October 12, 2006 - Thursday
Yo-yo Ma's original 1982 recording of Bach's six unaccompanied cello suites has been one of my favorite CDs for many years. When I was a college student I played a transcribed version of the first suite on guitar, so I'm very familiar with that one especially. Jeremy has come to know the cello suites, too, by requesting them often at bedtime and taking them in the car for the morning ride to school (he still does gets a CD for the car ride every morning, although it's been a while since he picked the Cello Suites) and I'd hope that some of it would rub off. His being able to identify the Brandenburg Concertos at a store was pretty good evidence that he's been listening and this morning there was another. He chose Pablo Casals 1939 recording, a CD I recently got, for the car ride and when I asked him about it, pointing out the different way Casals played the same notes, Jeremy noted that it was "recorded differently, too. Of course, there's easy distinction to be made between 1939 and 1982 recording equipment, but this Casals recording had been re-mastered and most of the obvious sound limitations, the hollowness, the hiss, the crackles, and so forth had been removed to the point were I don't believe the average uneducated listener would pick up on it right away.

Yesterday Jeremy asked, "how does the car know what CD it is?" I believe Jeremy, who was holding the jewel case, was asking how could the car could see which CD it was and be able to play it. I explained that the music was stored on the shiny side of the CD as data and that the car had a way to read that music and play it. Who knows how much of that he understood, but this morning Jeremy asked if Pablo Casals was still alive. I said he wasn't but that he had been alive during my life, as compared to composers like Bach and Beethoven who lived hundreds of years ago. Jeremy said that, "the car is pretending that he's still alive so we can hear his music."


Comments, Opinions?