Yes, I’m supposed to get ready to teach … give me a minute, would ya?

Because Drew drew (hah!) my attention to Jeff Tsai’s site, I’m reading more of it. There’s one post where he talks about his new iPod. In that entry he writes:

Obviously, any concert/playlist with unrecorded music is incomplete (my playlist for the 1.7.05 New Jersey Symphony concert only has one song on it when four were performed). These playlists help me not only build my collection of music (easily and conveniently) but they also help me expand my knowledge of repertoire.

My students will read this and know exactly what my gripe is going to be.

It’s that darn word “song”. Unless Tsai is speaking of a song, I think he really means “work” or “piece”. But is this just the evolution of language? Will I have to relax on this one? Am I being a snob? Am I alienating everyone in the world? Is it time to jump off this dusty planet?

I remember when Penderecki was here, and he talked at my husband’s college. Someone asked him where he got his ideas for his songs and Penderecki nearly bit the poor student’s head off. It obviously bugged him as much as it bugs me. Probably even more.

Sidebar: I love my iPod too. But getting classical works from the iTunes store can be a problem: if a movement is split into sections, or if two movements should actually not have a break, you’ll have a break between them, no matter. When you put your own CDs on, you can choose to delete those breaks … but only if you remember before you transfer them to iTunes. This means you have to be attentive every time you add an opera, a Mahler symphony … etc., etc.. I’ve written to Apple about this, but so far I haven’t seen that they’ve changed the store to allow “join CD tracks”, as they allow with your own music. (Guess I should check again — maybe they’ve heard me by now?)

And of course on the iPod and on iTunes they call every track a “song”.

Sorry … this ramble was as long, or longer, than the earlier one. 😉
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