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Monday, December 31, 2012

Beethoven Rules

WQXR, the famous and influential classical music station in NYC, does an annual listener poll ranking (and then playing) the greatest 100 compositions of all time.  This year, no shock (to this listener), my man Beethoven took six of the top ten slots, with symphonies 3,5,6,7 and 9 and the "Emperor" piano concerto, including three of the top four.  My #1 pick, and theirs (and enjoy our book): 

1 comment:

Laurence Glavin said...

WQXR-FM may be famous and influential, but it got the short end of the stick when the forced sale of the station by the New York Times landed the station on an inferior channel (yes, FM stations have channels, just like TV stations, because they send out"information" on more than one frequency; that's what Frequency Modulation means). Its legendary frequency, 96.3, was clear of interference from stations on its own channel and first adajacent ones; 105.9 receives interference from a 105.9 operation in Meriden CT and first adjacent 106.1 on Lawn Guyland. Thus WQXR is limited to a mere six-hundred watts albeit on the Empire State Building in mid-Manhattan; other FMs up there run six-THOUSAND watts. You see, besides obsessing on all things classical and operatic with a heavy emphasis on Beethoven , I also obsess on all things media (which is how I came to this blog; Dan Kennedy of Northeastern University's Journalism Depahtment recommended it on WGBH-TV in Boston. (It's not on his blogroll at www.dankennedy.net though).