Classical Archives LLC is an online digital music store that solely focuses on

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" al ...

. Originally opening as the Classical MIDI Archives in 1994 primarily as a repository for free

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...

sequences of classical music works, in August 2000 the site incorporated as Classical Archives, LLC, and has since been also offering commercial label recordings for both streaming and downloading. Non-members can stream 60-second samples from any track on the Classical Archives. For a monthly fee of $7.99 (or $87.89 a year) members are able to stream any

track Track or Tracks may refer to: Routes or imprints * Ancient trackway, any track or trail whose origin is lost in antiquity * Animal track, imprints left on surfaces that an animal walks across * Desire path, a line worn by people taking the shorte ...

work Work may refer to: * Work (human activity), intentional activity people perform to support themselves, others, or the community ** Manual labour, physical work done by humans ** House work, housework, or homemaking ** Working animal, an animal t ...

, or

album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records c ...

in its entirety from the site's catalogue, and receive a discount of 10% on the price of downloads. Both members and non-members can access detailed

musicological Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some mu ...

information for each work:

movements Movement may refer to: Common uses * Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece * Motion, commonly referred to as movement Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * "Movement" (short story), a short story by Nancy Fu ...

genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other f ...

, principal instruments, year of composition, and key. Additionally, nearly every composer's biography is provided. Free streaming radio is available for computers and mobile devices that also includes a device to close the connection in one hour, if desired. Classical Archives uses a proprietary system (called the Contextual

Metadata Engine A metadata engine collects, stores and analyzes information about data and metadata (data about data) in use within a domain. It virtualizes the view of data for an application by separating the data (physical) path from the metadata (logical) path ...

) that allows for the ingestion and cataloguing of all recordings based on musicologically accurate and uniform metadata. Because of the Contextual Metadata Engine, visitors can search and cross-reference by various relevant criteria: composer, work title, artist, albums, historical period, instrument, and genre, in order to find and compare different recordings. Classical Archives was founded by CEO Pierre R. Schwob. The cataloguing of the Classical Archives database is carried out by a team of musicologists led by Chief Musicologist and Artistic Director Dr. Nolan Gasser.

File types

The site provides 320kbit/s

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

files for downloads and 160 kbit/s AAC files for streaming. Sample clips are streamed at 60kbit/s for non-members.

Database

As of May 22, 2011, the Classical Archives database features 12,046 composers, 42,744 recording artists, and 26,697 Albums from 268 labels. These include the classical catalogues of

Universal Music Group Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as just Universal Music) is a Dutch–American multinational music corporation under Dutch law. UMG's corporate headquarters are located in Hilversum, Netherlands and its ...

(

Deutsche Grammophon Deutsche Grammophon (; DGG) is a German classical music record label that was the precursor of the corporation PolyGram. Headquartered in Berlin Friedrichshain, it is now part of Universal Music Group (UMG) since its merger with the UMG family of ...

Decca Decca may refer to: Music * Decca Records or Decca Music Group, a record label * Decca Gold, a classical music record label owned by Universal Music Group * Decca Broadway, a musical theater record label * Decca Studios, a recording facility in We ...

, Phillips,

ECM ECM may refer to: Economics and commerce * Engineering change management * Equity capital markets * Error correction model, an econometric model * European Common Market Mathematics * Elliptic curve method * European Congress of Mathemat ...

, etc.),

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

(

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region i ...

, etc.),

Naxos Naxos (; el, Νάξος, ) is a Greek island and the largest of the Cyclades. It was the centre of archaic Cycladic culture. The island is famous as a source of emery, a rock rich in corundum, which until modern times was one of the best ab ...

( BIS, Chandos,

Hänssler Classic Hänssler-Verlag is a German music publishing house founded in 1919 as Musikverlag Hänssler by Friedrich Hänssler Senior (died 1972) to publish church music. The company is now based in Holzgerlingen. Since 1972 Hänssler Verlag has also publis ...

, etc.), and many independent labels through

IODA The Orchard is an American music and entertainment company, specializing in media distribution, marketing, and sales. It is a subsidiary of Sony Music, based in New York City. In 2019, the company sold off its film and television division, whi ...

(

harmonia mundi Harmonia Mundi is an independent record label which specializes in classical music, jazz, and world music (on the World Village label). It was founded in France in 1958 and is now a subsidiary of PIAS Entertainment Group. Its Latin name ''harm ...

Nimbus Nimbus, from the Latin for "dark cloud", is an outdated term for the type of cloud now classified as the nimbostratus cloud. Nimbus also may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Halo (religious iconography), also known as ''Nimbus'', a ring of ligh ...

Summit A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak (mountain peak), and zenith are synonymous. The term (mountain top) is generally used only for a m ...

, etc.). As of June 2011, the Classical Archives has 904,230 registered members.

Other site features

* Exclusive Interviews: Artistic Director Nolan Gasser has conducted exclusive interviews with international performers and composers including

Marin Alsop Marin Alsop ( �mɛər.ɪn ˈæːl.sɑːp born October 16, 1956) is an American conductor, the first woman to win the Koussevitzky Prize for conducting and the first conductor to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She is music director laureate ...

, American Brass Quintet,

Vladimir Ashkenazy Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy (russian: Влади́мир Дави́дович Ашкена́зи, ''Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazi''; born 6 July 1937) is an internationally recognized solo pianist, chamber music performer, and conductor. He ...

Joshua Bell Joshua David Bell (born December 9, 1967) is an American violinist and conductor. He plays the Gibson Stradivarius. Early life and education Bell was born in Bloomington, Indiana, to Shirley Bell, a therapist, and Alan P. Bell, a psychologi ...

, Ray Chen,

Gloria Coates Gloria Coates (born October 10, 1938, in Wausau, Wisconsin) is an American composer who has lived in Munich since 1969. She studied with Alexander Tcherepnin, Otto Luening, and Jack Beeson. Music Her music features canonic structures and promi ...

John Corigliano John Paul Corigliano Jr. (born February 16, 1938) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. His scores, now numbering over one hundred, have won him the Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, an ...

Jeremy Denk Jeremy Denk (born May 16, 1970 in Durham, North Carolina) is an American classical pianist. Early life Denk did not come from a musical family. After several years in New Jersey, his family settled in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he grew up. He ...

Danielle de Niese Danielle de Niese (born 11 April 1979) is an Australian-American lyric soprano. After success as a young child in singing competitions in Australia, she moved to the United States where she developed an operatic career. From 2005 she came to w ...

, Simone Dinnerstein,

JoAnn Falletta JoAnn Falletta (born February 27, 1954 in Queens, New York) is an American conductor. Biography Falletta was raised in the borough of Queens in an Italian-American household. She was educated at the Mannes College of Music and The Juilliard S ...

, Renee Fleming,

David Finckel David Finckel (born December 6, 1951) is an American cellist and influential figure in the classical music world. The cellist for the Emerson String Quartet from 1979 to 2013, Finckel is currently the co-artistic director of the Chamber Music S ...

, Alan Gilbert,

Vittorio Grigolo Vittorio Grigolo (correctly Vittorio Grigòlo, born 19 February 1977) is an Italian operatic tenor. Early life Grigolo was born in Arezzo and raised in Rome. He began singing by the age of four. When he was nine years old he accompanied his mot ...

Hélène Grimaud Hélène Rose Paule Grimaud (born 7 November 1969) is a French classical pianist and the founder of the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York. Early life and education Grimaud was born in Aix-en-Provence, France. She described fami ...

, Hillary Hahn, Wu Han, Paul Hillier,

Daniel Hope Daniel Hope (born 17 August 1973, Durban, South Africa) is a European classical violinist. Early life and education Hope was born in Durban, South Africa, and is of Irish and Jewish German descent, his maternal grandparents, formerly from Be ...

Sharon Isbin Sharon ( he, שָׁרוֹן ''Šārôn'' "plain") is a given name as well as an Israeli surname. In English-speaking areas, Sharon is now predominantly a feminine given name. However, historically it was also used as a masculine given name. In I ...

, David Lang,

Lang Lang Lang Lang (; born 14 June 1982) is a Chinese pianist who has performed with leading orchestras in China, North America, Europe, and elsewhere. Active since the 1990s, he was the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Berlin Philharmonic, ...

Mark Padmore Mark Padmore (born 8 March 1961) is a British tenor appearing in concerts, recitals, and opera. He was born in London on 8 March 1961, and raised in Canterbury, Kent, England. Padmore studied clarinet and piano prior to his gaining a choral ...

Sondra Radvanovsky Sondra Dee Radvanovsky (born 11 April 1969) is an American-Canadian soprano. Specializing in 19th-century Italian opera, Radvanovsky has been called one of the leading Verdi sopranos of her generation. Her signature roles include Elvira in ''Erna ...

Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto i ...

Stile Antico ''Stile antico'' (literally "ancient style", ), is a term describing a manner of musical composition from the sixteenth century onwards that was historically conscious, as opposed to '' stile moderno'', which adhered to more modern trends. ''Prim ...

, Trio Mediaeval, Susan Wadsworth, Xiayin Wang, and

Eric Whitacre Eric Edward Whitacre (born January2, 1970) is an American composer, conductor, and speaker best known for his choral music. In March2016, he was appointed as Los Angeles Master Chorale's first artist-in-residence at the Walt Disney Concert Hall ...

. * Free One Click Concerts™: A concert length program of selected tracks based on either a special theme, composer, period, or genre. * Free Classical Archives Internet Radio Stream Broadcast for computers and mobile devices * About pages for composers and works. Powered by

All Music Guide AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

, biographies and work descriptions provide musicological and historical background. * Playlists: Members have access to playlists that are created by other members and Classical Archives staff. * Essentials: For each composer, a list of historically important works is presented.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Online music stores of the United States