The Importance of Habit

Yes, it's been a very long time since my last post.  I could come up with a list of  "good reasons" why I've been remiss in posting anything (travelling for Thanksgiving, travelling for Christmas, last-minute rush-job consulting assignments, blah, blah, blah, etc.) but the truth of the matter is I just lost my focus and got lazy. There were demands on my time but, in fact, I drafted half-a-dozen posts but  kept changing my mind about what I wanted to say and got too caught up in saying it "right."

In my meditation group this morning, a thought kept recurring to me and that is that we tend to associate the notion of "developing a habit," with getting stuck in a rut...of doing things we're supposed to do...of mechanically repeating things without thought.  A far more empowering view, however, is to substitute "muscle" for "habit."  No matter how repetitive or boring it is, we go to the gym regularly (well, at least some of us go regularly), even when we don't feel like it, because we focus on the end-result...whether it's to lose weight, bulk up your muscles, improve your cardio endurance or just plain to feel better on the other side of the workout.  When I was a composition student, I wrote...not just thought about but actually sat down and wrote music every single day.  Sometimes what came out was awful and I spent the next "sit-down" crossing most of it out but sometimes it was (at least to me) pretty wonderful.  Good, bad or indifferent, however, the mere act of creating something every day built the creative muscle.  By developing the habit, I developed the ability to write music on demand when necessary and to have the craft necessary to bring my artistic creativity into actuality.

That recollection, not surprisingly, led me to thinking about how long it's been since I'd posted anything here.  I have no aim to become a full-on novelist in the closing decades of my life but writing has always been a big part of what I do...everything from the musico-theoretical publications of my academic days to the technical specifications I had to write when I was a software development manager to the white papers, webinars and presentations I have to create in my current professional life.  Above all, I actually find it very gratifying.  The crafting of an idea, finding the right words to express it, watching those words come into existence on the page and, in some cases, the actual oral delivery of those words are all things that I find very gratifying.  And yet, in order to stay facile with the ability to do that, I need to do it on a regular basis.  Posting to this blog certainly is not going to change the world (at best, some of the posts might be slightly inspiring to a handful of people).  What it does provide, however, is practice.  To some extent, practice in the actual craft of writing but, more importantly, practice in building the habit/muscle, practice in being able to do what I said I would do even when I don't feel like it.

That ability to routinely do what you don't feel "inspired" to do spills into all areas of my life.  It's the little things like taking the recycling out to the garage now instead of sometime-later-today but also the bigger things like going to see a friend even though you're busy or tired, providing something of extra value to your client even though you know it's completely unexpected or just plain being willing to take a chance trying some new experience in your life even though it seems silly, unimportant or even scary.  This blog might not change the world but I find that going the extra distance on those sorts of things frequently does change my life.

Many personal coaches, gurus and other types of trainers will talk about the importance of ritual.  For some, that word has religious implications but I think rituals, whether as simple as brushing your teeth before you go to bed, volunteering for a cause you deem worthy or meditating on a daily basis are closely linked to building habits.  At one level, there is no difference but, to the extent that "ritual" implies some kind of devotion (not necessarily a religious devotion but "devotion" in the sense of "commitment"), it may be a more powerful way to think of building habits.  Whatever you call it, having activities that you commit to perform on a regular basis not only builds facility in that particular activity but builds the muscle for sticking to your commitments, to being true to your word, to being true to your self.  In that regard, it's not really important what the habits are.  However, if you're not in the habit of establishing habits or rituals in your life, it's probably best to start with those that are easy to stick with.  Depending on your disposition, that might mean something easy (like brushing your teeth or walking up the stairs instead of taking the elevator), it might mean something with tangible, easily discerned benefits (like walking up the stairs instead of taking the elevator!) or it might be something deeply important to you (like volunteering at an animal rescue facility or working for an environmental rights organization).  In the Blue Zones Project (also chronicled in the book, The Blue Zones of Happiness by Dan Buettner), researchers have been studying various populations around the world with exceptionally high rates of longevity (and not just longevity but meaningful longevity).  Diet and activity show up as recurring factors in the longevity analysis but one of the most commonly recurring themes in populations across the world is that these people have a reason to get up in the morning.  For some it's the habit of meeting a certain group of friends every day, for some it's caring for their grand-children or great-grandchildren (and, in some of these cases, the great-grandchildren themselves have already racked up quite a few decades of meaningful life) and for some it's some kind of societal activity in which they routinely participate.

I'm starting to free-associate a bit now so I'll close with one of my favorite quotes:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

(For many years, I (and apparently a boatload of other people) have always attributed this quote to dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) but in cutting-and-pasting a copy of the quote just now, I discovered that it is actually a misattribution.  Regardless of the source, I still love the quote!)

What is a "Real Man?"

For the past year, a very dear friend of mine has been harassed by an ex of hers...not a recent ex, by any means, but someone with whom she split almost a decade ago and who, for reasons not entirely clear, suddenly decided that he wanted to make her life a misery.  He has long since re-married, has a child with the new wife and has much deeper pockets than she and yet, he has openly admitted in text messages to her that his only goal is to see her ruined.

It's not my intent to blog about that situation.  It has, however, prompted me to dwell a bit on the ridiculous American notion of the "real man."  I've come up with a fairly straight-forward list of what I'd consider a real "real man" to be but, as disinterested in gender-stereotypes as I am, I find that what this list really defines is what it means to be a decent human being.  Because so much of our country does appear to buy in to this notion of a tough, unflinching, never-crying, get-what-I-want-at-any-cost "ideal," I will phrase many of these bullets in ways that quite deliberately takes aim at a gender stereotype which, sadly, is now well-entrenched not only in the imaginations of many people but in the very behavior of far too many of our elected officials and self-proclaimed "leaders"  (and I probably don't need to add that many of the characteristics below are also applicable to the definition of a "real leader" as well as the mythical "real man").

1. A real man does not prey on the weak, he cares for them.
2. A real man does not vent his anger on others, he has the courage to confront the anger itself.
3. A real man accepts responsibility for how his life looks and how people treat him...he does not berate, bully and abuse others to hide his own sense of inadequacy.
4. A real man knows how to say "I'm sorry..." not in a way that makes excuses (e.g., "I'm sorry you think that was wrong of me...") but in a way that really shows him taking ownership of a mistake. (There's a nice little tweet from Adam Grant about this very topic).
5. A real man believes in the concept of "win-win."  He does not need to "crush" his opposition, whether in personal relationships or in business.
6. A real man "fails forward"...rather than finding someone to blame or scapegoat for his own mistakes, he acknowledges them, learns from them, and becomes a better person, businessman or public figure as a result of that learning.  (John C. Maxwell's book "Failing Forward" is good reading on this topic, by the way).
7. A real man loses graciously.
8. Equally, a real man wins graciously.
9. A real man is able to be moved (and, sadly, I have to qualify this one by saying "be moved appropriately") by both comedy and tragedy...whether their own or somebody else's.  This includes the willingness to cry over someone else's loss, to acknowledge greatness in another and to smile deeply, warmly and whole-heartedly at someone else's relief, deliverance, good fortune or joy.
10. Finally, a real man (and definitely a real leader), is tolerant of others' beliefs, life-styles, customs, manners and values.  There's a lot more I could say about this one but it starts to get quickly into issues of moral philosophy and I'll be writing about that in more detail further down the road.

Breathe in Calm...

Today's post is not only a change of gears from our recent music discussions but also in its brevity.  While preparing to lead a session of my meditation group this week, I came across a brief excerpt from Jeanne de Salzmann's The Reality of Being.  I found myself immediately jotting down this prompt with which to begin my meditation:

Breathe in calm and breathe out joy...

In everything I see, I realize I have a choice of what I focus on.It is up to me to choose to find the special, to find the beauty, to find the joy in all around me.

Breathe in calm and breathe out joy...

I grant myself permission to focus on that which enlivens me, that which elates me, that which frees me.

Breathe in calm and breathe out joy...

I accept that the most empowering vision comes not from expecting the familiar but from being willing to find beauty in unexpected places.  It comes not from "knowing" but from "feeling" and from "desiring."

Breathe in calm and breathe out joy...

My willingness to be surprised is a measure of my ability to experience joy.

May you all find the joy around you in the coming week.

Early Mozart Operas

In my last post, I talked about my discovery of the Brilliant Classics series of recordings.  One of my early purchases (after the Bach set of which I spoke earlier) was the Complete Mozart Edition.

You don't need any kind of formal musicological training to know that Mozart 

• started composing at a VERY young age (his earliest works date from the ripe old age of 5 (!))
• was incredibly prolific (The Köchelverzeichnis (the official catalog of his work) lists no less than 626 works and, while some of those are fairly tiny piano works, many are full-length concert works and operas...and that's not including the five appendices to the catalog which list works which are incomplete, of questionable authenticity or known only from references in letters and such, even though the music itself no longer exists). To slightly personalize a quote from the late Tom Lehrer, "By the time Mozart was my age, he'd been dead almost half his life!"
• died tragically young (on December 5, 1791, a little less than two months shy of his 36th birthday).

I'm not going to attempt any broad overview of Mozart's life or music but, while working my way through this massive 170-CD set, two thoughts (out of many) that struck me were

• There are many lesser-known works in this box that I've not heard before. I have heard a number of the juvenile works and have always had thoughts along the line of "it's remarkable that a 5 (or 10 or 15) year-old composed this highly competent work but it sounds like the work of a 5 (or 10 or 15) year-old...an extremely talented young kid to be sure, but a young kid nonetheless."  In going through this box, that thought was reinforced but to a lesser degree than I'd have thought (i.e., I discovered more than a few pre- and early-teen works which were fairly impressive).  
• Mozart seemed much more at home in some genres than others.  Although I did not map out where my "biggest surprises" were, it's safe to say that while I did find that the earlier piano sonatas, symphonies and (to a lesser degree) the concerti often called for this "good-for-a-kid" qualification, the operas (a genre more than almost any other which you would think would need the hand of a "grown-up") almost never required such qualifiers at all!

Indeed, on this last point, not only are the very earliest operas already very good works of drama and music by all but the most stringent evaluative criteria, it's amazing just how many of them he wrote in his brief stay on earth.  For comparison, let's look at a handful of the world's best-known opera composers:

• Wagner, who lived twice as long as Mozart (dying shortly before his 70th birthday), completed only 13 of them in his life.  Granted, most of his operas are of epic proportions, but their total duration only slightly exceeds that of Mozart's output.
• Puccini wrote many of the most well-known operas in the repertoire, and died a month shy of his 66th birthday, but his list of gems amounts to a mere 12 operas (although he revised frequently, with half of those works having 2, 3, 4 or (in the case of Madame Butterfly) even 5 versions).
• Verdi, (whose name is almost synonymous with the genre)  finished about 28 operas in his 87 year-long life (an exact count is a bit arbitrary since, as with Puccini, several of them were revised one or more times...sometimes to the point of their becoming almost new works)

It's also important to note that these 3 men worked almost exclusively in this genre.  Mozart, living less than half as long as any of them, composed no less than 22 operas  (or 23 if we count Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots...see below for details on that one).  That's impressive enough but, at the same time, he was producing an enormous string of piano sonatas and concertos, violin sonatas and concertos, symphonies, piano trios and quartets, string trios, quartets and quintets and more...many of them towering as exemplars within  their respective genres even two centuries after their composer's death.  

As I work my way through these collected recordings, I've been struck not just by the quantity but by the stunning quality of even the earliest works...so much so that I feel compelled to say a bit about them.  I really just want to invite you to investigate these works on your own and I have no intention of doing any detailed analyses of these operas either as effective works for the stage or as great works of music (although I can say categorically that almost all of them rate highly in both areas).  I do, however, want to say a little bit about each of these "childhood" operas. Given the almost absurdly young age at which Mozart started composing, it seems fairly ridiculous to apply the age categories of "mere mortals" to him but, simply as a way of keeping this post to a manageable length, I'll arbitrarily look at only those operas that he wrote before his 18th birthday.  This has the further advantage of corresponding fairly neatly with the boundary of which of his operas are least known.

Mozart's opera output ranges from his first efforts at the age of 11 to the sublimely silly, deeply moving, dramatically powerful and just outright frickin' wonderful The Magic Flute, completed just a couple of months before his death.  In terms of the rather arbitrary yardstick of how well-known they are, you could divide them into 3 categories:

• The seven (or eight) completed before he turned 18 are probably unrecognizable to all but Mozart scholars (or people who shelled out the bucks for a set like this Brilliant Classics box!)
• There are another half-dozen (plus a couple of "outliers" (see below)) that I'd describe as those that you may have heard of (at least I had prior to buying this set) but probably never actually heard.  I'd put La finta giardiniera of 1774 up to Die Entführung aus dem Serail of  1782 into this category.  For the sake of neatness, I'll add two 1784 works to this group (L'oca del Cairo and Lo sposo deluso) even though these are probably as obscure as the operas in the first group.
• Finally, there are the seven towering masterpieces of the final half-decade of his life.  This group is a little bit less neat.  Certainly The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), Cosi fan tutte (1790) and The Magic Flute (1791) all belong in this group but the lesser-known The Impressario (1786) and La clemenza di Tito (1791) perhaps belong more in the previous grouping and 1790's The Philosopher's Stone is even less well-known than some of the childhood operas (although, in fairness, it's only partially by Mozart, having been jointly composed with four "somewhat less well-known" composers (Johann Baptist Henneberg, Franz Xaver Gerl, Benedikt Schack and Emmanuel Schikaneder...really!  I'm not making this up!)

No matter how problematic the neatness of that tripartite division may be, let's just say that we'll be focussing on the early operas here.

I've repeatedly prevaricated above on whether there were seven or eight operas in this early period and that's because of the questionable designation of the 1767 piece Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots (K. 35) which is variously described as a Singspiel, as a Sacred Musical Play and as an Oratorio.  The claim to being an opera comes from the fact that there are some directions for staging the action in the manuscript.  That would be consistent with a designation of "singspiel" or "sacred play" designations but not "oratorio."  Composed jointly with Michael Haydn and Anton Adlgasser, only Mozart's portion (which is part 1 of 3 parts) survives.  It is known to have been performed at the Archbishop's Palace in Salzburg on March 12, 1767 (Haydn's and Adlgasser's sections were performed in subsequent weeks) but I found no documentation for subsequent performances until the latter 20th century.  Of these early works, I found this one the least compelling with both the music and any sense of drama of minimal interest.

A couple of months later, Apollo et Hyacinthus (K. 38) was performed at the University of Salzburg as part of its end-of term "final comoedia."  Because of this inclusion in a larger selection of works and because Mozart himself never referred to this as an opera and never even gave it a name (it apparently acquired its status (and name) as a stand-alone opera when his sister entered it into a posthumous catalog of the composer's works).  Regardless, it is remarkable for an 11-year-old boy and already much more entertaining than Die Schuldigkeit but it remains far from a mature opera.  Some of the arias are attractive but, overall, neither the characters, the moods or the plot seem very well delineated and I was left with the sense that these folks could be singing about pretty much anything.  I'm sure there were many adult composers of 1767 who were writing lesser pieces but this one can probably serve as a baseline for Mozart's jumping-off point.

Fast-forward a whole year (!) to Bastien und Bastienne (K50) of 1768 and we have a rather cute one-act singspiel.  It's still a bit nondescript but there are already some charming touches, especially with some nice little rhythmic surprises in the finale.  It's still difficult to call this a "mature" work but it already shows a more deft hand than K.38 although it's a bit of an unfair comparison because, as a singspiel, it relies more on spoken narrative to forward the action.  The work is thought to have been premiered in 1768 at the home of the Viennese physician Dr. Franz Mesmer (who is said to have commissioned the work) although this has never been historically confirmed.  The first documented performance is not until October of 1890 when it is known to have been performed in Berlin.

Also from 1768 (and possibly composed before K.50) is La Finta Semplice (K.51).  To my mind, this sounds like the more mature work...indeed, it seems to show remarkable growth over K.50.   It is a bit heavily weighted towards recitatives at the expense of arias (which implies an as-yet underdeveloped ability to use the less-text-heavy arias as a means of sustaining the action of the opera).  Still, I suspect that many lesser contemporary composers would have proudly signed their names to this work.  This is nowhere near his late masterpieces but it is quite sophisticated by mere mortal standards.  Unlike the earlier works which appear to have been premiered while the ink was barely dry, this one waited almost a year, being performed (like K.35) at the Archbishop's Palace in Salzburg on May 1, 1769.

We wait almost two years (until 1770) to get to K.87: Mitridate, Re di Ponto which is one of my favorites from this early group.  Already at his fourth (or fifth) opera, the fourteen-year-old Mozart creates a highly effective, large-scale dramatic work with lovely music and some very impressive coloratura writing.  The overall tessitura is quite high (5 of the 7 roles are sopranos and the other two are tenors) but we have to understand that half of the soprano parts (in fact, the ones with the flashiest coloratura writing) were actually castrato roles (if you don't know what a "castrato" is, look it up but men may want to cover their private parts before reading the description!).  I'm done saying that "lesser adult composers would gladly claim this work as their own" but this one, to my mind, is a fully mature work.  Qualifiers are necessary only insofar as, a couple of decades later, Mozart went on to write some of the most sublime entries in the entire operatic literature.  Mitridate "suffers" only in comparison to works of that rarified mastery.  It was also Mozart's first big operatic success.  After its premier at the Teatro Regio Ducal in Milan on December 26, 1770 it went on to 21 performances. Oddly, it then disappears for a couple of centuries.  There was a single aria rediscovered (and performed) in 1901 but it was not fully mounted again until (I believe) 1963.

Another year goes by and 1771 gives us Ascanio in Alba (K.111).  I must confess that I prefer the music in Mitridate but, from a dramatic standpoint, this is an even more mature sounding work.  I was unable to find much information about its performance history other than, like Mitridate, it premiered at the Teatro Regio Ducal on October 17, 1771.

Finally, there are are two works from 1772.  Il sogno di Scipione (K.126) was actually written when he was still 15 but selections were performed in Salzburg on May 1, 1772.  The first complete documented performance was not until two centuries later when it was featured at the 1979 Mozart Festival in Salzburg.  Although I found K.87 a more enjoyable listen, this one exhibits an even greater sense of musical, emotional and dramatic maturity.  In particular, Fortuna's soprano aria "A chi serena io miro" is especially beautiful.

A few months later, he completed Lucio Silla (K.135), the last of his "underage" operas.  Premiered yet once again at the Teatro Regio Ducal (on December 26, 1772), I could find no reference to a subsequent performance until a 1962 Italian recording and the UK premiere in London in 1967. 

As mentioned above, all of these works are available in the Brilliant Classics box in good to very good performances (although the Lucio Silla recording is live and there is a lot of noise from the stage whenever there is any action...to the point that some of the quieter recitatives are drowned out in spots).  Many are also available elsewhere although I've not done any research to determine how easily obtainable these other recordings are.  All of them are worth a listen if you are interested in opera, in Mozart or simply are willing to be gob-smacked by the unmitigated precocity of the young Mozart.

If you want to dig deeper into these early operas, you can check out this interesting timeline approach to Mozart's work.

Brilliant Classics

In the coming weeks, I've got at least a couple of notes I'll be posting that deal with fairly obscure works by very well-known classical composers.  Before I get there, I wanted to make a fairly extended plug for a company that's helped me find a lot of this little-known work.  If you've read my home-page bio or are familiar with me from other online sources, you know that, despite having spent most of my professional life in the field of data management, by training I'm a classical music composer and theorist with degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, the New England Conservatory of Music and Princeton University.  I underscore that background here only by way of saying that I've been immersed in classical music for a VERY long time and have always tried to understand the repertoire of my field as thoroughly as I can.  Even so, there's been a LOT of music written in the last millenium and it's very difficult to have even a moderately comprehensive knowledge of it.  To that end, I'm always grateful for everything from performers to record companies to online services that make it a bit easier to delve into the great (and sometimes not-so-great) works of our past.  One such company that I'd like to call out now is the Dutch record label Brilliant Classics."

Yes, we actually used to listen to music on these things!

Now I've always been something of a "completist," especially with composers about whose work I'm very passionate.  Spanning my high-school days and into my early years in college, I began my first attempt to find at least one recording of every work by Beethoven that I could find.  We're talking about the early 1970's so this was long before the internet.  There were things like the Schwann Catalog and, especially having grown up in a suburb of New Haven and then moving to Philadelphia for four years, I was fortunate in having easy access to what, even for those days, was a multitude of extremely well-stocked record stores but my quest was often slow...especially once all the obvious candidates (symphonies, piano sonatas, string quartets, etc) were represented.  In college, I discovered the now-defunct Musical Heritage Society and some even more-obscure mail-order sources and those helped fill in a lot of the lesser-known pieces (you probably don't care to hear Beethoven's complete works for mandolin and harpsichord but I assure you, there are a number of entries in this category!).

Although the going could be slow, "the hunt" became a major hobby for me for many years (my wife would say that it's still a major hobby for me!).  However, much as I was more than happy to do the research, my student-level of funding, although fairly generous as an undergraduate (thank you, University of Pennsylvania!), did not always provide access to the more esoteric works (I still remember coming across an open-reel tape recording of a private performance of a reconstruction
of Beethoven's unfinished Oboe Concerto (H.12 in the Hess catalog) for the then astronomical price of $49).  Since that was approximately half-a-moth's rent for me...it remained an unobtainable entry in whatever catalog of "recordings-you-didn't-know-existed" and, to this day, I've yet to hear this piece.

By the time I got into graduate school, my record-buying tended to go more broad thand deep (although it was still far from shallow) as I endeavored to learn as much of the classical repertoire (both standard and otherwise) as I could.  It wasn't until fairly recently, after having amassed over 2500 LP's and well over 5000 CD's that I came across, a few years ago, a budget-priced box set of the complete works of Bach.  I know from many years of experience that neither "complete collection" (unless it be something manageable like "Beethoven's Complete Piano Sonatas" or "Complete Symphonies of Schubert") nor "budget box set" tend to bode well for stellar performances but when I found a new (as opposed to used) copy of this 142-CD set for $96 through the Amazon Marketplace, it seemed worth taking a chance.

Brilliant Classics' Complete Bach Edition

Ever since I began playing classical organ in high school (in 1970, of course, that was done with the intent of becoming the next Keith Emerson but that story is better left for a different post!), Bach has been my hands-down, desert-island, "if-I-could-only-hear-the-works-of-a-single-composer-for-the-rest-of-my-life" composer.  Over the decades, I amassed a vast collection of recordings of his music, covering everything from the "make-it-accessible-to-teenagers" approaches of Walter Carlos's Switched-On Bach (and, as much as I respect Carlos's trans-gender life choice, I reject the revisionist history that calls that album the work of Wendy Carlos...he was still Walter then) and Virgil Fox to modern-instrument versions to "authentic-performance" works and even a couple of downright silly things (like the excerpts from the Well-Tempered Clavier arranged for quartet of chromatic harmonicas (which, although I've not heard it in decades, I seem to remember being surprisingly good...if feeling a bit like "Bach goes to Mayberry")).  Still despite my great love for his work and the large number of recordings on both LP and CD, there was just so much of it and there were pieces that I just never got around to buying and so, as much as anything, I picked this up as an inexpensive way to fill in the holes in my collection.

Dutch soprano Marjon Strijk

This was my first introduction to the Dutch label Brilliant Classics and it was a very pleasant surprise!  As it turned out, it arrived at a time when I was doing a fair amount of long-distance driving but, over the course of about 4 months, I worked my way through the entire set, listening to absolutely nothing but Bach until CD142 came out of the player.  I don't think there's any other composer that I could have done this with (and, as I'll discuss further below, I've attempted it with more than a handful of others!).  Although I'd not heard of any of the mostly Dutch performers (either individually or the groups in which they play), not only are they very consistently at least good, many are stellar! In particular, I have to single out soprano Marjon Strijk
who sings on many (but not enough!) of the cantatas...not only is her execution flawless and her musical instincts stunning, her voice is an astonishing mix of the purity of the boy soprano sound that Bach would have known, with the richness and maturity of an adult woman.

Violinist Kristóf Baráti

Another "never-saw-THAT-coming" performance was that of the Partita #2 in D Minor for solo violin (BWV1004).  The famous Chaconne from this suite has always been a bit problematic for me in performance and this is the first recording I ever remember hearing where I was blown away with a sense, not just of the music itself but of how the violinist (Kristóf Baráti) just gets it!







But enough about this wonderful box set.  Perhaps I'll write more about it in another post but, for now, I just want to say that, for no particular reason, I'd not been purchasing CD's for quite a while when I bought what I came to call my "Big Box o'Bach."  My experience with this set was so positive, however, that I found myself revisiting my already sizeable collection of recorded music to see where else I had significant holes.  This, as it turns out, unleashed a frenzy of purchases (amounting to approximately 2000 CD's over the next couple of years...about half-of-which, at the time of this writing, are still in my "next-up" queue!).  The purchases were about 45% classical music (both modern and pre-twentieth century), 45% jazz (primarily 1940's, 50's & early 60's but also reaching out several decades before and after that period) and about 10% (or less) rock and other popular forms.  I won't go into the details of those purchases now but I will say that Brilliant Classics sets showed up repeatedly and probably accounted for at least 300 or 400 disks beyond that Bach Box.  As with Bach, these were mostly intended to fill gaps in the works of composers who were already very well-represented in my collection (Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Mendelssohn) but also a handful of odder little sets that were interesting curiosities to me such as the 9CD set "Richard Strauss - The Complete Chamber Music." This one, oddly, seems not to be listed on the company's web-site and, I have to say, it's one of the few relative disappointments I've had...partly because it's almost exclusively average-quality live performances but also because much of the music is simply arrangements (not always by Strauss himself) of the composer's orchestral works.

One of Brilliant Classics'
odder collections

Still, despite these occasional less-than-stellar collections, my experience with this label has, so far, been very positive.  The performances are mostly good to excellent, many of the works cannot be found elsewhere and these very economical boxes can often be had for about $1-$2 per disk (occasionally even less, as in my initial purchase of the Bach set mentioned above).  Do you really NEED to hear all 385 of Bach's hymn settings which were only ever intended for congregational use?  Probably not and I confess that I DID skip those disks when working my way through the set but at these prices, it's almost like you didn't even pay for these unwanted pieces.  And for every one of these, there could well be a huge surprise.  I, for example, was shocked to realize that after a lifetime of listening to Bach, I had somehow never heard the magnificent St. John Passion and, my gratitude goes out to the folks at Brilliant Classics for this if nothing else!

Let's Try This Again

Over the years, I've started a number of rather specific blogs and failed to maintain them on any regular basis.  While part of me thinks I just don't have the discipline to be a regular blogger, I find myself routinely drafting everything from musings about unusual music to rants against companies that don't seem to understand customer service (!).  With nowhere to post these things in any consistent way, it finally dawned on me that I what I really needed was a blog that was conceivably of interest to people whose range of interests was as diverse as my own.  To that end, here's my introduction to Idle Musings.  While I'm not quite sure how regularly I'll manage to post, the intent is to do at least a post or two a month.  If you stumble across this blog, please post a friendly comment or two and let me know if any of the particular topics resonated with you (obviously, it's premature to do that yet!).

For what it's worth, here (in no particular order) are some things that have been on my mind lately and which I expect to write about in the coming months:

• Early Mozart operas
• Beethoven's String Trios
• What does it mean to be "good" (part ethics/part philosphical discourse)
• What makes a "real man" (trust me, this one is NOT about being macho...quite the contrary, it's motivated by the way a very dear friend of mine is being treated by an ex who seems to have nothing better to do with his time than make the people around him miserable)
• The demise of the search engine (how everything from the "we've got to return LOTS of results" mentality to sponsored links have destroyed the usefulness of most search engines)
• The customer is always wrong (musings on why so few service providers seem willing to take input from their customers)
• The psychology of the Law of Attraction (this will probably be a recurring topic since I'm starting to work on a book about this)
• The old stage roads in Yosemite National Park

A note on the last one: you may have noticed that there's a blog called Yosemite Roads out there.  I started it many years ago at a time when I hadn't yet done enough research to keep the posts going.  Although I live on the east coast right now, I visit Yosemite as much as I can and have since hiked the length of most of these old roads and would like to start getting back to writing about them...I'm not sure yet if I'll fold those into this log or go back to maintaining the original blog.