A scoundrel, a giftless bastard, a self inflated mediocrity ~ Tschaikovsky on BrahamsIf you didn't already think musicians all quite mad you might care to rethink. John Cage *wrote* a piece of music that was *performed* in total silence. On the other hand Tschaikovsky, who couldn't stand Brahams, called his music, "chaotic & absolutely empty, dried up stuff." Nothing like a little in house rivalry to liven things up.
The William Tell Oveture goes for 5 unendurable hours so it is rarely performed but some bright spark decided the last section of the 4th movement would do very nicely for the t.v show The Lone Ranger. Why not? Ravel's Bolero may have been more influenced by the onset of Alzheimer's or the brain tumour that killed him than the muse, repeating itself as it does.
And then of course there is the one piece of classical music absolutely everyone knows: Here Comes The Bride ~ actually the Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin & performed after the ceremony as the happy couple are preparing for bed where the bride doesn't even know the name of the groom! Oh my! How the mind boggles!
One quite begins to see why the music critic, Ernest Newman, would refer to Elgar's Tosca as that "shabby little shocker." Ouch.
Vivaldi played his violin so high up the fingerboard there was hardly room for the bow between his finger & the bridge making his music, by all accounts, astonishing rather than pleasant.
Bach & Handel went blind; Beethoven went deaf & Schuman & Wolf went mad ~ syphillis, what else?! And Ditz thinks she wants to be a musician!
2 comments:
and here i am imagining them composing their music in serenity and beauty(of both soul and surroundings.) sounds as though i couldn't have been more wrong on either account, eh?
of course ditz has the benefit of having had absolutely *sterling* parenting, so i doubt she'll ever succumb to such misery (of either soul or surroundings);)
Just a thought... Do we ever really know about the sanity of their parents?
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