Ripping Cathedrals and Clarinets

So I went to the iTunes Music Store to grab myself some pieces I never got around to getting on CD (Brahms 1, the Beethoven 'Kreutzer' Sonata, Debussy's 'Sunken Cathedral') and I discovered a couple of things about purchasing classical through iTunes -- one I like, and one that vexes me.

First, the good news: There's an option to "Buy Work," just as you can "Buy Song" or "Buy Album." This is a nice little feature, because then I can get a whole symphony with just one click. For people who may not know which movements make up a work, this is useful as well.

Now, the annoyance: Lots, and I mean lots, of these albums seem to be in a "Buy Album" only mode. For example, most of the recordings of the overture to The Barber of Seville can't be bought separately -- they have to be bought as part of the entire opera (or at least an entire album of Rossini overtures). Likewise, I wanted to get a recording of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. Plenty were available, but, when I chose the one I wanted -- Bernard Haitink, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra -- I could not download the piece on its own.

Before someone tells me that there are other versions of Prelude on the iTunes Music Store that I can download without getting an entire album of Debussy orchestral music, let me say that I wanted *that* one. It matters which recording you get -- which conductor, which orchestra. It's a very personal thing sometimes. I went straight for Von Karajan when I downloaded the Brahms, but I don't want him for the Mozart 40. (Finding the right Mozart 40 being a nightmare in itself, as the excerpts they play for you do not make it clear whether you are getting the original orchestration, oboes on the lead, or its reedier counterpart, when Wolfgang gave the clarinets all the good parts).

I know they sell some pop albums this way, and I'm all about the purist experience of listening to something as a part oh a whole. But this seems like a bad marketing plan to me. It's the prohibitive cost that's kept so many from classical music -- that, and an unspoken sense there exists a *right* and a *wrong* way to do things and say things and play things... of *course* there is. But let us listeners deal with that. You just give me my sunken concertgebouw cathedral and let me sort that out.

Do you think in hell, we're going to have to forever listen to one another argung over the authenticity of Van Karajan's tempi or Ashkenazy's attack or whether it matters which bloody orchestra records whichever bloody piece? Or maybe, we just have to listen to the one we wouldn't have chosen.

Posted on June 27, 2004 to horticulture

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