The collectors' dilemma

parla wrote

So, 33lp don't compare the Pianist Magazine's editor or the Schumann biographer or an equipment reviewer. Do you know any ordinary female, who either stays as housewife or works in any other than the music or audio business profession and collects in the same way as some of their male counterparts do? That's the question.

Well firstly I don't actually know personally any men who collect recordings as do the respondents to this column, but I have read letters in Gramophone and HiFi World from one woman on music, attending concerts, collecting CDs and audio equipment. I admit not many write such letters which is why I remembered the name at the time. But then perhaps they're too busy doing the housework, gardening and looking after the kids whilst you salivate over your CDs.

I also,Parla, still have a copy of an audio magazine review from a decade ago of the 'speakers I still use in one system. It's by a woman. I would suggest that just because you haven't met a woman who is interested in hifi doesn't mean there aren't any. I remember on the now defunct BBC MM forum a woman in the USA asking for advice on buying audio equipment: should she get valve or transistor, quoting power output issues and asking if anyone had experience of one particular brand.

I'm with Troyen but you obviously consider female musicians and females who work in the music business or music journalism some kind of freaks, separate from "ordinary" females.

How about Martha Argerich's piano? Hard!

Vox clamantis in deserto, JAH. Women won't join in, because they are not here. We are in the wilderness of men, collecting avidly...and in vain...

I mentioned in a previous post of mine about the two "new girls" of late January. They were aspiring singers (one German and the other French), not collectors or any sort of this. They were interested in the thread of Hall of Fame because of DiDonato they love. As soon as the subject was covered, they had nothing else to say or they were not interested in anything else, apparently.

33lp, I don't have a problem at all, if women do not collect or do not deal with audiophile matters. On the contrary, I found them much more pragmatic, calculated and meticulous in family and home affairs. I believe we are the sort of freaks, but, probably, we can't help it.

However, the fact of life is that, even when I tried to "convert" any non-professional female to collect or simply to contemplate to build a kind of collection, so that she could follow the music she loved and could love, my endeavours were all in vain. Completely! On the contrary, with any serious effort, plenty of male young men converted to mini or maxi collectors and audiophile experts.

For some reasons, men and women are different and I can drink to that! (That's why I love my wife).

Parla

JAH, there is no contradiction considering women attending concerts and contributing to orchestras, etc. They love music as we do; they don't and even refuse even to think to collect! And, possibly, they are right! After all these years of collecting, I tend to believe in the futility of collecting a kind of expendable products.

Regarding the readership of Gramophone, as far I can tell from the people I know (and they are not few at all), they are all male. Probably, because these magazines tend to lead their readers to collect or, at least, to purchase new products (CDs, SACDs, DVDs, etc.).

Mr. Troyen, Mrs. Parla is pretty happy with our differences. I make the money. She collects it (that's her favourite collection: collecting funds in various currencies, including the by now precious chinese youan) and we spend it. She definitely doesn't have your humour or irony and she respects my appreciation of Chamber Music and any other form of Classical Music, including Baroque (by the way, Bach is one of her soft spots. Not that surprising).

Finally, women never show me any contempt. On the contrary... You see, what counts is not what you think of them but how you treat them (we live in result-oriented societies).

Parla

:-D  I thought the plant in the photo was the same as one we have in the garden - no, the one in our garden has quite different petals.

Sorry, Kev, my little take on the word Baroque, an era in music that produced so many note-spinning nonentities.

Liked, I believe, by those that like their listening easy or think music is a background to other pursuits. In fact a lot of Barockery was composed for that very purpose.

These people, I think, struggle with the higher musical form that is opera.