I am ambivalent towards this sort of compilation album. On the one hand, compilations serve two useful purposes - one, as a tin-opener, alerting one to stuff that one might not necessarily otherwise have noticed. Also, if one is entertaining, pottering or, er, chilling out, it's sometimes nice to have bleeding chunks rather than an entire work which requires greater mental concentration.
I'm not sure that I am entirely comfortable with the packaging of music as a commodity. Of course, ultimately, all music is a commodity, but this idea of being told what music will suit your mood is a bit...presumptuous. Perhaps I am more likely to chill out to some Monteverdi motets or to some Eric Coates tunes, or Schubert sonatas, but I think these collections are lacking in such things.
What counts as classical is a bit dodgy - William Orbit's immolation of Barber's Adagio for strings, or of Handel's Largo from Serse, or Ruichi Sakamoto's tune which I know as the pop hit 'Forbidden Colours', which I often heard on Timmy Mallett's radio show. Or My Heart Will Go On, which despite thankfully lacking the eminently-shootable Celine Dion and being played by an orchestra is still a sub-pop dirge. And is now being used as the hold music for our IT Helpdesk at work. Eeurgggh. Or the pointless Sarah Brightman singing the pointless Figlio Perduto, which is just a steal from Beethoven's 7th Symphony
There are some tunes that crop up time and again on these easy listening compilations, especially those that have been featured in well known-ish films but the plus point of these particular compilations are the tunes plucked from obscurity eg Reich, Tavener.
My especial favourites are Faure's Cantique de Jean. Indeed I have a theory that so many of these compilations feature some gloriously sublime Faure that he is probably the best loved unknown composer...! Part's Spiegel im Spiegel - I know Part is really raved about, but this is one of the very few pieces of his that I actually own. It's so gorgeous, I ought to get more... Ungar and Mason's Ashokan Farewell - I'm sort of intrigued by this, especially it's Celtic feel and this site explains all! I also like Nagoya Marimbas, by Steve Reich, who is hideously and wrongly under-represented in my record collection. Also, Tavener's Song for Athene.
And then there are the horribilisation of great works - a Going Home by Issy (who?)
I am slightly irritated by the references to pieces being from passingly ephemeral pieces of pap culture - Elgar's Nimrod from the film 'Elizabeth'. But still better than the phrase 'made famous by'.
The Gregorian Chillout is a slightly different animal from the other two albums. A purist would rant and rave about the misappropriation of Gregorian Chant which was designed for devout worship. I have an ambiguous view of Gregorian Chant. There was this ghastly teacher at school who was nuts about it (the Geography teacher who didn't know that Hawaii is one of the United States and swore blind that Pearl Harbor is in the Philippines. Moments after she had told me to take more interest in current affairs as I sat there wearing an against-school-rules CND badge with a copy of New Socialist on my desk; she had previously taught me Maths). Our school chapel, whose acoustics were appalling for the spoken word, was splendid for anything contrapuntal and gorgeous for Gregorian chant, as the notes echoed and re-echoed.
I'm not a purist, so I don't mind the adumbration of Gregorian Chant for dubious 'Chillout' purposes. It does include Gregorian Chant, and stuff like Byrd, Lassus, and Taverner (with an 'r') as well as Mozart, Brahms, Fauré, Bruckner, Elgar and Vaughan Williams. Still one cannot have too many versions of Ave Verum Corpus, quite possibly the best thing that Mozart ever wrote.
