The Classical Music Guide Forums

david54706

I read that sobering piece with my breakfast toast this morning. Ralph, you get the pick of the NYT for posting since you see it an hour before I do, but I occasionally scoop you. I've never quite given up my journalism roots. Having served in uniform in a controversial war, I understand the relucta...

david54706

There's not much controversy about my favorite operas. All have been mentioned by others, with the exception of "Porgy and Bess". I've always been a Gershwin fan and feel his venture into opera was probably his best truly classical work. Can't help lovin' "Rhapsody in Blue" but it doesn't compare wi...

david54706

At $5.74 a gallon, a five-gallon can would cost slightly less than $30.00. Better fill up the can now when it will only cost about $12.00. Of course, when I first learned to drive, gas cost less than 35 cents a gallon, but then a good steak was well under $1.00 a pound. The fact is, when gas was 99 ...

david54706

From the Houston Chronicle, June 25, 2005 A drama that's all too real: An oil disaster scenario By KEVIN G. HALL Knight Ridder Tribune News WASHINGTON - Former CIA Director Robert Gates sighs deeply as he pores over reports of growing unrest in Nigeria. Many Americans can't find the African nation o...

david54706

I like Riccardo Muti with the Philadelphia Orchestra. His 1985 recording, issued on Seraphim Classics, reflects his own personal balance of fierceness against romantic warmth.This recording holds the thread of argument together firmly without ever underplaying the excitement. IMHO, the sound is amon...

david54706

Double Ditto!!

Semper Fi Lance

david54706

I find it “velllllllllllllllly intelllllllllllllesting” that Charles Krauthammer is a fellow Canadian/American. I just knew there was something I liked about that man. Corlyss, you may want to be “evil” instead of “stupid” (as Krauthammer defines it) but I think it is a built-in prejudice against st...

david54706

Febnyc: Ahoy Swabby. Appreciate your comments. I don't want to make this a definitive history of the Cuban Missile Crisis - I'm not qualified. But I'm interested in your reference to the "Ring of Steel". I have not heard those terms applied to the quarantine circle around Cuba. Perhaps if you gave m...

david54706

Ralph: Just in case you were considering the time-consuming task of marking your changes for my benefit, DON'T. It's already done. After all, it is my project and I have the final editorial say, so it is up to me to do the dirty work of making changes. I would much rather enjoy your postings elsewhe...

david54706

Jbuck: I knew I should have checked "principle" in a real dictionary; it's one I always seem to get wrong no matter which I choose. Has to do with the old ditty "The Principal is your Pal", so I always think it's "principle" not "princiPAL". I do agree that the simple spelling correction is a better...

david54706

I seem to be the first, which is a first for me, but I'm glad to welcome you aboard. You have an interesting past and a changing future; your musical and literary experiences are shared by many in our group. I have commented in the past about the quality and intelligence of our members, and I hope y...

david54706

Ralph: I like what I see, but I've been over the text so many times I would appreciate some way to separate yours from mine. It also has to do with giving credit where credit is due. Is there some way for you to highlight your input? In Word, it is possible to use a yellow marker to separate one fro...

david54706

I would like to submit a personal historic narrative concerning the Cuban Missile Crisis to Wikipedia. I had a small active role in that historic event and I would like to see it published as part of the Wikipedia on-line encyclopedia. I'm sure it would also have some interest here on the CMG site, ...

david54706

Cosima: As an aging ex-Marine who experienced war up-close and personal, I share the feelings of my fellow servicemen who don't want to talk about it. I can easily talk in vague generalities about whether I was there, when I was there, and where I was there. Most questioners want to know more specif...

david54706

Honestly folks, I did know Ralph was pulling our legs, and he knows I knew. As a relative newbie, I didn't know of his other postings about Hackensack Volunteer Firemen and their Philharmonic Orchestra. I really DIDN'T spend time on the Internet looking for their collected works. I DO have an honora...

david54706

Ralph said: "There's a wonderful recording of that rarely performed work made through the collaboration of Nashville's Grand Ole Opry and New Jersey's Hackensack Vounteer Fire Department Philharmonic Orchestra and Ladies Auxiliary Chorale." I've looked that up on every Search Engine I know and can't...

david54706

Ralph: Thanks for the clarification of the legal presumption of guilt or innocence in other (than U.S.) courtrooms. I had no legal reason to think there was a presumption of innocence (to be proved) in other countries, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who had that mistaken notion. Where it originat...

david54706

Ralph: What thinkest thou about countries like France, where the accused must prove their innocence rather than the prosecution proving guilt? Wonder how Michael would have fared under that system of jurisprudence. :? Everybody: My disgust outweighs any sense of reason and proportionality at the ver...

david54706

Brenden: I too have heard that terrible recording. Don't know how that "guy" made a living as an opera singer. I have enough imagination to "hear" it cleaned up (I think) and nothing could lead me to hear more of his work. IMHO the movie "Farinelli" is a far better representation of castrati singing...

david54706

As a former Marine, I don't necessarily subscibe (or listen) to everything related to "The Halls of Montezuma", but I was interested in the discovery of a new opera by Vivaldi. Baroque operas are often difficult to do because we have no castrati opera singers available. Such a shame, almost up there...

david54706

Corlyss:

For those who have seen the awful face of combat and watched comrades die, we know that most of the heroes are dead of mortal wounds. Those that survived to receive their medals can only reflect on those who didn't and wonder "Why me?".

david54706

James: Thank you again for the "e"-acute accent, which is probably the most-used. If you know others, please share. I agree, Dvorak is difficult. I didn't have all of the correct accent marks until I upgraded my Microsoft Word to XP and then I had to update to get them all. Now my catalogue spells e...

david54706

Dittersdorf, who's Dittersdord? Masses, what masses. Those by Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, Verdi (and so many others, even Andrew Lloyd Webber)?

Clueless about Dittersdorf, especially the Masses.

David Sherman/david54706

david54706

Ralph, you have an wicked way with words. I certainly agree it might be more progressive for many Americans to focus their acrimony on "necrophilia" (defined as an "abnormal fascination with death and the dead; esp. an erotic attraction to corpses" - Websters New World Dictionary) than homosexuality...

david54706

Lance and Corlyss: I would like to have access to Symbols (a la MS Word) so I could correctly spell foreign words like "Meditation", which is French and has an acute accent over the "e". "Thais" also has an accent over the "i" and Athanael over the "e". In a group such as The Classical Music Guide w...

david54706

James: Thank you for the link, I will look into it. You seem to have a collection similar in size to mine, although I have given up on vinyls a long time ago. I love the large cover art but can't stand the clicks and pops. I think turntables will go the way of the buggy whip some day, but then again...

david54706

Thought this might be of interest - linking computers to an individual’s taste in music. I wonder how it deals with people who have NO taste? I guess that would be a tasteless question, wouldn’t it? :D Appearing in USA Today, Wednesday, June 08, 2005 Musical tastes get high-tech analysis By Alex Vei...

david54706

Brenden, Lance, and Corlyss: I really appreciate your informative posts about the nature of music collecting. We all seem to agree that the object of most serious collectors is not to have every composition and every recording (an impossibility, I'm sure), but to listen to what you want, when you wa...

david54706

Ralph: I always thought we in the U.S. had a monopoly on lawyers per capita. Didn't know that Hispanics thought they were so important. The Spanish word "abogado" means lawyer or barrister, for those who don't have a handy Spanish/English dictionary. Of course, since Ralph is a Law Professor, he wou...

david54706

Thank you for a very informative (if brief) summary of how you can listen to so many recordings. It is very similar to my own, including the eclectic nature of your interests in various music forms. I can only add that I don't give music 3 - 4 hours a day, probably more like half that many. Like Cor...

david54706

Lance: As a great believer in cataloguing my music and my movies, I wonder how you can collect music by recording artist. My catalogues certainly include the artists who made the recording, but I discovered years ago that there are far more artists than composers. I tried, rather unsuccessfully, div...

david54706

Brenden: You talk about a "small" classical music library of 3-5000 CDs and 350 LPs, which is about the size of a small public radio station's library. I am not being judgemental, but I can't even begin to listen to my insignificant library of 500 or so in a given year. That's almost 2 hours of non-...

david54706

Some years back, I aquired a 13-CD boxed set of Vladimir Ashkenazy playing "The Piano Works" of Frederic Chopin. Some of them date back to 1974 and up until 1984. Decca copyrighted the complete set in 1995, and the London label published it, with excellent discography on both the music and the artis...

david54706

Here in Texas (and other Mexican border states) it is very handy to speak a little Spanish. The last company I worked for paid English speakers to attend Saturday sessions and learn some Spanish speaking rudiments. The first thing the instructor acquainted us with was the large number of English wor...

david54706

Karl: Maybe someday a computer will be able to translate Gould's mumblings and we'll know what he REALLY thought about Bach. BTW, as the article alluded to, Gould would never play a piece from beginning to end in the studio, only in concert. He would endlessly repeat passages until he liked what he ...

david54706

Dan: Thanks? for the update on my home state and city. I should have remembered about the Rhodies since I spent my youth after WWII in Port Townsend, the home of the state Rhododendron festival. Are they completely gone just one week after the end of May? My home in Seattle was at 2500 Boylston Aven...

david54706

I'm surprised you didn't post this one, Ralph. Maybe because so many CMG members reside in New York and subscribe to NYT? Here in Houston I have to make do with the free e-mail NYT I receive every day, THANKS NEW YORK!!! David/D-E-S-38 From The New York Times, June 5, 2005 Play It Again, Vladimir (v...

david54706

Anyone going to Seattle should plan to spend many hours wandering the stalls, stores, restaurants, and exotica of the Pike Place Market. It's been a significant part of downtown Seattle for decades, located at the foot of Pike Street advertised with the simple greeting of "Public Market" made from l...

david54706

I have active interests in Classical Music, History (particularly military and political), movies (particularly award winners both old and new), the Opera, and I am always reading one or more books. As a consequence of my persuits, I am a member of discussion groups dedicated to those same interests...

david54706

I completely forgot - and no one else has mentioned - the hauntingly beautiful "Meditation" from the opera "Thais" by French composer Jules Massenet. It is very moving and certainly very sad. It is scored for solo violin, harp, and orchestra and nearly always brings tears to my eyes and cheeks. In t...

david54706

I like that multi-quote thing and would appreciate a lesson on how to do that. Everyone knows what's been said so far, so I will try to elucidate on the phrase "Shores of Tripoli" from "The Marine Corps Hymn". In 1805, Marine Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon marched across six hundred miles of North Afri...

david54706

As a former Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps, and a veteran of both the hot war in Vietnam and the Cold War with the Soviets and Chinese, I was moved and humbled by your tribute to what my brothers and sisters in arms have accomplished. It certainly never crossed our minds in the doing, bu...

david54706

I too was outraged and sent the organization the following e-mail: "I am absolutely outraged and aghast that your organization has rejected the application of a foreign national mother whose son - an American citizen - was killed during the war in Afghanistan. Are you also rejecting mothers who are ...

david54706

I may have made a mistake about "listening" to a DVD. I said you can simply turn off the TV and you will have the sound equivalent of a CD. My assumption was that everyone would have a sound system that was independent of their television, DVD player, VHS player, CD player, TiVO, etc. I have a 500 W...

david54706

Herman: Thanks for posting despite my inappropriate use of "Poll". To a limited extent (especially regarding Opera and Ballet) I agree with you. Those two categories of music do lend themselves better to a visual approach. I disagree that watching the same performance on DVD more than once is like "...

david54706

Ralph: Thanks for the correction on the use of a "Poll" posting. I will correct myself next time. It seems to be generating some interest in spite of my error. I hope that continues for a while, anyway because it is an interesting subject, but I will understand if it doesn't. Somewhere on our site t...

david54706

I thought I would bring this article to the attention of the Classical Music Groups Forum. I have noted the trend in publishing DVDs of classical music and thoroughly enjoy the ones I have added to my collection. One of my favorites was a gift from a friend from the last Van Cliburn competition in F...

david54706

I'm new to the Classical Music Guide Forums, but I must say I'm surprised no one has mentioned the obvious: Samuel Barber's "Adagio", which was popularized by the film "Platoon". It can literally send you out looking for a bottle of Zoloft to start your day. Another good candidate would be the Adagi...

The Classical Music Guide Forums

Search found 48 matches

Five Gallon Cans

$121 a Fill Up? A Frightening Oil Disaster Scenario

"Symphonie fantastique" Recordings

Answer to Flood of Illegals? Assimilate...

The "Ring of Steel"

Editorial Suggestions

Corrections to Winds of War

Welcome Aboard

Critique: The Winds of War

The Winds of War - October 1962: Please Critique

Memories Better Left Alone

Dead Heroes

Foreign "Accents"

Dittersdorf?

Necrophilia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cataloguing Classical Music

Musical Collections Documentation

Musical Tastes Get Hi-Tech Analysis

Collecting and Documenting

Lawyers

How to Listen to 4,000 Recordings

Chopin in a Box

Importing English into Spanish & Visa Versa

"Play It Again, Vladimir"

The Intelligence of Classical Music Lovers

Thais

The Shores of Tripoli

Classical Music on DVD