I don't fear that classical will be lost due to lack of musicianship or the creation of new compositions. The rise of "world" music and various fusions of it have shown that consumers are always looking for different ways to enjoy sound.
What really concerns me is that the rise of MP3 will cause consumers to overlook a lot of alternative material since many of the important details are lost in the conversion process. When only the highly distinct rhythm and non-dynamic melodies of popular music are translated well by the medium, other types will lose their shot at growing their own audience.
It would be a tragedy if non-pop becomes an option only for the 'philes because they are the only ones with the equipment to decode the nuances.
Still, all is not lost and I can proudly claim to have one victory in this regard. I introduced a younger cousin who plays drums to Brubeck's classic. He can't play along yet, but at least he knows what rhythmic excellence really means. And, more importantly, he's hungry for more.
ensen.
What really concerns me is that the rise of MP3 will cause consumers to overlook a lot of alternative material since many of the important details are lost in the conversion process. When only the highly distinct rhythm and non-dynamic melodies of popular music are translated well by the medium, other types will lose their shot at growing their own audience.
It would be a tragedy if non-pop becomes an option only for the 'philes because they are the only ones with the equipment to decode the nuances.
Still, all is not lost and I can proudly claim to have one victory in this regard. I introduced a younger cousin who plays drums to Brubeck's classic. He can't play along yet, but at least he knows what rhythmic excellence really means. And, more importantly, he's hungry for more.
ensen.
"What really concerns me is that the rise of MP3 will cause consumers to overlook a lot of alternative material since many of the important details are lost in the conversion process."
I've been downloading some classical MP3s @ 128k. There may be a slight difference between this and the same piece in Redbook format, but it is very, very hard to hear. Secondly, we should beware of the "audiophile falacy". At least that's what I call it. First the average non-audiophile doesn't miss what he doesn't hear and even if he can percieve the difference between MP3 and SACD it doesn't bother him/her because he/she is responding to the content. I'm married to a musician who thinks such differences are nice but don't make much difference to her because she knows what the music is supossed to sound like and neither MP3, DVD-A or SACD are "real" and this is not a problem because her brain just fills in the missing parts.
Finally, I don't think MP3 at it's current data rate is permanent. As speeds of communication and memory capacity increase and fall in cost, higher data rates (24/96 or whatever) will be more common. I'll bet that in ten years it's a non-issue.
I've been downloading some classical MP3s @ 128k. There may be a slight difference between this and the same piece in Redbook format, but it is very, very hard to hear. Secondly, we should beware of the "audiophile falacy". At least that's what I call it. First the average non-audiophile doesn't miss what he doesn't hear and even if he can percieve the difference between MP3 and SACD it doesn't bother him/her because he/she is responding to the content. I'm married to a musician who thinks such differences are nice but don't make much difference to her because she knows what the music is supossed to sound like and neither MP3, DVD-A or SACD are "real" and this is not a problem because her brain just fills in the missing parts.
Finally, I don't think MP3 at it's current data rate is permanent. As speeds of communication and memory capacity increase and fall in cost, higher data rates (24/96 or whatever) will be more common. I'll bet that in ten years it's a non-issue.
My guess is that classical listeners are more inclined to buy
their music on disc than pop listeners are. So if classical
listeners want to download the music from the net and burn
their own CDs I would guess that has more to do with the
discs not being easily available in shops. Something I had
expected to happen but we still haven't seen is burn-on-demand
services in record shops, similar to print-on-demand books that
has been tried or at least suggested. If the record companies
provided the shops with a fast internet connection and a
fast good CD burner, you could basically buy any disc in the
catalogues in you local shop. The companies would probably
have to go toghether and cooperate on the technology, though,
and the equipment should probably have some built in encryption
so the shops cannot burn multiple copies without paying for
them.
For those of us enjoying the luxury of high-speed internet
connection it would be an interesting alternative to be able
to download non-compressed CDs directly from the record
companies, of course. If they can provide a sufficiently fast
server, ideally mirrored at least locally in each country, this
could work well. However, I suppose we are still too few
customers having this option. On the other hand, this seems
not to bother software companies. Although most people
don't have very fast internet connections, demo versions of
software, especially computer games, are becoming
increasingly larger, nowaday often on the order of 50 to 100MB,
and people download them even if they only have a 56k modem.
Downloading a full linux distribution usually ends up around
some five full CDs, and even many modem users do this.
their music on disc than pop listeners are. So if classical
listeners want to download the music from the net and burn
their own CDs I would guess that has more to do with the
discs not being easily available in shops. Something I had
expected to happen but we still haven't seen is burn-on-demand
services in record shops, similar to print-on-demand books that
has been tried or at least suggested. If the record companies
provided the shops with a fast internet connection and a
fast good CD burner, you could basically buy any disc in the
catalogues in you local shop. The companies would probably
have to go toghether and cooperate on the technology, though,
and the equipment should probably have some built in encryption
so the shops cannot burn multiple copies without paying for
them.
For those of us enjoying the luxury of high-speed internet
connection it would be an interesting alternative to be able
to download non-compressed CDs directly from the record
companies, of course. If they can provide a sufficiently fast
server, ideally mirrored at least locally in each country, this
could work well. However, I suppose we are still too few
customers having this option. On the other hand, this seems
not to bother software companies. Although most people
don't have very fast internet connections, demo versions of
software, especially computer games, are becoming
increasingly larger, nowaday often on the order of 50 to 100MB,
and people download them even if they only have a 56k modem.
Downloading a full linux distribution usually ends up around
some five full CDs, and even many modem users do this.
Two very good points about data rates and file sizes. I will admit to being convinced.
As to the argument that musicians don't care or fill in the gaps - I disagree. I certainly hope musicians care that recordings be as good as possible, especially their own. And as for the gap filling, as a former musician (and one who still knows how instruments should sound) it really bothers me when details get lost. Those details are critical, especially when the nuances determine if the performance was good, passable, mediocre or virtuoso.
ensen
As to the argument that musicians don't care or fill in the gaps - I disagree. I certainly hope musicians care that recordings be as good as possible, especially their own. And as for the gap filling, as a former musician (and one who still knows how instruments should sound) it really bothers me when details get lost. Those details are critical, especially when the nuances determine if the performance was good, passable, mediocre or virtuoso.
ensenpurplepeople said:
Which points got you convinced about what? Just curious
since it wasn't obvious what you were referring to.
I would suppose most musicians today care about their
recordings being good, or at least done in such a way that
listeners appreciate them. In the old days most muscians
wouldn't care much and often weren't even interested in
the recordings, expcept for the money they might occasionally
get from the recordings. There are several cases where
the engineers were not satisfied with the technical quality
of some parts of a recording and wanted a retake of those,
but couldn't do it because of the extra fees the musicians
requested. I suppose musicians used to be paid only for the time
of the recoding sessions and not through roylaties in those days.
There were exceptions though. I read that George Szell came
back from a tour to Europe in the late 1950s and brought
with him a couple of brand new AKG microphones he had
bought in Austria because he had heard they were supposed
to be very good.
I do on the other hand suspect that many musicians do not
care so much about sound quality when listening to recorded
music. Very many musicians have very crappy gear at home
and I suspect many listen rather to the interpretation than
the actual sound. I am not a musician, but I tend to listen in
that way too, although I certainly appreciate when the sound
is good too.
Hi,
They're certainly fine mikes.
A good sound engineer will have several mikes and capsules and use the ones that suit the occasion best.
Microphones, like everything else, have a set of characteristics that you have to be aware of.
They also have a sonic fingerprint that shows their character...
Dave Wilson of Wilson Audio once made a recording of some organ music with on one side of the vinyl disc a take with a Neumann mike and the other an AKG.
You could tell the mikes apart quite easily on high resolution gear.
Cheers,
They're certainly fine mikes.
A good sound engineer will have several mikes and capsules and use the ones that suit the occasion best.
Microphones, like everything else, have a set of characteristics that you have to be aware of.
They also have a sonic fingerprint that shows their character...
Dave Wilson of Wilson Audio once made a recording of some organ music with on one side of the vinyl disc a take with a Neumann mike and the other an AKG.
You could tell the mikes apart quite easily on high resolution gear.
Cheers,
I was a bit vague...
sam9: Your spouse seems similar to the wife of a friend of mine. As the story goes, she made a demo tape of her quartet as a sales tool for getting wedding gigs. The MD was recorded in their living room using a single karaoke mike on the fireplace mantle. That room has hardwood floors and two opposing walls are fully glassed in both length and height. Describing the session as "live" would have been an understatement. Needless to say, nobody could understand why the MD sounded so bad. Even after some technical explanation by my friend, the members of the quartet (including his wife) would still not wholly believe that the recording technique and not their performance was the cause. And I quote: "But it's digital, it should be perfect."
sam9 said:
Christer said:
sam9: Your spouse seems similar to the wife of a friend of mine. As the story goes, she made a demo tape of her quartet as a sales tool for getting wedding gigs. The MD was recorded in their living room using a single karaoke mike on the fireplace mantle. That room has hardwood floors and two opposing walls are fully glassed in both length and height. Describing the session as "live" would have been an understatement. Needless to say, nobody could understand why the MD sounded so bad. Even after some technical explanation by my friend, the members of the quartet (including his wife) would still not wholly believe that the recording technique and not their performance was the cause. And I quote: "But it's digital, it should be perfect."
My wife didn't show much interest in accurate musical reproduction until I took her to Vegas and she heard a "good" stereo. Now she nows the difference which helps me to design better stuff. Could it be that the disinterest is caused by ignorance? As was said, you don't miss what you don't know. Classical recordings may diminish but I doubt it will die. So many things are cyclical. Tubes were a thing of the past until recently, now it seems to be making a comeback. As for MP3s: I just can't accept that any form of compression is a good thing and look forward to widespread distribution of direct from master recordings of all types of music.
NYTimes addresses the issue (today)
No Requiem for Classical CD's, Please
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
he British cultural critic Norman Lebrecht has been the Cassandra of classical music. His polemical 1997 book, "Who Killed Classical Music?: Maestros, Managers and Corporate Politics," offered insights into the way conglomerate thinking was ruining a once proudly nonprofit art form. But his bleak indictment was wildly overstated.
Not content as Cassandra, Mr. Lebrecht is becoming a classical music sibyl as well. In a recent column in La Scena Musicale, an online magazine, Mr. Lebrecht offered what he called "the rock-solid prediction" that "the year 2004 will be the last for the classical record industry."
Should classical music lovers take this seriously? His analysis is interesting, but his conclusion preposterous. That the recording industry has been reeling from the one-two punch of poor economic conditions and the proliferation of free Internet downloading is old news. Things have never been worse, Mr. Lebrecht says. Major classical music labels, which a decade ago "pumped out 120 new releases a year," he writes, now produce a "trickle of two dozen." Where the majors "once fought bidding wars over shimmering talent," he adds, "they now compete in shedding it."
He cites EMI Classics' decision not to extend the contract of Roberto Alagna, the French-born Sicilian singer whom the company once touted as "the fourth tenor." Mr. Alagna has been added to "the dump pile," Mr. Lebrecht writes, "a victim of poor sales." (An EMI spokesman said that Mr. Alagna was offered a new contract but rejected it, which amounts to being dropped.) Mr. Alagna's wife, the soprano Angela Gheorghiu, "remains under contract but has no further recordings planned," Mr. Lebrecht writes. Not quite true, the EMI spokesman said. EMI is obligated to make several Gheorghiu recordings, but the programs have not been specified.
Yet Mr. Lebrecht's evidence for the coming demise of classical recording could be viewed alternatively as proof that for once the free market is working. If some greedy major labels are getting the comeuppance they deserve, let them go under.
Smaller labels like Nonesuch and Naxos, which once just filled in the gaps with records of specialty repertory and adventurous artists ignored by the majors, are proving that it is possible to release important recordings at midrange prices and still pay the bills. And though the financial repercussions from the downloading of CD's have the recording industry feeling besieged and impotent, some bold orchestras have, like many rock groups, taken matters into their own hands and released self-produced CD's, recorded live and available on the Internet.
Considering Mr. Alagna's history at EMI, you can only say, "What did they expect?" When EMI signed Mr. Alagna in 1993, he seemed a charismatic lyric tenor with a refined understanding of French style and a dashing stage presence. As he began dating Ms. Gheorghiu, an alluring, dusky-toned, fiery Romanian soprano, her recording company, Decca, tried to lure Mr. Alagna. EMI fought back and won. In 1998 EMI held a lavish news conference and buffet at Tavern on the Green in Central Park to anoint opera's handsome new love couple.
But their individual talents, though considerable, were oversold. The classical market was glutted with an extensive back catalog. It was one thing for EMI to offer its new stars in a welcome recording of Puccini's lesser-known and lovely "La Rondine," stylishly conducted by Antonio Pappano. But the couple's recording of Puccini's "Tosca"? Did EMI expect opera buffs to buy this unremarkable "Tosca" when so many classic accounts were available?
If not meeting Mr. Alagna's demands means that EMI can direct more attention to composers and emerging artists, so much the better. One is Leif Ove Andsnes, the young Norwegian pianist, an exclusive EMI artist and for me the most accomplished pianist of the new generation.
Still, Mr. Lebrecht predicts that Mr. Andsnes will be held to "one disc a year, just the one, if he's lucky." But might not this restriction actually benefit Mr. Andsnes's development? So far he has put careful thought into each of his albums, like his scintillating 2003 Schubert recording, which interestingly offers the Piano Sonata in D major, D. 850, along with a group of mostly lesser-known lieder sung by the British tenor Ian Bostridge.
Every day comes more evidence that the classical music business is facing dismaying economic challenges. Last month the Detroit Symphony Orchestra announced that, to deal with a budget crisis, its musicians and staff members had agreed to a three-week unpaid furlough. The recording industry has been further shaken by seismic shifts in digital technology.
In the glory decades artists like Arthur Rubinstein and George Szell made big money from their recordings. Today, with the exceptions of a handful of stars, most artists understand that recordings will not make them a living. It is hard to speak of classical and pop recordings as the same industry. A violin recital album that sold 5,000 to 10,000 copies over three to five years would be considered a solid success. Sales of 50,000 would be considered extraordinary. By contrast EMI paid $28 million just to buy out Mariah Carey's contract in 2002.
Though the soprano Renée Fleming is a top-selling Decca artist, the Sony Classical label has just released a lovely account of her performance in the title role of Massenet's "Manon," recorded live at the National Opera of Paris with the tenor Marcelo Alvarez, a Sony artist, singing Des Grieux. In the golden days an artist of Ms. Fleming's popularity would have been rushed into the studio to document her major opera roles. Studio recordings of a complete opera have become dauntingly expensive. Live recordings are a viable alternative.
In recent years two major orchestras, exasperated by the declining interest of the major labels, have boldly taken live recording one step further and started producing their own CD's. The London Symphony is one. Its live 2001 recording of Berlioz's epic opera "Les Troyens" was issued on the orchestra's label, LSO Live. The San Francisco Symphony has also established its own label, SFS Media, and issued, among other releases, a blazing account of Mahler's Sixth Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. Both recordings received critical acclaim, solid sales and Grammy Awards. Though the CD's are in stores, consumers can also order them from the orchestras' Web sites.
The growth of downloading technology has received lots of media coverage. But not enough attention has been directed to this more benign Internet prospect: instead of manufacturing thousands of discs and getting them into stores, the record companies will increasingly take orders online, burn copies of the requested CD's and mail them.
This mode of operating has already salvaged Composers Recordings Inc., the scrappy nonprofit label that for 48 years maintained the most eclectic and adventurous catalog of contemporary classical music. Though that company folded in April, its catalog was taken over by another nonprofit, New World Records, which has promised to make the entire catalog available by burning to order, complete with printouts of the liner notes.
Here is my rock-solid prediction, though it comes with no deadline: the major labels will set up their own custom-made CD ventures. The move makes financial sense and will allow companies to keep their entire back catalogs in circulation, including oddball specialty items.
Still, consumers will have to adjust to new realities. Custom-burned CD's are not likely to come with fancy packaging. Serious collectors who are running out of shelf space at home have begun jettisoning the hard plastic jewel boxes, slip their CD's into soft plastic envelops and store them in file boxes. After all, a CD is essentially a plastic-coated floppy disk. Maybe we will have to start treating them that way.
Despite the greed and bungling of so many recording executives, these companies still have top-level employees who care about classical music and want to deliver it to appreciative consumers.
If the classical divisions of the major labels totter, as Mr. Lebrecht predicts, so be it. Smaller companies and emerging technologies will offer new solutions. Seems naïve? Well, classical music could use a few Pollyannas right now. It already has a Cassandra.
No Requiem for Classical CD's, Please
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
he British cultural critic Norman Lebrecht has been the Cassandra of classical music. His polemical 1997 book, "Who Killed Classical Music?: Maestros, Managers and Corporate Politics," offered insights into the way conglomerate thinking was ruining a once proudly nonprofit art form. But his bleak indictment was wildly overstated.
Not content as Cassandra, Mr. Lebrecht is becoming a classical music sibyl as well. In a recent column in La Scena Musicale, an online magazine, Mr. Lebrecht offered what he called "the rock-solid prediction" that "the year 2004 will be the last for the classical record industry."
Should classical music lovers take this seriously? His analysis is interesting, but his conclusion preposterous. That the recording industry has been reeling from the one-two punch of poor economic conditions and the proliferation of free Internet downloading is old news. Things have never been worse, Mr. Lebrecht says. Major classical music labels, which a decade ago "pumped out 120 new releases a year," he writes, now produce a "trickle of two dozen." Where the majors "once fought bidding wars over shimmering talent," he adds, "they now compete in shedding it."
He cites EMI Classics' decision not to extend the contract of Roberto Alagna, the French-born Sicilian singer whom the company once touted as "the fourth tenor." Mr. Alagna has been added to "the dump pile," Mr. Lebrecht writes, "a victim of poor sales." (An EMI spokesman said that Mr. Alagna was offered a new contract but rejected it, which amounts to being dropped.) Mr. Alagna's wife, the soprano Angela Gheorghiu, "remains under contract but has no further recordings planned," Mr. Lebrecht writes. Not quite true, the EMI spokesman said. EMI is obligated to make several Gheorghiu recordings, but the programs have not been specified.
Yet Mr. Lebrecht's evidence for the coming demise of classical recording could be viewed alternatively as proof that for once the free market is working. If some greedy major labels are getting the comeuppance they deserve, let them go under.
Smaller labels like Nonesuch and Naxos, which once just filled in the gaps with records of specialty repertory and adventurous artists ignored by the majors, are proving that it is possible to release important recordings at midrange prices and still pay the bills. And though the financial repercussions from the downloading of CD's have the recording industry feeling besieged and impotent, some bold orchestras have, like many rock groups, taken matters into their own hands and released self-produced CD's, recorded live and available on the Internet.
Considering Mr. Alagna's history at EMI, you can only say, "What did they expect?" When EMI signed Mr. Alagna in 1993, he seemed a charismatic lyric tenor with a refined understanding of French style and a dashing stage presence. As he began dating Ms. Gheorghiu, an alluring, dusky-toned, fiery Romanian soprano, her recording company, Decca, tried to lure Mr. Alagna. EMI fought back and won. In 1998 EMI held a lavish news conference and buffet at Tavern on the Green in Central Park to anoint opera's handsome new love couple.
But their individual talents, though considerable, were oversold. The classical market was glutted with an extensive back catalog. It was one thing for EMI to offer its new stars in a welcome recording of Puccini's lesser-known and lovely "La Rondine," stylishly conducted by Antonio Pappano. But the couple's recording of Puccini's "Tosca"? Did EMI expect opera buffs to buy this unremarkable "Tosca" when so many classic accounts were available?
If not meeting Mr. Alagna's demands means that EMI can direct more attention to composers and emerging artists, so much the better. One is Leif Ove Andsnes, the young Norwegian pianist, an exclusive EMI artist and for me the most accomplished pianist of the new generation.
Still, Mr. Lebrecht predicts that Mr. Andsnes will be held to "one disc a year, just the one, if he's lucky." But might not this restriction actually benefit Mr. Andsnes's development? So far he has put careful thought into each of his albums, like his scintillating 2003 Schubert recording, which interestingly offers the Piano Sonata in D major, D. 850, along with a group of mostly lesser-known lieder sung by the British tenor Ian Bostridge.
Every day comes more evidence that the classical music business is facing dismaying economic challenges. Last month the Detroit Symphony Orchestra announced that, to deal with a budget crisis, its musicians and staff members had agreed to a three-week unpaid furlough. The recording industry has been further shaken by seismic shifts in digital technology.
In the glory decades artists like Arthur Rubinstein and George Szell made big money from their recordings. Today, with the exceptions of a handful of stars, most artists understand that recordings will not make them a living. It is hard to speak of classical and pop recordings as the same industry. A violin recital album that sold 5,000 to 10,000 copies over three to five years would be considered a solid success. Sales of 50,000 would be considered extraordinary. By contrast EMI paid $28 million just to buy out Mariah Carey's contract in 2002.
Though the soprano Renée Fleming is a top-selling Decca artist, the Sony Classical label has just released a lovely account of her performance in the title role of Massenet's "Manon," recorded live at the National Opera of Paris with the tenor Marcelo Alvarez, a Sony artist, singing Des Grieux. In the golden days an artist of Ms. Fleming's popularity would have been rushed into the studio to document her major opera roles. Studio recordings of a complete opera have become dauntingly expensive. Live recordings are a viable alternative.
In recent years two major orchestras, exasperated by the declining interest of the major labels, have boldly taken live recording one step further and started producing their own CD's. The London Symphony is one. Its live 2001 recording of Berlioz's epic opera "Les Troyens" was issued on the orchestra's label, LSO Live. The San Francisco Symphony has also established its own label, SFS Media, and issued, among other releases, a blazing account of Mahler's Sixth Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. Both recordings received critical acclaim, solid sales and Grammy Awards. Though the CD's are in stores, consumers can also order them from the orchestras' Web sites.
The growth of downloading technology has received lots of media coverage. But not enough attention has been directed to this more benign Internet prospect: instead of manufacturing thousands of discs and getting them into stores, the record companies will increasingly take orders online, burn copies of the requested CD's and mail them.
This mode of operating has already salvaged Composers Recordings Inc., the scrappy nonprofit label that for 48 years maintained the most eclectic and adventurous catalog of contemporary classical music. Though that company folded in April, its catalog was taken over by another nonprofit, New World Records, which has promised to make the entire catalog available by burning to order, complete with printouts of the liner notes.
Here is my rock-solid prediction, though it comes with no deadline: the major labels will set up their own custom-made CD ventures. The move makes financial sense and will allow companies to keep their entire back catalogs in circulation, including oddball specialty items.
Still, consumers will have to adjust to new realities. Custom-burned CD's are not likely to come with fancy packaging. Serious collectors who are running out of shelf space at home have begun jettisoning the hard plastic jewel boxes, slip their CD's into soft plastic envelops and store them in file boxes. After all, a CD is essentially a plastic-coated floppy disk. Maybe we will have to start treating them that way.
Despite the greed and bungling of so many recording executives, these companies still have top-level employees who care about classical music and want to deliver it to appreciative consumers.
If the classical divisions of the major labels totter, as Mr. Lebrecht predicts, so be it. Smaller companies and emerging technologies will offer new solutions. Seems naïve? Well, classical music could use a few Pollyannas right now. It already has a Cassandra.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.