Just for the record

A new candidate for the worst piece of music ever imagined – David Hamilton’s Elysian Fields.

I don’t much like orchestral music except for a few pieces that soaked into my brain courtesy of my father’s terrible habit of playing his ten records over and over, and over.

On the other hand, chamber music I often like. Stay with me, I am going somewhere with this.

Back before electricity I guess the only way to fill a large hall with music was to pump up the chamber group to 10x or even 20x the number of players.

It was pure economics.

But they forgot to shrink the things when electricity, mikes and speakers were invented.

You don’t see rock bands with 50 people in them do you?

Today, a group of die hards insist on continuing to write music for these orchestras.

Unfortunately all the nice melodies were poached by the early composers so of late there has been a concerted effort to see how much pain the avid followers can take.

And it turns out they can take quite a lot.

Not in this life. And not in the next thanks.