Category: Music

The symphonies are tricky, because many of them are wonderful
live but meandering on disc.  On disc you should favor 5, 10, 14, and
15.  #4 is a breakthrough work but no longer so important.  #6-8 are
amazing in concert, with a good conductor, but otherwise a struggle.  9 is pleasant but
slight.  #11-13 are a mixed bag, worth knowing, but don’t judge him by
those or start there.  For #5 buy Bernstein, for ten buy Mitropoulous or
Mravinsky (though many versions are excellent), for #15 Jarvi or Haitink are good versions.  The closing bit of #10 is perhaps my favorite
moment in all of Shostakovich.

The String Quartets are his most convincing and most consistent works.  The Brodsky, Borodin, and Manhattan Quartets all do good versions.   

Buy the two-disc set of his Preludes and Fugues, Opus 87.  Ashkenazy is the version of choice, though I retain a fondness for the idiosyncratic jazzy take of Keith Jarrett.  This is the Shostakovich you will enjoy if the sometimes harsh textures of the orchestral works put you off.

Also buy the Op. 67 Trio for Piano, Cello, and Violin, performed by Yo-Yo Ma, Isaac Stern, and Emanuel Ax.

That’s it.

I’ve never been convinced by the opera, the film music, the concerti, the rest of the piano music, or the short jazzy pieces, though all have their defenders.

Here is some summary information.

Usually I resist buying Big Box Sets.  I never did much with my 9-CD box of Stax music, for instance.  The Mar-Keys are good but rarely my first choice in the morning.  Otis Redding I already knew.

But surely nominal values should not matter (…tell that to those guys are arguing whether Pluto should be a "planet," a "pluton," or a mid-sized boulder.)  Why is buying a Big Box Set different from buying a bunch of individual CDs over time?

There is a neuroeconomics critique of Big Box Sets.  So much of the pleasure of a purchase lies in the anticipation of the buy rather than the having.  The anticipatory pleasure of a Big Box Set, no matter how large, is not so much greater than the anticipatory pleasure from a single CD.  Yet once you own a large box it sits around.  You can’t listen to the CDs all at once.  They start to feel "stale," and then you go out and want that anticipatory fix again.  Bryan Caplan aside, the anticipatory pleasure of "listening to the seventh CD in the box" is somehow not the same.  So you buy some more CDs.  The Big Box Set sits dormant.

If it is a really big box, you can’t even look forward to the pleasure of "finishing it off," and consigning it to the basement where probably it belongs. 

I have just bought Miles Davis’s 20-CD box "Live at Montreaux", used I might add.  These CDs override all of the strictures against Big Box Sets.

This is fortunate because in my future lies the eight-CD Miles Davis Live at the Plugged Nickel and the 6-CD Miles Davis and Gil Evans.

The Music of Islam is another worthwhile 20-CD set.  And I would like to buy a 20-CD box of Fela Kuti, if they put one out.

Here is my previous post How Quickly Should I Go Through My Stock of Battlestar Galactica?

Here is a list from Pitchfork; the Beach Boys’ "God Only Knows" takes first place.  The selections are excellent (head to iTunes), but I would have opted for the Beatles’ "Rain" and the Byrds’ "Eight Miles High."  You’ll find links to their top 200 picks as well.

Daniel Levitin’s This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession — is a new book on how music affects our brains.  Here is an introduction to the book.

Addendum: Here is an interview with Levitin.

Don’t they say "demography is destiny," or something like that?  Basically I like the rap CDs that all the other overeducated middle-aged white guys like.  That means rap which is musically complex, often ironic, and innovates with rhythmic patter and postmodern pop culture references.  Here are a few favorites:

1. Outkast, their entire ouevre.  They have mastered soul and funk as well.  Their new album is due August 22, but this time around the advance reviews are quite critical.

2. Eric B and Rakim, Paid in Full.

3. De La Soul, especially their clever early material.  They ran out of steam quickly, however, as have most rap groups.  But their "Jenifa Taught Me" cut might be the most fun rap song ever.

4. NWA, the Compton album.  A mini-opera, visceral like Verdi.

5. Control Machete, Mexican rap is generally worthwhile.

6. Nas, Illmatic.  A classic.

7. Dr. Dre, The Chronic.  The best parts are when SDD cuts in singing.

8. P.M. Dawn, most of all Jesus Wept, if you consider that rap.  Hits the sweet spot between gospel and Prince.

9. Kanye West, his last CD.  He has the talent to rival Outkast as the most important rapper(s).

10. My dark horse pick would be Schooly D, The Adventures of Schooly D, especially the stripped-down cassette version with only the album’s highlights.  The next step after Varese.

If we can count Robert Ashley, Perfect Lives is the best rap of them all.  He is in any case a pioneer for integrating voice into music.

The most overrated bad rap group is the snotty and execrable Beastie Boys.  The most overrated good rap group is Wu Tang Clan, who had gobs of talent but doesn’t stick in my memory.  Run D-M-Z and Public Enemy are both overrated, but I am not yet sure which category they belong in, good or bad underrated.

For more on the history of rap music, see my In Praise of Commercial Culture, chapter four.  Here is an article on rap music in the Middle East.

Here is one article.  For me the essential Ligeti is the Horn Trio (most of all), the piano music, the two string quartets, and the cello and violin concerti.  He is best known for his "Lux Aeterna," which played a critical role in the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Here are some reports.  Here is Wikipedia.

"Early on in the entertainment industry, it’s in the interest of the business to think of themselves as throwing a party, not selling a product. I think they attract more of a following that way," he said.

"But over time, the industry takes more the form of a market and is driven by market forces. The Superbowl initially felt like it was rewarding its fans. But then it becomes established and the League finds it in its interest to push up prices."

That is Alan Krueger, from this BBC article on his work on the economics of rock music.   Hat tip to EconBall blog.

Yes that is the name of the album, released today.  The first surprise is that Borders didn’t have it out on display.  The second surprise is that Brian Eno produces and imposes his sound on it.  The third surprise is no world music.  The fourth surprise is its high quality, at least after the dull You’re the One, six years ago.  Here is a good New York Times article on Simon and the album.  Here are (mostly positive) blog reviews.

Austan Goolsbee is now writing monthly economics columns for The New York Times.  Here is his first piece on French competition policy and iTunes.  Here is commentary from Henry Farrell.

This list is from a talk by Alex Ross, music critic at The New Yorker.

This stuff is hard to come by, buy it here, pointer from Bryan Caplan.  A few warnings:

1. The old joke about murdered cats is not groundless.  It takes a long time to pick up the patterns.

2. Much of the beauty is in the timbre; even an electrified live performance can mangle this, but these CDs manage OK.

3. You have no business not knowing the high culture music of history’s most dominant culture.

4. Most of all, they are fun.

99 cents, but the deals expire in two months.  Apple insists on keeping a single price across the board.  Why might this be?  Why might the retailer care more about price predictability than the wholesalers?

1. The confusion and resentment costs of different prices might be blamed on Apple.  But surely we see different prices in many other retail arenas.

2. Perhaps Apple is solving a status game problem.  If everyone else is selling for 99 cents and your song sells for $1.20, yours looks special.  Music companies might set prices too high, not taking into account the lower demand for iTunes, and music, more generally.

3. Could Apple be enforcing music company price collusion, while receiving implicit kickbacks in the rights agreements?  This would require the complainers to be in the minority.

4. Apple makes much of its money on hardware, especially iPods.  Low song prices  cross-subsidize the hardware, to some extent at the expense of music companies.  That said, some music companies wish to charge lower not higher prices.

5. Hit songs are kept at artifically low prices to discourage people from moving into the world of illegal downloads.

6. Price is a signal of quality and Apple doesn’t want to admit it carries "lemon" songs.  But won’t demand for the hits go up?

7. Uniform pricing is a precommitment strategy for a durable goods monopoly game.

We must distinguish two aspects of the problem.  First, Apple wishes to control retail prices.  Second, Apple wishes to make all retail prices the same.  Which of these features is more important for understanding the problem?

Here is a proposal for determining prices by auction; no way will we see it.  Here are rumors that the uniform pricing will end.  Note that the Japanese store already has two tiers of prices.  How about keeping the price the same, but bundling hot songs with less desirable ones?  Way back when, we used to call these "record albums"…

Wow, Glenn Hubbard can dance!  Well, for an economist.  Check out this awesome music video (click on the link and go to Every Breath You Take).  Dean, Dean Baby (econ rap!) is also great.  Glenn Hubbard, coolest Dean ever.

Thanks to Eric Helland for the pointer.

On my first listen I didn’t believe the ‘ype.  By the twentieth listen I was believing, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am Not is a great CD.  Reminscent of The Who but popped up a notch with reggae and ska beats, Arctic Monkeys are a garage band from Sheffield, England.  Original guitar licks and the lead singer’s Yorkshire accent give the album real flavor.  I also like that it’s thematically whole, revolving around bars, bouncers, and the desperation and self-loathing that comes from trying to pick up women.  I like this: 

Last night these two bouncers 
one of em’s alright

The other one’s a scary
His way or no way
totalitarian

And this:

Everybody’s trying to crack the jokes and that to make you smile

Those that claim that they’re not showing off are drowning in denial

But they’re not half as bad as me, say anything and I’ll agree

Cause when it comes to acting up, I’m sure I could write the book

Yeah, I’ve been there.