HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad)
Subject: Re: Supertitling
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 15:28:28 GMT

In article <1992Aug27.215817.13690@fid.morgan.com> steve@fid.morgan.com (Steve Apter) writes:

>One of the reasons I enjoy NY City Opera is their use of supertitles.
>Sorry, my Italian** is just not good enough to follow the story line
>of an unfamiliar opera.  Any opinions on the use of this technology?

I have an opinion, an unpopular one.  I hate them.  I think they wreck
the live experience of an opera, and turn it into television (I don't
despise television, but a live theatrical experience is something else).
This gives us a reading-medium and a visual-medium that our eyes can
flip back and forth between, to keep us from being bored.  But it wrecks
the involvement that I go to the opera for.  (No, I can't "just ignore
them."  They're rather conspicuous.)

It's also true that they're often poorly managed, badly synchronized,
oversimplified, all that.  But presumably all that could be fixed in
time.  My objection is more fundamental.  I really think that the
prevalence of supertitles will kill opera in the next few decades,
because the medium will become nothing more than an idle evening's
time-killer, just like 3 hours of prime time.  You *have* to keep your
eyes on the stage in the opera, if you're serious about getting
everything the medium has to offer.

As an alternative:  Why has everybody given up on performing opera in
translation?  THAT is a live, compelling experience.  When I was a music
student at Indiana U, I saw 6-8 operas a year in English.  The
productions were not always wonderful (though often surprisingly good),
but boy that was a wonderful way to wake up to what opera can be.  So
was the one segment of the English National Opera RING in English that I
saw live (their recordings are special too).  That company remains
committed to opera in English (except for one aberration in classical
Greek that was recently forced on them), as the Met does to opera in the
original language (occasionally in translation).  In both cases, without
supertitles.  I say bravo to both of them.  SOMEbody has to keep alive
the idea that it's the performers' job to communicate.

I do think there are occasional times when supertitles might make sense:
a visiting company doing a very rare work in a language likely to be
unfamiliar to most of its viewers.  In such a case, the loss entailed by
using supertitles may be offset by the gain in comprehensibility.  But
for other cases, it's not that hard to do your homework about CARMEN.

Don't bother to write attacking me as an "elitist" (meaningless word
anyway) -- I've been called worse.  All I am is an opera lover who
doesn't want his favorite medium to fizzle away to nothing.

Jon Alan Conrad
From: wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Supertitling
Date: 29 Aug 92 14:37:22 GMT
Organization: Oxford University VAX 6620

In article <1992Aug27.215817.13690@fid.morgan.com>, steve@fid.morgan.com (Steve Apter) writes:
> One of the reasons I enjoy NY City Opera is their use of supertitles.
> Sorry, my Italian** is just not good enough to follow the story line
> of an unfamiliar opera.  Any opinions on the use of this technology?
> How widespread is its use?
> 
> **German, French, Urdu, &c.

I agree---with surtitles (or subtitles on the telly for that matter), you can
follow the action on stage *and* understand the libretto at the same time. It
saves either wrecking your eyesight reading a libretto in semi-darkness or
spending two days before the performance familiarising yourself with the score.
For those of us for whom going to the opera is a once-a-year treat and buying
an operatic CD is a case of finding the cheapest in a rare sale, libretto or
no, this is the best way of following the plot well.

In Britain, most amateur companies seem to use English translations, or stick
to opera in English. The English National Opera Company at the Coliseum always
performs in English, but Covent Garden (most of the time) uses surtitles.
Glyndbourne Touring Opera uses them when it comes to Oxford, so I presume it
does at Glyndbourne as well. As for the other regional companies, I don't
know---it's a long time since I've seen any of them.

-- 

Stephen Wilcox             |   Remember what happened to the dinosaurs!
wilcox@maths.oxford.ac.uk  |    I did---and look what happened to me.
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: stefan@sinus.stgt.sub.org (Stefan Bechtold)
Subject: Re: Supertitling
Organization: Sinus Stuttgart, Germany
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 23:32:47 GMT

dl@indetech.com (David Lieberman) writes:

>>One of the reasons I enjoy NY City Opera is their use of supertitles.
>>Sorry, my Italian** is just not good enough to follow the story line
>>of an unfamiliar opera.  Any opinions on the use of this technology?
>>How widespread is its use?

>Every major opera company in the U.S. and Canada with the one exception of 
>the Met uses supertitles.  Increasingly they are being used in Europe, too.
Where in Europe ?
I can't imagine that this technology is used anywhere in Germany.
Apart from the fact that the opera houses are often old and it isn't easy
to install such a supertitling, I think the german audience wouldn't 
accept this because it disturbs the music/acting...


Stefan Bechtold


-- 
+ Stefan Bechtold # stefanb@delos.stgt.sub.org # Voice +49 711 813240 +
++++++++sed nemo potuit tangere: merda fuit ! (Martial III 17)+++++++++
From: jwa@vipunen.hut.fi (Jyrki J Wahlstedt)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Fantastic music
Date: 25 Aug 92 23:21:07 GMT
Distribution: rec.music.classical
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland


  I blundered with my news reader and lost the original, but there
  was someone who loved Symphonie Fantastique of Berlioz and asked
  for more music in the same vein.
  I'd say the symphonic poems of Franz Liszt are the stuff to listen
  to: Tasso, Mazeppa, Les Preludes etc. The symphonic poems of R. Strauss
  and Sibelius could be fine, too. Mahler's symphonies are fantastic also,
  although they have no program (i.e. what's been, is removed nowadays).

  (Danse Macabre was mentioned. At least Saint-Saens has written a piece
  with that name. He used it later in his Carnaval des animaux!)
--
!
!	Jyrki Wahlstedt
!		jwa@vipunen.hut.fi
!
!  Our life is no dream, but it should and will perhaps become one.
!
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: clarinet arcana
From: comjohn@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Mr. John T Jensen)
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 22:57:22 GMT
 <1992Aug25.081253.14158W@saruman.sssab.se> <17e8vbINNmc6@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> <1992Aug25.221452.9278@aero.org>
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.

dgolber@aero.org (Dave Golber) writes:

>Take a piece whose key signature has no sharps or flats, as written
>for A clarinet.  This means that when I play it on A clarinet, I have
>a (comparatively) easy time of it.  If I transpose it to play on Bb
>clarinet, I end up with a key signature full of flats ... lots of them.
>[Actually, it may be full of sharps ... I forget which ... I'm a humble 
>folk musician these days, and I don't do this kind of stuff.]
>As a result, the damn thing has become much harder to play.

>The point is that on wood winds, different keys can be _very_ different 
>in terms of the effort it takes to play in that key, because of the 
>way the machine is set up.  Piano: relatively little such problem.

I dunno, this just sounds like saying what the prevous writer suggested:
that clarinets in keys a semitone or tone apart are to avoid the effort of
transposition, which we horn players have to do all the time.  Seems fairly
extreme to have to own two expensive instruments in order to avoid adding
five sharps (B-flat to A).  We horn players have to transpose all sorts of
rot.

>The minor effects: if the composer used the lowest note on the 
>instrument (written low E) on the A clarinet, then I can't play it
>on Bb clarinet at all.  Similar stuff.

>And as various people have already said: different instruments have 
>different tone colors.

Yes, but two instruments only a semitone apart wouldn't sound very
different, would they?  As above, of course, the A-clarinet can go half a
tone lower, is all.

>That's one use for C instruments.
>As I said, I love my C clarinet 'cause it's light and it wails.
>I don't play parts WRITTEN for anything much, these days.

Yes, I can imagine that one a tone higher would have a somewhat different
timbre.  D trumpets, a third above the ordinary B-flat one, sound VERY
different and are used as 'Bach trumpets.'

jj

John Thayer Jensen                      64 9 373 7599 ext. 7543
Commerce Computer Services              64 9 373 7437 (FAX)
Auckland University                     jt.jensen@aukuni.ac.nz
Private Bag 92019
AUCKLAND
New Zealand
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical

Hi,
	I am looking for a book on the development of musical notation. I
guess there must be 000s of them out there, so I will give my 'wish list'.
If anyone knows of a book that comes close, then I would be really grateful
to hear of it.

	Wish List:

		o Covers development of notation from Plainchant neumes (s?)
			to C20th.
		o Explains basic history driving development, and introduction
			to interpreting old MS.
		o Not _too_ dry and academic - my theory is OK but not great.
		o Lots of prety colour plates of example MS.
		o Examples of composers own handiwork: e.g. Tchaikovsky's
			jottings on the back of an old cig. packet whilst on the
			18:12 from Waterloo
		o About $5 and available now from my local newsagent.

OK, I know my last wish will not be fulfilled - but any pointers for the
others?

			Chris. xxx.



________________________________________________________________________________
    "It's a sobering thought that by the time Mozart was my age he had been
                    dead for two years" - Tom Lehrer.
________________________________________________________________________________
Chris Robson, MS 5UR5			Phone:	(503) 750-2766
HP Corvallis Division			Fax:	(503) 752-7811
1000 NE Circle Bvd.
Corvallis, OR 97330			E-Mail:	chrisr@hpcvra.cv.hp.com
USA
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: benjamin@force.ssd.lmsc.lockheed.com
Subject: Re: Bartok Quartets
Reply-To: benjamin@force.ssd.lmsc.lockheed.com
Organization: LMSC, Sunnyvale, California
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 92 16:30:59 GMT

In article <1992Sep2.141549.14741@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca>, walkerd@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (David Walker) writes:
>Can anyone tell me if the Bartok String Quartets played by the
>Tokyo Quartet are available ANYWHERE in any format? Local and
>not-so-local stores tell me that they never made it to CD, and
>that the LPs are no longer available. Can this be true? To my
>ears, they are the finest performances yet, especially no. 4.
>
>Any help at all would make my day! Thanks,
>
>Dave

I would like to add to this request:  I've looked long and hard for
the Julliard Quartet cycle (early 1960's?) of the Bartok Quartets.  
Several critics/reviewers speak highly of it.  Columbia, oops, Sony 
has been re-releasing lots of the recordings from this era, so why...?
The Tokyo's set is also highly regarded.

Brian
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: hafner@ifi.unizh.ch (Michel Hafner)
Subject: Re: Korngold
Organization: University of Zurich, Department of Computer Science
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 92 10:06:01 GMT

In article <CB.92Sep2164438@tamarack13.timbuk> cb@tamarack13.timbuk (Chris Brewster) writes:
>Deryk Barker writes:
>
>   [Korngold] wroted damned good film music, and maybe he
>   actually did find his forte in Hollywood.
>
>As I understand it, he was not just *good*; he essentially invented
>the whole technique of film scoring.  Maybe Bob K. can fill this in.

That's not true. He certainly was one of the top five film music composers in
Hollywood from the mid 30s to the mid 40s, but he didn't invent the basic 
scoring techniques. These were established by many people and start with silent
films that had already original music composed for them in addition to arrange-
ments of classical compositions. There were equally good scores composed by
contemporaries of Korngold ( who started 1935 )
- Max Steiner: King Kong (1933), The informer (1935)
- Franz Waxman: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
- Alfred Newman

								Michel Hafner
-
From: givler@bermuda.cbm.commodore.com (Greg Givler)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Bottom ten operas
Date: 31 Aug 92 17:24:16 GMT
Organization: Another Amiga UNIX System

In article <kiran.715080111@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> kiran@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Kiran Wagle) writes:
>Ken Sherrill <KSSHC@CUNYVM.BITNET> writes:
>
>>The time has come for us to get serious. What ten works should be
>>dropped from the canon, or at least from the standard international
>>performing repertory? 
>>My basic criterion for this list is the "If you can cast them, you can do
>>something much better" standard -- as opposed to the "I can't sit through
>>one more routine performance" standard. By the latter criterion, one might
>
>How about the No Musical Merit Whatsoever standard:
>
>Cav & Pag (Cavalleria Rusticana & I Pagliacci)

Although I am not a fan of Cavalleria Rusticana, I take exception to
Pagliacci. It is one of my favorites. The chills that I get when 
Canio bursts into "No, Pagliaccio non son", did I spell that right. 
Also the end with "La Comedia e finita" And the orchestra blaring 
"Ridi Pagliaccio" it is some of the best drama around. Also one 
of the most beautiful love duets around. Sorry, I don't care 
what anybody says, it will always be one of my favorites, as will 
Faust. 

>Anything by Khatchaturian
>All of Puccini except Turandot

Then you have never really listened to La Boheme, God what 
beautiful music.

>
>-- 
>Kiran Wagle     <kiran@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>     (812) 335-0420

Greg
-- 
Greg Givler                 | "If you're not going to kill me,
Commodore Product Assurance | I have things to do." - From Darkman
givler@cbmvax.commodore.com |
===============================================================================
From: ladasky@netcom.com (John J. Ladasky II)
Subject: Re: clarinet arcana
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 92 08:12:03 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

	I can't resist.

cam@mullet.gu.uwa.edu.au (Cameron Neylon) writes:
>[clarinet arcana deleted]
>This means that a lot of the rather clumsy octave transopssitions in
						   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

	This is a great pun! "Transopssitions!"  It's self-contained!

>I can't think of anything witty enough that people 
>would really want to see it time after time after . .

	Yeah, but sometimes your subconscious will take care of a few 
things for you.

-- 
=============================================================================
 John J. Ladasky II ("ii")				(ladasky@netcom.COM)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Great composers do not borrow - they steal."  - John Ladasky		~ -	
(At the urging of fellow netter Lon Amerman, I stole the above		o o
 quote from Igor Stravinsky, who stole it from a statement made		 >
 by Pablo Picasso about painting, who stole it from...)			\_/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." - Elvis Costello?
							    Frank Zappa?
"Property is theft." - Groucho				    Laurie Anderson?
=============================================================================
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: dbarker@spang.Camosun.BC.CA (Deryk Barker)
Subject: Re: Reply to Pawel Penczek
Organization: Camosun College, Victoria BC, Canada
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 22:10:35 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.185328.22554@news.iastate.edu> txa86@isuvax.iastate.edu writes:
>Mr/Ms Penczek:
>
>     Sorry, I don't have Slatkin's recording of Shostakovich No.4, so
>I don't know whether it is good or not. But I can give you another 
>conductor's recording which is also good:
>
>     Shostakovich Symphony No.4
>     Vladimir Ashkenazy, Conductor
>     Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
>     LONDON records

There is a recently released version by the National SO and
Rostropovitch on Teldec. I haven't heard it, but I heard him conduct
this symphony in London about 6 years ago - ther finest performance I
have ever heard.

Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept., Camosun College, Victoria B.C.


Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: dbarker@spang.Camosun.BC.CA (Deryk Barker)
Subject: Re: Korngold
Organization: Camosun College, Victoria BC, Canada
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 18:00:17 GMT

In article <1992Aug31.155335.16991@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> spg@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Stephen P. Guthrie) writes:
>I have heard that Korngold was a child prodigy acclaimed by Strauss, Mahler
>and Schoenberg. I know he worked for Hollywood after being forced to flee
>from the Nazis, but did he ever realize his potential with 'serious' music.
>I have heard his violin concerto but nothing else. There are some recordings
>of orchestral music out there (eg. symphony, sinfonietta) and also some
>chamber works and operas (Die Tote Stadt). Are any of these of interest
>or are they second rate works?

It depends what you mean by 'second rate'. I, for instance, consider
R. Strauss a second rate composer (as he did himself). The symphony is
interesting, but very outdated for its time (written 1946-7), and
hardly in the same league as, for example, Mahler. A prodigy who
failed to live up to his prodigiosity (as it were). He wroted damned
good film music, and maybe he actually did find his forte in
Hollywood.

Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept., Camosun College, Victoria B.C.


Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: henwe@sssab.se (Henric Weyde)
Subject: Re: clarinet arcana
Posting-Front-End: Winix Conference v 92.05.15  1.20 (running under MS-Windows)
Reply-To: henwe@sssab.se
Organization: Scandinavian System Support AB
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 10:12:47 GMT


>Jack Campin writes:
>
>> What music was written for the C clarinet?
>
The Swedish-Finnish virtuoso clarinet player-composer H. B. Crusell
wrote some very beautiful clarinet concertos and other pieces for
clarinet in the early 19th century. His works have been revived in 
Sweden over the last decade but clarinetists have always kept him 
close to their heart.

/Best regards Henric Weyde
 
 henwe@sssab.se
 Scandinavian System Support AB, Linkoeping, Sweden 
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: ujwb@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Jeff Beer)
Subject: Re: Music, not for air-heads
Organization: Educational Computing Network
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 18:54:49 GMT

Cage wrote a percussion piece for water ballet.  They had a gong played
under water.


Jeff
From: jdooley@maemaster.eng.uci.edu (John R. Dooley)
Subject: Re: JOHN CAGE
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 25 Aug 92 18:32:53 GMT

In article <1992Aug23.004740.706@spang.Camosun.BC.CA> dbarker@spang.Camosun.BC.CA (Deryk Barker) writes:
>> 
>> 
>>Are you telling me that sitting in silence for 4'33" is something other 
>>than boring?  I can't imagine anything less exciting.
>
>Sitting through two hours of Les Miserable - I speak from experience.
>

Whew! I thought I was the only one who felt that way.

John D.




Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: mikulska@astro.Princeton.EDU (Margaret Mikulska)
Subject: Re: records-database
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 04:29:31 GMT

In article <CB.92Aug31153656@tamarack13.timbuk> cb@tamarack13.timbuk (Chris Brewster) writes:
>
>I wrote:
>   >...  My main aim for a recordings database would be to
>   >eliminate redundant typing while allowing complete flexibility in
>    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>   >how the data is retrieved.  I think this aim requires a fully relational
>   >database (such as Alpha 4, Personal RBase and not many others).  
>   >In other words I would have separate tables of recordings (by number),
>   >performers, composers, works, etc. ...
>
>Margaret Mikulska) writes:
>
>   I think that it's really an overkill to use a heavy-duty commercial
>   database.  I don't think that data about recordings are complex, and in
>   my greatly biased opinion a flat ascii file plus a few UNIX tools ...
>   The really hard part is typing in the entries.
>   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>As I said to Bill P, I think your last sentence (as quoted) argues
>against those preceding.  

Not in the least. 

>In a flat file I have to type like this:
>
>  Beethoven  Symphony 5  >  Toscanini  >  NBC Orchestra  >  RCA 1234
>  Beethoven  Symphony 5  >  Toscanini  >  BBC Orchestra  >  EMI 5678
>
>etc.  You have to keep typing the same information over and over.  In
>the above case, you could copy a line and make modifications, but in the
>general case you'd be doing a lot of extra typing. 

Well, you just copy a line and make modifications - obviously, you don't
keep typing the same things.  The only extra
typing is the info that is different in the two records.  What extra
typing is there in the general case?

>With a table-based
>system, the table of recording numbers points at items in the other
>tables.  That doesn't mean it's a trivial job, but it has got to be
>better than the flat-file approach.

There certainly are purposes for which a fancy database is better, but
for cataloging recordings I don't see any advantage in having anything
fancier.  Your mileage may vary, of course, but if it can be done in a
simple way, why look for a fancy way?  Besides, in your case there is
overhead associated with pointers to other tables - how, exactly, do you
implement that?  As you say, it's not a trivial job; while copy&modify a
line is trivial.

Why does it _have_ to be better?  I guess my point is that with UNIX
tools you can do amazingly flexible things with a flat ASCII file as
your data set; and what you can do with it is customizable to the
extreme.  On PCs, things _are_ different.

Of course, it _is_ a matter of personal preferences.


-Margaret
From: mgresham@dscatl.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: A Brahms Contrarion - a few corrections
Date: 30 Aug 92 10:04:43 GMT
Reply-To: mgresham@dscatl.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Organization: Digital Systems Co,  Atlanta, Ga

In article <1992Aug29.005732.9575@credence.com> jeffw@or.credence.com (Jeff Winslow) writes:
>>  I like "Es hing der Rief" in Op. 106 so much...
>
>Groovy, man. I meant "Es hing der Reif".

(Watching old Mod Squad re-runs again I see. :-))

Reminds me of the misprint I saw on an opera poster:

"Un bello in maschera"

(Must've borrowed the overture from William Tell for that one.)


Cheers,

--Mark Gresham

dscatl!mgresham@gatech.edu

==========================
From: smoliar@argon.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: John Cage is Dead
Date: 26 Aug 92 22:33:49 GMT
Reply-To: smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Organization: Institute of Systems Science, NUS, Singapore

In article <1992Aug26.163758.10503@fid.morgan.com> steve@fid.morgan.com (Steve
Apter) writes:
>In article <1992Aug26.113912.8009@nuscc.nus.sg> smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen
>smoliar) writes:
>
>						  (You can also learn a bit
>>about Heidegger;  but since Heidegger ALSO had Nazi connections, I guess you
>>would deem such education either detrimental or worthless.)
>
>I expect you mean "from Heidegger", else what follows doesn't seem to 
>follow at all.  (Well, I suppose that, caught up as you are in "furious-
>debate" mode, you didn't have time to review what you had written.  You
>certainly didn't take the time to read my original reply to your reply
>to my initial posting.)

I meant what I wrote.  The Minnesota collection includes de Man's "Heidegger
Reconsidered," which he wrote in 1964.  Unless you feel you have nothing more
to learn about BEING AND TIME, you might want to check it out.  Meanwhile, I
suggest you follow your own advice about thinking before writing.
-- 
Stephen W. Smoliar; Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore; Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Kent Ridge, SINGAPORE 0511
Internet:  smoliar@iss.nus.sg
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical