Luke Muehlhauser

Media diet for Q3 2023

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Music

Music I most enjoyed discovering this quarter:

This quarter, I was reminded that I often like orchestral arrangements of originally non-orchestral pieces (by a different composer). Here are some favorites, most of which I discovered for the first time this quarter [playlist]:

  • Leopold Stokowski (as arranger): Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and “Sheep May Safely Graze” and “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” Rachmaninov’s “The Bells of Moscow,” Clarke’s “The Prince of Denmark’s March,” Mozart’s “Turkish March,” Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata mvt 1, Franz Schubert’s “Serenade,” Chopin’s “Funeral March” and “Minute Waltz” and Preludes (Opus 28) No. 24, Albeniz’s “Festival in Seville,” Handel’s “Dead March,” Purcel’s “Dido’s Lament,” Mussorgsky’s “St. John’s Night on the Bare Mountain,” Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”
  • Ferde Grofé (as arranger): Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue
  • Henry Wood (as arranger): Grieg’s “Funeral March in Memory of Rikard Nordraak,” Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp minor
  • Maurice Ravel (as arranger): Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition
  • Henri Büsser: Debussy’s Petite Suite
  • Gustav Mahler (as arranger): Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14
  • Steven Stucky (as arranger): Purcell’s Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary
  • Arnold Schoenberg (as arranger): Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1
  • Benjamin Britten (as arranger): Purcell’s Chacony in G Minor
  • Franz Liszt (as arranger): Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy
  • Erwin Schulhoff (as arranger): Beethoven’s “Rage Over a Lost Penny”
  • Claude Debussy (as arranger): Satie’s Gymnopédies
  • Francis Poulenc (as arranger): Satie’s Gnossiennes No. 3
  • Gustav Holst (as arranger): Bach’s Fugue a la gigue in G Major [BWV 577]
  • Eugene Ormandy (as arranger): Bach’s “Sleepers Wake” [BWV 140]
  • Various arrangers: Brahms’ Hungarian Dances

Rediscovered or revisited, and really liked:2

  • Ludwig van Beethoven: “Rage Over a Lost Penny” (1798), “Pathetique” Sonata (1799), “Moonlight” Sonata (1801), Symphony No. 3 “Eroica” (1804), Symphony No. 5 (1808), Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral” (1808), “Für Elise” (1810), Symphony No. 7 (1812), Symphony No. 9 “Choral” (1824), String Quartet No. 13 mvt 2 (1826) [playlist]
  • Sergei Rachmaninoff: Prelude in C-sharp minor (1892), Piano Concerto No. 2 (1901), Piano Concerto No. 3 (1909), Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini variation 18 (1934) [playlist]
  • Edvard Grieg: Lyric Pieces, Book 1 (1867), Holberg Suite (1884), Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 (1888), Peer Gynt Suite No. 2 (1893) [playlist]
  • Claude Debussy: Petite Suite (1889), Fantaisie for Piano & Orchestra (1890), “Reverie” (1890), Two Arabesques (1891), Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894), Nocturnes (1899), Suite bergamasque (1905), La mer (1905) [playlist]
  • Igor Stravinsky: Scherzo Fantastique (1908), The Firebird (1911), Petrouchka (1911), The Rite of Spring (1913), Pulcinella Suite (1920), Symphony in Three Movements (1945) [playlist]
  • Antonio Vivaldi: RV 4 mvt 4, RV 7 mvt 4, RV 59 mvt 2, RV 63, RV 93 mvt 2, RV 110 mvt 1, RV 113 mvt 3, RV 115 mvt 1, RV 119 mvt 3, RV 131 mvt 1, RV 141 mvt 1, RV 151 mvt 1, RV 157 mvt 1, RV 204, RV 208 mvt 3, RV 228 mvt 1, RV 256 mvt 3, RV 260 mvt 1, The Four Seasons, RV 273 mvt 1, RV 407 mvts 1 & 3, RV 419 mvts 1 & 3, RV 425 mvts 1 & 3, RV 522 mvts 1 & 3, RV 532 mvt 3, RV 537 mvts 1 & 3, RV 580 mvt 2, RV 589 mvt 1. (Most Vivaldi composition years are unknown, but they’re generally from roughly 1700-1740.) [playlist]
  • Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 1 (1876), 21 Hungarian Dances (1879), Academic Festival Overture (1880), Symphony No. 3 (1883), Symphony No. 4 (1885) [playlist]
  • Johann Sebastian Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor [BWV 565], Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 [BWV 1048], several preludes from The Well-Tempered Clavier [BWV 846-893], Concerto for Three Harpsichords in C Major [BWV 1064], Concerto for 2 Violins in D Minor [BWV 1043], “Sheep May Safely Graze” [from BWV 208], “Badinerie” [from BWV 1067], “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” [from BWV 147], BWV 1052 mvts 1 & 3, BWV 1006 mvt 1, BWV 1045 mvt 1, BWV 1062 mvt 1, BWV 1068 mvt 2, BWV 1065 mvt 1. (These pieces were generally composed between 1704 and 1746.) [playlist]
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 25 (1773), Symphony No. 31 (1778), Sinfonia concertante mvt 1 (1779), Posthorn Serenade mvt 7 (1779), Symphony No. 36 (1783), “Turkish March” (1784), The Marriage of Figaro overture (1786), Horn Concerto No. 4 mvt 3 (1786), Piano Concerto No. 24 (1787), Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1787), Piano Sonata No. 16 mvt 1 (1788),  Symphony No. 39 (1788), Symphony No. 40 (1788), Symphony No. 41 (1788), “Queen of the Night” (1791), Requiem (1791) [playlist]
  • Erik Satie: Gymnopédies (1888), Gnossiennes (1897) [playlist]
  • Boards of Canada: Music Has the Right to Children (1998), Geogaddi (2002)
  • Child’s View: “Pendulum” (1999)
  • Nobukazu Takemura: “Meteor” (2000)
  • Matmos: “And Silver Light Popped in His Eyes” (1997)
  • Matthew Herbert: “Just Once” (2006)
  • Kammerflimmer Kollektief: Maander (1999), Incommunicado (2000), Hysteria (2001), Cicadidae (2003), Absencen (2005), Jinx (2007)
  • The Delgados: Hate (2002)
  • Andrea Bocelli: “Con te partirò” / “Time to Say Goodbye” (1995)
  • Coldplay: A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002)
  • Add N to (X): Loud Like Nature (2002)
  • Clinic: Clinic (1999), Internal Wrangler (2000)
  • Muse: Showbiz (1999), Origin of Symmetry (2001), Absolution (2004), Black Holes and Revelations (2006), “Uprising” and “Unnatural Selection” (2009), “Survival” (2012)
  • Eric Whitacre: “Lux Aurumque” (2000), “Equus” (2012)
  • Zbigniew Preisner: “Lacrimosa: Day of Tears” (1998)
  • Regular Music: Regular Music (1985), North South East West (1996)
  • Piero Milesi: Modi (1982)
  • The Lost Jockey: The Lost Jockey (1982), Professor Slack (1982), The Lost Jockey (1983)
  • Paul Bailey Ensemble: Summerland (2002)
  • Andrew Poppy: “32 Frames for Amplified Orchestra” (1985)
  • Michael Gordon: Dystopia / Rewriting Beethoven’s 7th Symphony (2015)
  • Cibo Matto: Viva La Woman (1996)
  • Fantastic Plastic Machine: The Fantastic Plastic Machine (1997)

This quarter, I listened through “complete works” playlists for Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Grieg, Debussy, Stravinsky, Brahms, and Satie. I also listened to various “highlights” playlists for some composers who wrote too much music for me to listen to comprehensively: Vivaldi (1, 2), JS Bach (1, 2), and Mozart (1, 2, 3). I discovered that while most of these composers’ works are pleasant and somewhat interesting (which cannot be said for most rock/pop or jazz artists, even those I like), I don’t strongly enjoy the vast majority of these composers’ output beyond a subset of their most famous pieces (listed above). Very little of it grips me (except for specific short passages) in the way that many ~entire albums of rock/pop and jazz music do.

I suspect some reasons for this are that (a) they typically lack a steady rhythm or groove, (b) they don’t have much repetition, in particular of catchy “hooks” or passages, and (c) for vocal pieces, they employ a usually-annoying “affected” singing style. Then again, some of the rock/pop and jazz music I love also features (a) and (b), so I’m not sure how explanatory these hypotheses are. Also, even for my favorite rock/pop and jazz artists I often only strongly enjoy 3-6 of their albums, and that’s not too far off from how many hours of music I liked enough to list above for each classical composer I surveyed this quarter. (Though I note that classical and jazz composers are usually much more prolific than rock/pop composers.) Some of my favorite contemporary classical composers, e.g. Michael Nyman and Philip Glass, use lots of steady rhythms and catchy hooks.

Movies/TV

Ones I “really liked” (no star), or “loved” (star):

  • Various, The Bear, season 2 (2023) ★
  • Stoller & Delbanco, Platonic, season 1 (2023)
  • Various, Mad Men, seasons 2-7 (2008-2014)
  • Gerwig, Barbie (2023) ★
  • Various, Righteous Gemstones, season 3 (2023) ★
  • Various, Spider-Man: Across the Universe (2023) ★
  • Szymanski, Jury Duty (2023) ★
  • Variouus, The Afterparty, season 2 (2023)
  • Philippou, Talk to Me (2022)
  • Craig, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (2023)
  • Mottola, Confess, Fletch (2022)
  • Various, Reservation Dogs, season 3 (2023)

Games

From now on I’ll just list all games I played a significant amount:

  • ★ Tears of the Kingdom: If you aggregate dozens of “best games of all time” lists, there’s a decent chance that 2017’s Breath of the Wild will land in the #1 spot or close to it. Given that, it’s crazy just how much better Tears of the Kingdom is in every way. BotW was already more “open” and free than any other open world adventure game when it launched, and since then only a few games have attempted something so ambitiously open (e.g. Genshin Impact and Immortals Fenyx Rising), and none have executed remotely as well. Now, with TotK, the Zelda franchise has increased its “openness” lead over the rest of the industry even further, by (a) making the world map ~2.3x as large and radically more vertical, and by (b) allowing you to fuse together ~any objects that appear anywhere in the world (including many new devices like fans, wheels, rockets, and steering sticks) and thereby build almost any kind of structure or vehicle or device you can imagine, which in turn allows you to solve puzzles, combat encounters, and traversal tasks in a near-limitless variety of ways. The results are basically “game-breaking,” except it works because the wild creativity is the point. This still isn’t quite the awe-inspiring best game of all time that Elden Ring is, but it’s probably my new favorite game of all time. I would love for other developers to attempt to make adventure games as ambitiously open and creativity-enabling as TotK, but will they be able to, given that they still haven’t caught up to where BotW was 6+ years ago?
  • Supraland: A 3D Metroidvania wth a fun setting (stick figures in a sandbox). The puzzles and gameplay are generally well-executed, but I only made it ~70% of the way through because I sometimes went for weeks in a row when I was too busy to play it, and then I couldn’t remember where everything was or what I was supposed to do next, and I eventually gave up trying.

Books

  • Yong, An Immense World
  • Lapena, An Unwanted Guest. Prior to this, I’d found myself unable to read fiction for >10 years. My mind always wanders.  On a whim I decided to try again, and thought a page-turner fair play murder mystery would be most likely to hold my attention all the way through, since those often grip me on TV and film. Anthropic’s LLM “Claude” suggested An Unwanted Guest plus a few others, so I gave it a try (on audiobook). And I’m happy to report I made it all the way through, and enjoyed it! The first fiction book I’ve finished in >10 years. My review: It’s written plainly and directly, and it’s pretty fast-paced. It takes place over the course of a couple days at an isolated hotel with the roads blocked and power cut off etc. Multiple people are murdered, and while there are clues pointing toward who is responsible, there aren’t a lot of them, and it would be pretty hard to guess (I certainly didn’t). Overall a satisfying ending for my tastes. Very Agatha Christie in style.
  • Foley, The Guest List. (Updated reaction:) I think I need to try this one again someday, as in my low-attention state I missed some important stuff early on (as I learned by reading a review later). So for now I’m leaving it unrated.
  • Ware, One by One. Again found by searching for books like An Unwanted Guest. A similar setup, and the whodunit mystery begins sooner than in The Guest List. Maybe not quite as fair play as An Unwanted Guest, but similarly enjoyable.
  1. Of course this is closer to a “most popular” list than a “greatest” list, but regardless, these pieces are great, and do seem to me like a great selection for introducing someone to classical music. [↩]
  2. I think I hadn’t heard some of the classical pieces before, but I’m not sure which ones. [↩]

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