - although it's a command-line app so it probably runs fine with WINE.

Re:I've always wondered why there isn't more of th

[hunterx11]

I don't mean to disrespect them in any way, nor am I complaining that they are overpaid; however, the starting salary for a 1st violinist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is over $100,000. There are far too many great musicians who are indeed trying to scrape a meager living, but members of prominent orchestras are not such people. Of course, as you said there are more costs than that to an recording, and it is of little surprise that there are not more distributed for free.