After a few days of using it, I agree it is a major step forward.
For me, I want there to be an AppleTV version soon as that is where I have my best receiver/speaker setup.
I am amused what gets filtered into my Classical “Library” tab, not just Brian Eno, but Laurie Anderson, Frank Zappa, Björk, Randy Newman, Duke Ellington, yadda yadda. Not strictly “classical music” by any stretch…
This article is a decent albeit basic discussion of the issues around metadata and music.
Decades ago when UCLA moved from a homegrown online library catalog to a purchased and augmented catalog, I know the Music librarians and catalogers worked a lot with faculty to add fields, and a metadata glossary, in a year or longer design phase. I wonder if there are official LOC standards; Dublin Core has some music support, but it’s very basic.
Why can’t I use the search butten bottom right to search in my tracks? Like in Apple Music you can search in Apple music or in your library?
I know I have Morgen by Glenn Gould and Schwarzkopf in my Library, but how do I find it?!
Is it everything by them? Or just selected tracks?
If the latter, it may make sense, depending on which tracks have been selected.
For example, Emerson Lake and Palmer have many rock/jazz covers of classical works. And a few original symphonic works that may be considered modern-classical.
Symphonic Music of Yes is an album of orchestral arrangements of Yes songs. You may not like it (I don’t think it’s particularly good), but you could easily make the case that it is a classical album.
It’s great that Apple is starting to recognize the unique differences between classical and pop when it comes to managing a collection. But only releasing the app to iPhone users seems like an incomplete offering. For me, classical music is much more often played from my Mac or from my iPad. The only time I really play music from my phone is in the car or walking, and I refuse to use an iPhone-formatted app on my iPad and waste all that screen real estate. So for now I will continue using Apple Music on all my devices, because it’s the only app that actually exists on all my devices. FWIW, I’d much rather see the Apple Classical app features rolled into an Apple Music app release. Having a separate app just for classical, no matter how lovely it may be, is just a PITA.
selected complete LPs. For instance, Laurie Anderson’s Big Science; Zappa’s Hot Rats; Randy Newman’s Ragtime soundtrack and so on,
I agree that some rock musicians explore some of the same ground as traditional classical genre musicians might, but it seems a bit of an expansive criterion. I’m not complaining, mind you, just am amused.
I’ve noticed that if I play something on Apple Classical, it appears in the Apple Music “recent”, or I have the option to add to a playlist that the two apps share. In other words, discovery of a particular piece is easier in Classical, but then I can use Apple Music to play the music on any device I have it on (Mac, stereo, etc.)
Primephonic and Idagio came out about the same time. I used both for about six months before deciding on Idagio as my primary source of Classical Music. I was excited when Apple purchased Primephone and have been waiting, impatiently, for two years until the release of Apple Classical. The wait was definitely worth it. Apple has significantly improved what was Primephonic. I would like to say that I will remain loyal to Idagio also, but probably not.
I have two questions about Apple Music Classical, and then two unrelated comments about my most recent experience listening to a live performance of music by my favorite composer.
The first is about the inability to download music into an “Apple Music Classical” library for listening with no internet connection. I know that the EU will be abandoning “airplane mode” in the near future, but that won’t enable me to compare different recordings of the Mahler 2nd in my hearing aids at 35,000 feet between SF and NYC. Is the confinement to streaming limitation financial or technical?
The second is how recordings of a single work are presented in a top level search. As a Bay Area resident for almost ALL of Micheal Tilson Thomas’s tenure as music director of the SF Symphony, I came to love almost all of his performances (and recordings of the Mahler Symphonic repertoire for Sony Music Classical). Eventually, I learned that my adoration of his interpretations is NOT shared by many very talented and knowledgeable musicians. But when I search for ANY Mahler Symphony among “all” recordings of a single work, MTT’s efforts are rarely presented among the first dozen, and he doesn’t appear in the first dozen screensfull list of the much recorded “Titan” (1st) Symphony. Does anyone know HOW different recordings are ordered in that top level list?
I flew to SF this week to meet up with old friends and introduce them to Herr Mahler as interpreted by MTT, partly just because it’s remarkable that he’s still able to stand on a stage with a baton more than two years after his diagnosis of an almost universally fatal brain tumor. Of course, the 6th is among Mahler’s most strident, dissonant, and angry “marching music” works (as I listened, I thought briefly that if there were a “PDQ Mahler,” this could easily have been one of HIS rather than Gustav’s).
My friends did not leave Davies Symphony Hall enamored of Mahler as a composer of beautiful music. I reminded them of his talents as an orchestrator (as compared, for example, with Schumann or Brahms, where “everybody plays all the time” could be used to describe symphonic composition. I instructed them to download Apple Music Classical and listen to the Agagietto from the 5th (perhaps even remembering its performance at Bobby Kennedy’s funeral, or to the final two sections of the 8th and 2nd to bear witness to single bar modulations from ethereal to gloriously overwhelming, and then the third movement of the 1st Symphony, to demonstrate that Herr Mahler had a fully-developed sense of humor.
Finally, a tribute to the metadata in Apple Music Classical. As my friends were driving me back to our hotel Thursday night, one of them asked me just how important the conductor was, anyway, in keeping > 100 musicians in sync by waving his stick. I thought immediately of Gilbert Kaplan. Some of you may be chuckling already. For those of you who are not, you DON’T need to resort to Wikipedia. Just search for his name and Mahler 2nd, then scroll through the metadata to his name and remember what Gertrude Stein said about Oakland, where she grew up.
Sounds like a fun conversation.
I would probably begin the discussion by pointing out that conductor does a lot more than keep the timing. His job (if he’s doing it well) is equivalent to the producer, recording engineer and mixing engineer in a pop music recording session. He tells each section when to come in and go out, how loud to be, and tailors the emotional content of each.
Which is why you can find recordings of nearly-identical orchestras performing the same piece that sound very different. The conductor is going to play a large role in those differences.
Of course that’s true, particularly for something as complex as Mahler. But, sometimes, a conductor is almost superfluous. Our local Bozeman (MT) Symphony did a Mozart Violin Concerto, and to honor the era in which it was composed the orchestra did it with no “leader” other than the concertmaster, who was also the soloist.
One thing that you can do is to add music in the Classical app to a playlist in your Apple Music library, or create a new playlist, and then in the Music app on the iPhone download those “songs” for offline playback.
I was trying to find Mussorgsky‘s Pictures at an Exhibition, but it would pull up that and mostly the Ravel orchestration. Should be a way to choose without going through all of them. I am hoping this gets better with an iPad version.
This is essentially what I do
Kirk, I’m enough of a non-audiophile that I can enjoy listening to the Mahler 8th through my hearing aids, but I’m capable of telling the difference between that and truly excellent sonic experiences. So, I’m curious. How difficult would it be to do the play-list creation in Apple Music Classical->download to Apple Music, then listen on a.pair of HomePod 2 speakers? Would an average listener be able to detect a REAL difference between that and a single original HomePod? Would that same average but a bit cash-compromised listener be happier adding a second HomePod Mini to his existing one? How about creating a pair where one original HomePod is paired with a new HomePod 2.
I now live 1000 miles from the nearest Apple retail store, but I’ll be able to ask these questions at a real bricks and ,mortars store on our family visit to Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Oh, we also have an LG Soundbar beneath our OLED LG TV; I have NO idea whether I could get a similar sonic experience by using IT as the speakers and cannot even test whether I can do a BT connection to the soundbar until we get home.
Is the inability to do one-click spatial audio to a pair of HomePod 2s technical/hardware, or just a matter of a programmatic update.
I should add that my spouse is far more interested in Monteverdi, Pachelbel, Bach, and Mozart than she is in Mahler, Stravinsky, etc. so the full-on Symphony of a Thousand in my Living Room would not be an every day experience.
I hope the Apple Music Classical programmers are getting an earful from the Software Tools department. To release a first-party app that’s iPhone-only in 2023 is inexcusable. At WWDC we’ve been hearing for years how easy it is for developers to make their software work across iOS, iPadOS and macOS. When I opened Apple Music Classical on my iPad and got the little iPhone app screen I was incredulous. What an embarrassment for Apple.
Does anyone know what Apple did with the expertise it acquired when it purchased Primephonic? Like many of you, I was stunned by the mediocrity of the tiny iPhone-only app in which marketing and glitz overwhelm the base Apple must have had by buying Primephonic. Or perhaps Apple just did that purchase to eliminate a competitor and trashed the expertise because Apple believes it knows more than anybody else. For me, I’ll stick with IDAGIO for classical music.
My guess is that Apple is limiting the rollout to one OS at a time to make sure each iteration works perfectly across the many countries they sell to around the globe. As discussed, a classical music database is a super duper mega undertaking. Spacing the rollout to each individual OS as well as in different languages, will enable any early corrections that might be necessary.
You have a much more gracious take on this than I do. 