And the Habby Goes to...

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The process of selecting the compositions and then assembling the video presentations has allowed me to listen to potential Habby-winning pieces over and over – both in full length form and in depth when editing each one down to a sample passage. Listening to so much classical music during the Habby project has given me the sensation – and joy – of feeling as though I have been privileged to spend personal time with hundreds of wonderful composers themselves, not just their music.

Many classical works run 30, 45, 60, 120 or even 180+ minutes. This runs counter to the quick bursts of content and short attention spans that are today's cultural reality. Therefore, in some of the longer compositions, only a portion of a composition was awarded a Habby - whether it was a movement of a concerto, an aria from an opera or a single sonata from a larger sonata compendium. That means that if you enjoy a particular Habby Award winner, chances are there is more of that composition for you to seek out and enjoy.

Some recordings of Habby Award winners present a variation or re-arrangement of the original work. The Habby's don't seek to perfectly reflect the music as it would have been heard at the time when the Habsburg emperors would have made their fictitious award selections. A very clear example of this is the recording of Paganini's 1830 Habby Award-winning Adagio flebile con sentimento from Concerto No. 4. Indeed the recorded version was re-arranged (and embellished) into an aria. Including the odd such musical evolution seems consistent with the goal of the Habby Awards which has always been to celebrate great compositions and composers and (re-introduce) a modern audience to glorious (and often forgotten) music in a modern awards format. After all, the Habbys™ aim to appeal to the widest possible audience, not just the narrow community of musicologists seeking absolute historic accuracy. The Habbys™ are for fun and enjoyment, not rigorous musical scholarship.

As with all artistic awards, there are no right or wrong answers. Beauty is truly in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. While it is fine to prefer (and even advocate for) a different piece of music for any of the Habby Award years, that shouldn't make the selected winner any less worthy of appreciation and respect.

Certainly some liberty has been taken in the allocation of music to the particular Habby Award years. Best attempts have been made to honor a winner in the year that composition of the work was definitely known to have been completed. However, in many cases such historical accuracy is not known for sure, in which case the composition was then assigned to the year of first public performance or of first formal publication (in some cases, after the composer's death) if those years are known. It is also true that in order to bestow certain compositions with a Habby Award, a few liberal interpretations were made as to when a piece of music might realistically have made its way to the ear of the Habsburg emperor, given the slower flow of information in earlier centuries.

The Youtube channel @AncientGrammys does not seek to monetize its videos, and indeed cannot, as the snippets of music that backstop each video are copyright protected by the tremendous artists and their publishers who recorded the performances. Similarly, the Spotify account AncientGrammys does not make money for the creator of the Habbys™ – though hopefully it helps boost royalties for each of the artists who made the recordings in the Habby Reveal playlists. One day hopefully the compilation of the Habby Award winners and the story of the fictitious Habsburg Ledgers for Musical Eminence can become the basis for a larger commercial production – be it a series, film, stage show or novel.