John Abbott's fascinating blog about his listening experience links to the "online home of Desert Island Discs, where public figures during the past seven decades, in 2950 episodes, have discussed music they couldn't be without if left in some isolated place.
Active in London and San Francisco, musicologist and technology editor Abbott maintains a humongous site, embracing all music, but with emphasis on contemporary works and, especially, British symphonic music — which he admits is not everybody's cuppa joe.
Abbott's ATuneADay blog also includes the current BBC List of Fifty modern classic (1950-2000), and the BBC-3 Sunday night new-music program Hear and Now. His Spotify playlist points to the music discussed in the blog.
Abbott's own list is influenced by his own druthers, of course:
I’m particularly interested in the British symphony, and have now posted a chronology on this site. An obscure field, perhaps, but there were many hundreds composed, most of them now forgotten and rarely (if ever) performed. However, the CD era did see the revival of a number of works in recorded form.The peak period of the British Symphony occured during the 1940s and lasted right through to the 1980s, later than many people realise. But there are examples on the list as early as 1802 (Samual Wesley, Symphony in Bb) and as recent as 2012 (Peter Maxwell Davies, Symphony No 9). Over time I will add more details to the list about the individual works. Comments, additons, corrections etc. all very welcome.
His other favorite categories are "Late Masterpieces," "Musical Authors" (such as Paul Bowles, Anthony Burgess, Ezra Pound, and others), and "Lost Chords" — "Music that might have been ... lost works, unpublished or suppressed manuscripts, projected works that were never completed, published works that were initially performed but later withdrawn. The 'Lost Chords' and 'Musical Authors' series came out of the research I did for some planned radio documentary series that I was working on a few years ago — the BBC showed some initial interest but in the end they didn't get past the commissioning board."
"Eclectic" is an understatement for the top of Abbott's current musical diary:
* Vaughan Williams, Norfolk Symphony (1905-6)
* Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 3 (1971)
* Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, Jerry Springer the Opera (2002) — this is rather strange: I first heard about Springer from Abbott even before its first full production, saw and liked it in Edinburgh and San Francisco, but he seems to regard it as an important, lasting work, which I think it's probably not.
* Robert Schumann, Five Romances (1853, lost)
* The Waterboys, A Man is In Love (1990)
* Dominico Scarlatti, Sonata in D Major (c 1752)
Abbott responded to my jaundiced comment on Springer:
I'm trying not to imply that everything I include is a masterpiece — just that it's good (or at least interesting) of its kind. Otherwise it wouldn't be possible to write about some fairly trivial examples of pop music which, for one reason or another, have nevertheless stayed in my memory. I think Springer works well as music theater, but like you, I'm not sure it will last, and as I say in the blog, I can't actually listen to the music divorced from the show itself.
Abbott's chronology runs from Orlando Gibbons' 1612 work The Silver Swan to Iiro Rantala's 2011 "Tears for Esbjorn" from Lost Heroes. Let the browser beware: Once you get into this blog, it's difficult to leave it.