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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."
So, where can I get the earlier performances? I assume someone might have them available for download somewhere. Thanks. :)
Free classical music downloads. Sure, the recording of the performance is still copyrighted, but aren't there any "free classical performers" out there?
Does anyone have links to the first 5 (if it is even still legal to download them from anywhere)?
Anyway, this sort of thing is very cool. I have not listened to much Beethoven (aside from bits and peices in movies and such), so something like this is an excellent opportunity. If anyone knows any places to legally download performances of other classics, please post them.
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.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
TEST #1: Appetite for free downloads
- status: complete
result: people like free downloads.
TEST #2: Ongoing Appetite for free downloads
- status: incomplete
result: pending...
I just cant wait to see what the results are!!
air and light and time and space
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.
The mp3s are CBR 128kbps. Ugh. When will people learn to use ABR instead of CBR? You wind up with fractionally larger files that sound MUCH better!
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Goddamn communist atheists at the BBC, sharing stuff. Don't they realise that if any of us stop grasping what is ours, society will collapse. You didn't see Jesus Christ preaching about sharing, did you.
Love,
The Republican Party
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
aren't there any "free classical performers" out there?
Yes. The problem is, they're not very good. Unlike popular music, where someone can start to learn guitar and become a world-famous "musician" a few years later (in some cases, this order is reversed), a good quality symphony orchestra contains 50 or more musicians, rarely with less than fifteen years of experience.
As a general rule, if you're a professional classical musician, you can't afford to give away your work for free -- not to mention the costs of renting a recording studio which can fit an entire symphony orchestra. If you're an amateur classical musician (defined as "has a full time job which isn't music"), then unless you're really exceptional, you're not good enough to make recordings which people will want to listen to.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
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!
Well it may be triumphal, but it isn't mindless triumphalism in that sort of jingoistic way you imply. Rather is is a deep expression of joy and solidarity among your fellow human beings. With out a little work you will probably miss the point of any music which falls outside the musical vernacular within which you were raised. I would suggest spending a little time with the middle piano sonatas and concertos and move on from there. Beethoven did write some mind-blowingly profound music such as the late string quartets, but you need to be able to listen from a different point of view than you generally get by default in this culture.
Here is the text of the Schiller poem used in the last movement--I think flag waving is a stretch:
Joy!
Joy, beautiful spark of God,
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter, fire-drunk,
Heavenly, your shrine.
Your magic reunites
That which custom has strongly split;
All humans will become brothers
[Schiller's original:
What custom's sword has parted;
Beggars become princes' brothers]
Where your soft wing whiles.
Whoever has succeeded in the great attempt
To be a friend of a friend;
Whoever has achieved a lovely wife
Mix in your joy!
Yes, also whoever only one soul
Calls his own around the world!
And whoever has never known of this,
Steal away crying out of this group!
All beings drink joy
At the breasts of nature;
All the good, all the bad
Follow her trail of roses.
She gave us kisses and vines,
A friend, proven in death;
Great pleasure was given to the worm,
And the cherub stands before God.
Glad, like his sun flies
Through heaven's splendid plan,
Run, brothers, your race,
Joyful, like a hero to the victory.
Be embraced, millions!
This kiss to all the world!
Brothers, over the starry firmament
Must live a loving father.
Do you bow down, millions?
Do you sense the Creator, world?
Seek him beyond the starry firmament!
He must dwell beyond the stars.
Listen to the whole thing. The Ninth is a heck of a lot more than just the Ode to Joy.
I reckon the 9th Symphony 67 minutes. Ode to Joy is but a tiny fraction of it.
Incidentally all of Beethoven's symphonies are very long. The symphonies range from around 25 minutes and the 9th is 67 minutes. It should be a crime to listen to only part of it.
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.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
as they are breaking Beethoven's copyright.
Wondering why i am doing so strange posts? I am trying to get a "+5,Flamebait" or "-1,Insightful" rating.
Yeah -- that's the best part!
That's the way I like to watch the news too -- just fast forward to the explosions. Everything else is just an appetizer.
Well no. Sonata != Symphony.
Symphonies are orchestral works. The Moonlight Sonata (Mondschein, as it's called in German), (no. 14, opus 27 no 2 in C sharp minor) is a solo piece written for a piano. Check wikipedia for a detailed discussion of symphonies and sonatas.
See for example Magnatune, which has tons of good classical recordings including some from world renowned performers, all under Creative Commons licenses. Granted they are mostly solo and small chamber performances, rather than full scale orchestral works. However, there are certainly professional classical performers willing and able to release stuff under CC. Note also that the BBC downloads are just a 7-day license and you're not allowed to share the files after downloading. It's not much better than a one-time radio broadcast that you can tape off the air.
You're not making fun of our anthem now are you ?
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
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.
Why oil price increase equals economic trouble (Score: Interesti
It's not like you were the only one to grow up. Beethoven did it, too. Did you ever listen to Beethoven's late string quartets? They're legendary and noone in their right mind could call them "pompous", "whiny" or "annoying".
Besides, Mahler is also a bit pompous (but I like his music).
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
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.
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Maybe we should make all those filthy foreigners pay the license fee as well! What what?
Went ahead and made a _trackerless_ torrent for those of you who want all the symphonies in this BBC series.
c kerless.torrent
Grab the torrent here: http://home.no.net/nexus/beethoven_symphonies_tra
Now, this is my first atempt at a trackerless torrent and you will need a client with trackerless support to use it (Newest Azureus and BitComet comes to mind)
When in danger, whewn in doubt! Run in circles, scream and shout!
If the cable conecting you to your ISP isn't thick enough and does not have gold plated connectors it will sound even worse!
> 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.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
For those of you bold enough to leave the computer screen for a while, there probably is a local CD store near you where you can buy the whole set of beethoven symphonies.
Why oil price increase equals economic trouble (Score: Interesti
Indeed, the 4th movement, and the 3rd are still among my all-time fave tracks, but try to get a good performance, I have a 120MB rip of the 4th movement by Bernstein, which is incredible. Cheap dime cuts are pathetic compared to a good performance (this one is the weiner phil), and just not worth it.
Been a while since I've been in a chill enough mood to sit down and enjoy them though, damn 5 second atten-hehe, i googled "boobs", hehe
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
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.
It's a shame theres so much bloody blabbering pre-fixing the actual music though. They seem to be recorded straight off air.
:)
Still, cynics aside it's still jolly nice of the BBC
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
I just downloaded them and the sound quality is very poor. 128kbps CBR MP3 is really not adequate for classical music (and it sounds like it wasn't a particularly good digital master either). In contrast, 128kbps AAC from iTMS is significantly better. I generally encode CDs at 256kbps AAC, since the Dolby consumer AAC encoder is not nearly as good as the Pro version (same bitstream format, slightly tweaked psycho-acoustic model).
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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.
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.
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Incidentally, BBC Radio 3 have in fact also broadcast *all* Beethoven's piano sonatas (including Moonlight). You can listen to them on the BBC website.
I can understand that one's personal music taste changes, but your post makes it seem like Beethoven's 9th is something of a bygone era (musically speaking). Someone else mentioned that Beethoven's music evolved as he became more mature (again, compared to his 9th). I don't think that one can classify his 9th as immature, annoying, etc.
His 9th symphony was composed at the end of his life. I can understand perhaps calling his early symphonies "immature" but his later ones were works of an original, genius mind.
The 9th symphony was the first symphony to add singers in a symphony. I have heard some people refer to it as a work that helped start the Romantic period. Finally, Mahler spent his entire life trying to immitate the "greatness" of Beethoven's 9th. Whether he succeeded or not is a matter of interpretation.
Thank goodness I've got some Slashdot Anonymous Coward to tell me that Beethoven is crap. We all anxiously await your Symphonic efforts.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
This sucks. If they're going to let you download them for free they should let you redistribute them...as long as it's for free of course.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
> Mondschein, as it's called in German
Yet somehow "Moonshine Sonata" doesn't convey quite the right idea in the Appalachian and Ozark states.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's interesting - although the BBC has the FULL RIGHTS to distribute this music as they see fit (including free), the record companies were STILL whining about it, and going on about "how it would destroy the record industry" etc. The record companies were on the BBC news at least twice whining about this.
This proves the truth - record companies just don't like competition.
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Not true. By Beethoven's time (early 1800s), the modern symphony orchestra format was well established, and his compositions are played by modern symphonies in their original forms. Bach (early 1700s) didn't write any symphonies, because symphony orchestras didin't exist at the time. But he wrote a lot of choral pieces, a lot for organ/harpsichord, and much for solo string instruments and small string ensembles. Some of the instruments are now different - piano is more commonly used than harpsichord, for example, and modern string instruments have a few changes - but the music for the most part can be played unaltered.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
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.
English is easier said than done.
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.
I thought that almost any orchestra performance ends up paying royalties to someone, is that an exaggeration?
I find that hard to call. In the UK, dues/royalty to the Performing Rights Society are calculated on a per-concert basis, according to the tariffs I've seen. There is a performer's habit of mixing old and new in many concert programmes, which means that if there is even just one short newer work in a programme that is mostly made up of out-of-copyright stuff, then the concert as a whole is in for a royalty payment. (I don't know what it is that legally entitles the licensing scheme people to construct their tariff like this, because the design of it seems to mean that a lot of money is in effect collected as royalty on out-of-copyright works.)
Then again at the old end of the musical timescale, current interest is reviving really old works that need editing and perhaps reconstruction as much as transcription to be playable, and for that the editors can now claim copyright much as if they were the composers.
So the copyright-free zone is practically limited at both ends of the time spectrum -- and maybe it's getting squeezed from both ends too.
-wb-
Root-mean-square error as a measure of fidelity works with processes that do not use a psychoacoustic model, but it does not take into account the various kinds of masking that the human ear uses and that codecs such as MP3 and Vorbis exploit. There is no known accurate measure of perceptual audio fidelity.
The original length of the Compact Disk was designed so that Beethoven's 9th could fit on a single disk. Now, of course, we have the ability to cram 80 minutes worth of music onto a single CD.
BTW we just succeeded in slashdotting Auntie Beeb.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
The 1st Chair Violinist has a great deal of responsibility over and above being a hot violin soloist. S/He is usually the assistant conductor of the orchestra. S/He is the person who puts the orchestra through its rehearsals. S/He makes sure everyone has the right sheet music. S/He is basically the "second-in-command" of the orchestra.
;-)
All that, and they have to be a hot violin soloist too. It's really quite a set of responsibilities. No shit they get paid well.
Unfortunately the percussionists in the orchestra are the ones at the bottom of the totem pole. This was a fact of life that was quite depressing for my husband, who's a percussionist and was a member of the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble in the early part of the 1970s. Instead of classical, he took his chances on rock.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Only problem is the 2 minutes of talking before the music.
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...
String quartets op. 127 (128?) and beyond. You know what an opus is.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
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.
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