tutti talk edition 11, June 2015 - Apple's total immersion is good for classical music

Announced this week is Apple's music streaming service.

Apple's announcement was inevitable, and composers and songwriters have been predicting the dominance of streaming over downloads for years.

This could be very good for classical music. Not so much in the sense that classical music will be available in the same way as other genres, just as it is in now on spotify, but looking rather more to the long term benefit, in the sense that classical music, with its distinctive characteristics, could become a stronger, legitimate and viable alternative music.

Contemporary classical music and living classical composers offer a range and diversity which is really beyond classification (no partial pun intended). 

While the global following for pop music is defined by artists as well as genres and sub-genres, appreciation of contemporary classical music is evolving as much more inclusive of the spectrum of styles and sound canvases painted by living composers.

To put it another way, as trends appear, pop music is an all for one (artist) phenomenon (hence the charts) while the scenario for contemporary classical music is increasingly all for all (newly composed work).

Apple will be offering its 800 million users a total immersion in popular music with content pushed on to users at a bombardment level never before experienced. The listeners' (or should that be users'?) world will become even more frenetic, fragmented and ephemeral.

Enter classical music - space, cohesion, silence, passion, depth, permanence, choice, beauty. We all need something of those qualities in our lives and maybe, just maybe, Apple will unexpectedly open the door to classical music for more people.

tutti is home to the work of over 1,000 composers with 25% of them living and working around the world.

Here are some of our newest acquistions -

Attentive and detailed work from David Stoll in his fourth quartet, Spaces in a Space - listen, download and purchase the score.

Captivating and uplifting music from Rosemary Duxbury - listen to an extract from Reverie for viola and piano and purchase the music.

Wonderful new performances by pianist Alexei Knuppfer of delightful miniatures by Nicholas Wilton (Spanish Dance) - available to download.

An engaging new edition of Charpentier's Messe de Minuit, brought newly to life by Scottish composer, Graham Robb - (Messe de Minuit) listen to an extract.

Here's to a great future for classical music - our bite of the Apple!

That's it for now . . .

   
Sarah Rodgers 

Director
tutti.co.uk ltd

Dove takes flight at Easter

I was fascinated by a listing in The Times in the run up to Easter, itemising the musical settings due to be performed at Cathedrals, Royal Chapels, Choral Foundations and London Churches on Easter Day. The compiler, Deborah King, named 88 institutions across the UK, and provided service times and the music to be sung for each.

There was no commentary from the author, which made it all the more fascinating a listing for the conclusions the readers could draw for themselves. With liturgical repertoire, it is wonderfully beneficial to composers that the tradition is to name the setting after the composer, as in Schubert in G or Stanford in A. To her credit, Deborah King was meticulous in naming each and every composer regardless of whether their name appeared in the title in this traditional manner. For example Wood, Collegium Regale or Mozart, Coronation Mass, were also fully listed.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. What repertoire are these venerable, historic and often renowned establishments serving up to their congregations? Of course there is a very good spread of the aforementioned 'Composers in Key', and notably Stanford (15 services), but also, Dyson, Darke, Bairstow and Brewer. The French organist composers also get a good look in with Langlais, Widor, Durufle and Vierne.

Returning to the British Isles, the more recent repertoire was led by Howells and followed by Mathias. William Walton, and Vaughan Williams also make appearances, but the name that really caught my eye, was Dove - Jonathan Dove. His Missa Brevis featured in no fewer than 5 locations, out-pacing Missa Brevis by Britten and followed at some distance by his younger contemporary Gabriel Jackson whose Missa Triueriensis was down to be performed (unsurprisingly) at Truro Cathedral who had commissioned it in 2005.

Jonathan Dove is not the first British composer to take flight on the wings of liturgy and bless Deborah King for putting an Easter spotlight on him and 34 other composers.

Final statistics - 35 composers, 110 performances, 88 locations. 

That's it for now . . .

   

Sarah Rodgers