My Blogroll of lossless classical music blogs is still most comprehensive

Recently, my dear colleague Otto started his Opera House. Like his two others blogs, the purpose „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.“

Random Clasics started as mp3 blog, but switched to FLAC sometime in the past. Fred says: „I love old recordings. Turn me loose in a used record store and I'll spend hours there. Everything I upload here is from my collection and is vinyl. Working with vinyl is not a perfect science and often the results are far from pristine. Let me know if you have a request - I might have it! PLEASE let me know if there are any download issues. Thank you much for visiting my blog!“

Also musica del siglo xx occasionally turned to lossless. I mentioned the Colectivo Ruben Vizcaino Valencia already before.

Avant que j’oublie is the sequel of The High Pony Tail. Maready decided to change his blog name and address, without stating a reason.

Problembär's Pantheon is a new lossless blog with up to now only one post. Problembär promises to post more: „I'll be updating this site about once a week. I may upload some of my old stuff in lossless in the future. But the next few things I have ready will be new. Hope you all enjoy this new blog.“

5 against 4 („It’s the most beautiful ugly sound in the world“) features this year's London Proms , the „World’s Greatest Classical Music Festival“, with recordings, program notes and thoughtful reviews of all the premieres.

Guanacanto („Por la música, vale la pena vivir … en Guanajuato“) contains postings on Mexican Barocco music by composers I never heard before.

Expanding the list of lossless classical music blogs never ends…

The Music Parlour ~ Historical is a spin off (or a subset?) from Tin Ear’s Music Parlour. The latest posts were Sir Thomas Beecham’s Zauberflöte from 1937, Mengelberg’s Beethoven Symphonies from 1940 and Beethoven’s 5th piano concert performed in 1922. (picture aside). Stuff for the connoisseur, you see. 

www.jolyon.com is „a site on the history of sound recording. […] I will endeavor to put the recordings into some context, that is, why such and such a piece was recorded by such and such musicians on such and such a date, otherwise it all looks a bit arbitrary. In fact there were often very good commercial reasons for issuing particular discs and it is worth while pondering how these were received by the public.“ (jolyon50@googlemail.com)

Jolyon has an excellent „My Links“ Page, with references to discographies & catalogues, free downloadable recordings, journals, and more.

Alucard from Italy runs the 18CenturyMusic Blog, „because classical music is not only Haydn and Mozart“. He posted Zelenka, Abbé Vogler, Sammartini, Myslivecek, Stamitz, etc., but nevertheless Haydn frequently occurs. I know Alucard from avaxhome under the nickname Kushami, but were not aware of his personal blog. You may also visit his YouTube channel.

Yao (Avax: qzlanyao) started his Classic Collection at August 1st, mainly Bach and the RCA Living Stereo 60 CDs Collection. I like the bright and well-arranged blog design.

Neal’s Historical Recordings moved from Google Blogger to Wordpress („for a variety of reasons“). Update your bookmarks, guys!

Supplements to my list of lossless blogs

When writing the last notification, I forget to mention Le moment musical - Classical music collection. Amedal has offered since November 2009 more than 160 posts which range from baroque to 19th century music, running some of my personnel favorites (f.e. Spohr, Ries, Raff).

El baúl del coleccionista is an „Espacio dedicado a la coleccion de grabaciones historicas“, i.e. a place for historical recordings, owned by Dumbarton Oaks. Two weeks ago the blog converted to FLAC; the older posts are still in mp3.

Also Ipromesisposi is an older blog I managed to ignore, alas!

en folía - "Un lugar para la música", active since November 2008, discovered by me as recently as two weeks ago, is a discreet blog on black background (such backgrounds are unusual at the moment). The music selection is excellent.

I put geometria innamorata to the lossless list because of some posts of Wagner, Pasquini, Bernard Parmegiani. Maybe the blog is too weird and does not fit in my list. What do you think?

Last, but not least: A blog, which is no blog, because of missing RSS feeds (yes!) : Rare Classical Vinyl is a repository of the Mercury Living Presence recordings:

"Mercury built a devoted following among classical music listeners in the 1950's and 60's. In 1951, when the company was a Chicago-based independent, it launched its ''Olympian Series'' with the now classic monophonic LP of the Mussorgsky-Ravel ''Pictures at an Exhibition'' played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Rafael Kubelik. In reviewing that disk in The New York Times, Howard Taubman wrote that the effect was ''like being in the living presence of the orchestra''; Mercury took his phrase ''Living Presence'' as the rubric for its subsequent releases, and carried it well into the stereophonic era."

Notification about new lossless blogs

Well, I made my last notification about new lossless blogs on February 6th, a rather long time ago. Let me report now, what I found in Blogosphere during the last 5 months (without special order):

Maready stated in his blog High Pony Tail: „Most selections are taken from vinyl recordings. Sometimes I use the available technology to 'remove' pops and clicks. Often, particularly in cases where the recording has been made available on CD at some point, I simply record the record to my beloved Sony CD-R recorder and post the results without further intervention.“

The Vinyl Fatigue „gives digital new life to forgotten LPs“, as Lawrence Austin, the owner, declares: „I grew up listening to records -- shellac and vinyl -- and the sound of a needle tracking the grooves of an old LP is still deeply comforting to me -- a sound from childhood, like the fan of the hot air furnace coming on. However turntables are now relatively scare, and we are becoming less tolerant of noise from the medium the music is stored on, so putting up renovated files of what I consider choice, but neglected performances, seemed a good way to spend some time. There are several thousand LPs in the house, a lot of them not re-issued on CD, some of them performances of real importance. If you like something, post a comment. I'd love to hear from you.“

Squirrel is a musician/teacher/writer in New York City: „These LP transfers generally represent noteworthy or neglected recordings from the Great Century which have fallen out of print, out of favor, or out of reach. The focus is primarily on chamber music, violinists, violists, and cellists of distinction, and orchestral music. I strive to balance standard repertoire by interesting and lesser known artists with unusual and lesser-heard works. These are made available here not to circumvent the marketplace, but to fill in the cultural/historical gaps in our collective understanding of recorded posterity for those who wish to listen. They are to be enjoyed, shared, and learned from.“

運銘 (Yun-ming) has contributed to the collaborative blog Meeting in Music in the past, and last May she started her own „Ah Meng’s Blog“, which gained up to now more than 30 followers.

„A 20th Century Opera Collection“ started in April, run by RVV („Un grupo para difundir los libros de la ciencia politica“).

3 days ago, André Rendeiro stated: „I'm starting this blog with the intent to share some of the music I own as a retribution to some of you who have given so much to me by doing the same. Although I don't possess a lot of music on original CD's (and those are the ones I intend to share), the music I have is of extreme rarity in the blogosphere, mostly premiere recordings of music by portuguese composers. I might acquire some more, and I'll certainly share it with you. The name of the blog "Feldeinsamkeit" isn't properly the better name for a blog which offers portuguese classical music, but my musical roots are deeply in the heart of German music, specially in Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler and R. Strauss, so I chose the name of a lied by Brahms on Allmers' poem, which I love.“

Last but not least there are two relaunches/resumes to report: Hot Skin is the former „La Peau Douce“; and http://uncle-osvalds-music.blogspot.com/ is moving to http://domibus-eternis.blogspot.com/.

The first 100 posts of the Kammermusikkammer

Yes, I am celebrating the 100th post of the Kammermusikkammer, with 100 years old recordings of Josef Hofmann on the piano. (And with some childish reminiscences of grotesque drawings by W.B.)





And here, of course, follow the usual statistics:

A roller coaster animation of Ferdinand Ries' 2nd Symphony

An animation of the First Violin of the Second Symphony of Ferdinand Ries, driving on a roller coaster, won the red dot award for communication design 2009. The music is performed by the Zürcher Kammerorchester, which had commissioned the Virtual Republic (Düsseldorf) to visualize the orchester's claim "GROSSE GEFÜHLE" (great feelings).

View the animation here.

Read my post about Ferdinand Ries in the Kammermusikkammer.

Reducing my backlog of notifications about new lossless blogs

I really have an enormous backlog of notifications about new lossless blogs, and I want to make things a little better with these short resumes:

"Links. Musik Kino Philosophie" is the name of an extraordinary discovery. The owner, Schahed, posted 129 articles since December, with tags like Alexander Kluge, Bruno Maderna, Edgar Reitz, Karl Marx, Modern Music, Opera, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Richard Wagner, Slavoj Zizek, and more. Maybe you can get an idea what all he is interesting in. He offers audios, videos and audiobooks.

"John Bull's 'Circle of Sound'" started on January 23th and contains LP transfers, "many long out of print." The blog's subtitle is "classics for the connoisseur - curious from the world of recorded sound", which makes me curious about his (I imagine him to be a british) future steps.



"Grumpy's Classics Cave" are "ramplings and rumblings from a collector of recorded classical music". The rumbler, his name is CharmNick, is owner of a photocard of London Transport, and also interested in old LPs. I could not resist to republish his portrait here.

Another collector of LPs, much longer active in blogosphere, is Benoit from the "Quartier des Archives". He posts in flac and mp3, tracklists and comments are in French. Most of the posts are pictured with the scanned LP, not the cover. Maybe he lost the covers over the years; the LPs look really old. The blog is a quarry for the audiophile.

موسيقى -كلاسيك
(http://yak-musice.blogspot.com/) was active only in November and December 2007, but the (mostly classical) music is well selected (from Ockeghem and Monteverdi to Saint-Saens and Friedrich Nietzsche), and the links are still active. I discovered the blog last month. The owner signed with Yakoff.

Right now, where I am writing these lines, I stumpled about "The Music Parlour", with music from LPs from the fifties (exactly: 1949 to 1964). As I am reading in some comments, is the owner's name Tin Ear, and he is a close friend of CharmNick (mentioned above)

one million giraffes - Will your giraffe be one in a million?

"My friend, Jørgen, doesn't believe I can collect one million giraffes by 2011. I'm gonna prove him wrong, but I need your help. You can create your giraffe(s) in any way you like, but not on a computer and no store bought objects. You must create your giraffe(s) yourself!

So far I've got 538 229 giraffes, so I need 461 771 more and I have 336 days left.
Let's show Jørgen how amazing the internet is. Please send in your own giraffe!"

Maybe some of my followers can help Ola Helland?

RBB Kulturradio: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

1. Vorurteile: Warum Mendelssohn trotzdem ein guter Komponist ist
2. Auf preußische Art: Die Mendelssohns und die Berliner Singakademie
3. Eine Frage der Öffentlichkeit: Die Tradition der Sonntagsmusiken
4. "Göthe, sein Vorbild": Mendelssohn in Weimar
5. High Society: Kleine Revue der Mendelssohn-Zeitgenossen
6. Glaube und Gesellschaft: Abraham Mendelssohn und sein Judentum
7. Raphaelslocken: Felix, zweifellos ein Wunder(kind)
8. Vom Leben im Hinterhaus: Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, Schwester und Frau
9. Vom Dasein als Weltbürger: Felix, Bruder und Künstler
10. Zwischen Geist und Geld: die Familie Mendelssohn
11. Enger als gedacht: Düsseldorf und die rheinischen Musikfeste
12. Ein Glücksfall: Leipzig und sein Gewandhaus
13. Lob des Taktstocks: Felix Mendelssohn als Kapellmeister
14. Von Schumann bis Mahler: Wenn Dirigenten komponieren
15. Der Schwierige: Mendelssohns Beethoven-Bild
16. "Dass ich ein Deutscher sei": Felix Mendelssohn auf Reisen
17. Bach und Händel: Mendelssohn als Bearbeiter
18. Bretter, die kein Glück bedeuten: Arbeiten fürs Theater
19. Der Mozart des 19. Jahrhunderts? Zur Mendelssohn-Rezeption I
20. "Rothe Korallen" und "grüne Seetiere": das Poetische bei Mendelssohn
21. Wagner und die Folgen: zur Mendelssohn-Rezeption II
22. "Die blauen Blümlein all’": Mendelssohn, ein Romantiker
23. Queen Victoria lässt bitten: zur Mendelssohn-Rezeption III
24. Magie des frühen Todes: das Jahr 1847
25. Konflikte: der deutsch-deutsche Mendelssohn
26. Feuerköpfe, Angsthasen, Museumswärter: Wie geht Mendelssohn?

200 Jahre Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Eine Sendereihe des RBB Kulturradio von Jänner bis Juni 2009. Von Christine Lemke-Matwey.
[Zum Originalpost]

What's a Lied? (from the FAQ of The Lied and Art Song Texts Page)

Q. What's a Lied?
A. The word Lied is German for song (pronounced /leet/). The plural is Lieder (pronounced /leeder/). Kunstlied is the proper term for "art song" in German, but music-lovers speaking English or French commonly refer to German art songs as just plain Lieder. Note that this site includes art songs in many languages (e.g., in French, the terms chanson and mélodie are used as well as lieder). There are also many madrigals, partsongs and choral works.

Q. OK, then what's an "art song"?
A. Like most categorizations in classical music (even the term "classical music" is problematic), this is a very difficult definition to make due not only to the blurring of lines that many contemporary compositions create, but also due to the overlap of popular music, pop classics, broadway musicals, and folk music. This definition is intended only as a rough guide to the genre.

An art song is a relatively short piece of music written by a person commonly referred to as a "composer", and set to a text intended to be poetic, for a classically-trained vocalist with some form of accompaniment (usually but not restricted to the pianoforte). During a performance, which is usually in a recital hall these days, even if the piece was originally intended for the salon, the audience sits quietly without smoking, eating or drinking (unless very stealthily). The singer is rarely also the composer of the song. The lighting rarely changes during a performance, and no special set, scenery, or costume (besides typical recitalwear) is required.

I could not say it better...

This is an excerpt from Emily Ezust's Lied and Art Song Texts Page. The Classical Iconoclast calls it "far and away the best source of Lieder and Song Texts", which I only can aggree.

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.

Kammermusikkammer - Statistics for 2008

At the end of 2008, the Kammermusikkammer exists for about a half year, and contains 49 posts. As a statistic maniac, I herewith molest my followers with some diagrams:

Chopin resumed posting

After 8 months of silence, Chopin resumed posting on his blog, with two CDs of Jordi Savall. Welcome back, dear Chopin, in the community of classical music bloggers!

New AvaxHome Music Classical sub-categories

Since some days the /music/classical category at AvaxHome contains sub-categories, according to chronology:

Before 500 Ancient Music (/ancient)
500 - 1450 Medieval (/medieval)
1450 - 1600 Renaissance (/renaissance)
1600 - 1750 Baroque (/baroque)
1750 - 1830 1. Viennese School (/first_viennese_school)
1830 - 1900 Romantic (/romantic)
1900 - 1950 Early 20th century (/early_20th_century)
1950 - 2000 Contemporary (/contemporary)
2000 - present 21th Century (/twenty-first_century)

User FredCouples commented on 17 Dec 2008 23:37:

The category "music before 500" does not make too much sense in my regard - the amount of recordings (done from surviving manuscripts with music notation on them) tends against zero (0)... ;-)

The Spanish are top (Kammermusikkammer - Visitors by Country)

Even though using Feedjit, it is not easy to get reliable statistics about the visitors of the kammermusikkammer, because Feedjits Live Traffic Map analyzes the geographic locations of only the last 100 visitors on a given moment.

In order to run statistics over longer periods, I made measurements on different days, on different day times, and calculated average percentages. And now I can (proudly) present the Kammermusikkammer's Visitors Statistics by Country.

The top ten visitors country (covering 68,4 percent of all visitors) are:

1. Spain           13,3
2. United States   11,7
3. Germany         10,7
4. Brazil           8,3
5. France           6,9
6. Italy            5,6
7. United Kingdom   4,2
8. Japan            3,7
9. Canada           2,1
10. Austria         1,9

Ice enhanced her cbox

The new designed cbox on ICE's blog classics makes a great visual impact: The posting persons appear with a personal picture, and Ice spent money (so I think) to buy more (and more startling) smilies (most of them are animated). All this makes a convenient ambience for the chatting, kidding, flirting, which takes places on this remarkable cbox.

The return of the king - Audiorosity is back

Sankerib decited to re-open his famous blog Audiorosity for public viewing. 

Some comments from his devotedly followers:

w61:  Hallo Sank. Sincerely happy to see you again. We missed you because here we have the best posts of all around. For days and days I came to see you were back, without loosing my hope: Now you are. And so are we. From Italy
prunejuice:  HOORAYY!!! I'm always saddened to see that this blog is closed now that it's open again, my life can continue hahaha
cholera:  Welcome back. Your periodical disappearences plunge all of us in an abyss of despair, only to be rebound onto a heaven of euphoria when you come back. (I have a PhD in 'flattering')
max:  Welcome back, I missed you a lot!!!
Blackbird:  Welcome back my dear friend Sankerib, we missed you
wolfgang:  Sun is rising again in Audiorosity. Welcome back, we missed you. Everything OK?
Scoredaddy:  Welcome back, my friend! You have been missed.
Lever:  Welcome back Sankerib, I'm very glad seeing you open again , best regards
octron:  Hello Sankerib, nice you have opened your blog again But no new uploads (just kidding )

I rearranged the mp3 music blog lists

Evidently, I re-organized my lists "More active mp3 blogs" and "Inactive mp3 blogs" by content, which results in four different rubrics:

• Classical music in general
• Opera
• XXth Century - Electronic - Jazz
• Folk - Guitar - World Music

I hope, this is for the convenience of my followers.

Furthermore, I added some outstanding blogs to the mp3 blog roll list:

• elcuervolopez
• Scoredaddy's
• libros libres musica libre
• Brazilian Concert Music
• El Rincón Melómano
• Paidéia Musical
• Sonidos y Silencios

Rickdog left his calling card

Some days ago, a guy named Rickdog left his calling card on my Joachim post and (highly visible) on the cbox. I consider it best to republish Rickdog's comment here, so that the followers of the kammermusikkammer got notified:

rickdog hat gesagt…

You have a great music blog here! I've added you to my mp3blog list and custom search, check it out.

Rickdog's collected 6,000 mp3blog links, accessible from the alpha menu at page top. You can open frames on these blogs to view them directly on my site, and you can also view the feeds in a frame.

The newest mp3blogs
http://chewbone.blogspot.com/2008/01/alphanew.html

You can search your blog and all the others in my custom google search:

Chewbone MP3blog search
http://chewbone.blogspot.com/2008/03/mp3-blog-search-results.html

I add new blogs to the alpha lists once a week, but your site is immediately added to the custom google search engine.
12. November 2008 11:48

Guía del Mundo Clásico - Guide to the World Classic

Recently elflaming74, owner of Classic Download, started a now project, a guide to prominent classical music, called Guía del Mundo Clásico. The idea behind is to act as meta-directory, serving links to several outstanding performances of the same work.

For example, the post "El Arte de la Fuga" contains references to CDs of Jordi Savall, Gustav Leonhardt, Glenn Gould, Helmut Walcha, Rinaldo Alessandrini, which have been posted in different blogs. (Of course, credits are given.)

This is a fine idea of cooperation between classical music bloggers, and we all should support it. Maybe this is also the reincarnation of "Andante Musica".

Sankerib closed his blogs - Dmitry breaks through the baroque era

For some days, Sankerib closed his famous blogs Audiorosity and HM Catalog without any notice to his faithfully followers. Maybe he has good causes to act so. But I dont know nothing. @Sankerib, if you by accident read this, please explain...

Dmitry, on the other hand, decided to relaunch his blog Barocco-Music under the name XVIII Century Music, which he comments as follows:

"I want to change my blog's area of focus. I'm trough with barocco music and now I'm going to add some music of the Classicism. I won't forget about barocco as well."

Dmitry started the relaunch with Ignatz Pleyel's Symphonie and 11 (!) posts to Antonio Salieri (the victim of Milos Forman's calumny).

More! More! More! (Blogs, recently discovered by me)

It's hard to follow the many new incoming classical music blogs, but here they are (all added to the blog lists on kammermusikkammer during the last days):
HM Catalog
The Concert Hall
Il canto sospeso
Blogger Musical (basic library)

New blog StateWork, maintained by Guillermo

The classical music blog universe is still expanding: On October 28, 2008, the new blog StateWork started with Shostakovich 10th live on Carnegie Hall (19 Feb 2004). Like most of the posts, this is a broadcast recording (which is unique among the classical music blogs I know). 

The blogs owner, Guillermo, in his own words: "This is for you and I, to make available the great performances of recorded history that are either not available anywhere (private broadcast recordings) or somehow unavailable and not foreseeably set to be released commercially. The real aim is to feed the need for more superlative performances of music."

I registered as follower.

Who on earth is "Ruben Vizcaino Valencia" ?

A blogger named "Colectivo Ruben Vizcaino Valencia" is follower of some classical music blogs and keeper of some own music blogs, as:

• libros libres musica libre
• musica del siglo xx
• Todo Mahler

He/She is saying in the profile:

"Somos un colectivo, organizado en memoria del Maestro Ruben Vizcaíno Valencia, y nos declaramos partidarios de la generosidad, la solidaridad y la entrega anonimas."

Who on earth is "Ruben Vizcaino Valencia"?  - After googling for a long time, I found a link:

TIJUANA VERDADERA: PROFESOR RUBEN VIZCAINO VALENCIA

There are rumors about that the "Colectivo" is a pack of copycats, it est they copy/past posts from other music blogs. Hence, I put their blogs under quarantine (meaning: I did not add to my list of music links on the Kammermusikkammer.)

New blog Classic Download, maintained by elflaming74

Some days ago, elflaming74 discovered my blog, wrote a comment, and hence I am aware of a new classical music blog, bearing the name Classic Download.

26 posts appeared during only some days (since Octobre, 22, exactly). I dont know whether the posts are all self-made, but the titles are well assorted (piano, old opera, f.e. Purcell, Gluck, chamber music)

Download links in all posts have been repaired successfully

The closing of the shareonall service made the older posts unaccessable. In the last weeks I was very busy on reripping and reposting the affected CDs, and now all work has been done.

The new links (all lossless, most of them APE+CUE+LOG, the others single FLACs) use the sharebee service, which is my favored file upload distribution service.

The posts, which have been repost at last, are:
Muffat (Armonico Tributo)
Zelenka (Triosonaten)
Claudio Monteverdi: Madrigali (La Venexiana, live in Corsica)
Fux - Serenada Rondeau Sonata
Janequin & Sermisy: Les cris de Paris