# listening ridiculous number of times to same recording.



## arthro (Mar 12, 2013)

Hi,

I remember seeing a documentary about the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca getting a hold of a phonograph in the 1930s and a record of some Bach, and listening to it ad nauseam, like, over and over again, practically incessantly. You can imagine, at the timem he probably didn't have many recordings to choose from either, so in many ways he was forced into that mode of listening.

Nowadays however, with so much music and recordings, it's much harder to do this, mainly because something will come among and distract us. Nevertheless I think it might still occur, especially when we think we've found something that is so good, we're able to shut out all distractions. And of course that we have the time to do it.

So, maybe it's been asked before but ... I was interested in hearing of occasions when forum members have listened to something a ridiculous numbers of times over and over.

Cheers / Ar.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

For a some weeks all I did all my free time was run Beethoven's 9th on my earbud, over and over, but about 20 different recordings and kept buying more. Now I hardly listen to it. I did similar with Beethoven's opera Fidelio and many other works. Then something new catches me and I am off on another wild ride of recordings and listening over an over. Also I remember listening to Beethoven's third symphony over and over for a week, and that was the same performance.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Listening to the same recording over and over and over and over again and expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

hpowders said:


> Listening to the same recording over and over and over and over again and expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity.


I don't know what I was expecting but in some ways it was a bit insane!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Florestan said:


> I don't know what I was expecting but in some ways it was a bit insane!


I tend to favor certain recordings, but I only listen repetitively if I'm trying to learn a new score, like the Schoenberg Piano Concerto and Violin Concerto. Wow, did I spend so much time with those, over and over for weeks and weeks!


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

yes, I did and occasionally I do, depends on a recording and my mood


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

I do occasionally, depends on a recording and my mood.


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## Antiquarian (Apr 29, 2014)

It happened to me once, when I was young. It was _Symphonic Dances _by Rachmaninoff. I would listen to it over and over, so much so that I wore out the LP. (This was long before CD technology- I was a pre-teen.) I was at the time immersing myself with fantasy novels, and this seemed the perfect music to accompany my reading.


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## LOLWUT (Oct 12, 2016)

I have listened to Bernstein's Mahler 3 so many times I have ruined it for myself.


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## majlis (Jul 24, 2005)

60 years ago, I listened every day vinyls by Ricci playing Sarasate with his teacher Persinger, and a recital by a great French violinist named Gerard Jarry, today forgotten.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I remember being completely addicted to Gould playing the sarabande of Bach's 4th partita. It was a real formative thing for me, probably the thing that made me interested in music before Mozart. At that time in my life I would play to death the second half of Winterreise, it was Schreier/ Richter I think. 

A similar thing happened with the end of Act 3 of Parsifal, one of the recordings with Vickers, when he enters the shrine, and indeed with Götterdämmerung from Hagen's watch to the death of Siegfried, I used to listen to Solti - that's a lot of music. But most of all with Peter Grimes, which when I was a kid I played so often that I could sing most of the songs. Oh another one at that time was Figaro, I would listen over and over to that duet where Figaro is trying to deceive Almaviva, and the count kind of knows he's being lied to, it was some recording with Fischer Dieskau, I can't remember which, and to the wonderful wedding march. 

It happens less to me now, I somehow have a different relation with the music, more cerebral, for better or for worse.


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## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

I do it before I go to a concert if I don't know the music being performed very well. That way I get used to it and enjoy it on the night!!


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I sometimes drive my car and don't care to change the cd for weeks, my way of hearing my new cd's. Now it's lute music by Francesco da Milano and 2 more played by Jakob Lindberg, new BIS recording.


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## TwoPhotons (Feb 13, 2015)

I do this all too often I'm afraid. It means that, compared to most other listeners, I have a narrow range of music which I know. However, the stuff that I _do _know, I know very well! :lol: (e.g. for the past week I've been replaying Act 2 from Tristan und Isolde)

I also find it difficult to listen to a new recording of a work. It always used to irk me when I heard a passage played in a different tempo than what I'm used to. I had similar problems in concerts - rather than simply taking in what the musicians were playing, I would subconsciously compare it to my favourite recording, and always ended up disappointed in some way.

I would say I am getting better over the years, both in terms of expanding my range of music and in terms of accepting new interpretations of music I know. It really just comes down to having an open ear, and allowing the music to "flow through you".


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

hpowders said:


> Listening to the same recording over and over and over and over again and expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity.


Why expect a different result? Maybe you get the same result and like it? I've listened to several versions of several wonderful works in the last week and found (mostly) the same result - delight! These works include:

Chopin Piano Concerto No.1
Haydn Symphony No.43 ("Mercury")
Vivadi Op.3 No.1

... although the HIP versions had a lot of abrasion mixed in with the delight


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

I've never really paid much attention to Liszt's piano sonata in B minor, so for the last week I've been listening to it in the eight different recordings I have of it so I can really get familiar with it. It's getting there. To my mind the best version is that by Jeno Jandó on Naxos; he really gets at the musicality of it rather than the virtuosity that seems to be the focus of most pianists (including some very big names), and it feels like a completely different piece in his hands.

But yes, back in the days of LPs when I was a poor student I'd get classical music LPs on interlibrary loan and just play them over and over and over and over until they had to go back. A lot of them I can still hear in my head.


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## ldiat (Jan 27, 2016)

Pugg said:


> I do occasionally, depends on a recording and my mood.


yes i do this also then i go to sleep and dream about the opera stars....all women


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## Lenny (Jul 19, 2016)

I do it for my spotify play lists, don't know if that counts (?). I remember one spring listening to my Schumann list so many times (maybe two months straight, all day long) I got sick of Schumann for a looong time 

Now I've recovered my love for Schumann, because I found some new interesting chamber pieces. But still I skip some sections in the play list...


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I sometimes drive my car and don't care to change the cd for weeks, my way of hearing my new cd's. Now it's lute music by Francesco da Milano and 2 more played by Jakob Lindberg, new BIS recording.


Sometimes in the car the CD loops back to the beginning and I don't notice for a while--this is particularly a problem with Mahler.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I tend to be lazy in my vehicle and keep the same cd on for dozens of continuous plays/weeks. It can pay dividends. A couple of years ago I put on a cd of Haydn Op. 20 string quartets performed by the Solomons on Hyperion; after a few weeks, I was totally smitten and hearing Haydn in a new light which also eventually carried on to Haydn's symphonies and other genres. Now I'm a strong Haydn advocate.


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## FDR (Oct 19, 2016)

Closest thing to a ridiculous number of repeats for me would be listening to Brahms 4th symphony three times in a row just yesterday. Haha

There's just too much when it comes to classical music for me to be all over a specific recording. I always feel curious about listening to something new that I have not heard before, composer or piece of music. Though I do see the enjoyment of comparing different recordings of the same symphony for example.


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## Alydon (May 16, 2012)

hpowders said:


> Listening to the same recording over and over and over and over again and expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity.


I have recently bought a six CD set of Glenn Gould playing Beethoven sonatas and have listened to it time and time again with a kind of morbid fascination. Now, that is insanity.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Alydon said:


> I have recently bought a six CD set of Glenn Gould playing Beethoven sonatas and have listened to it time and time again with a kind of morbid fascination. Now, that is insanity.


That reminds me. I haven't listened to a Beethoven piano sonata in ages, and I don't really have a good set. Perhaps it is time to rectify that.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Florestan said:


> That reminds me. I haven't listened to a Beethoven piano sonata in ages, and I don't really have a good set. Perhaps it is time to rectify that.


I have the Annie Fischer set and a few others. They are not arranged chronologically in the Fischer set. So many humorous moments in those sonatas. Uncanny!

I've gone to piano concerts and when a humorous moment in a Beethoven sonata came, I would look around me and the people usually looked so serious. Beethoven would have been PO'd. Not even a smile!

Don't they get it????


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

ldiat said:


> yes i do this also then i go to sleep and dream about the opera stars....all women


As long as you don't get to carried away, no harm done I would say.


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## Bluecrab (Jun 24, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Listening to the same recording over and over and over and over again and expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity.


Nah, not at all... but given the emoji you used, I infer that your post is tongue-in-cheek.

I'm guilty of this with Bartok's string quartets 1 and 4 (doing it right this minute, as a matter of fact). There is so much going on in both of those works that every time I listen to them, I hear a nuance that I hadn't focused on before. And they sound better every time I listen to them.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

I call listening to the same thing over and over "immersion therapy" 

I do it all the time. At work I put together a playlist of what I'm going to work on that evening and listen to it all day. Its great for learning new pieces. I listen all day at work, then when I read through it the day's listening comes back and I catch all sorts of things in the score I wouldn't catch sight reading the first time cold.

I started doing this in music school where I would put one vinyl record on the turntable and listen to nothing else for 2 or 3 weeks

this works well for me, but I don't think its for everyone. its just something I've always done


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

When I got my first album, Indo-Jazz Suite by Joe Harriot and John Mayer back in 1967, I played it so much that now I only need to reach for it and I can hear every note in my head. I even learned the flute part so I could play along with it. It was my only album until I got payed the following month and I could buy Live at Pep's by Yusef Lateef so it really got hammered every day for a month. No idea how many times but it was a lot!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Michael Rische's performance of Debussy's L'isle joyeuse. So terrific, I can't stop playing it!


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

"99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall"

Love that song!

V


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

gardibolt said:


> I've never really paid much attention to Liszt's piano sonata in B minor, so for the last week I've been listening to it in the eight different recordings I have of it so I can really get familiar with it. It's getting there. To my mind the best version is that by *Jeno Jandó on Naxos;* he really gets at the musicality of it rather than the virtuosity that seems to be the focus of most pianists (including some very big names), and it feels like a completely different piece in his hands.
> 
> But yes, back in the days of LPs when I was a poor student I'd get classical music LPs on interlibrary loan and just play them over and over and over and over until they had to go back. A lot of them I can still hear in my head.


I bought mozart sonatas of Jeno Jando recently and though he plays superbly well - he has this annoying humming habit and I cant listen to it - I also have the same pianist playing Beethoven on Naxos but there is no humming. Does he hum on the Liszt CD?


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Varick said:


> "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall"
> 
> Love that song!
> 
> V


Listening ridiculous number of times or SINGING IT ridiculous number of times?


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

Florestan said:


> Listening ridiculous number of times or SINGING IT ridiculous number of times?


Yes

V


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

stomanek said:


> I bought mozart sonatas of Jeno Jando recently and though he plays superbly well - he has this annoying humming habit and I cant listen to it - I also have the same pianist playing Beethoven on Naxos but there is no humming. Does he hum on the Liszt CD?


Hm, I didn't notice any, but I wasn't listening for it either.


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## Guest (Oct 27, 2016)

Try André Laplante too. Available on YouTube, Spotify.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

There are some pieces I have heard over 1000 times. There are Bach pieces I play back to back for hours. I like to listen to the same piece over and over, back to back, many times. It gives me great pleasure. 

New thread idea: What Piece Have You Listened to More than Any Other?


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## Bruckner Anton (Mar 10, 2016)

I have spent countless hours on the following recordings, which are combinations of immortal compositions, nearly perfect performances and at least fair sound qualities:
Bach goldberg variations perahia and leonhardt sony
Bach cantatas richter archiv
Bach violin concertos szeryng marriner philips
Beethoven late sonatas pollini dg and arrau philips
Beethoven cello sonatas richter rostropovich philips
Beethoven symphony 6 boehm vpo dg
Brahms piano concertos gilels jochum bpo dg
Brahms violin concerto grumiaux beinum rco philips
Brahms symphony 4 karajan 80s and abbado bpo dg
Bruckner symphony 7 giulini vpo dg, wand bpo rca and haitink rco 79 philips 
Bruckner symphony 8 boulez vpo dg, wand bpo rca and haitink vpo philips
Bruckner symphony 9 giulini vpo dg, barenboim bpo teldec and haitink rco philips
Haydn last 4 piano trios beaux arts trio philips
Mahler symphony 6 karajan bpo dg and haitink bpo philips
Mahler symphony 9 bertini emi and abbado dg
Mozart symphony 40,41 brueggen philips
Mozart piano quartets beaux arts trio philips
Mozart string quintets grumiaux philips
Schubert last piano sonatas brendel philips
Schubert piano trio no.2 rubinstein rca
Wagner parsifal knappertsbusch philips
Wagner ring keilberth testament and boehm philips
Wagner tristan boehm dg


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

I have played the LPs that I began my collection with many times, well over a hundred in a lot of cases.I still play them all, but maybe just once a year.

A few years ago I played John Martyn's 'Don't want to know' on a loop. I heard it 46 times according to itunes, and it got better each time.


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