but wait, there's more
Sep. 3rd, 2009 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimaccontinuing from my previous musical post ...
So Taruskin's book on Russian music also contains some noncontroversial gems, including an article about Miaskovsky (which I spell that way because that's how it was spelled in the old Schwann catalogs, which were the mother's milk of my classical music training). A second-rank Russian composer of the first half of the last century, Miaskovsky is beloved by connoisseurs of obscure classics because he poured his compositional energies into no fewer than 27 symphonies. "That heap of symphonies was to us record geeks what grapes were to Tantalus," says Taruskin, and is he ever right about that.
Not that I ever got to listen to even half of them, or really get to know the ones I did hear. (For second-tier Russians of that era, I prefer Glazunov.) Taruskin has some nice and useful summaries of the character of individual symphonies, and I'd gladly report on how they match with my own perceptions, except that my entire Miaskovsky CD collection promptly vanished from the face of the earth after I took it down from the shelf yesterday in preparation for listening to some of it.
My other musical research project I hesitate to mention, because it's large enough that it looks as if I should have been doing other things. But in fact the bulk of the work was done about five years ago, and what remained was to clean up the snags. (And that which couldn't be done at other music libraries was done over Mythcon weekend at UCLA's.) But it's over the hump now, and I put it on the web.
What is it? It's a catalog of symphonies by 134 19th-century composers (a number of whom slopped over into adjoining centuries). Miaskovsky isn't among them; he started too late; but Glazunov is. I'd noticed that there was no single source you could go to for accurate and definitive information for a large number of composers, so I decided to compile all the best sources together. Here's the introduction and list of names. Here's the rationale and details. And here are the actual lists. I hope it will be useful to those with an interest in the period. (And how many of the symphonies on that list do I have recordings of? 240, about a quarter.)
So Taruskin's book on Russian music also contains some noncontroversial gems, including an article about Miaskovsky (which I spell that way because that's how it was spelled in the old Schwann catalogs, which were the mother's milk of my classical music training). A second-rank Russian composer of the first half of the last century, Miaskovsky is beloved by connoisseurs of obscure classics because he poured his compositional energies into no fewer than 27 symphonies. "That heap of symphonies was to us record geeks what grapes were to Tantalus," says Taruskin, and is he ever right about that.
Not that I ever got to listen to even half of them, or really get to know the ones I did hear. (For second-tier Russians of that era, I prefer Glazunov.) Taruskin has some nice and useful summaries of the character of individual symphonies, and I'd gladly report on how they match with my own perceptions, except that my entire Miaskovsky CD collection promptly vanished from the face of the earth after I took it down from the shelf yesterday in preparation for listening to some of it.
My other musical research project I hesitate to mention, because it's large enough that it looks as if I should have been doing other things. But in fact the bulk of the work was done about five years ago, and what remained was to clean up the snags. (And that which couldn't be done at other music libraries was done over Mythcon weekend at UCLA's.) But it's over the hump now, and I put it on the web.
What is it? It's a catalog of symphonies by 134 19th-century composers (a number of whom slopped over into adjoining centuries). Miaskovsky isn't among them; he started too late; but Glazunov is. I'd noticed that there was no single source you could go to for accurate and definitive information for a large number of composers, so I decided to compile all the best sources together. Here's the introduction and list of names. Here's the rationale and details. And here are the actual lists. I hope it will be useful to those with an interest in the period. (And how many of the symphonies on that list do I have recordings of? 240, about a quarter.)
