h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Have you submit this as an Edited Guide Entry? It is very good, just the stuff the Guide should be made of.

The Bach Mass in B Minor has some beautiful oboe d'amore music, in particular a duet between alto singer and the oboe d'amore. I think it is worth a mention.

Thanks - I've just also replied to your other comment by the way. I will certainly both add that reference into the article, and seek out a recording. Any suggestions for good ones?

By the way, do you know whether there's any way to provide links to excerpts of music in guide entries (or has anyone already done it)? I think that alot of the music-related entries in the guide would 'come alive' with this. I suppose that copyright issues are the major problem, but wonder whether there is scope to link to excerpts 'by permission' - I think this is the way Amazon.com does it.

A good recording of the B Minor Mass is John Eliot Gardener's one on the Archiv label. I can't remember who the players were.

There are two ways that music can be added: Midi and Audio.

Midi files are compact files which contain instructions for the built-in synthesizer in your sound card. They can play instrumental music but not voice. The quality depends on the sound card. The cheapest sound cards sound like the sort of electronic music you get in telephone exchanges. Most people have everything that's needed to play a midi file. All you need to do is to find the midi file somewhere on the web and put a link to it. (Your page will have to be in GuideML or HTML for this). Copyright should not be a problem since JSB is long dead. Many people have made midi files of his work and provide them for free.

Audio is an actual recording of the music. It has two problems: copyright and how to play it. Even if the music as written by Bach is out of copyright, the performance is not, so you would need permission. I think that the H2G2 editors would be wary of anything that is in copyright at the moment. To play audio, the person viewing the page needs a piece of software called an audio player, which is not included as standard with most PCs. A common audio player is Real Audio, available for free. But you have to install it and it might interfere with other stuff you've got.

Hope this helps.