Day 21

Quick one today as I'm spending all day tomorrow doing stuff for my upcoming wedding (in May 2010) and have three internship interviews and a big grad school homework thingy to do by Tuesday.

Side One:
Piece: Quartet No. 23 in F Major, K 590
1. Allegro moderato
2. Andante; Allegretto
3. Menuetto: Allegretto; Trio
4. Allegro
Composer: Mozart
Performers: The Budepest Quartet: Roisman & A. Schneider, Violins; Ipolyi, Viola; M. Schneider, Cello.
Record Date: 04/29/1935

Side Two:
Piece: Quartet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 18
1. Allegro
2. Adagio cantabile
3. Scherzo: Allegro
4. Allegro molto, quasi presto
Composer: Beethoven
Performers: The Budepest Quartet: Roisman & A Schneider, Violins; Kroyt Viola; M Schneider, Cello.
Record Date: 06/01/1938

The one thing I will point out about these recordings is the recording date. When I thought about it, I began to raise questions about the recording of a temporal art, like music, and how this captures the the intentions of the composer as interpreted by the musician. When these guys recorded the pieces, they did it through one mic, that fed to a piece of equipment, that literally cut the record right then and there. It was one take, no multi-track, no EQ, no compression, no nothing. The reason that I bring this up is because I've been reading a lot of audiophile websites lately, which often state that the goal of a stereo is to replicate the music exactly as it was played. If that is true, and since Mozart was born and died long before recording music was even an idea, couldn't we say that these, what we would call Lo-Fi recordings, are more true to the piece that Mozart put to paper than any recording that is done today using multi-track, post-editing, compression filled, mixed-down tech masturbation? I honestly don't know, but I would say it's a good question to ask as everyone raves about the joys of the new Beatles mixes.

Day 15

Today we move to chamber music, mainly because I listened to these two string quartet pieces while reading an article on the philosophy of how we teach epidemiologists to conduct data analysis. If I had been listening to something heavy, I would have wanted to kill myself for fear of misclassification.

Side One
Piece: Quartet No 17 in B-Flat Major, K. 458 "The Hunt": First Movement, Allegro vivace assai; Second Movement, Menuetto, Moderato, Trio; Third Movement, Adagio; Fourth Movement, Allegro assai.
Composer: Mozart
Musicians: The Budapest Quartet: First Violin, Joseph Roisman; Second Violin, Alexander Schneider; Viola, Boris Kroyt; Cello, Mischa Schneider.
Record Date: 02/02/1940

Side Two
Piece: Quartet No. 19 in C Major, K. 465 "Dissonant": First Movement, Adagio, Allegro; Second Movement, Andante cantabile; Third Movement, Menuetto, Allegro; Trio; Fourth Movement, Allegro molto.
Composer: Mozart
Musicians: The Budapest Quartet: First Violin, Joseph Roisman; Second Violin, Alexander Schneider; Viola, Istvan Ipolyi; Cello, Mischa Schneider.
Record Date: 11/14/1932

Anyone who has spoken to me about classical music knows that I am no big fan of Mozart. It's that I don't find his work beautiful, or technically amazing, I just have little to no emotional response to 90% of what I hear. I once heard this thought best stated by a TA I had for one of my Music course (I did minor is Musicology), "Mozart wrote pretty pieces for rich people."

I think I'll leave it at that; though I do plan on listening to plenty of Mozart throughout these 10,000 days. Sometimes you just need something pretty.