Except "song" doesn't work for classical music, where the generic term is "work"("opus") or "piece".

Which is a significant problem for Pandora.

The Digital Rights legislation seems to require that no two tracks (or is it "songs"?) on a CD be played within the same hour. That's fine for pop music and jazz, where usually 1 Track = 1 Song.

Not so for classical music, where one work may be in four or more very related movements, like a piano sonata, symphony, or string quartet. (Beethoven's Diabelli Variations for piano has 33 movements! It would take a month to hear the whole thing!)

The result for the classical listener to Pandora can be a bit frustrating, if not down right infuriating. Mashing the 3rd movement of the Beethoven 5th symphony to the 2nd movement of the Brahms violin concerto could cause serious brain damage, because the end of that 3rd movement is all about the beginning of the 4th movement that comes next. That's why it's there. It makes no sense otherwise.

I think Pandora is interpreting the copyright legislation regarding streaming a bit too literally. You could say that all four movements comprise the song known as Beethoven's 5th symphony, rather than let the recording company's somewhat arbitrary 1 Track = 1 Movement define what a "song" is in this context.

Besides, I'm sure that if DG found out that I just heard their recording of the entire Beethoven 5th, they'd probably be overjoyed!

Talk about Pandora trying to be the new radio! As far as classical is concerned, it's not much better than KDFC, ("Here's the third movement of Beethoven's 5th symphony .. that Beethoven, what a grouch!") except that Pandora has no fawning announcers and a much better record collection.

So, I guess that does make Pandora better than KDFC, afterall, come to think of it.

But I do think you need to reconsider what a "song" is in the classical context. Right now what you're doing can be a bit crazy making.

thanx.. great post.

I think that I refer to a song and a recording as one entity only when the recording is the first released or first popularized recording of a song. I generally speak of versions of songs when they differ from the original recording.

The other versions can be a cover (ie Dinosaur Jr's version of Just Like Heaven) or a different recording by original artist (ie the acoustic version of Ironic by Alanis). There are also live versions, sometimes differentiated by date and/or venue, demo versions, and various mixes. Sometimes those distinctions are part of the song "title", but usually they aren't.

To me the song is what's on paper and the recordings are just different versions of the song. I almost see a song as similar to an architectural drawing for a house. It shows the basic structure of a house, but the way the house is painted and decorated will be different for each owner. The houses may be vastly different in look and feel, but structurally they're the same.

When you start knocking holes in the walls, adding more windows or taking away windows you start playing with the structure, but the house's origins are usually still recognizable. I think that is kind of what happens when someone covers a song. They do exterior and interior redecoration and sometimes they also make some structural changes, but the origins are usually identifiable.

Rather than saying that we've never heard a song in it's purest form, I would say that such a state doesn't exist for a song. There is no purest version of a song, just as there is no purest house, no purest redwood tree, no purest apple, no pureset human.

Another question is whether the written work itself should even be considered the song in its purest form. It is merely a written recording, rather than an audio recording. Perhaps the "song" exists in a much more abstract sense, and has some essence that cannot be seen or heard or touched and cannot be physically defined.

This is always an interesting question to consider - "where does the music lie?"

I definitely believe that recordings are just documents of one particular performance/construction of a "song." Even notated music is just a record of the way a composer or transcriber conceived of a piece at a particular time. The notes on the page are constantly re-interpreted and "re-heard" in many different ways.

Performers like Bob Dylan and Will Oldham really highlight the difference between songs and recordings - they continually reinterpret their own songs and almost never play them like they recorded them. I think some of Bob Dylan's songs from the 60s MEANT something completely different when he performed them in the mid 70s w/ the Rolling Thunder Revue.

Ultimately, "songs" don't really exist at all. It is just a concept created to allow us to talk about our aural experiences of recordings and performances.

If a "pure form" of a "song" exists, it exists in our minds (and it is probably quite different for every individual).

NARAS (the Grammy people) use Song Of The Year and Record Of The Year to distinguish between the two.

In their estimation:
The song is the work of a songwriter.
The record is a collaboration between producers, engineers, songwriters and performers.

Does this mean that we could refer to NPR reporters as "phonojournalists"?

In this digital age, phonography has gone digital, but it persists as the art form of recording, mixing, mastering and printing some form of record.

This may be my favorite Play Listen Repeat, MZ. Great topic.

When you say "recording" it makes me think of a cover. Like the song "imagine" by John Lennon and Jack Johnsons cover of it. They're the same song but they're also very different from each other.

Thank for this post
Go GO Pandora .

Awesome post.
Thanks =)

"The song is the work of a songwriter.
The record is a collaboration between producers, engineers, songwriters and performers."

I agree. It's the most exactly definition.