From: "alexander inglis" <alexander.inglis@canrem.com>
Subject: liner notes
Reply-To: "alexander inglis" <alexander.inglis@canrem.com>
Organization: Canada Remote Systems
Distribution: rec
Date: 22 Dec 92 14:54:07 EST

From time to time I hear complaints about the decline in "presentation"
that CDs represent since the good ol' days of LPs. I don't go back to
the 78 era, but in my time I collected a LOT of LPs. I'm not convinced
that the extent of documentation we receive now is, on average, any
worse than it used to be.

I can think of one series, in fact, that is *easily* the most heavily
documented I have ever encountered: CD or LP. That's the extraordinary
Schubert series from Hyperion. At least a couple of dozen pages of
densely packed notes and translations -- sorry, it's *all* in English.

The most extensive LP documentation that comes to mind was the book (not
booklet) that came with the original release on DGG of Schoenberg/
Berg/Webern string quartets. Don't have the LPs any longer -- but I
*still* have the book!

If you don't mind putting up with a stilted performance, there's also
that remarkable documentation accompanying Gilbert Caplan's performance
of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. At the price, it's almost worth it
for the documentation alone!

I've always been bothered by budget releases -- frequently aimed at the
casual buyer -- that contain *no* documentation at all. Scandalous! This
is the very crowd that needs something to hang their hat on. Yet another
release of Beethoven's Fifth at full price under any famous conductor --
well, maybe we don't need musical detail here. But the $6 CD could be
the first (and only) recording a buyer has: it ought to have something.

It's not just economics, despite the wails from the producers. Naxos
proves that. Its line of inexpensive CDs (they sell here from C$5-7, or
about 1/3 mainstream discs on sale) are a model. You not only get a
couple of paragraphs talking about musical form, you get a bit of
historical perspective and a few words on the performers. Since this
level of information could be squeezed into a couple of pages, even
budget disks with three languages ought to manage this.

Finally, does anyone care to share their favourite "gobbledegook" liner
notes? As much as I enjoy his music making, Giuseppe Sinopoli shouldn't
be allowed near a typewriter! His brilliant disc of Schubert Unfinshed/
Mendelssohn Italian has a Sinopoli note that begins:

"Standing outside any typology of the emotions, Schubert's 'Unfinished'
represents one of the most disconcerting examples in the music
literature that may be said to belong to the funerary category, the
music of mourning, by which I mean the cultic celebration of loss, the
loss of some good. That good may never have existed, but the very fact
of its having been so passionately desired yet never achieved removes it
into a limbo zone of the consciousness where it is possessedas dream".

Ghaaackkk!

Glenn Gould was capable of dropping off the deep end from time to time.
And Wagner opera box annotators, I think, are *required* to be obtuse!

Alexander Inglis  |  InterNet: alexander.inglis@canrem.com
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