A Happy New Year to all Followers of Kammermusikkammer!

If you also want to find a four leaf clover, you may follow this advice or maybe this one (or also both)

Pablo Casals plays "El Cant dels Ocells" (Youtube)

Yesterday I posted Pablo Casals performance of the Bach Cello suites. And here is another fine piece, the "song of birds".

Scoredaddy's goodbye and farewell

Scoredaddy announced the official demise of his blog:

SCOREDADDY'S was my labor of love for more than two years, offering the opportunity to sample obscure and often-impossible to find music: music that is ignored and buried by recording companies, and otherwise unavailable to people in most parts of the world. It was a place of discovery, both for its visitors and for me, as I delighted in learning more about the music I love and share.

In choosing material to feature (almost on a daily basis), I always sought to make SCOREDADDY'S a place that I, myself, would enjoy spending some time at. In accordance with my own musical tastes, I strove to include diverse genres, hence SCOREDADDY'S familiar slogan "superb music of all kinds".

I guess I was doing something right as SCOREDADDY'S attracted a considerable following and I received e-mails and friendly comments on a daily basis. In addition to the stimulating interaction generated by SCOREDADDY'S readers, a group of friendly collectors generously contributed their own shares of hard to find, out-of-print discs and rare LP's. It all seemed like a win-win proposition for all involved, especially since the vast majority of the items on offer were not commercially available in 95% of the world. However, some blog-troll out there in cyber(looney)space was not pleased.

Read the full doleful story...

Appearance in pairs

As a rule of thumb, lossless blogs seem to appear as pairs. The latest newcomers are not really twins (like the recent both ottos), but only casual incidents:

Pepe's Blog (picture on left) is an archive of CDs and DVDs and TV-rips concerning operas, the first and only lossless opera blog I ever heard from. Pepe started on the 8th of November, and has reached up to now 173 posts.

Classical Archives (picture on right) covers the mainstream (instrumental) genres of classical music; artists range from Monteverdi to Penderecki. Since September he posted 29 articles; some of them contain multiple CDs.

The best of luck, dear newcomers!

Timeline of New Composers

When advancing the history of music in chronological order, I recently reached J. S. Bach. With him, born 1685, my blog switches from "Alte Musik" (Early Music) to "Klassik" (Classics). (Following my opinion, the change of an area should be caused by the appearance of an giant).

Here is the second part of the Timeline of Composers, for your convenience. Like the first part, which I posted in February, its not my own work, but stolen somewhere in the net.

Brandon's Classics - Música Libre

Recently I discovered two new lossless blogs:

Brandon's Classics, maintained by Brandon, starts on September, 23th.

Música Libre, maintained by expanium, starts on November, 5th.

Welcome newcomers, to the lossless classical community!

Pachelbel's Canon in D Major (Musica Antiqua Köln)

Two hours ago I posted Pachelbel's Canon & Gigue - together with other chamber music of this master - at the Kammermusikkammer.




An other fine performance by the ensemble "Musica Antiqua Köln" comes from Youtube:


Enjoy! (And then read the original post.)

Kammermusikkammer reaches 300.000 readers

Last weekend, the page counter, which I installed during summer 2008 (I cannot remember the exact time stamp), exceeded 300.000 impressions. I am impressed too.

Leverkühn closed his corner and two Ottonian twins appear

The well-established blog http://leverkuhnscorner.blogspot.com/ is dead and gone. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. His owner, Leverkühn, was the inventor of "black links hidden before a black background".

As some kind of compensation, "Otto" appears, with blog twins:
Otto's Classical Musick
Otto's Baroque Musick

Otto says: "A warm welcome to all fellow classical music enthusiasts.The purpose of my blogs is two-fold...to give back to the community who has helped me so much over the years and provide info to my radio listeners. Thank you both and thank you 1.FM for your continued support. All of the cd's you find here are the latest additions to the web radio and are broadcast or will be in the near future. I want to encourage every visitor to buy the cd's and support the artists. Thank you for visiting my blog and please listen to my radio whilst browsing. Contributions and suggestions/opinions are most welcome.

Happy listening!
Otto."

Good luck!
WMS.Nemo

Soap and Plum Preserves

Mail from P.A.S. to me, from Jul 26:

Hello, WMS Nemo,

Rho, from the State of Wonder blog recommended that I let you know of my new project:

http://sandflyer-sapp.blogspot.com/

I will try to complement posts from bloggers like Ice at Classicallibrary, Rho at State of Wonder, Edmond at Fauteuil d'Oreille and a few others.

I would be honoured if you could spread the word, I hope you will not be disappointed.

Thanks in advance,

Sandflyer,
Warsaw, Poland

Sandflyer states in his profile:

I try to aim for performances of works off the beaten path, generally unavailable on CD or performances by noteworthy artists.
Sometimes, both requirements are met... If the same live performance becomes available on CD, I will remove my broadcast recording, directing the listener to an appropriate link...
I make all the recordings myself.

A new blogger's search added to Kammermusikkammer

Recently, I added blogger's new tool, the smart "Search Box", to my Kammermusikkammer. After entering the search string and pressing the appropriate button, you get the results subdivided into several tabs:


"Dieser Blog" (This Blog, Kammermusikkammer): Powered by Google Blog Search. New posts may not appear immediately.

"Verlinkt von hier" (Linked From Here): Searches the pages I have linked to from the Kammermusikkammer.

"Lossless music blogs": etc: Searches the blogs which are included in the respective columns.

Rho's State of Wonder & Alio Modo

I proudly present links to two new blogs in my "Lossless Music Blogs" column:

Rho started A State of Wonder, a blog "mostly about the music of J.S.Bach, in particular his keyboard music, and especially the Well-Tempered Clavier, but, then again, not exclusively about either. Basically, it will grow as it needs. I hope you enjoy some of the music posted here."

The other blog is Alio Modo, run by an anonym "Librarian" / "admin", who demonstrates a distinctive taste, both avantgarde (Antheil, Adams, Xenakis) and old style (Pergolesi, Vivaldi).

Happy Birthday, dear Closet!

"A Closet of Curiosities", the excellent avantgarde music blog, run by grey calx, celebrates its 3rd anniversary.

Grey Calx:

"I believe that three years is a milestone in the blogosphere especially of this type of blog. A Closet of Curiosities has come far from an obscure blog with just a few visitors to a semi-obscure blog with more traffic.

Finally, I would like to thank my visitors for stopping by and checking out the stuff I post. I hope that so far I have accomplished what I set out to do which is for this blog to be an educational resource for electronic, avant-garde, ethnic, environmental/nature, improv and ambient music and sounds as well as the quirky novelty recordings and whatever else I occasionally like to show off to the world."

And this is my gratulation song, prizing Greys arduous and excellent work:

More amendments to my lossless blogs list

On February 22th Ivan started the blog Classical And Organ Music For All, with up to now 56 posts, mainly concerning organ music (surprise!), but also complete works of C.P.E. Bach and Rachmaninoff.

Ipromesisposi is a so far small blog, named after its owner: "Aquí trataté de anotar las sensaciones en la escucha de mis obras favoritas. El objetivo no es decidir cual es mejor o peor grabación, sino aprehender el carácter específico de la interpretación." (The blog presents works in different interpretations, like it is done in Guía del Mundo Clásico).

Hemos Hablado demasiado del silencio is a already two years old blog, but has only been lossless for a short time. Jorgewic is very interested in singers (arias, piano songs).

Pancho Villa started Archivosclasicos only some days ago and reached now 172 (!) posts. Panchos taste is refined, he degusted also from other blogs (like Archinuls gone http://huehueteotl.blogspot.com/, but this is another story).

Much Ado about NEW LOSSLESS RuleZ in AvaxHome's music section

The admins of AvaxHome finally had the pleasure to inform their publishers about new rules for music publications in lossless format, which results in many misunderstandings, rants, and verbal slanders. But also some interesting topics arised out of the broad emotional discussions, f.e. links to faqs concerning the correct use of Exact Audio Copy:

How_to_configure_EAC_for_a_perfect_rip
install1.html
http://xs.vc/eac/
flacaddicted.googlepages.com
EAC__How_to_encode_into_FLAC
EAC__How_to_encode_into_WavPack
hydrogenaudio Category:EAC_Guides
Why do I like Cue sheet so much?

Newly-discovered Russian secrets

Recently, I discovered the russian webside intoclassics.net, because it contains a link to mine kammermusikkammer. Now, if you link to me, I will link to you.

The webside refers to some music archives, I never heard before. Most of them I have added to the lossless resp. mp3 blog lists, f.e:
v r e n o v a t i o n
zzzyva's music room
Блог Минора (Minor)
Музыкальная вертикаль (Peterforte)
Русский классический романс - А. А. Алябьев
CapsLock.WS (which is also a software repository)
Красная книга Российской эстрады

These findings give good reason to start learning Cyrillic letters and Russian language. Ole!

Amendments to the lossless blogs list

A short while ago, two new lossless classical music blogs started, and have been added to my blogroll:

"Harmoniemusik" started on the 23th of january, with the "Unbelievable Mozart", which are (more or less) contemporary re-workings of Mozart's own compositions, works whose attribution to Mozart is likely but uncertain or reconstructions from fragments. Anchusa, the blog owner, is also a frequent contributor to "Meeting in Music".

On the 7th of february, Chamaeleo followed with "2Cs and 2Fs",  a blog, entirely devoted to the violin. In only ten days of existence, the blog grew to 17 posts. 

I wish both "newcomers" much pleasure with their works.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Ars longa, vita brevis (Audio)

Beethoven komponierte den Kanon "Ars longa, vita brevis" WoO 192, so schnell seine Feder schreiben wollte, in einer Zeit von etwa zwei Minuten. Die eigenhändige Widmung lautet: "Geschrieben am 16ten September 1825 in Baden, als mich mein lieber talentvoller Musikkünstler u. Freund Smart (aus England) allhier besuchte. Ludwig van Beethoven".

(Quelle: Beethovenhaus Bonn)

Der Kanon ist 24 Sekunden lang:


Aber es gibt noch zwei weitere, ganz andere "Ars longa" Kompositionen von Beethoven. Hier ist "Ars longa, vita brevis" WoO 170 aus dem Jahre 1816:


Sowie die Version WoO 193 (aus 1825?):

Bachs "Musicalisches Opfer" reposted in lossless FLAC format

My very first post for the Kammermusikkammer was Johann Sebastian Bach, "Musicalisches Opfer" (BWV 1079), performed by Enrico Gatti's Ensemble Aurora. It was the first and only post in a lossy format (mp3), and to repair this fault, now I rescanned the CD and reposted in lossless (single) flacs (with cuesheet).

CD Info (Tracklist, Covers, Booklet, Links to Downloads)

As a sample you may hear now Track No. 16, "Canon perpetuus":

A poem by Oswald von Wolkenstein

Read the main article about Oswald von Wolkenstein at the Kammermusikkammer

Back to the roots again - a timeline of "Old Composers"

With my next post featuring Oswald von Wolkenstein, I will return to the beginning of European artistic music, and afterwards follow the timeline in roughly chronological order (Ars Nova, Renaissance, Barocco, ecc.). Be prepared to hear a lot of polyphonic music in the next weeks (masses, motets, chansons, lais).

Nevertheless, every forth post will be out of the order and a piece of "normal" chamber music (f.e. Bachs Goldberg Variations, if you accept the version for string trio as "normal" chamber music).

Lydia Kavina plays theremin: Debussy's "Claire de lune"

Read the original post

A new year - two (NO: three) brand new blogs

Last monday, tonyangelo started a new lossless classical music blog "La peau douce" (with up to now 9 posts, like the Stravinsky shown beside).

Also on last monday, the blog "Classical in the Air" was born, maintained by upkerry14 (Nickname is "Bill"). Bill says: "I'm going to try a blog featuring classical music in lossless format only ( FLAC, APE etc... except for some DAB which are shared here in thier original lossy format) of FM/digital radio broadcasts that I get mostly from www.dimeadozen.org. I have no idea how much time I will devote to this so it's a wait and see sort of thing. Feel free to contribute as well of course. Enjoy the tunes."

UPDATE: I just discovered another blog owned by upkerry14, named A Thunderous Sound. It started with string quartets by Max Reger, a composer seldom found in the lossless blogs and avax.

Welcome, newcomers to the classical blogs comunity!

The Concert Hall changed to FLAC format

On Friday, December 19, 2008, scarpia said on The Concert Hall:

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Starting Monday, December 15, the files for download will be presented only in FLAC format. Also, the download links will be available on the window of the post comments. So, you must open the comments window to have access to the download links. This week will be entirely devoted to the complete symphonies of Darius Milhaud. Stay tuned and enjoy the concert. Thanks.

Well done, Scarpia !

MEETING IN MUSIC: New Classical Music Web Portal

Scoredaddy recently posted in his blog Fanfare For Aaron Copland:

I want to take this opportunity to encourage all visitors to this site to also visit a marvelous new portal dedicated to classical music.

MEETING IN MUSIC features interesting articles, links to the best classical blogs on the web, and occasional links to sample some of the great music discussed amongst the blog participants.

My good friend Sankerib designed the site and although in constant improvement and development, MEETING IN MUSIC is already operating and you are cordially invited to join us to contribute and to partake of what is offered and to chat with fellow music-lovers from around the world.

http://www.meetinginmusic.blogspot.com/

I fully agree with Scoredaddy and Sankerib: Let's join and contribute to this new forum.