Love of Music and Musicians

P.R.Schwob, CEO & founder

The Classical Archives were born out of a great love of classical music and ardent admiration for musicians. Classically-trained performers often start learning to play an instrument, and the immense discipline required to master it, at an extremely young age. Some (like composer John Williams) learn to read music before they learn to read. Being intensely involved in classical music demands a maturity and sensitivity which is quite remarkable in such young people. (The terror involved in performing in front of an audience and the resulting failures and successes test and build these characters early.) Finally, and to be truly succesful, many musicians also develop a deep appreciation of general culture and most are very well read and wonderful to talk to, and learn from.

We're Number One
The democratization of culture in general and classical music in particular is something I've been involved with for many years. This mission found a perfect outlet when the internet and the web exploded in the 90's. This medium is also ideal to provide musical instruction, contextual information such as illustrated biographies, timelines, historical settings and other culturally enriching material. I started the Archives with about 40 files in 1994. Today it is the largest classical music site on the web, containing 40,035 files by 2,091 composers. Many of them recorded live by extraordinary artists performing on real instruments. We now have close to 1 million unique visitors each month. That's tens of thousands of people, every day, who listen to classical music on our site. If you compare this to the capacity of an average concert hall, that's a lot of concerts!

Sharing
We strongly believe in sharing their music and making it accessible to as many people as possible. Now, we appreciate that some of the forms in which music is offered on this site may not meet with the approval of all purists. Although we are adding, at an accelerating rate, wonderful live recordings in MP3 and streaming WMA formats, the majority of our media contents is presented in the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) format. Unlike MP3 and WMA, MIDI is usually rendered by a synthesizer. Not created by real instruments. In addition, many users must rely on built-in synths on their audio cards and their computer's small tinny speakers. Nevertheless, the MIDI format does offer some significant advantages:

• MIDI files are very small and can be downloaded very quickly, even when using a slow modem.

• MIDI files are basically an electronic version of sheet music. Most MIDI files can be viewed as a score which can be quite useful to a musician.

• When played through a good synthesizer, many MIDI files can provide a splendid and fulfilling experience. A few years ago, one of our most renowned musicologists came over for dinner and I played Schubert's Unfinished through my sound system. I was using a top of the line synth to play a MIDI sequence sent by one of our Japanese contributors who really knows how to shape and control each event in these files. (This is an art form in itself.) My friend asked "whose orchestra is this?" He refused to believe that the performance was entirely produced by electronics.

Your Support is Needed
And this is mostly free, within the limit of 5 files/day for those who do not yet, or can't afford to, support us as subscribers. Furthermore, we endeavor to offer complete recordings - as opposed to the 30 to 60 second snippets you get from other sites who are trying to sell you CDs. Not a bad deal! Of course, if you like what we do and want to support our mission to continue developing this site, we invite you to become a an Annual Subscriber of the Classical Archives. Today. So please SUBSCRIBE NOW. We need, and shall be most grateful for, your support.