Donald Satz wrote:

>...  Earlier today, I was listening to classical music stations on the
>net.  The percentage of times I heard only ads was disgusting.  Even worse
>was the general programming: very light classical syrup.  One station
>actually welcomed me to its "romantic" hour - what it played made
>Tchaikovsky look golden to me.  It's a bleak landscape.  The most
>challenging work, by far, was a Chopin piano concerto.

Well, I turned TO the Internet and spent some time last night with KWAX
(I think that was the name), a station in Portland Oregon that sends 62k
"surestream stream" audio, which works very well with my cablemodem.  The
quality of sound was so good that it was as if I were hearing actual FM
here but without interference.

The big number they played, I knew the composer immediately, as it sounded
like Shostakovitch's Symphony #5's big brother.  Apparently he kept #4
under wraps because the authorities wanted more pleasant music.  Still, it
sounded as if he had written this and then taken off all the harsh edges
when he did #5.  Interesting.  It could have been the same piece otherwise.

Dave Lampson mentioned music of Ligeti and others.  We performed the piece
about "Luz" or "light" and it was a bit difficult to learn but we did come
to like that one (this was not always true with modern music, especially
the ones where they make you do clucking sounds while you tap rhythms).
This one became 'music' to us.  Very much so.

I agree with Dave re what 'music' "is" ...  and I suppose the kind of music
many of us are -usually- talking about is then 'organized music':-)

Here's a page that was given in the newsgroups tonight, for global
classical-music listening on the Net (a nice collection of stations, though
not at all complete)

   http://www.casema.net/~ribbens/classic


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