06 January 2011

Music for the Radio...

January 7, 2011  “Wondrous World of Music” sitting in for Gordon Black on KZYX -FM, Philo CA

10 am station ID, underwriting. Music of Albeniz, Kodaly, Jean Francaix, Chausson and  Tchaikovsky

10:04 Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909) “Asturias” + “Tango” 9:02
Performed by John Williams, guitar

Albeniz loved the music of Andalusia. Was a child prodigy on piano; first appeared at the age of four. These pieces are arranged for guitar from various virtuoso piano pieces. Note that the Tango here was writen before it became the dance we know from South America. When Albeniz wrote this Tango it was a form of Spanish Flamenco, quite different from the later Brazilian Tango dance.

10:13 Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1967) “Dances of Galanta” 15:09
Performed by the Philharmonia Hungarica, Antal Dorati, conductor

When Kodaly lived in the village of Galanta (part of Hungary then, now the Czech Republic) there was a long-established gypsy band in the village, so well known years earlier a book of their dances had been published in Vienna. Kodaly used the Gypsy songs as his starting point, and also made use of their typical rhythms called in Hungarian “verbunkos” ("ver-bun'-kosh"), a military style tune played in march tempo.

10:30 Jean Francais (1912-1997) “Quintet for Clarinet + S Quartet” 24:31
Performed by The Serenade String Trio & Friends, with Bernhard Rothlisberger, clarinet

Written in 1977. Francais used winds many times in his compositions.

10:54 Lute Music by Silvius Leopold Weiss (1686-1750) to top of hour
Prelude in D Major 1:47
Capriccio in D Major 2:38
Fantasia in C Major 3:50
Performed by Lutz Kirchhof, lute

Silvius Weiss died in the same year as JS Bach. Born and raised in Germany, he spent six years in Rome where he heard the music of Corelli, Alessandro and Dominico Scarlatti, and in general absorbed the Italian musical esthetic. He began performing and composing at age 20 and soon became known as the greatest lutenist of his day. He was the most prolific composer for that instrument who ever lived. He wrote more than 600 suites, sonatas, concerti and other pieces in the late baroque style.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

11:00 station ID, underwriting

11:04 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) 49:41
Symphony #5 in E minor, opus 64 NOTE CHANGE CD for Movts 3/4
Performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan

Tchaikovsky wrote his Fifth Symphony in the summer of 1888. Dramatic, many changes of tempo.

11:54 Isaac Albeniz “Cordoba” 6:00
Performed by John Williams, guitar

Gloating, just a little...

The Borders Group bookstore chain is showing every sign of going down. Forgive me, but I’m going to do a little gloat ... there, that was fun.

I don’t want 19,000 international booksellers to lose their jobs, I don’t want publishers and authors to go unpaid. It’s not good for anyone if miles of bookshelves disappear.

But hey, many of us involved in grassroots bookselling and publishing long ago noted the era of Super Stores could not possibly go on forever. It’s been suspected for a while that Borders was the weakest of the beasts.

As the New York Times put it plainly, “Borders, which has suffered from losses in revenue for years... reported dismal third-quarter earnings in December.”

There is a long-standing American trend toward massive consolidation. See: Standard Oil and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company for classic examples; Starbucks for a more recent one.

One day in 1971 Tom and Louis Borders opened a small bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and began to expand.

The consolidation went like this: Kmart Corporation purchased Waldenbooks, a bookstore chain. Waldenbooks purchased Brentano's, another chain of bookstores. In 1992 Kmart acquired all the Borders stores and expansion really took off, often at the not accidental expense of smaller, non-chain bookstores. Borders (or Barnes & Noble) is opening a big new store across the street or down the block, and you’ll just have to pack up and leave, buddy.

This process made a lot of money for a few people, and hurt many other people in the process. Years ago, traveling to Kauai, Hawaii, we discovered the small bookstore we liked was gone. To this day there are no independent bookstores on Kauai and most other Hawaiian islands. At one end of Kauai you can shop for new books at Borders; at the other end, Barnes & Noble. With minor nods to local authors, the stock of both is essentially identical.

1-7-2011 CORRECTION -- Thanks to a reader who just returned from Kauai and noted there is an excellent independent bookstore in the island -- Talk Story in Hanapepe and I am so chagrined I missed it! And so happy it's there.

Borders and Barnes & Noble can be viewed as dinosaurs raining blows on each other. Down here where people actually live and shop – in the ever-evolving land of independent bookstores, if you will – we hardly hear those dinosaur battles.

Barnes & Noble sells a B&N-branded E book reader, the Nook Color. Borders doesn’t have one of their own. This has hurt Borders, although they are pushing hard to sell The Franklin AnyBook Pro Reader, Sony Daily Edition and Touch Edition and Pocket Edition, the Kobo, the Cruz, the Libre.

Independent bookstores don’t have store-branded E readers, and yet most are doing well selling electronic editions through the newly developed Google Books webstore.

The business press so far has concluded that Borders is headed for restructuring now and bankruptcy later. They’ve tried to renegotiate payment deals with major publishers, but the publishers don’t like the offer.

Borders may be down and Barnes & Noble up, and who cares? You, good listeners and readers, shop locally. You believe the 3/50 Project  –  people working together to shop locally and spread the word about it -- is a fine thing, and you’re right.

Good for all of us intelligent mammals. We are evolving, yet we will cling to paper-based books as long as we can. We will read electronically too, why not? But mainly paper. May all the little people live long and prosper.


NOTES:

Borders’ own history lesson

The Wikipedia version

“The 3/50 Project supports independent, locally owned businesses by inspiring consumer loyalty to the storefronts that directly fund their communities. Think of three businesses you'd miss if they went away. Stop in. Say hello. Pick up a little something that makes you smile. That's what keeps them around, after all. Pick 3. Spend 50. Save your local economy.”