Altering Physical Boundaries to Expose the True Structure of a Piece

Boundaries help define art.

In our last installment, we discussed how buying pre-packaged music means accepting someone else's decision-making when the physical boundaries on an audio delivery medium (LP or CD) do not align with the intended artistic boundaries of the music recorded.

When you ephemeralize your own LPs, you are the master of your own destiny, introducing or removing boundaries to personalize the digital result for the most important listener: you.

Two relatively simple examples were presented last time; here we discuss two more interesting examples.



            Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #6           

Title: Bach The Goldberg Variations
Artist: Glenn Gould (1932-1982)
Genre: Classical
Year: 1982



The Goldberg Variations, originally written for harpsichord but often performed on piano, consist of an aria and 30 "diverse variations" on it. There is a definite order and structure. The variations all use the base line and chord progression of the aria. Every third variation, starting with variation #3 is a canon following an ascending pattern. The two variations following each canon also follow a distinct pattern, forming groups of 3. The 30th variation is a unique piece called the quodlibet; the aria is repeated to close the piece.

The CBS Masterworks edition of Glenn Gould playing The GV ignores the structure completely. Side 1 is the aria and variations 1-15; Side 2 presents variations 16-30 plus the aria reprise. It's an efficient use of vinyl (50% of the total piece on each side) recognizing the listener's need to flip sides to hear the entire piece. The CD re-issue went to the opposite extreme, organized as a flat list of 32 tracks.

I took a hybrid approach. Using the CD track times as a guide (accurate because the CD and LP contain the same performance) I exported the arias, variations 1&2, and the quodlibet independently, then exported the remaining nine groups of 3 as combined tracks identified by their canon. This offers playback flexibility while accurately reflecting the structure of the piece. One may not want to shuffle The GV, but a good index is always appreciated. The track list looks like this:

01 Aria
02 Variation 1
03 Variation 2
04 Variations 3-5: Canone all'Unisono
05 Variations 6-8: Canone alla Seconda
06 Variations 9-11: Canone alla Terza
07 Variations 12-14: Canone alla Quarta
08 Variations 15-17: Canone alla Quinta. Andante
09 Variations 18-20: Canone alla Sesta
10 Variations 21-23: Canone alla Settima
11 Variations 24-26: Canone all'Ottava
12 Variations 27-29: Canone alla Nona
13 Variation 30: Quodlibet
14 Aria da capo


            Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #7           

Title: Music for 18 Musicians
Artist: Steve Reich and Musicians
Genre: Classical
Year: 1978



Music for 18 Musicians is a so-called minimalist composition for voices, strings, reeds, piano  and mallet instruments. Like The GV, Mf18M is structured as a series of variations (11 in this case) which composer Reich calls Sections, framed by the equivalent of an aria, a section entitled Pulse to open and close the piece. Unlike The GV, played as 32 self-contained pieces, Mf18M is a single continuous composition; transitions between sections are identified only by a shift in the pulse patterns and repeated phrases being played.

There are no tracks on the ECM vinyl recording, nor any time information published for the sections. Ask yourself: how does a continuous piece of music get put on LP, a medium with a distinct side A and B?

Producer Rudolph Werner solved that problem by engineering a long fade-out at the end of Section 4, which closes side A, and enginering a long fade-in at the start of Section 5, which opens side B. He effectively cut Mf18M in two to put it on disc.

As with The GV, I went to the CD re-issue to look for a strucural approach for my digital transfer for the LP. In this case, ECM chose to structure the CD as a single track containing the entire performance. I could do the same, fusing sides A and B, but that still would leave the fade-out/fade-in between sections 4 & 5.

So in the end, I chose to remain as true as I could to the composer's intent for the piece and the producer's intent for the LP, and transferred the side A and side B tracks as is.

Sometimes you slay the dragon. Sometimes the dragon wins.


© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.

One Does Not Shuffle a Beethoven Symphony

Boundaries help define art.

This week the Wall Street Journal ran a feature relating that some people believe iTunes is user-surly toward classical music. The two major complaints are:

• The Composer meta-data tag—of equal or greater importance to a classical music listener than the Artist tag—is often blank in downloaded music, hampering search.
• Chopping a classical piece into separate tracks for each of its movements invites crimes of playback. "One does not shuffle a Beethoven symphony."

The former is an issue with music labels, not iTunes, and hardly seems grounds to ascribe evil intent to inanimate software. The latter reminds me of the Henny Youngman joke that begins, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this." But the issues give us an opportunity to talk about personalization.

There are two kinds of boundaries on an LP: there is the intended silence between tracks, and there is the break between sides A/B. The boundary on an audio CD is the hard limit of 74:44 as the maximum possible duration.

The innate boundaries in a creative work and the physical boundaries of audio delivery media do not always align. Buying pre-packaged music means accepting someone else's decision-making when there is a conflict.

The last step in the digital transfer pipeline is packaging material for export to audio files. Here you are the master of your own destiny, introducing or removing boundaries to personalize the result for the most important listener—you.

Two simple examples today. Come back for two more complex examples tomorrow.

          Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #4         

Title: Sweeney Todd [1976 Original Broadway Cast]

Artist: Soundtrack

Genre: Musicals

Year: 1979



Musicals are seldom perfectly symmetric. Sweeney Todd was released on vinyl as a 2-LP set. Act I is longer than Act II, covering sides 1-2 and part of side 3. Restoring the work to its innate Act I & II grouping on transfer was a no-brainer.

         Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #5        

 

Title: Piano Music of the 20th Century
Artist: Maurizio Pollini

Genre: Classical

Year: 1979



20 Jahrhundert is a mammoth 5 LP box set. Ignoring the 5 or 10 part grouping inferred from the physical packaging, a more natural arrangement emerged around the seven composers whose work is performed. In effect, I produced a "title" for each composer. Grouping the movements of some of the finer-grained short pieces into a whole (e.g. Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces, op. 19, whose total running time is just over 5 minutes) also made sense.

© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.