The Fredösphere

While at my parents last week, and on my mother's advice, we stopped at a used book store in the nanocity of Orland, Indiana.  The town is a terribly quaint and slightly melancholy place with a village green and an empty row of classic store fronts in a state of disrepair.  In the store I purchased two science fiction titles--it would almost be more precise to say I purchased the two science fiction titles--but the real finds were in the absurdly well-stocked classical CD section.

My music collection naturally reflects my tastes, which is to say, it is freakishly deep and narrow.  I own nothing by Beethoven, for example.  Let that sink in:  I own no recordings of any Beethoven music.  This was not planned; remember, I'm not on some kind of anti-Beethoven crusade.  (He's not Haydn, after all.)  Only in the last few years have I begun to aspire to stylistic omnivorousness.

The point is, it's not hard for me to find music I don't own.  For example, in Orland I bought the four Brahms symphonies and Handel's Water Music, plus a no-name group singing barbershop classics.  (There is evidence the quartet is Fred, but they get no credit on the cover.)  These are disks you might find anywhere.  But who would imagine finding disk with Le Sacre and Apollo in rural Indiana?  And imagine my excitement at finding a Chanticleer disk I didn't yet own.

I'm enjoying the Stravinsky especially.  I find it impossible to listen to Le Sacre; Apollo is first on the disk, and when its sane nobility completes, I'm so satisfied, I can't bring myself to shift gears into Le Sacre's grinding rhythms.

Lean your ear in close to the computer.  Do you hear that melody:  Duh-DA duh-DA, duh-DA duh-DA?  That's the first movement of the Apollo which I'm listening to right now.  As Bjork would say:  gorgeousness!

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