To the glory of coffee:

Hello all. My attention span for my research paper has reached its end for the night - thank God it's just a peer-review due-date tomorrow and not the actual hand-in. However, I'm still probably too hopped up on coffee to fall asleep so I figured I'd give y'all a candid look into the ACTUAL work music majors have to do: the music history research paper.

(quick point about the coffee. i finally got a bean grinder, and i got a free coffee maker a while ago, so i can actually make coffee from home now. couple that with no facebook and my late-night productivity has skyrocketed.)

Yes, the music history research paper. We love to hate it, and vice versa. This time around we actually got to make up our topic; a composer, a work, a city and a decade - mine is on Gustav Mahler, New York, the time he spent there (1907-1910) and his Ninth Symphony (written during that period). It's been pretty good, I just listen to his music for ages and then write a bit about it. The problem, however, is that the piece is so beautiful I'm spending so much time listening to it I'm getting very little writing done. Ah well.

This is all fairly inconsequential anyways - I really just wanted to share the piece itself :P
The Symphony is about an hour and a half long in total, so in order to not have to analyze the entire piece I've just focused on the adagio finale (which is, in my opinion, by the far the best movement of the piece. beyond-words beautiful and moving). I cannot count the number of times I've listened to it over the past week, but it is definitely a high number and is only going to get higher over the next few days while I make myself finish writing.
Youtube yielded gold on this on: I found a video of the full symphony played by the Vienna Phil under Bernstein in IMPECCABLE quality. Like, seriously - this is the best video quality I've seen on youtube. Video and sound are both amazing, syncing is bang on, and like I said it's got the entire work; in particular the video splitting for the adagio are great as well - the editor seperated the videos at pretty fitting musical moments.
I also found a documentary (with footage from the same concert) titled "Four Ways to say Farewell." It's from the same concert performance as the first video set (though the quality is not as good, it just actually looks like it was done in the 70s, which it was), except it's more an analysis of the work as opposed to just the straight piece itself. It features commentary from Bernstein himself, as well as additional footage from rehearsals leading up to the concert. Between the two videos, my mind has been completely blown and there aren't really words to describe how beautiful they both are; hearing the passion and understanding Bernstein displays for the piece is so surreal and inspiring, and the actual uninterrupted work from the first video is just....... no words.
So, here you go. First video is the Bernstein commentary (part 1 of 6) and the second is part 1 of the adagio concert video. Hope you enjoy, and have a good second half of the week!