Music links
This page contains 'carefully screened and annotated' links from that musical world which we believe R3 must reflect.
We see no point in duplicating composers' and musicians' pages and sites, however good they are. Such collections are "widely available elsewhere". (Now where have we heard that phrase before?)
We also want to highlight such sites as Voice of the Listener and Viewer, lots of links to like-minded organizations and articles, and Pipedown, which clearly share with FoR3 a discriminating, campaigning purpose – for good music appropriately experienced.
There are two good pieces of software which can be used to 'record' (monitored/attended and automatically/timed) the R3 Real streams, live and 'on demand'. For Mac OS X Bitcartel's iRecordMusic lets you navigate, for example, to the 'Listen Again' page of the BBC R3 site in a 'bundled' browser, then click a button to start recording once you launch the Real file you want. On Windows machines High Criteria's Total Recorder fulfills the same function, though differently. Both products have been heartily endorsed on the CMoR3 messageboard over the years.
Please let us know of other exceptional links in these three categories (music, advocacy, technical) which you use. Thanks!
We also want to highlight such sites as Voice of the Listener and Viewer, lots of links to like-minded organizations and articles, and Pipedown, which clearly share with FoR3 a discriminating, campaigning purpose – for good music appropriately experienced.
There are two good pieces of software which can be used to 'record' (monitored/attended and automatically/timed) the R3 Real streams, live and 'on demand'. For Mac OS X Bitcartel's iRecordMusic lets you navigate, for example, to the 'Listen Again' page of the BBC R3 site in a 'bundled' browser, then click a button to start recording once you launch the Real file you want. On Windows machines High Criteria's Total Recorder fulfills the same function, though differently. Both products have been heartily endorsed on the CMoR3 messageboard over the years.
Please let us know of other exceptional links in these three categories (music, advocacy, technical) which you use. Thanks!
Andante has a lot of content! Not all of it is free: currently $99 a year to access the 'Reference' sections (which include entries from the Concise Grove, discographies, CD store searches, concert notes, the New York Review of Books classical music reviews back to 1963) and the web business directory with thousands of classical links. You can still get a lot for nothing: unbeatable classical music news coverage (with a slight American emphasis), hundreds of excellent news-related (long) essays, editorials, concert and book reviews (all with archives), interviews (recent ones include Barenboim, Boulez, Lou Harrison, Maw, Bostridge, Rattle, Saariaho), the Andante online radio station, and their own online CD shop. Excellent site! Thanks to Maestrolover for recommending it.
An excellent site for all things balletic. You name it, it's probably here somewhere: 2000 pages of news, reviews, features, links, reference and other resources. Beautifully uncluttered pages, and all free – the Internet as it was once meant to be!
The CPDL began in 1988 and is now one of the world's largest free sheet music sites. This 'Wiki'-format repository has much more than scores and includes texts, translations, and composer information.
Classical Net is idiosyncratic in places, but has some useful encyclopaedic-type data on hundreds of composers of all eras, including links to official sites, lists of works, recommended recordings and reviews, and timelines/necrologies.
The website of the magazine and classical CD guide, and not bad, though you'll soon notice you get far less content than you do in the mag. Best bits: Top news stories; Audio news (for those who like that sort of thing!); UK concert diary; New releases – tells you what's new out on every label (listed alphabetically).
Subscribers can access the full text of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition (London, 2001), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (London, 1992), and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd edition (London, 2002). Many libraries, schools and other institutions have a subscription which will cover you if you have a library card. You can access the website by the Library barcode user login.
From the IAMIC's mission statement: "IAMIC is an international network of organisations which document and promote the music of their country or region or a certain musical field (primarily the contemporary classical music)." Now this is a really worthy site. The IAMIC has around 40 member countries, mostly European, and if you go to their websites (all listed here) you'll find extensive information about native 20th century composers, including up-to-date biographies and detailed lists of works. Some are better than others, some don't have English versions (shock! horror!), but all are worth a visit!
The privately-owned MusicWeb is good for two things at least: its daily-updated CD and concert review pages (claiming up to twice as many reviews as Gramophone, all splendidly detailed), and its focus on British composers. MusicWeb hosts the site of the British Music Society, formed in 1979 to promote the music of neglected British composers, and carries countless in-depth articles on those composers. In fact, through the BMS you can actually help sponsor recordings of British works (they have their own label). True MusicWeb itself suffers a little from over-busy layout and some dead links, but don't let that deter you.
The UK site of the 'budget' record label, Naxos (other national sites also accessible from here). Has some very handy pages in its 'Learning zone', including a large database of composers, complete with potted biography and list of recordings available on Naxos, and an A-Z of opera, which gives synopses of hundreds and full librettos of tens of works (including all of Wagner's!). Naturally, there's also loads of information about this label's generally fantastic catalogue.
Intelligent, American online magazine about modern (classical) music. Full archive (back to its founding in 1999) jam-packed with interesting articles and features on all contemporary aspects of classical music.
A multilingual worldwide database of all (well, most) things opera, including reviews, news, calendars, festivals, opera houses, production details, performer biographies etc. Though very neat and tidy, not the most user-friendly or self-explanatory of layouts, and not all sections are equally up-to-date, but still a must for opera lovers. At the moment an impressive labour of love of one Mike Gibb, but expect to see more third-party ads as the site picks up more sponsorship. Thanks to Me Kurwenal for the recommendation.
PublicRadioFan is a useful, US-based site that lists classical music-oriented public radio stations around the world that broadcast their audio over the internet. (Competition? What competition?!) Thanks to Hugo Stokke for the recommendation.