If there are two factors that can be said to have instigated the renaissance of my love affair with classical music, it is the radio and the phonograph: that is to say, my discovery of radio and the phonograph. One of the first things I did after moving into my dormitory quarters was to invest in a little clock radio; given that I have a problem controlling my irrepressible urge not to do things the normal way, it was inevitable that my little clock radio would be a DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) made by Tivoli Audio, known for those little, mono radios designed by the founder of Ruark in his dotage. I learned that you could connect a second speaker, a subwoofer, and even a CD player, and I brought home the little clock radio with one speaker with the vague idea that I would invest in the rest of the system later. I never did, partly because I eventually got a valve amplifier and standmount speakers, but mainly because it sounded so good on its own.
DAB was the next logical evolution for radio after FM. The difference between frequency modulation and amplitude modulation (known in the UK as medium wave), is a fundamental change in the way the signal is encoded: the metaphor usually used is that of a light blinking on a hilltop transmitting information; with MW (and shortwave, and most other forms of radio) the information is sent by the light flickering on and off. With FM, you have different colors of light, and the information is contained in the difference between the colors. DAB is though someone had put up a large neon billboard on the hilltop. Those who understand computers might prefer to think of it as a broadcast form of streaming audio (usually at somewhere between 160 to 192 kbps). It isn't absolutely perfect; there are times when the error rate goes up to the point that the signal deteriorates and I find myself switching over to FM (imagine a foggy night when you can't make out the billboard, but can still see the colored flashes of light). But in general the broadcast quality is impeccable, and you have to hand it to the BBC when it comes to sound engineering (and content).
Even better than BBC 3, though, is the UK's main classical music station, Classic FM. Their hegemony is so strong that they have their own record label, cable television channel, and music magazine as well. The programming, however, is top-notch, especially when you consider that this is a commercial radio station and not a state-sponsored one; classical music radio is not generally an easy sell in the contemporary world. Classic FM does (it would appear from the commercials) have a certain leaning in its listening demographic common to most classical music stations, and so one has to sit through contant ads related to erectile dysfunction, inheritance tax lawyers, and the like. But they are careful to make sure that they get a wide variety of phone-ins and emails, and in fact tend to bias those who aren't rich old men in carpet slippers looking out over their estate, favoring instead children, students, and the working class (either that, or these are the people who bother phoning in). There is a conscious aversion to 'greatest hits' and canonical performers; or you get one and not the other. Every so often they throw in something unexpected, like a movie theme, and on weekend evenings they play chill-out music under the rubric of a show called the Chiller Cabinet.
Even though I can now legally watch television, I only bother to tune in on Saturday evenings for you-know-Who. But the radio is a constant companion; it's so addictive that it has tended to get in the way of revision for examinations. 'Revision' is the British term for what I know as 'reviewing'; both are etymologically parallel in meaning 'to see again', my experience of revision is closer to the way I usually understand the word, as meaning a change or adjustment, i.e., 'so that's that the professor was talking about during the lecture that I hadn't read up for'. Come exam season the call-ins include lots of students asking for some Shostakovich to keep them company while revising. 'Good luck with your examinations, and here is the Fifth Symphony!' I myself am incapable of multitasking: this is a legacy of my age, I think; I grew up when 64MB of RAM was a lot, and I am incapable of having multiple applications running simultaneously, and the same is true of my brain. Kids these days, who can send text messages while surfing the net and having sex all at once, genuinely baffle me. Oh no, wait, that was me just a couple of years ago.
The use of the phonograph in this day and age as a source input seemed to be the domain of fussy old geezers obsessively balancing their tonearms; this is a misconception. It's the domain of fussy old geezers and me. As I mentioned in a previous post, there are some types of music that the phonograph does reproduce better than digital sources, and it's worth getting new pressings of some of this stuff. But for the most part I'm luxuriating in the wealth of cheap material out there, especially for classical music. There's a church down the road where you can pick through records in a bin and then drop a few coins into a collection box. (Oxford seems to be in the process of dumping its vinyl wholesale, and I'm only too happy to cart them back to my room.) Second-hand vinyl shops, meanwhile, need a strong tolerance for dust, a lot of spare time, and the patience to deal with snarky shopkeepers (these shops seem invariably to be manned by someone who will look over your selections with raised eyebrows and a sneer). Then you have to clean them; isopropyl alcohol is what I would normally use, but in Oxford you will find yourself directed down the road to the pub, which sells the only alcohol they are familiar with in these parts. I am debating whether to wipe down my vinyl with Guinness, or resort to something like lighter fluid.
But lo! Attention sneering shopkeepers everywhere, hearken to what I have found at the bins lately: Ashkenazy playing Beethoven's Appassionata; Horowitz performing at the Royal Albert Hall; Dvorak's cello concertos; Rachmaninoff performing his own Third Piano Concerto; and, for some reason, er, Susanne Vega. Oh, sorry, you can't listen to them, because I've got them now and you don't. Played though valves, they sound simply wonderful, and far too good to interrupt for revision.
The best clock radio in the world
Classic FM
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