BaL 3.06.23 - Brahms: A German Requiem

[gurnemanz]

Exactly. Hardly anyone is buying downloads, but billions are streaming.

I once had an LP collection. Then I had a CD collection but now rarely buy any. Having several thousand CDs I do use a database program to keep an overview of what I have. For me downloaded music has the advantage of being able to be added to this database and become part of my collection.

I also stream a lot and greatly appreciate this way of listening to music but just clicking the 'like' button does not seem like collecting recordings, as I have been used to doing over the years and I do not find the resulting favourites library either user-friendly or well-adapted to classical music.

[gurnemanz]

A most interesting post, thank you! Well done Rutter, for introducing the work with such easy, unassuming depth and lightness.

My own school choir choral revelation was singing (as one of the treble choir of angels) in The Dream of Gerontius with the Hallé under Barbirolli, which permanently franked my English predilections, as you can imagine.

I'm not sure I can agree with you about German being "absolutely crucial" for Brahms's German Requiem. The German text isn't particularly beautiful in itself. I think the polemic point which Brahms makes through his title is not an instruction about the sung language (let alone anything suggesting "Deutsch über alles"!) but one about singing a secular - not sacred - requiem in the vernacular, rather than Latin.

Like all composers of his day, he would have expected - and, I expect, desired - his works to be sung here in our vernacular, and certainly he must have approved the original English translation before its publication. I for one cannot separate the English text in which I got to know "How lovely are thy dwellings fair" from the music it fits like a glove; and I'm not entirely convinced that the essential character of the music is changed by singing it in a language which hardly anybody in the audience can understand.

(This, hot from the news that less than 2000 UK A-level pupils are currently studying German, which seems to me something this country should be very concerned about and ashamed of).

I taught German A-Level for many years and am saddened to see it on a downward spiral: as fewer students go on to take German at university, fewer teachers will come through. It is in danger of dying out (except in public schools - a bit like Latin). I could not now have the career I had.

I am not dogmatic about this but usually prefer to hear vocal works in their original language, not just because I am linguist but because I want to hear what the composer actually wrote. "Wie lieblich" rather than" How lovely" is the sound Brahms had in his head.

[Master Jacques]

I taught German A-Level for many years and am saddened to see it on a downward spiral: as fewer students go on to take German at university, fewer teachers will come through. It is in danger of dying out (except in public schools - a bit like Latin). I could not now have the career I had.

I am not dogmatic about this but usually prefer to hear vocal works in their original language, not just because I am linguist but because I want to hear what the composer actually wrote. "Wie lieblich" rather than" How lovely" is the sound Brahms had in his head.

It must be very hard for you to witness this decline, which threatens to turn German into a dead language as far as our benighted country is concerned.

You clearly have the majority on your side nowadays in wanting to hear vocal works in languages which few (in this case, excepting yourself) can understand. We certainly live in a world of singing technique - and culture generally - where word and meaning are discounted, in favour of sound and general effect. Quite how this helps us think about what we're hearing, I do not know. And in the case of the German Requiem, I should think that being able to hear, understand and meditate on the thought and its verbal expression ("How lovely are thy dwellings fair, Oh Lord of Hosts!") in the moment is every bit as important as hearing the original vowel sounds (assuming English choirs can pronounce them correctly) on particular notes. And I am sure you would agree that surtitles, in this instance, are a bad distraction from hearing either words or music.

Of course, this discounting of meaning and the word is largely responsible for the decline in German speaking. It is crisply ironic, that in the "bad old days" when singers and choirs wouldn't have dreamed of performing this work in anything other than English, there were many more German speakers around, who could have understood the old Lutheran texts!

[Goon525]

I once had an LP collection. Then I had a CD collection but now rarely buy any. Having several thousand CDs I do use a database program to keep an overview of what I have. For me downloaded music has the advantage of being able to be added to this database and become part of my collection.

I also stream a lot and greatly appreciate this way of listening to music but just clicking the 'like' button does not seem like collecting recordings, as I have been used to doing over the years and I do not find the resulting favourites library either user-friendly or well-adapted to classical music.

I strongly recommend Roon to you, although (a) it’s not cheap, and (b) I have no idea if your Hi-Fi gear is compatible. But if it is, it’s a superb way of integrating your own downloaded collection with one of the superior streaming services, Qobuz or Tidal, very seamlessly. And also (for Qobuz) giving access to sleeve notes plus their own notes on the classical repertoire. You need to see what it can do for yourself. If you’re anywhere near Guildford, I’ll be happy to demonstrate.

[gurnemanz]

I strongly recommend Roon to you, although (a) it’s not cheap, and (b) I have no idea if your Hi-Fi gear is compatible. But if it is, it’s a superb way of integrating your own downloaded collection with one of the superior streaming services, Qobuz or Tidal, very seamlessly. And also (for Qobuz) giving access to sleeve notes plus their own notes on the classical repertoire. You need to see what it can do for yourself. If you’re anywhere near Guildford, I’ll be happy to demonstrate.

Thanks for the recommendation. I have checked out Roon online and it does look like a system which would suit my needs and where I would probably go if starting from scratch. However, I have invested many, many hours in my existing database which I have set up over the years to suit my precise needs, including reviews and comments etc as well as the usual metadata. It is infinitely searchable and sortable on every possible category or field. I use it daily and cannot realistically contemplate a change at this late stage of my life.

My tuner/internet streamer does a great job at the core of the set-up. It links to downloaded music on my PC but I also add all my downloads to a permanently plugged-in, tiny but amazingly capacious 512 GB usb stick. The tuner also conveniently links to Spotify, which may not be the state-of-the-art audio which some want, but sounds fine to my septuagenarian ears.

[Mal]

I also stream a lot and greatly appreciate this way of listening to music but just clicking the 'like' button does not seem like collecting recordings, as I have been used to doing over the years and I do not find the resulting favourites library either user-friendly or well-adapted to classical music.

On Spotify you can "like" albums as well as individual tracks, and the "liked" albums go automatically into your personal "library" of albums.To me, it does feel like collecting CDs! Ordering them in a systematic way is problematic... but so is ordering CDs(!) In your database system, why not just add a link to the album on spotify?