May by Kenneth Kirschner: Compendium

On Compendium

Since the late 1980s, I’ve been titling my compositions by the date on which they were begun. I’ll be the first to admit that there are pros and cons to this system: On the one hand, each piece receives a clear and distinct title, one that remains completely abstract and that – importantly, for me – in no way influences the listener’s expectations of what they’re about to hear. On the other hand, even I myself rarely have any idea what any of my pieces are actually called.

But one other advantage of this system is that it offers more than one way of ordering the music. There’s the obvious chronological approach, as seen on my own website, kennethkirschner.com. But it’s also possible to order the music in what might be called calendar form: sorting each piece by the month and day of its title, regardless of year – so that any January 1 pieces fall on January 1, any January 2 pieces fall on January 2, and onward all the way up through December 31, forming a single yearlong cycle. With this ordering, the music jumps unpredictably across years and decades, perhaps in the process revealing interesting but less obvious patterns in its development over time.

This collection of my work – Compendium – presents a selection of my music spanning the last five decades, organized in calendar form, with 12 “albums” that each cover one of the 12 months of the year. It’s intended to act variously as an introduction, an anthology, a retrospective, even a sort of “greatest hits” collection – but with the compositions selected entirely according to my own personal preferences. The pieces included here may not be everyone’s favorites, and reasonable listeners will disagree with the choices I’ve made. But for me, these are the pieces from which I’ve learned the most, the pieces I feel best succeeded at what they were trying to achieve – or sometimes just the ones that were the most fun.

Another goal of this project is to offer listeners easy access to the most current versions of these recordings. I’m in a constant state of revising my past works; usually this takes the form of improvements to the audio quality, as my own production skills slowly improve over time, but sometimes I more substantively revisit and rework a given piece. Obviously, it’s impossible to update the audio on pieces that have been released on physical media like CD or vinyl, and it’s often unexpectedly difficult to update purely digital releases as well. So what will be found here will always be the most current (and thus hopefully best-sounding) version of any given recording of mine, and listeners with older copies of recordings are invited to update them.

Clearly, with all 12 months of the year represented, there will be no “new releases” uploaded to the Compendium site in the future. But if you’d like to follow the account, I’ll be posting regular updates whenever pieces are added to (or removed from) the collection, as well as any time existing recordings are remastered or revised. Each month’s page will include a changelog showing revisions to the selection, as well as the specific version of every included recording. And of course, any recordings of mine not included here will still be freely available on kennethkirschner.com.

All the music on this site will remain free to stream, as well as free to download in anything up to full resolution of the original source recording. Donations to the project are always appreciated but by no means required or expected. For those listeners particularly interested in supporting the work, subscriptions are available. Subscriptions offer absolutely no exclusive benefits whatsoever – other than the knowledge that you’re helping support the work and ensure it remains accessible to all interested listeners.

As with all my work, the music here may be – for non-commercial purposes – freely copied, shared, sampled, remixed and utilized in other artistic works in any medium. If you’d like to make commercial use of the music, feel free to reach out via the contact form. And feel free to reach out as well, if inspired, to share any interesting or creative use of the music at all, as I’m always eager to hear what people are doing with these sounds.

Thanks for listening.

Kenneth Kirschner
January 2026

Selected music by Kenneth Kirschner

Albums & releases:
kennethkirschner.bandcamp.com

Complete recordings:
kennethkirschner.com