http://conversationalreading.com/classical-music-demise-greatly-exaggerated Reviews, interviews, news, and lots of opinion on world literature Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:37:46 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 http://conversationalreading.com/classical-music-demise-greatly-exaggerated/comment-page-1#comment-4382 R J Keefe Tue, 17 Apr 2007 18:43:29 +0000 http://conversationalreading.com/wordpress/2007/04/classical-music-demise-greatly-exaggerated.html#comment-4382 The classical music recording industry has always been saddled with the problem of "bibiographic completeness." Whether or not there was a demand for Schumann's string quartets (not that there wasn't), someone was going to record them. In the Sixties, several times over. Now that most canonical music has been recorded (if not all), the "completeness" issue is no longer a factor in the making of recordings. It remains a factor (as it was not before) in the maintenance of backlists. If the old Schumann quartet recordings are discontinued, what is to be done? Reissue or re-record? If the industry hasn't figured out an answer to this question, that's largely because it never knew that it was in the fine-arts museum business. Ideally, non-profit foundations would acquire the rights to the best recordings and insure their availability. (The Andante label was an experiment along these lines.) Given your remarks about novelty the other day, Scott, I'd expect you to disagree with my proposition that music can't be listened to intelligently until the second hearing. That's why recordings are so important. The classical music recording industry has always been saddled with the problem of “bibiographic completeness.” Whether or not there was a demand for Schumann’s string quartets (not that there wasn’t), someone was going to record them. In the Sixties, several times over.
Now that most canonical music has been recorded (if not all), the “completeness” issue is no longer a factor in the making of recordings. It remains a factor (as it was not before) in the maintenance of backlists. If the old Schumann quartet recordings are discontinued, what is to be done? Reissue or re-record? If the industry hasn’t figured out an answer to this question, that’s largely because it never knew that it was in the fine-arts museum business. Ideally, non-profit foundations would acquire the rights to the best recordings and insure their availability. (The Andante label was an experiment along these lines.)
Given your remarks about novelty the other day, Scott, I’d expect you to disagree with my proposition that music can’t be listened to intelligently until the second hearing. That’s why recordings are so important.

]]> http://conversationalreading.com/classical-music-demise-greatly-exaggerated/comment-page-1#comment-4381 Bud Tue, 17 Apr 2007 13:40:21 +0000 http://conversationalreading.com/wordpress/2007/04/classical-music-demise-greatly-exaggerated.html#comment-4381 I think there's more to it than the aggregate numbers suggest, although the book you mention seems overly cynical. The middle ground is that the industry is not in great shape and it's difficult to get recordings done unless you are already a big seller - just look at the top-selling list of that savior of everything "long-tail" iTunes - half of it's crap like "the most relaxing..." and The Four Seasons and the rest are just a couple of well known names like Josh Bell and Yo Yo Ma. I think there’s more to it than the aggregate numbers suggest, although the book you mention seems overly cynical. The middle ground is that the industry is not in great shape and it’s difficult to get recordings done unless you are already a big seller – just look at the top-selling list of that savior of everything “long-tail” iTunes – half of it’s crap like “the most relaxing…” and The Four Seasons and the rest are just a couple of well known names like Josh Bell and Yo Yo Ma.

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