Top 10 classical music downloads

Slate has a very snarky take on the top 10 classical music downloads from Itunes.

At No. 10 was the opening chorus of Carl Orff's 1936 cantata "Carmina Burana," a setting of lewd poems by a bunch of medieval monks whose only outlet for their desires was to put them in verse. In Latin. The track takes the solemnity of Latin and makes it defiantly impious and bellicose. And if there's anything people like in their religion these days, it's defiance and impiousness.

I guess he's not a fan of Andrea Bocelli:

With No. 5, the light started to dim and I couldn't see straight. Andrea Bocelli's "Con Te Partiro" held that position. This is in the classical section? Bocelli's tenor is, how do you say, unsupported and is about as operatic as Boone's Farm is fine wine. With its synthesizer-sounding string section and chorus, the song is high-class movie music. Like so many terrible tunes, I can't get this one out of my head, especially this mock-heroic modulation from G to A at the end. Ravel does the same thing at the end of "Bolero," so you know Bocelli's arranging team can ID a good model when they hear it.

Bocelli also had position No. 4, though there he had the star power of Céline Dion to help him out in "The Prayer," from Bocelli's Sogno album. Dion coos with an electric keyboard in the background before twittering in Bocelli's ear when he enters. Is easiest listening a genre?

And

Which brings us to No 1., an alternate version of "Con Te Partiro" featuring Andrea Bocelli and his perfect mate, the soprano Sarah Brightman, titled "Time To Say Goodbye." The arrangement includes the "Bolero" pattern on a drum throughout, along with Brightman's straight-from-a-phonetic-dictionary Italian. That, folks, is the sound of lousy vocal technique.

I find it amusing that Bocelli arouses so much passion. When I was visiting India two years ago, I rember seeing one of my mom's friends, an elderly mild-mannered gentlemen taking umbrage at my grandmother for announcing that Bocelli was "Kevo sojjju." That's gujarati for "Very good."

Me? I think Bocelli is quite relaxing at times! I love classical music and opera, but I don't put Bocelli in that category.