Customer Reviews

20 Centuries of Hits

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Scholarship is suspect since cut for the 4th Century (and 8th, 9th, & 10th Centuries) has organ accompaniment, for instance. For that matter, since the bulk of it would ordinarily be classified as "classical" (I found it on the Rhino site and then come back here to buy it), please cross-reference it from "popular", Amazon. Bought it to hear the Oxyrhynchus Hymn Fragment for a report on Byzantine music, but I've been playing it over and over, thoroughly enjoying it.

Of all the Rhino collections (and I own a vast majority of them,) this single CD elicits the most intrigue from friends and co-workers who see it amidst my collection. It's an impossible concept to pull off, but the fact that the weirdos at Rhino attempted it at all is inspiring.

This is a neat historic curiosity, but since they were willing to go beyond 20 tracks, why not include the oldest piece of music historians know of? And the excuse of using "Louis Louis" rather than the Beatles or Elvis or Frank Sinatra is weak ("most covered song" - ha! - I suspect it has more to do with copyrights and royalties). Otherwise well chosen and intriguing - and all those chants are kinda relaxing.