The 5th Symphony did absolutely nothing for me.  It was long and tedious.   According to the Wikipedia article “Many consider this symphony to be Bruckner’s lifetime masterpiece in the area of counterpoint.” That might very well be but this was just not an interesting work for me.  My bias is toward the Baroque era while also liking bits and pieces of various other periods.  I have not yet found a composer any further out in the symphonic music spectrum than Beethoven that I really enjoy.  Bruckner’s 5th did not change my mind.

Bruckner’s 8th Symphony was a lot more enjoyable.   Bruckner apparently had a love of reworking pieces (much to the consternation of musicologists) and this was no exception when it was trashed by a conductor that had made his 7th Symphony quite a success.  This piece surprised me in many spots because of similarity in sound to several contemporary 20th century composers I have listened to such as Alan Hovhaness.  There are sections where the orchestration reminded me of the opening passages of Hovhaness’ “Loon Lake” symphony (No. 63), which is incredible given that “Loon Lake” was written the year I graduated from high school (1988)…almost 100 years after Brucker had revised his 8th symphony.   All that being said my opinion of Bruckner wasn’t changed by the 8th Symphony either.

To someone who really studies music I suspect Bruckner’s works are a fantastic source of material.  To me there just isn’t enough going on there to keep me interested.   When I listen to Beethoven’s works I quite literally am overcome with emotion.   When I listen to Mozart, or Bach, or Handel they also move me emotionally in a way that works of Bruckner that I listened to just did not.   I know others feel differently but I’m not so sure I’ll be listening to more Bruckner anytime soon.  I have so much Bach and Handel to enjoy

The recording aside I sometimes really wonder about the value of reviews in the iTunes store.  Here are two of the reviews of the recording in question:

beautiful melody
by mahh superma…

nice flowing beats that are played beautifully.

No offense to “mahh superma” but there are no beats.  The music certainly is beautiful and it is definitely played well but this is not how classical music should be described.  It’s not electronica.

We also have:

soothing and elegant
by Bballplaya

these compositions are soothing and elegant.  some are a bit choppy and rough though.

Actually none of the compositions are choppy and rough.   Bach didn’t produce a piece of music that was choppy or rough.  Certainly the orchestra may have *played* the piece inappropriately but even in then in the selection of music presented here it would be hard to play any of the pieces choppy or roughly.

I’m glad there were five reviews for this because this music needs to have an audience.   It is also quite possible these aren’t kids but based on the choice of words and the chosen nicknames it is kind of hard to assume these were reviews written by adults.

So call me elitist or whatever you’d like but kids, keep listening but learn to listen well.  And write better reviews!  This is best music of the last 1000 years.   It deserves as much!

eMusic.com

You pay a monthly fee and they have tiers which split based on the number of tracks you can download per month.  This actually works out pretty well, except for classical music where it can become downright crazy.  My tier, which actually is a special tier since eMusic just recently changed their pricing, is 40 tracks for $11.99. For the challenged that is less than $0.40 per track.  The problem is that in the case of classical music many pieces have tracks that are very short, on the order of 15 seconds short.  So I’m paying the same price for that 15 second track as for a 10 minute track.

The problem compounds itself when you are considering purchasing one of the many fine options, such as Handel’s Messiah, which is 54 tracks (depening on which version you download…I’m looking at one on the  Chandos label).  I can’t get that all in one month without buying a booster pack from eMusic.

It would be nice if eMusic would offer an option to buy a whole album vs. looking at everything as just tracks (in other words….follow the model that iTunes and Amazon.com do).   I purchased Handel’s Messiah on Amazon as an mp3 download for $13.  Their per-track pricing is much more expensive.  C’mon eMusic!  Give us the option to buy full albums even it is a seperate charge!

Classicsonline.com

These guys price things really weird when talking per-track charges.  Tracks that are less than 5 minutes cost $0.99.  Tracks longer than 5 minutes cost $1.99. Tracks longer than 10 minutes cost $2.99.  Why would I want to buy from these guys again?  Yeah great selection.  Yeah its from Naxos but their definition of ‘affordable’ is interesting to say the least…at least on a per-track basis.

In their defense they do offer album downloads like Amazon and iTunes and it appears that the are using 320kbps these days for their downloads which is much better than when they launched.

In the end I wish eMusic were being smarter about what constitutes a track given how important it is without them offering album downloads at a discounted price.  Everything else aside it’s ridiculous that I have to pay the same thing for a 15 second track as a 10 minute one.