Are You Ready For Some Classical?

A Soundtrack For Super Bowl XLVI.

The New York Giants (left) and New England Patriots (right) will battle for
 the Lombardi Trophy (center) in Super Bowl XLVI.
All images © 2012 The National Football League,
the New York Giants and New England Patriots.

Today, at Lukas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, IN, the New York Giants battle the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI.

No, you haven't walked into the wrong blog. Bear with me a second. I'm a music lover, as well as a football fan. And I thought I'd write this up as a guide to make the Super Bowl more enjoyable for music lovers.

With gametime fast approaching, here's a recommended football playlist in case you get sick of play-by-play, long commercials, and Madonna. (Although frankly, I'm looking forward to Madge's half-time cavort where she dresses up like Bill Belicheck.)

So here's the playlist. Mute your TV, crank your stereo, and watch as the Giants and Patriots occasionally collide in sync with really loud orchestral music. Hit it, boys.

Lineups and Coin Toss:
Richard Wagner: Overture to Die Meistersinger (9:37)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra cond. Rafael Kubelik (Arts & Media)
Celebrate the pomp and circumstance of the big game with the lead-in to Wagner's comic opera, which is actually longer than the four-hour Super Bowl broadcast. If the show runs long (and it does) you might have time to play the whole of Act I.

First Half:
Mahler: Symphony No. 6 ("Tragic") (87:00)
Vienna Philharmonic cond. Leonard Bernstein. (DG)
The fierce, chugging rhythms that open Mahler's darkest symphony remind me of the march of a football team towards their opponent's end zone. The three hammer-blows in the last movement are like penalty flags, or three unsuccessful attempts at ground gain before you have to punt.

Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (33:25)
Cleveland Orchestra cond. Pierre Boulez (DG)
Lisa Simpson, (an expert on NFL football if there ever was one) coined the term "savage ballet" to describe NFL football. Nothing is more savage than Igor Stravinsky's primal sacrificial Rite with powerhouse rhythms that are as chaotic as a pile-on with defenders fighting to strip the ball from their sacrificial victim: the running back.

Half-time Show: 
Ponchielli: The Dance of the Hours from La Gioconda (8:52)
Orchestra e Coro de St. Cecillia di Roma cond. Lamberto Gardelli. (Decca)
This fanciful ballet from a wonderfully over-the-top opera provides a welcome alternative to lip-synching and wardrobe malfunctions. Then again, Madonna might actually be worth watching this year. Doesn't mean you have to listen to her.

Second Half:
Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 (45:09)
Lahti Symphony Orch. cond Osmo Vänskä. (BIS)
Much like the underdog team facing heavy opposition, Sibelius' Second Symphony is about beating the odds. And it has a really good brass part in the last movement.


Holst: Excerpts from The Planets 
(I: Mars, The Bringer of War,
IV: Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity.) (Total time 14:38)
Boston Symphony Orchestra cond. William Steinberg (DG)
The opener of The Planets is an obvious choice for the head-banging crunch of pro football. If your team is winning, put on the Jupiter movement (it's the fourth one) and have a triumphant sack dance.

Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (Ravel Orchestration. 32:21)
Berlin Philharmonic cond. Claudio Abbado (DG)
Ever think that the portly tread of the composer in the "Promenade" reminds one of watching a game clock tick down? The clatter and bang of "Gnomus" sounds like pads smashing together. And the "Hut of Baba Yaga" is a wide receiver catching the ball and sprinting down the field, taunting his opponents.

Richard Strauss: Symphonic Fantasia from Die Frau Ohne Schatten. (20:29)
Berlin Philharmonic cond. Zubin Mehta. (Sony Classical)
We end with the cosmic harmonies drawn Richard Strauss' most complicated opera, boiled down by the composer into a handy-dandy "fantasia" that uses some of the best bits from the score. Hopefully the game will be as exciting as this music.

Enjoy the game, all. Go Giants!

Building the Digital Beast III: Feeding the iPod

(Ed. Note: This is Part III 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 II was about building playlists. iPod, Touch, Mini, Shuffle, iTunes, and iPhone are of course, trademarks of Apple.)

When 150 gigs of pocket storage is no longer enough.

Coconut headphones, designed by Iwan Roberts.
Image © 2011 Experience-It-All.com

One of the nice things about city living: when your CD collection gets too big for its shelves, you can always add another bookcase. Or get a bigger apartment. Or a storage unit. Or move into your storage...I've said too much.

Unfortunately, that's not the case with the iPod. The largest current model of this device that Apple has available (the iPod Classic) is marketed at 160 gigabytes. With is onboard operating system, it actually holds about 147 gigs. My "classical" Pod holds (an average) of 23,000 songs. That's about 82 days worth of music, which is more than is needed but it's nice to have it all in one place. 

Here's the catch. My MacBookPro holds a lot more. And in addition to Beethoven, Brahms and Berlioz, it has plenty of Blue Öyster Cult--which I don't want to mix in with my classical music library. 

This post shows you use iTunes in a slightly different way to make sure that your digital device holds the content that you want. 

Build your playlists.

We talked about playlists in the last article. You can set one up that will auto-fill the iPod using only music from your classical section. The easy way to do this is to meta-tag all the classical music in the Composer field in this format: 

Composer Name (Birth Year-Death Year). For example: Richard Wagner (1813-1883).

Set up a Smart Playlist like so:

Composer [field contains] [(1]. 

The computer will then search out every file meta-tagged with those symbols: the paranthesis and the number 1 from the date of birth. i.e. all of your classical music, opera, chamber music etc.)

Since "(1" is a poor name for a playlist, rename it. How's "New Classical and Opera Playlist." Sounds snappy.

The smart playlist field, set to grab everything meta-tagged with "(1"

You can also set your playlist to a particular size, say limiting it to 20 gigabytes or 30 gigs, depending on how big a library you want to import. But this doesn't give you any control over what goes into the playlist. 

You can make and add as many playlists as you like--and they don't have to be "smart." I usually keep a cycle of Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, a complete Ring cycle, and a few other playlists I like living in my iPod. Others, I rotate in and out and keep updating. More playlists means an easier to use iPod. 

Tip: Remember to find out what the capacity of your iPod is and leave at least 1 gigabyte empty for the operating system, the library filing, and the RAM needed for it to operate efficiently.

Connect your iPod. It will appear (in the left hand column) under "Devices." It is factory-set to start trying to update automatically. Click on the little "(x)" in the top bar to make it stop.

The iTunes status bar. The (x) is on the right.

Then under the 'music' tab, set it to 'Add select songs and playlists. Four windows will pop up. They look like this:

The Set Playlists window.

Find your playlist with the "(1" in it. Click the box next to it. A check mark appears.

Hit "Apply Changes." Your iPod will update. Your brand new classical playlist will load itself into your iPod.

Tick off the boxes of the items you want uploaded

This same procedure can be used to update other Apple devices: iPod Touch, Shuffle, iPod Mini, and the iPhone. For smaller devices, you can build a decent library using just albums. Scroll down the list of playlists. Albums and artists will come up as fields. Scroll through your albums. Select the ones you want to update. And for iPhones, be sure to leave a gig free for the phone to function properly.