HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: vnguyen@husc8.harvard.edu (Vinh Nguyen)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: CD Boxed Sets of Operas
Date: 6 Sep 92 05:44:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Sep6.014438.15410
Reply-To: vnguyen@husc8.harvard.edu
Distribution: usa
Originator: vnguyen@husc8.harvard.edu

In article <1992Sep5.224906.10599@u.washington.edu>, 
lmeissne@milton.u.washington.edu (Loren Meissner) writes:
> Am trying to find a place where I can mail order CD boxed sets of complete operas at a discount. I've just received a card from BMG Classical music service indicating that it is NOT possible to order the following sets through them:
> THE MERRY WIDOW

I think that HMV/EMI is the only major company carrying this opera.
There are two sets with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, the first one has the
economic advantage of being on a single mid-price CD.  You might as
well buy this at any store since there won't be much of a price
difference after the shipping & handling fees are included.  The
latter set is a magnificent improvement over the otherwise excellent
earlier set (which won't make you regret it), but it is packaged 
as a rip off at two full-price CDs each with about 40 minutes of
music for a total of 80+ minutes which could have been squeezed onto
a single CD (like the earlier set) or offered at a discounted price.
Still, music making of this caliber is a bargain at twice the cost!
There is yet another EMI se of this opera which might have been 
deleted, actually two I think, one with Willy Boskovsky and his
Vienna crowd and one in French with Mady Mesple' (?).  Hmm, it 
seems that HMV/EMI has a glut and a monopoly on this opera for
I can't think off-hand of any other major label with a recording
of it.  Well, my best advice is to go buy the mid-price Schwarzkopf/
Ackerman set.  I don't think that BMG will carry any version of this
opera because it only carry the Polygram group and RCA recordings.

> THE BARBER OF SEVILLE

But because BMG carries the Polygram group and RCA recordings it
should carry (and I have seen these in their selections in the past,
even though I'm no longer ordering through them -- having exhausted
their catalogue, I guess) the Marriner set on Phillips and the 
Leinsdorf set on RCA.  Check again with them on this.

> PELLIAS & MELISADONE
 
You might wait a while for this set to come up on the BMG catalogue.
BMG should carry some new Decca and DG recordings and there might
be a chance that the new Dutoit and Abbado recordings will pop up.
Go for the Dutoit one I guess, since he's consistently excellent in
the French repertory (based on his excellent Ravel cycle) while
Abbado isn't really at home here.  I'm sorry that Pelleas & Melissande
isn't high on my list, and I haven only heard the Karajan set on EMI
LPs.  As much as I like Debussy's orchestral music, this opera of
his left me a bit cold.  Ah, I wish there were no singing ...  :-)

> Thanks in advance for any suggestions you can offer.
 
Sorry, I have no idea about any other discount mail order places.
Columbia house isn't very good either with prices or selections.
BMG is your best bet, if you have the patience.

Vinh Nguyen
From: coren@osf.org (Robert Coren)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: GHOSTS OF VERSAILLES -- Boston-area tape?
Date: 14 Sep 92 15:55:29 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Open Software Foundation

Oh, damn and blast! I forgot to set the VCR this morning. Is anyone in
the Boston area taping tonight's broadcast? I'll try to get my lover
to set it up, but he may (1) forget or (2) not be home soon enough.

Robert
coren@osf.org
From: loewenst@aramis.rutgers.edu (David Loewenstern)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Fair Phyllis was Re: Place in France
Date: 12 Sep 92 21:52:32 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Whippany, NJ
Cc: loewenst

In article <1992Sep3.222306.1@eagle.wesleyan.edu>, phoogenboom@eagle.wesleyan.edu writes:
> 
> While we're on the subject of composers quoting childhood tunes, who out there
> is familiar with "Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone," a madrigal by John
> Farmer.  Near the beginning of the piece, on the words, "after her lover," one
> of the voices sings the tune familiarly associated with "nyah nyah nyah nyah
> nyah," to wit:
> 
> GeaGE (transposed to c major)

The altos sing "nyah, nyah,nyah, nyah, nyah".  Funny, having sung 
"Fair Phyllis" for 2 years, I never noticed it before.  I don't 
think I'll ever be able to sing it again with a straight face (as 
if all the running up and down weren't enough...). 
  
Deborah Greenberg (his lovely wife) on David Loewenstern's 
account.
Xref: sparky rec.music.classical:12424 comp.music:4350
From: smith@CS.Stanford.EDU (Jeremy Smith)
Subject: re: Karajan & Solti (was Mahler's 5th & Solti etc.)
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 22:20:31 GMT

In article <8SEP199216410533@deimos.caltech.edu>, inr@deimos.caltech.edu (I. Neill Reid) writes:

|>   although there are some very fine recordings, it's a very Germanic 
|>  Sibelius that he presents 
|> 

Perhaps,  but Sibelius himself said that HvK was the only conductor who understood
his music.

Jeremy.

Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: smith@honesty.Stanford.EDU (Jeremy Smith)
Subject: Re: Sibelius 2nd symphony
Reply-To: smith@honesty.Stanford.EDU.Stanford.EDU (Jeremy Smith)
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 18:17:35 GMT

In article <1992Sep07.172730.6857@bas-a.bcc.ac.uk> ucap22w@ucl.ac.uk (Martin S T Watts) writes:
>
>Sibelius 2nd gets a rather bad press, on the grounds that it's less
>formally innovative than the later works, but surely this is only relatively
>so. The first movement is quite adventurous really, and the thematic material
>throughout seems to me very imaginative, with some beautiful tunes. Indeed, for
>all their other rewards the later symphonies have a distinct lack of melody.
>
I really have to agree here.  Not only is the thematic material very
beautiful in Sibelius 2nd but it rather strikes me as an anthem of
national pride along with Finlandia.  Remember that Finland was occupied
by Russia in 1901 when the Symphony was being composed.  And although
Sibelius emphatically denied that the Symphony had a nationalistic
program lurking beneath the music,  I find it hard to believe it is
absent of Finnish pride.

(remember, Mackerras conducting L.S.O. is the *ULTIMATE* perfomance of
this work)

Jeremy.
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: slothrop@cheshire.oxy.edu (Roger Lebow)
Subject: Re: Mauricio Kagel
Organization: Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041 USA.
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 07:06:00 GMT

Kagel is Argentinian, though he's lived abroad (mostly in Germany, I seem to
recall) for many years.

As you guessed, his music is published by Universal Edition in Vienna. Their
American agent is European American Music in Paoli, Pennsylvania (I don't
have their 'phone number offhand, but you can call information). Many of Kagel's
works for small ensembles are available for sale; the rest may be rented from
European American.

Roger
From: eijkhout@cupid.cs.utk.edu (Victor Eijkhout)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Six fingers to play harpsichord, eh?
Date: 8 Sep 92 19:18:13 GMT
Reply-To: eijkhout@cupid.cs.utk.edu (Victor Eijkhout)
Organization: University of Tennessee, Knoxville - Department of Computer Science
NNTP-Posting-Host: cupid.cs.utk.edu

In article <5600@blue.cis.pitt.edu.UUCP>, genetic+@pitt.edu (Dr. Dave) quotes:
|> 
|> 	The correct way to strike the key is longitudinally, with a
|> 	curving motion, so that the finger retains its natural relaxed
|> 	curved position, and the key is struck with maximum moment and
|> 	precision.  However, to do this with the thumb would involve a
|> 	bizarre rotation of the wrist, throwing the other fingers down
|> 	below the level of the keys, in order to strike with the tip of
|> 	the thumb in the same way that you strike with the tips of the
|> 	other fingers.  To strike with the *edge* of the thumb was as
|> 	unthinkable as to strike with the pad (or edge) of one of the
|> 	other fingers.

This would be true for most mammals. However, humans (and apes?) have
this extra degree of freedom for the thumb.

And what's wrong with using the sides of other fingers. Never
heard of chop-sticks?

|>       David M. Tate

Victor.
From: diarmuid@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Diarmuid Pigott)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Karajan & Solti (was Mahler's 5th & Solti etc.)
Date: 11 Sep 1992 18:40:36 +0800
Organization: The University of Westrn Australia
NNTP-Posting-Host: uniwa.uwa.edu.au
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

Jeremy Smith (smith@CS.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
: Sibelius himself said that HvK was the only conductor who understood
: his music.

Where? My Sibelius biographies says other things... 


A thing I'd like cleared up is if the statement in one biography about
Debussy confessing to S. that he hadn't written a symphony because he couldn't
is true or not. Anyone know?


Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: paul@cgh.cgh.com (Paul Homchick)
Subject: Re: John Cage
Organization: Chimitt Gilman Homchick, Inc.
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 20:57:32 GMT

diarmuid@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Diarmuid Pigott) quote/wrote:
>al@sys6626.bison.mb.ca (Haus Der Luge) writes:
>: I personally believe that, in the long run, Cage will be remembered as 
>: possibly one of THE most important composers in history.
>
>*sigh*

I tried to resist (really!), but I cannot.  Today's New York Times
Arts section contained the following letter:

'To the Editor:

  'In "Cage Merely an Inventor? Not a Chance" [Aug 23], John Rockwell,
assessing the importance of John Cage, writes of "4'33"," a composition
characterized as Cage's "best-known score": "The idea was simplicity
reduced to genius:  a performer or performers come on stage, assume
positions of readiness and then do nothing for 4 minutes 33 seconds --
in three movements.  This is conceptual art with a vengeance... Like
so much of Cage's artwork... '4'33"' had a philosophical agenda.  It
was to call attention in a formal context to the richness of ambient
sound:  to tune the audience's ears to ever-present sonic wonders, and
hence to enrich lives through meditative awareness.  Instant Zen, if
you will."
  'What Mr. Rockwell omits to mention is that the Cage score of 1952
was appropriated "note for note" from a composition of 1928 by Harold
Acton called "Cornelian."  Acton's work is in prose and describes a
musician who conducts performaces "consisting largely of silence," in
the words of Humphrey Carpenter ("The Brideshead Generation").  This
coincidence rases serious questions about genius, philosophical
agendas, meditative awareness and other kinds of awareness as well.
  'It would be useful to know whether Cage's silence is artistically
preferrable to Acton's; whether the later work may be considered an
improvement upon the earlier or merely a "quotation" of it; whether
Cage's work is an homage to his predecessor's, and which work should
be regarded as more meaningful.
           'Anthony Hecht
             Washington


 I find this interesting, even if it isn't true, as it suggests a
thought experiment: imagining that 4'33" was written twice, and then
asking Mr. Hecht's questions about it.
  Although I wouldn't part with my copy of "Silence", or my Folkways
recording of "Indeterminacy", or my CDs of "Singing Through" and "Four
Walls," when I survey most of Cage's work beyond the prepared piano
pieces, I find myself in agreement with Boulez's comment on Cage made
to Morton Feldman: "I love John's mind," Boulez said, "but I don't
like what it thinks."  (From Calvin Tomkins' book: "The Bride and the
Batchelor").
-- 
Paul Homchick                    :UUCP     {rutgers | uunet} !cbmvax!cgh!paul
Chimitt Gilman Homchick, Inc.    :Internet                       paul@cgh.com
1111 West DeKalb Pike, Suite 101 :MCI                               PHOMCHICK
Wayne, PA  19087-2179            :GEnie                              HOMCHICK
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Identification (and conductor) wanted
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 02:49:51 GMT

In article <ROB.92Sep11091504@leopard.cs.man.ac.uk> Robert Marshall <rajm@cs.man.ac.uk> writes:
>
>According to Charles Rosen's `The Classical Style', a well known
>conductor (unnamed) used to, usually, omit the 5/8 sections from a
>well known piece of music (also unnamed) because he found it too
>difficult to beat. The composer is supposed to have protested
>privately but in vain.

>Anyone care to name names?

This sounds a little like the story of Koussevitsky and _Le Sacre_.
He supposedly had his score rebarred, and some sections written in
doubled note values.

Roger
From: dbarker@spang.Camosun.BC.CA (Deryk Barker)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Du Pre Recital
Date: 14 Sep 92 22:59:08 GMT
Organization: Camosun College, Victoria BC, Canada

In article <00960932.F3620320@vms.csd.mu.edu> 6145goldino@vms.csd.mu.edu writes:
>Of the recordings of the Mahler 6 that I have heard none have done the slow
>movement so powerfully as Solti/CSO.  No other music comes so close to making
>me want to cry.

And Jacequline du Pre was in the cello section? Or what?

Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept., Camosun College, Victoria B.C.
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: cb@tamarack13.timbuk (Chris Brewster)
Subject: Re: Shenkarian analysis
In-reply-to: beh@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu's message of 14 Sep 92 17:40:54 GMT
Organization: pubs
Distribution: rec
Date: 14 Sep 92 17:17:57 CDT


I haven't looked into Schenker but he seems to offer what might be
thought of as the down-side of the German approach to things.  I just
don't understand what he adds to the old I-V-I "irreducible" plan for
tonal works.  

What I've noticed is that many themes begin on note 5, such as the first
theme in Mozart's clarinet concerto.  The fifth note over the tonic
chord seems a perfect Mozartian (or anyone else's) beginning: it's
stable but not really stable; the chord has no tension, but the melody
is "open to suggestion".  But the melody will of course end on 1.  So my
own little hypothesis was that, with an over-all harmonic scheme of
I-V-I, the primitive melody is 5-1, or maybe 5-7-8.  And even if the
melody doesn't actually begin on 5, well, it still does in spirit.  (The
down-side of German thinking: I have a system that explains everything,
which is true even if reality doesn't seem to conform to it.)  So maybe
I should develop a 3000-page theory from this; votes?

Chris Brewster
cb@cray.com
From: haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Ned Rorem book
Date: 9 Sep 92 05:40:43 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: hobbes.ucsc.edu


Last night I saw a couple of copies of "Settling the Score" essays on
music by Ned Rorem on the marked-down table at a local bookstore.
So if you'd like to have a copy of this book now is a good time to
be looking in the bargain section in bookstores.
-- 
haynes@cats.ucsc.edu
haynes@cats.bitnet

"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art."
        Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: inr@eccles.caltech.edu (I. Neill Reid)
Subject: re: recommendations of choral performances
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 16:35:00 GMT

 A further clarification :-
>From: wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk  writes
 [ bits deleted ]
>>                          the 16 Harry Christophers 
>Very good, but see the Monteverdi choir, the Tallis Scholars, the Taverner
>Consort,...

>> 
>>                          the Tallis scholars 
>Excellent---the same singers under a different conductor produce similar
>results.

  There are only 3 singers in common between the 16 and the Tallis
Scholars (Sally Dunkley, Tessa Bonner - who isn't on the 16s latest
Shephard disc) and Francis Steele). So definitely NOT just the same singers
(although undoubtedly all stemming from the same excellent Oxbridge
choral tradition)

>Stephen Wilcox             |   Remember what happened to the dinosaurs!
>wilcox@maths.oxford.ac.uk  |    I did---and look what happened to me.

 Neill Reid   - inr@eccles.caltech.edu
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: mikulska@crux.Princeton.EDU (Margaret Mikulska)
Subject: Re: Parsifal and the taragota
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: mikulska@astro.princeton.edu (Margaret Mikulska)
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 18:51:35 GMT

In article <18mdseINNgao@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> diarmuid@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Diarmuid Pigott) writes:
>I believe that the taragota was intended to have a solo part in
>Parisfal, but this is normally taken by a cor anglais. Is there a
>recording with the taragota? If so, is the recording good in other
>departments (ie singing and conducting)?


1. It's "tarogato", not "taragota".
2. Not in "Parsifal", but in "Tristan" (the shepherd's song, beginning
    of Act 3).
3. It was the other way round: Wagner specified cor anglais, and
    Mahler suggested the use of tarogato instead.

I never heard of any recording of Tristan with tarogato (unless I simply
didn't notice that it was there).


-Margaret
Xref: sparky rec.music.classical:12655 alt.exotic-music:494
From: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical,alt.exotic-music
Subject: the tarogato
Date: 11 Sep 92 15:02:52 GMT
Reply-To: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie

dclason@dante.nmsu.edu (Dennis Clason) wrote:
> O.K., I'll bite.  What's a taragota...

Tarogato (I think there's an acute accent on the last "o").  It's a wooden
soprano saxophone invented in Hungary around 100 years ago as part of the
nationalist revival of Hungarian culture; the original tarogato was a
double-reed folk instrument (I'm not sure if it was an oboe or a shawm)
with a tone-colour that was a bit much for the revivalists (according to
Baines, "Woodwind Instruments and their History").

I heard a tarogato in a music shop in Prague a few weeks ago; it sounded
much like you'd expect a wooden soprano sax to.  Pleasant timbre, but not
really distinctive enough to win a niche of its own.  I think Ravel uses
it somewhere.

-- 
--  Jack Campin    room G092, Computing Science Department, Glasgow University,
17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, Scotland   TEL: 041 339 8855 x6854 (work)
INTERNET: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk or via nsfnet-relay.ac.uk    FAX: 041 330 4913
BANG!net: via mcsun and uknet     BITNET: via UKACRL    UUCP: jack@glasgow.uucp
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: chrisi@lloyd.Camex.COM (Chris Ischay)
Subject: Re: Preparing vs. was-Re: Supertitling
Organization: Camex Inc., Boston MA
Date: Fri, 04 Sep 1992 16:37:43 EDT

In article <1992Sep4.013431.19617@indetech.com> dl@indetech.com (David
Lieberman) writes:

>I have heard lots of opera-in-english.  I find most of it unbearable.

I wonder whether you find it harder to listen to works in translation when
you know the original reasonably well.  Yes, Rigoletto sounds funny.  On
the other hand, when I hear an opera in the theatre that I've never heard
before, I'm grateful to know what's going on.  As I've said before, that's
not my normal practice, but at least it's an option.

>Everybody praises the Andrew Porter translations.  I have never heard any
>of them.  Are the translations good or are they praised because of Porter's
>influential critical position?

I have Porter's translation of Falstaff.  I appreciate it more as a
masterwork of translation than as a perfect singing libretto.  He managed
to capture the sense of a lot of the original without a slavish regard for
literal translation.  Does it do harm to the original?  I don't think so.
But then how do you translate lines like, "Pizzica, pizzica, ..." however
it goes from there?  I think he did a pretty good job.

Chris Ischay
chrisi@camex.com
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
From: jeffw@or.credence.com (Jeff Winslow)
Subject: Re: need train song recommendations
Organization: Credence Systems Corp. Beaverton, OR
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 02:23:07 GMT

I see I'm a bit late with this info, but another possibility is the last
of Debussy's "Proses Lyriques", "De Soir", I believe, which has train
imagery in the piano accompaniment.

But if your eight-year-old thinks about classical vocal music what I
thought about it when I was eight, this may wind up being the least-played
piece in the compilation. 

						Jeff Winslow
From: gjm11@cus.cam.ac.uk (G.J. McCaughan)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: recommandation for good performances of choral works.
Date: 8 Sep 92 17:27:28 GMT
Organization: U of Cambridge, England

In article <Bu8nLI.9An@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, dmnhieu@riemann.math.purdue.edu (Duy-Minh NHIEU) writes:

>    If I were to study performances on choral music (ie: What constitute a good
> choir/or choral group?), and I want to go by examples, what would you recommand?(I list here a list of some group that I know of, please add to it and/or correct me if I am wrong)
> 
>      big groups:  The King's college choir
>                   The Cambridge singers (John Rutter)
>                   The Montevedi choir (together with the English Baroque
>                                        soloist, conducted by John Elliot 
>                                        Gardiner)
> 
>                   The Robert Shaw choral
>                   The Westminster choir.
> 
>     small groups:
>             
>                   The kings' singers

I'm not sure what you consider a "big group", but surely the choir of King's 
College, Cambridge is not "big" by any sensible definition. (Not more than about
30 singers.) I suspect the same is true for the choir of Westminster Cathedral.
Note that both of these (I think; certainly the first) use boys rather than
women for their soprano parts, which may or may not be a problem.

It is my opinion that Trinity has a better choir than King's, but then maybe
I'm biased. :-)

-- 
Gareth McCaughan     Dept. of Pure Mathematics & Mathematical Statistics,
gjm11@cus.cam.ac.uk  Cambridge University, England.    [Research student]
From: Mike_Quigley@mindlink.bc.ca (Mike Quigley)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Revueltas (was Re: obscure but good)
Date: 16 Sep 92 00:25:02 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

I have an album of Revueltas conducted by Eduardo Mata on RCA ARL 1-2320 dating
from 1977. It contains Sensemaya, Redes, Caminos, Itinerarios and Janitzio. New
Philharmonic Orchestra, produced by Charles Gerhardt. Great stuff!