A Communication to My Friends: A Millennium Approaches

Some thoughts and some blog news as we approach the 2000th Superconductor post.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at his desk. Painting by Serov.

As we approach the 2000th article on Superconductor (which should happen sometime in October) I've been looking for a good way to celebrate that still keeps readers entertained. This blog has been a lot of work and it's been around a long time now, mostly due to the indulgence of certain arts organizations, our cherished advertisers and you, the classical and opera loving community that has become a strong audience for my writing. And yet there's still so much to do.

Building the Digital Beast II: The Playlist

(Ed. Note: This is Part II of our series on how to live digitally and still have a satisfying portable classical music experience. Part I is on how to meta-tag mp3 files. Part III is about managing the iPod. iPod, iPod Touch, Mini, Shuffle, iTunes, and iPhone are of course, trademarks of Apple.)

How to use Playlists to manage your iPod.

If Bach had his playlists organized....

Hi there. In Part II, we're going to talk about managing playlists on iTunes to maximize your classical music experience.

So you've got all (or at least some) of your music uploaded/downloaded into your computer. The next step is to use the Playlist feature to effectively become your own classical music DJ.

There are three types of iTunes playlist:

The regular Playlist is just an ordinary tool to put your tracks in a prearranged order. It takes the most work, but gives you the greatest amount of control.

For the classical music aficionado or opera lover who wants to play all the Bruckner symphonies in order, or perhaps listen to the entire Ring over a week, playlists are invaluable. But of the three, the regular Playlists are the most important because you can do heavy customization, putting just what you want in the desired order.

Customized Bruckner playlist with the movements of the symphonies in the right order.

Smart Playlists are built from your library to fit a set of prearranged conditions. Those conditions are based on data meta-tags on files, or on other data relevant to the tracks. For example: here's an all-Bruckner smart playlist I made a few years ago. It was generated with the tags "Composer--Starts With--Anton Bruckner":

Computer-generated "smart" playlist with the running order slightly jumbled.

For example, you can grab all the works tagged with "Anton Bruckner" or all the pieces conducted by "Riccardo Chailly." This is why having accurate meta-tags are important. Smart playlists can also grab any movements or pieces that last a specific amount of time, or meet some other criteria that you set yourself using the Notes field.

The third type of playlist is called On-the-Go and is generated by your handy-dandy iPod. You can add to it by hi-lighting a track with the click-wheel, and pressing the center button. The track will blink and be added to the list. You can also add whole artist folders, composer folders, what-have-you to the list.

However, when you re-sync your iPod with iTunes, the On-the-Go playlists will automatically update, purging the main list and saving your old one as "On the Go 1," or "2" or whatever number you are up to.

Next post, we'll talk about managing an iPod and what you do when your library is too big for your device.

Building the Digital Beast

(Ed. Note: This is Part I of our series on how to live digitally and still have a satisfying portable classical music experience. Part II is on how to build and manage playlists. Part III is about managing the iPod. iPod, iPod Touch, Mini, Shuffle, iTunes, and iPhone are of course, trademarks of Apple.)

How to manage classical music in your iTunes.

If Beethoven had read this article, he would have
filed his Karajan recordings correctly, too.
Photo from Teapot Shortage.

Superconductor could not function without a massive iTunes library, accessible anytime on my Mac with two finger movements. I also keep updating the "Classical iPod", 155.5 gigs of carefully organized works--and the newer iPhone, with less storage capacity but a greater chance that my listening experience will be interruptive.

The challenge of keeping any classical music library updated is compounded by two things: the generally poor quality of CDDB (CD Database) listings, which drive iTunes' ability to assign names to your music) and that there is no existing industry standard or naming conventions applied across the board to classical music. Even if there were, nobody wants to pay coders or web people to do it. So it never gets done.

I did it, and at present, have about 200 gigs of music, relatively well organized. Here's how I solved the problem. Maybe it will help you follow suit.

Step One: Balkanize the Genre tab.
iTunes' factory setting has just one assigned genre for "classical" music. Everything in one field. Useless.

I divide works as follows:

• 20th Century: any instrumental music written 1900-2000.
• Cantata: Sung works for small ensemble. Lots of Bach.
• Chamber Music: Everything for small ensemble except string quartets.
• Concerto: if it has a soloist vs. an orchestra, it's in here. Includes piano concertos and violin concertos.
• Harpsichord: Like piano, but plucked. Solo works in here.
• Lieder: all art songs, even if they're not in German.
• Opera: The queen of arts.
• Operetta: because I roll like that.
• Oratorio: Religious-themed stage works. Lots of Handel.
• Orchestral: Catch-all category: tone poems, overtures, waltzes, etc.
• Piano: A soloist battling 88 keys. Some duo works for four hands.
• Sacred Music: Masses, motets. You know, church music.
• Symphony: If it is designated "symphony" by its composer, it goes here. From C.P.E. Bach to P. Glass.
• Violin: Solo and duo works for that instrument.

Now here's the good part. You can do this quickly. Select your files. (albums). Hit Command-I. An info box pops up. iTunes will ask you if you "think it is a good idea to edit this many files at once." It is.
Go to the Genre field at the bottom. Type in your new Genre. Wait for it to compile and presto-change-o, you've started to Balkanize your massive "classical" collection.

Step Two: Standardize your Fields: 
Once you decide what genre your files are, it's easy to start changing the fields to suit your music needs. You can change many of these fields at once for multiple files, and ITunes will reorganize your folders in your Library, putting the "books" on the right shelves. This is just the method that works for me, and I thought I'd share it.


Pick a disc of Beethoven symphonies. Let's say Herbert von Karajan, conducting the Beethoven Fifth. The 1981 cycle he did in Berlin. Here's how it looks, freshly downloaded from Amazon.com:

The Song Title field is all right, but the rest is a mess. The album is called "Beethoven?" Really useful. The composer's name is spelled wrong and there are no dates on him (I use the dates for search functions in playlists. May explain that later.) And worst of all, the artist is "Herbert von Karajan" with "Berliner Philharmoniker" broken out into a seperate field.

• Artist, Album Artist: for an orchestra, put the name of the orchestra (in English) with the name of the conductor. Like so: Berlin Philharmonic cond. Herbert von Karajan. You can do these for all works with the same orchestra and conductor and when they load into an iPod or iPhone they'll all wind up in the same folder.
• Album: should reflect a clear, unique folder for these recordings, One of the problems with iTunes is that two albums with the same title will wind up in the same folder in your iTunes. That can make "Beethoven Fifth Symphony" a very large file if you own more than one recording. Adding the conductor's name can clarify matters. If a conductor (like von Karajan) made multiple recordings of a work, add the date as a marker. So: Beethoven: Symphony No. 4, 5 Karajan 1981.
• Composer: Services like CDDB and Amazon have strange ideas about spelling the names of composers, or only using their last names. So you might have files tagged with "Beethoven", "Ludwig Vanbeethoven" or even "LvB." Choose a STANDARD style that works for you. I like this format: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).

Here is the same file after a quick cleanup:

The Song Title is unaltered. Album is now called "Beethoven: Symphony No. 4, 5 Karajan 1981." This gives you the pieces, the conductor's name, and (important for Karajan) which cycle it is of the four he recorded in his lifetime. Composer's name is now spelt right, with those useful dates. And the Artist and Genre fields have been corrected.

That's pretty much it. Hope this helps you get started uploading (or downloading) your music and getting your portable classical collection to a place where everything is as it should be.

Dusting off the Haitink Ring

Signed Photo of Eva Marton as Brunnhilde.
Photo owned by Andrew Howe.

There's been a lot of Wagner and Strauss-related content in the blog lately. These two great German composers number among my favorites, whether for the power of Wagner's mighty orchestral developments or the shimmering diversity of voices that Strauss wrung from the orchestra.

In the interest of continuing our summer program along the same vein, here's a look at Bernard Hairink's underrated version of Wagner's mega-mythological cycle.

When the Haitink Ring hit the market, it faced a lot of stiff competition. Georg Solti and Herbert von Karajan had made classic cycles (in the '60s and '70s, respectfully). James Levine had unleashed his Metropolitan Opera forces on a set of audio and video readings of the four operas. And live recordings from Fürtwangler, Böhm, and Boulez peppered the already-overstocked shelves of the big classical music stores--Tower, HMV and (later) the Virgin Megastore.

All of those are now gone, and the classical music industry has reduced its output to a trickle of CDs and a flood of reissues. So it's time to re-assess Bernard Haitink's durable version of the Ring. Assets of the recording include a fine Siegfried sung by ex-bassoonist Siegfried Jerusalem, tenor-that-never-was Reiner Goldberg as his daddy Siegmund, and Matti Salminen as an impressive Hunding.

Theo Adam, who recorded Wotan for Karl Böhm, here shifts to Alberich. He was much older when this recording was made, but his snarls suit the dwarf. Waltraud Meier is an excellent, bitchy Fricka (only in Walküre) Marjana Lipovsek sings the role in Das Rheingold opposite the Wotan of James Morris. Morris, in turn sounds better on this set than on the Levine cycle. Finally, Götterdämmerung features a superb trio of Gibichungs. Thomas Hampson is an heroic, yet appropriately wimpy Gunther, Cheryl Studer as Gutrune, and John Tomlinson, is in fine, gruff voice as the treacherous Hagen.

Unfortunately, there is one big negative in this set, the stentorian Brunnhilde of Eva Marton. She sings most of the role without inflection, keeping her big, laser-like soprano on full blast even in the most lyrical passages. The decision to have her sing all three phrases of "Heil dir Sonne" (from Siegfried) at full fortissimo destroys Wagner's intentions and robs the Awakening scene of its beauty. However, she gets better in the later pages of Götterdämmerung, particularly the confrontation in Act II and the radiant finale. She is aided by the underrated Munich orchestra, in superb, shimmering form, led by a conductor who appreciates textures and nuances found in the more obscure corners of the score.