...forthcoming from cpo:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/siegmund-von-hausegger-barbarossa/hnum/4963361 (https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/siegmund-von-hausegger-barbarossa/hnum/4963361)
That's wonderful news!
This release was already in the 2012 (ahem) cpo catalogue (https://www.jpc.de/cpocover/cpo-catalogue-2012.pdf) (pdf link), which mentions the Drei Hymnen an die Nacht (composed 1905 after texts by Gottfried Keller (1819 - 1890), from Natur, in Nacht, no. 5) as the second work, next to Barbarossa.
The same poems, by the way, were set to music by Felix Weingartner and Otmar Schoeck.
Yes, Schoeck includes them into his (21-song's)cycle "Unter Sternen" (a masterwork!). Five songs from this have been wonderfully orchestrated by my friend Rolf Urs Ringger in 1974. I remember attending a Zurich premiere with Peter Pears, singing some Ringger orchestrations, most probably "Wandersprüche".
Here an excellent CD recording - fortunately not with Pears :-)
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=39516&album_group=14
Quotefortunately not with Pears
...whose voice I'm entirely allergic to.
Pears was dead at the time of recording (of that set) anyway and had been for 8 years? (Unlike some other top-rank vocalists who I was surprised, if not displeased, to find out are still alive.)
How can one be allergic to the voice of Pears? *shaking head*
Quite easily, I think. It is a very distinctive (and to some rather mannered) sound - and it got more so as he got older. You either love it or loathe it. He was always, to my ears, marvellous in Britten's music - and he once gave a wonderful Gerontius. Dudley Moore in "Beyond the Fringe", you may recall, produced an extremely clever and funny parody of both Britten's musical style and Pears' vocal timbre: "Little Miss Britten". Listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdmoxlqQQ4c (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdmoxlqQQ4c)
Pears' "Michelangelo Sonnets", "Les Illuminations" and "Serenade" recordings are good. The worst he ever did was Schubert's "Winterreise". And, of course, having no Britten opera alternatives at that time on LP, one got used to it - but now, re-listening them...
Well, the same goes for Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Some other also include Fischer-Dieskau, but in this case I am a harsh defender.
Oh dear. What have we started? Back to Hausegger, please!
My copy of the CD arrived from Germany today. Barbarossa, I have to say, must contain some of the loudest passages of purely orchestral music in my collection. In certain pasages I could swear I heard the kitchen sink being thrown into the mix. Nevertheless, it's an immensely impressive, 49-minute, 3-movement symphonic poem - and at this stage I'm prepared to hazard a guess that it might just be the composer's best piece...
Highly recommended.
I still prefer Natursymphonie. Barbarossa is really good, but less original - and it has many cheap and conventional sections.
You're undoubtedly right. The big problem IMHO is the generic nature of the music - one is constantly searching for an individual voice. But there isn't one. Enjoyable, though.
Has anyone spotted this recording as a download somewhere yet?
Out of interest is it the same performance that someone uploaded 4 years ago to YouTube? I only just noticed that...
No, the new one is with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Antony Hermus.
QuoteHas anyone spotted this recording as a download somewhere yet?
No, it's not out yet. In fact, cpo have only just released as a download the previous Hausegger disc of
Wieland der Schmied,
Aufklänge and
Dionysische Fantasie.
Yes, I spotted that on Spotify a while back. The inconsistency of CPO's streaming/download policy really drives me bonkers sometimes.
No wonder that sometimes they don't care... In the classical field, the streaming/downloading business is uninteresting. Labels have to pay a lot of money to streaming companies (a real mafia), then there are high royalties to pay to its stars, composer's rights etc. - so there is very little left over. The CD market still brings in a bit more, thanks to the (still) higher price of a CD, but there too, distributors are putting companies under pressure by demanding increasingly unfavourable conditions, such as "on commission" contracts etc. It may be a little bite more favourable in case of big star's repertoire, but denfinitely not as far as less-known repertoire is concerned.
Most smaller labels only work on a "on demand" basis anyway - and this since a long time. They make very small first pressings (300-500 copies or so), then, after seeing that more orders come in, they continue with lots of 50, or even less. Smaller pressing plants make intersting offers - and there are even labels who re-issue on CDRs instead of CDs. It really looks as if it would be the beginning of the end...
Last but not least: don't forget that for all this, it's we music-lover who are resposnsible, not the labels. It's the consumer who does not want to pay anymore for music - he does not realise what it costs to produce a good CD. Some criminals upload CDs on YouTube, so they are available for free! During years, my Marco Polo, Sterling and Guild CDs were are available on such platforms (my Brun Symphonies are available in the darknet!) - totally free of charge! I was able to get support from copyright companies and from the police to trace but few responsibles. One of them just started redoing the same a couple of weeks after we were able to convince him to cancel his uploadings.
Dear musiclover friends in this forum: just take a few minutes to reflect on this situation! A commercial - and available - CD should be paid by the music-lover who wants it. Another situation may be old broadcasts and live recordings (as long as they are not being issied on CD or video).
Just an example: My last year's settlement from the US Company (who is responsible for performance royalties from various online platforms) was US$ 0:02! This very sum has been transmitted to my bank accouint! This company explained me that they would consider me again after having reached a sum of US 100.00. They have my complete - and regualrly updated - discography. The responsibles there seem to have no notion at all of classical music... So that's downloads for you...
Edit: my previous post went wrong and contained only a small portion of what I wanted to say. Below is the full post.
We could talk at lenght about the situation of classical music, but allow me to focus on the recording industry for now. I think we're confusing a number of things here. There is a fundamental difference between the streaming and download markets. In the first case, I do not own the music, just the right to stream it to my device. And I agree that the payment that flows to the artist is usually wholly insufficient. Moreover, in classical music the structure of the music usually does not help in a model that is oriented on other genres. On the other hand, if you think the renumeration is insufficient, don't use that channel to publish your music. The mass appeal of "unsung" classical music is not such that publishing on Spotify will gain you unexpected riches. We are lovers of what I would call a "boutique" genre (that makes the tendency to align prices with mass market genres all the more problematic, but that is another issue).
Downloads are different thing and basically the same as CDs, just without the physical unit of a CD plus booklet. That also saves cost: producing that physical unit, keeping stock, postage, distribution. In the case of cpo, a new CD is typically 20 euros, an older one anything from 8 to 15. Such price differentiation is unusual in downloads, which (in my experience) start and stay around 9-10 euros. So in general, a record company makes more money off a CD when the music is new, and more off a download if the music isn't. However, distribution and sales fees are wildly different (15-30% depending on circumstances), so it is difficult to generalize convincingly. One big advantage of downloads for a company is that it takes away a chunk of risk: the production of physical copies (even in small numbers), which may sell slowly or not at all, and have to be stored somewhere.
However, I do fundamentally disagree with you that it is "music-lover who is responsible, not the labels", and I don't think the example of the people that upload not only whole CDs, but entire catalogues to Youtube is a typical one for classical music lovers. Our responsibility is a shared one with the record companies. The labels have an obligation (and this is really their reason for being) of presenting music to the potential customer in a way that allows that customer to take notice of new material, choose whatever he or she likes, in whatever format he or she likes.
That doesn't mean they have to present all the options. I'm fine with cpo not distributing downloads at all, or them not streaming their music. I personally don't like it because I prefer not to have a physical CD if I can avoid it, but I can understand the economic rationale if they wouldn't. The problem is one both of consistency and transparency. Some cpo recordings are available digitally, some aren't. Some get released as downloads immediately, others only after years, or never. My guess is that there are rights issues at the bottom of this, but I wouldn't know because cpo is a very closed company.
Contrast that with Hyperion, whose digital policy is totally clear: CDs are 11 GBP, downloads (of varying quality) 9-14 GBP - and you can buy both through external channels and their own web site. But they also have the sense to communicate. Not only does that make it much easier for them to create a certain amount of anticipation for new recordings, the goodwill they created also helped them get out of trouble after the Sawkins debacle.
We have a shared responsibility towards the future of classical music, and we can take that up by buying CDs, downloads or QoBuz subscriptions. Heck, we can even write letters to Google in an attempt to stop the more predatory Youtube channels. But we are not responsible for record companies presenting their catalogue in a way that makes sense and as customers we have, in my view, a right to complain.
Thanks, Ilja, for this extended report - I was just reporting based on experiences of some companies I had contacted concerning digital rights of my Fritz Brun series, which has been discountinued by Guild. Now, since this problems has come to a more than satisfactory new solution, I am happy. But the situation about illegal downloads is really serious...
That is a real problem. I know of some labels that have complained to Google/YouTube and had uploads successfully removed. However, that doesn't prevent people from starting another channel and uploading them immediately again. So long as YouTube can't be made liable, it remains a difficult fight.
I agree. It is absolutely disgraceful the amount of copyright music that is uploaded to YouTube. There should be legislation in place which fines YouTube HEAVILY if a piece of copyright material is not removed. And it should be their responsibility to police it. We all suffer through the lack of accountability of online media sites. And sites like Spotify are almost as bad. I know one company that spent over a year in getting Spotify to remove some tracks from its CDs which it was wrongly offering for sale owing to an error on the part of the company's distributor. The distributor did his best but Spotify just dragged their heels for ever. The only thing that will discipline these people is draconian fines.
We have, here in Zürich, a big Google branch. Now they just moved to new and the most expensive grounds of the city. The styling of their offices is luxurious; as a outsider you cannot even reach the information desk. No way of getting an appointment with one of their YouTube responsibles, they say that such persons are not here, but in the USA and that I should write them. In the past already I have written several times on this YouTube problem, but they did never answer.
How very dispiriting, Adriano. I'm so sorry - but not altogether surprised.
Might be an idea to mount some kind of petition, though.
Do note a lot of music on YT is actually uploaded by the publisher themselves (or at least, auto-uploaded by bot with approval)
And in fact not only will YT take down reported videos quite quickly, they will do so in a 'guilty until proven innocent' way, which means that, for instance, one person and send 100s of spurious claims over videos and get legit vids taken down....such as one Alex Mauer did recently: https://sirtaptap.com/2017/07/timeline-alex-mauer-dmca-debacle-starr-mazer-river-city/ (this seems to be a pretty good summery of what happened).
Doesn't bear out Adriano's experience.
Quote from: TerraEpon on Wednesday 16 August 2017, 04:11
Do note a lot of music on YT is actually uploaded by the publisher themselves (or at least, auto-uploaded by bot with approval)
And in fact not only will YT take down reported videos quite quickly, they will do so in a 'guilty until proven innocent' way, which means that, for instance, one person and send 100s of spurious claims over videos and get legit vids taken down....such as one Alex Mauer did recently: https://sirtaptap.com/2017/07/timeline-alex-mauer-dmca-debacle-starr-mazer-river-city/ (https://sirtaptap.com/2017/07/timeline-alex-mauer-dmca-debacle-starr-mazer-river-city/) (this seems to be a pretty good summery of what happened).
"A lot" is rather an undefinable quantity, mind you. And I'd argue that none of the uploads by the most prominent channels (particularly "Kuhlau dilfeng #" and "Unsungcomposers") are done with the blessing of the copyright holders. The speed with which Youtube/Google reacts to complaints varies widely, and nothing is to stop you from starting immediately again after your channel is taken down - which often happens. I have spoken with people in the industry that have had material taken down only to see it re-appear days later. In some instances, the work was on YouTube almost as quickly as it had been released onto the market (e.g., the Damrosch Symphony).
That the reverse also happens cannot really serve as an excuse for violating valid copyright. On the contrary, both (and other) examples indicate how rather than investigate claims on their individual merit, Google invariably opts for the lazy way out, which leads to varying amounts of injustice - and damage.
Nothing against uploading excerpts for commercial purposes, but not complete CDs/Videos! Another example: years ago, by accident, I stumbled over a (20 minutes) Croatian TV production on YouTube: a film version (with dancers and mimes and the bass singing and playing) of a recording of my chamber group arrangement of Mussorgsky's "Songs and Dances of Death" In the end titles neither it is mentioned that I am the arranger nor that the publisher is Max Eschig. Of course Eschig and I were never informed on this project. I complained over years, and it's still on YouTube - and the Croatian responsibles never reacted. Copyright societies now refuse to help since, in the meantime, the affair is over 10 years old.
To be fair though, any copyright claimant (so not only copyright societies) can object to YouTube using this form, including you or Eschig: https://www.youtube.com/copyright_complaint_form (https://www.youtube.com/copyright_complaint_form)
If you look at it this way....
There has to be a belief somewhere down the line of who is 'right'. That is to say, someone has to claim "I'm allowed to upload this" vs someone else saying "That's my copyright, you can't upload this".
As stated above, anyone can fill out a form stating the later. And as I stated above, YT will pretty react right away and take it down. The person who uploaded then has to make a legal statement saying they are in the right to counter it.
Sure you could just paint everyone as criminals and say "well they have no problem stealing so they have no problem lying"....which might be true, but there's thousands of videos that get taken down where it's NOT true...
Here's perhaps a good link about what one person went through: https://petapixel.com/2016/02/20/how-i-turned-a-bs-youtube-copyright-claim-back-on-the-real-infringer/
TerraEpon, intriguing though that case might be, I feel that you're muddying the issue here. It is not about YouTube politics and the "thousands of videos" that get taken down inappropriately (one might argue that because of its scale, anything with YT involves "thousands" of videos).
We were discussing the effects of YT channels on classical music sales and the practice of uploading virtually entire catalogues to them. It appears that a) there can be little question that this is an illegal practice and b) that whatever YT does to counter it evidently does not work.
I think this (important) diversion has been adequately explored, so perhaps we could return to the subject in hand, please - unless anyone has a blinding flash of inspiration as to what to do about internet piracy...
... which makes me wonder -which- Barbarossa gave his name to the Hausegger dichtung (Frederick I (1122-1190) Holy Roman emperor, Hayreddin Barbarossa (1478-1546) (on whom the pirate-related legends are based), etc.)
It's the Holy Roman Emperor, Eric. IIRC one of the three movements refers to the legend that he didn't die, but is sleeping in a mountain waiting to be woken at the time of Germany's greatest need - maybe he slept through the alarm twice in the first half of the 20th century!
To those who are not Italian speaking: Barbarossa was red-haired, and in translation it means "the Red-Bearded". The Nazis named their Soviet Union Invasion "Operation Barbarossa". The Holy Emperor, thanks God, brought them all other than good luck.
In Verdi's opera "La battaglia di Legnano", Federico Barbarossa loses his battle against the Lombardic cities.
In 1815, Ferdinand Fränzl composed an opera on the other Barbarossa, entitled "Hariadan Barbarossa".
And in Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake", the evil genius is called Von Rotbart (In the score in original German).
Another operatic bearded man is, of course, Bluebeard (Bartok, Dukas, Reznicek). In Italian this would sound "Barbablu").
As a bit of background, I should perhaps point out that after German unification in 1871, the figure of Barbarossa gained an altogether more elevated status in German national mythology. Perhaps the clearest manifestation of this is the Kyffhäuser Monument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyffhäuser_Monument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyffh%C3%A4user_Monument)) near Bad Frankenhausen in Thuringia. That made it a suitable (and marketable) subject for all sorts of artistic manifestations, and this propably "helped" Von Hausegger to choose it as the theme for this symphony (which is what it is).
The CPO summery for this CD reads "..and so our Hausegger series continues with more powerful symphonic music..". I was under the impression that 3 CD's would cover the complete surviving output of Hausegger - Wonder what's next in pipeline?
Choral (a cappella) music? Operatic music? No idea...
"Promises are for keeping – and so our Hausegger series continues with more powerful symphonic music and the greatest success of the composer's lifetime, his Barbarossa of 1899"
As I read it, the "continues" refers to the current release, Barbarossa, and doesn't necessarily imply any more CDs. Sorry to burst any bubbles.
No bubbles burst but usually the word Concludes is used to state the completion of a series or "final volume" or something to that effect - e.g. https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/max-bruch-saemtliche-werke-fuer-violine-orchester-vol-3/hnum/3126654 (https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/max-bruch-saemtliche-werke-fuer-violine-orchester-vol-3/hnum/3126654)
If Mark is not correct (though I suspect he is) it can only mean that CPO have plans, as Eric implies, to record some non-orchestral works by Hausegger since they have already put on disk all his extant orchestral compositions.
One can wish for opera preludes, orchestral interludes, transformation music and things of that ilk, can't one? There's more chance of that than a complete opera, I guess.
There's no way of telling exactly what cpo mean: the German says 'setzen wir....fort', which means 'we are continuing'. Thus this release could be the promised continuation or there could be more to come. My sense is that this CD is the continuation and that no more is promised.
You could be right - CPO seems to have recorded all extant orchestral works, unless someone has unearthed a lost manuscript, e.g. the Frühlingssymphonie.
To return to the music, specifically Barbarossa - I'm afraid I really do think it's a lot of huffing and puffing about very little. The idiom seems to me essentially Wagner+ and the thematic material, while sumptuously garbed, is pretty undistinguished. I was hoping for better.
...actually Hausegger seems to me to be closer to the idiom of, say, Strauss' Macbeth than to the later, more mature Strauss.