A Pleasant Exercise

This video includes evocative samples from one hundred of the great Western masterpieces of orchestral music. It's a great way to brush up on your recognition of famous pieces, and to rediscover ones you may not have thought of in a while that you'd like to listen to in full.



Enjoy!

6 comments:

  1. Eric Blair8:00 PM

    Aye, there's the rub. *Now* one can simply buy the recording or just bring it up on You Tube.

    And, roughly 1650-1950. Shows how popular (or over used) some of those are, but also what a tremendous flowering it was.

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  2. Eric Blair9:26 PM

    Now this is interesting--these are all the most popular "Billboard 100" songs 1940-2016, most popular meaning the longest time at #1 for that year.

    I pretty much don't much recognize anything past 1990, or prior to 1956, and haven't even heard of most of the groups past 2000.

    But, like I've said before, everything is fragmented and a sub-culture/scene/whatever these days.

    Can't even imagine what it will look like in another 10 years.

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  3. Eric Blair9:26 PM

    Ooops. Forgot the link:

    https://youtu.be/J9_lW36Faos

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  4. I knew most but not all of the 1940s tunes, probably due to an affection for movies from the period. I was much fuzzier on the 1950s. Nothing before Elvis, everything after.

    The 1960s I knew very well, as they included many of my parent's favorite songs. I think 1969 was the only one I hadn't heard before.

    Lost the ball again in the 1970s, where there were hits and misses. A lot of my own favorite music is from the 1970s -- golden age for Outlaw Country music is late '60s through the early 80s -- but I guess they didn't make the #1 hit at any point.

    I knew all the 80s songs, although I don't like most of them. :) Same with the 1990s. I lived through all of that, but almost none of it is pleasing to my ear.

    Things do not improve in the 2000s, except I no longer know the tunes nor, mostly, the artists. The ones I do know are ones I didn't like from the '90s, but they're the ones who continued to be popular.

    2009 is the first song with really noticable autotune. I hate that stuff a ton, and every single #1 song after that has it as a major feature.

    Still, it may be that 'the single most popular song of a year' is not the best measure of America's musical qualities. None of the songs I would have thought of as being the best of American music in the given period appeared on this list.

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  5. Eric Blair11:17 AM

    just goes to show what is 'popular' at the moment does not necessarily age well.

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  6. Gringo1:22 PM

    I looked at the Billboard 1940-2016. I will arrange some of the songs by recognition according to my age

    Decade before I was born: 4/10. Two of those songs I remember from being performed in elementary school concerts- one of which I sang.
    0-9: 8 songs. The first song I recall hearing on TV or radio when it was a current hit- when I was 8 years old.
    10-19: 9 songs
    20-29: 7 songs
    30-39: 4 songs
    40-49: 1 songs
    None thereafter.


    When I was a kid, we had a 78 of Hank William's Kawliga. I played that over and over. Not exactly typical music for my parents, who were graduate degree folk w classical music bent. I don't know how they purchased it. Especially since we lived in New England. Sleeping Beauty in 78 reflects what they tended to purchase for their kiddos. Though they didn't always purchase classic- they had a Phil Harris album and Hits of the '20s.
    Judging how I played it over and over again, I loved Kawliga. Which may help explain how decades later I fell in love with Western Swing.

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