2016 is
coming to a close, and as I do each year at this time, I will indulge in a
long-winded editorial about what happened in our many platforms this past year,
and discuss what I plan for next year. At the end, as a pale form of
compensation for my readers, I will share my yearly YouTube mashup of
quips and quirks amassed throughout the year.
2016
Highlights
Under my
new “reduced workload policy”, we provided our fewest number of Friday montages
yet for a calendar year – 24 in total. As many of you noticed (I hope)
though there weren’t specific “thematic arcs” exploited this year in any of our
platforms, we did introduce montages and playlists that “fed” our long-term Project
366.
As I will
get into later, this long-term project serves as “prime motivation” behind the
montages and playlists I assemble. By doing so, in an admittedly biased way, I
am trying to provide a more “holistic” view of the repertoire, rather than
focus on more spontaneous offerings.
The reduced
workload has meant cutting back on Tuesday blogs, reducing those to twice a
month and mostly focused on two main “series”: Once Upon the Internet
and Vinyl’s Revenge. This formula will morph somewhat over the next
year, primarily because I am running out of OUTI material.
Opera (and
lyric selections) has made a return in the fall, and for the foreseeable
future, I plan to issue monthly OTF posts on OperaLively. For those, I
will continue “mining” the Public Domain sites LiberMusica and the MQCD-Musique-Classique
library of old vinyl recordings.
In terms of
readership, listenership and social media feedback, I can tell we have a few
“avid followers” because I can recognize the names on Facebook! Our page
views and plays/downloads on our different platforms are consistent, which is
heartening to me. I’m always humbled and at times surprised by the response to
posts and music shares, and I thank all of you for taking the time to sample
our wares as it were, and provide your reactions.
A couple of
noteworthy (and surprising) things I stumbled upon… One of our montages from
2016 was used as background music for a lengthy YouTube video (LINK) and I saw
one of my posts “recycled” on one of the sites I often consult, discogs (LINK).
There may be more, but these are a pair I am aware of. Don’t be shy to spread
our material, that’s what it is meant for! All I do ask is to get some form of
“attribution” for the material…
Coming
in 2017
As I said
earlier, Project 366 serves as the main motivation for most of the stuff we
have planned for this coming year. For the record, I have planned out the
entire series, which will take us all the way to December 2018 – that is, of
course, if I hang on doing this for a couple more years…
I plan on
sharing more montages this year, and to do so, I will be trying something new:
on months where there are 5 Tuesdays (four times a year), I plan to post a
first-run montage as part of the Tuesday Blog. I’ve always posted
those on Fridays (with very few exceptions) but never on the TalkClassical
site. However, since I’ve been doing dual-posts of Tuesday Blog contents for
the last couple of years, I think this isn’t something I consider out of
character… My first such “Fifth Tuesday” podcast will be in January.
Going back
to Project 366 for a moment, we are well-into our first 122 “Listener Guides”.
There are about 60 remaining to that first set, and these are planned to be
dispatched by September 2017. As was the case this year, I plan a pause for the
Tuesday Blog over the summer, but montages will continue, at the typical
bi-weekly pace throughout the year.
It has
been long-held policy to avoid “repeat works” in montages we share. There have been few exceptions to
this policy – providing single movements vice the entire work being one that
comes to mind. As we feed our long-term project, and since we’ve been at this
for over 5 years and 230+ montages, I think I will be less strict in applying
this policy in the future, especially if we haven’t programmed a work for a
couple of tears. In the coming months some “repeat works” will find their way
into montages – I hope you won’t mind…
Before I
get any further into my musings, I wanted to share some of my more recent
“adventures in music collecting”. I discussed earlier the fact I am mining LiberMusica
for all its worth, having already posted some of the music I uncovered this
past year. As I look for material for Vinyl’s Revenge, I do stumble from time
to time on some surprising material on YouTube, performances from legendary
performers or composers I am discovering. It should come as no surprise to many
of you that there is a ton of material posted on YouTube – sometimes
flagged and removed through Copyright Police intervention – and certainly
worthy of discussion in these pages. I may introduce a series on “Mining
YouTube” and share some of these discoveries. That may be a worthy
“replacement” for Once Upon the Internet. This is just an idea, let’s see where
that goes!
As I
prepare Vinyl’s Revenge material, I plan to turn a few of these into a series
on Mozart’s “Last Piano Concertos”, folding in some Podcast Vault
selections and at least one of my 5th Tuesday montages.
Video
Favourites for 2016
Before I
step aside for our YouTube mashup, I wanted to thank all of you once again for
reading and sharing the music we love so much. Please continue providing me
your comments and reactions here and on social media!
Happy New
Year 2017 from your friendly music blogger
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