Microsoft Composer Collection April 9, 2008

In a recent piece in The New York Times Book Review, that paper’s chief music critic, Edward Rothstein, notes that, “Now we have a technology that works for the way we listen rather than the way we hear: the musical CD-ROM.” You need look no further than the discs produced by Microsoft Composer Collection (Microsoft Corp./The Voyager Co.) for proof.

This boxed set of three CD-ROMs includes Multimedia Beethoven, Multimedia Mozart, and Multimedia Schubert, with each taking a single work to examine in detail (The Ninth Symphony, The Dissonant Quartet, and The Trout Quartet, respectively). The format for each disc is essentially the same. The opening screen provides a number of options including Contents, a section on the life of the composer, a Pocket Guide, Learning to Listen, and one or two other sections, depending on the work. Text, by Robert Winter (musicologist) for Beethoven and Mozart, and by Alan Rich (music critic for the LA Times and NPR) for Schubert , is intelligent, literate, and enlightening, and it is enriched by extensive hypertext links, audio samples (to illustrate various points in the text), illustrations, and stills that provide an historical and cultural context. But the highlight of each disc is “Close Reading,” practically a measure-by-measure exegesis of the piece as it plays.

You can pause or re-play any part of the piece, compare passages, isolate themes or rhythms, hear different interpretations of the same section – in short, you have the tools to explore the music in an infinite number of ways. Or, you can just sit back and listen to the whole piece from start to finish. After you spend a little time with these discs, you begin to truly appreciate the flexibility of the medium.