some music listening

I've been getting reacquainted with some old (friends) great music. Listening to these greatest, highest of influences in musical sound is something anybody with some modest expenditure can do; but you have to learn the music and get it into memory. You also have to see it in perspective. See why it is the highest. That requires hearing all music, and all classical music. But once you do these works become powerful influences to use to literally order yourself internally. They are language like all higher B influences. Language you can use by higher parts of your inner being. The structure of these works of music alone communicate powerfully at deep levels.

I've further placed these twelve works (and groups of works) of classical music into a template based on the Olympian pantheon (which itself is a template of 12 universal types). This increases further the power of hearing these works. It gives them a completeness on a scale above the completeness of each individual work.

This can be done once you get knowledge of and understanding of and a feel for each of the gods and goddesses of the Olympian pantheon and what their type is. On work_celestial (yahoogroups) somewhere I've outlined the list if anybody has interest. But musical works can be chosen the way I have with this current group linked above or you can choose single powerful works for each type. In the list I'm using now there are about 40 separate works (if the Well-Tempered Clavier is considered one work). It's alot of music.

Some notes on recordings: I'm listening to different recordings of each group for each of the 3 times through. Here's some recordings for each I'm finding (and being reminded) are very good recordings:

• For Mozart's last six symphonies Herbert von Karajan's Deutsche Grammophon recordings from the '70s are surprisingly good. (His EMI recordings of the same works from the '70s are similarly good, but I seem to have given those away...) I have a zillion recordings of these symphonies, big orchestra and period performance, and could name alot of different ones worth hearing, but generally I'll just name one recording for each of these 12 works that stands out currently for me.
  

• Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (hands down among the greatest and most sublime musical works ever created) still has to be heard on the Phillips Duo Arthur Grumiaux recording. There are other great recordings, but you havn't heard these neverendingly astonishing works until you've heard Grumiaux playing them.
  

• Bach's Brandenburg Concertos... Many people don't like these works because of the busy-ness, unrelenting, closely woven tapestry of the music. Too crowded, too unending. Not enough silence for notes. Yet if you settle to the fact that you are hearing Baroque music and not anything else then you can get over that initial impression and engage the music for what it is. (The slow movements, anyway, give enough melody and beauty to make up for the fast movements relentlessness.) The music itself is almost in its own category. No other concerti grossi of its type (not even Handel's Op. 6) compare in inspiration and stature. I admit to preferring the slower, more Olympian, large orchestra approach to these works, rather than the fast, period style so prevalent. For this reason I consider von Karajan's recordings on Deutsche Grammophon to be a standard for these works.
  

• For the Well-Tempered Clavier I'm listening to Samuel Feinberg (classic Russian, romantic piano take, but really in a technical class by himself) and Richter (more granite and solid though similar Russian style as Fineberg) and Gould (in a class by himself) as the three recordings. I'd recommend Fineberg but his recording has been impossible to find since forever. I got lucky a while back during a rare window of time when it was available. The Richter (RCA) is unfortunately recorded badly (too much reverb and worse). Gould is Gould and worth hearing. Friedrich Gulda is probably a good, non-extreme choice to hear these works on piano.
  

• I find Celibidache's EMI recording of Bruckner's 4th to be inspired. Most recordings of Bruckner's 4th are OK, though. Celibidache is a little different with the slow pace and visionary build-ups. So I mention him.
  

• I have an old recording on a fly-by-night bootleg label of Bach's B Minor Mass recorded off Austrian radio in the '40s, von Karajan conducting Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Kathleen Ferrier (spelling may be off in those names, it's been awhile since I've been involved with these works and have forgotten the spellings). Because of those two singing together it's a great recording. Impossible to find though (and the EMI edition that has those two and Karajan is not the same and not as good).
  

• For Beethoven's 7th symphony I find that Furtwangler (his studio version on EMI) captures everything about the symphony. He understands it. He alone (or among the very, very few) gets the pacing of the trio of the third movement right. I just mention this recording because it's one that if you hear it you can know that you've heard this symphony. It's a mythic symphony (I associate it with Artemis). It has the hunt, death, the dance. Mountain side, city.
  

These are just some of the recordings of some of the 12 groups of music that stand out...