...but somebody's gotta do it:
I'm glad someone is keeping track
I stumbled across this "article" today chasing down a plagiarist. I wonder how this page could be useful to someone. I can't imagine going into a record store (if they still have those) and going to the "Fifth symphony" aisle:
"I'm in the mood for a fifth symphony today. A fourth symphony just won't do, and ninth symphonies are so passe."
The listed works have nothing in common beyond the fact that they happen to be the fifth symphony of some composer. We can't even compare two fifth symphonies by the same composer! And what are we to make of an article that includes Evgeni Kostitsyn's fifth symphony, but not Hans Werner Henze's, or Stamitz's?
The article for me raises interesting questions about how we classify music. According to the Wikipedia article, Beethoven borrowed the opening of the third movement of the fifth symphony from the last movement of Mozart's 40th symphony. Would it then make sense to group Beethoven's fifth and Mozart's 40th under the same heading? Both are symphonies, German/Austrian, and they sound alike in places. Certainly a symphony sounds more like another symphony than it does a piano sonata. So let's put Mozart 40 and Beethoven 5 under the same heading and we'll put the piano sonatas (by Beethoven, Mozart, and others) in the other corner of our record store (grouped, of course, by number).
Early Beethoven (Mozart, Schoenberg, whoever) doesn't sound all that much like late Beethoven (Mozart, Schoenberg, whoever), so should we have a separate department in our record store for "early" music (where you can only find opus numbers 1 to 1/2n, where n is the total number of works written by the composer) and one for late music (opus numbers 1/2n+1 to n)?
Lately, I've been shopping for recordings by performer--I don't care so much about what they're playing, I just want to hear them play it. What if we had a classical record store grouped entirely by performer? (Or, put another way, what if we had a popular music store organized entirely according to song title--all of the "Yesterdays" here; all of the "White Christmases" there)
I suppose one of the interesting things about software like iTunes is that you can actually do this--create your own playlist organized however the heck you choose.
I'm glad someone is keeping track
I stumbled across this "article" today chasing down a plagiarist. I wonder how this page could be useful to someone. I can't imagine going into a record store (if they still have those) and going to the "Fifth symphony" aisle:
"I'm in the mood for a fifth symphony today. A fourth symphony just won't do, and ninth symphonies are so passe."
The listed works have nothing in common beyond the fact that they happen to be the fifth symphony of some composer. We can't even compare two fifth symphonies by the same composer! And what are we to make of an article that includes Evgeni Kostitsyn's fifth symphony, but not Hans Werner Henze's, or Stamitz's?
The article for me raises interesting questions about how we classify music. According to the Wikipedia article, Beethoven borrowed the opening of the third movement of the fifth symphony from the last movement of Mozart's 40th symphony. Would it then make sense to group Beethoven's fifth and Mozart's 40th under the same heading? Both are symphonies, German/Austrian, and they sound alike in places. Certainly a symphony sounds more like another symphony than it does a piano sonata. So let's put Mozart 40 and Beethoven 5 under the same heading and we'll put the piano sonatas (by Beethoven, Mozart, and others) in the other corner of our record store (grouped, of course, by number).
Early Beethoven (Mozart, Schoenberg, whoever) doesn't sound all that much like late Beethoven (Mozart, Schoenberg, whoever), so should we have a separate department in our record store for "early" music (where you can only find opus numbers 1 to 1/2n, where n is the total number of works written by the composer) and one for late music (opus numbers 1/2n+1 to n)?
Lately, I've been shopping for recordings by performer--I don't care so much about what they're playing, I just want to hear them play it. What if we had a classical record store grouped entirely by performer? (Or, put another way, what if we had a popular music store organized entirely according to song title--all of the "Yesterdays" here; all of the "White Christmases" there)
I suppose one of the interesting things about software like iTunes is that you can actually do this--create your own playlist organized however the heck you choose.