I recently joined an email list discussing the books of Patrick O'Brian, and one of the discussion that came up was about the "plucking" piece at the end of the movie Master and Commander. It's by Luigi Boccherini, and called "La Musica notturna di Madrid". Amidst the discussion of where to buy a recording of it, someone pointed out a site - http://www.karadar.it - with a collection of .mp3s of classical music - "11.000 Mp3s totally legal and free" as they put it.
You can go to http://www.karadar.it/Mp3composer/Default.htm to do searches by title or composer (or browse alphabetically by composer). This will give you links that say download, but things get a bit convoluted. It turns out to be easier to go straight to the "Cocoa Compilation" listed on their main page ( http://cocoa.itc.it:8080/cocoakaradar ). You'll need to register, but it's pretty trivial. To download .mp3s, you add tracks to a "compilation" then download that. (The download page still gives you links to the individual .mp3s, so I don't know the purpose of making a compilation.) It will ask tyou to fill out/confirm the "header" for the compilation - I guess it's like chosing a title for a custom CD - then ask a trivia question before going to the download page. (I cheat and look answers up on google.)
You might want to do searchs on the karadar search page first, because it's a touch more convenient, and you can tell who did a recording by hovering over the information circle next to a title. (For example there are two versions of Mahler's 9th symphony: "PO URSS Moscow/Kondrashin" and "Vienna Phil. Orch/B. Walter")
I've been finding the downloads slow, but that may just be my ISP.
At least it seems a possible way to sample different composers.
-- CH
You can go to http://www.karadar.it/Mp3composer/Default.htm to do searches by title or composer (or browse alphabetically by composer). This will give you links that say download, but things get a bit convoluted. It turns out to be easier to go straight to the "Cocoa Compilation" listed on their main page ( http://cocoa.itc.it:8080/cocoakaradar ). You'll need to register, but it's pretty trivial. To download .mp3s, you add tracks to a "compilation" then download that. (The download page still gives you links to the individual .mp3s, so I don't know the purpose of making a compilation.) It will ask tyou to fill out/confirm the "header" for the compilation - I guess it's like chosing a title for a custom CD - then ask a trivia question before going to the download page. (I cheat and look answers up on google.)
You might want to do searchs on the karadar search page first, because it's a touch more convenient, and you can tell who did a recording by hovering over the information circle next to a title. (For example there are two versions of Mahler's 9th symphony: "PO URSS Moscow/Kondrashin" and "Vienna Phil. Orch/B. Walter")
I've been finding the downloads slow, but that may just be my ISP.
At least it seems a possible way to sample different composers.
-- CH