back to school quiz August 24, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : the orchestra world, add a commentSoho the Dog has posted his back to school classical music quiz, which I’ll reproduce here (and give my own answers). Remember, there’s no such thing as a dumb answer, just a dumb person!
1. What’s the best quotation of a piece of music within another piece of music?
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata in the last movement of Shostakovich’s Viola Sonata
2. Name the best classical crossover album ever made.
Yo-yo Ma’s Soul of the Tango
3. Great piece with a terrible title.
John Adams’ The Wound Dresser
4. If you had to choose: Benjamin Britten or Michael Tippett?
Britten all the way, baby.
5. Who’s your favorite spouse of a composer/performer? (Besides your own.)
Richard Strauss’ wife Anna de Ahna, she must have been a piece of work!
6. Terrible piece with a great title.
Beethoven’s Creatures of Prometheus, I still can’t get over my disappointment upon first hearing this work after being excited by the title.
7. What’s the best use of a classical warhorse in a Hollywood movie?
The Dies Irae of Mozart’s Requiem in Amadeus.
8. Name the worst classical crossover album ever made.
Anything by that artistic abortion Il Divo - ooh, I think I threw up a little in my mouth…
9. If you had to choose: Sam Cooke or Marvin Gaye?
If the stars align just right, who needs to choose - shuffle ‘em both in the iPod!
10. Name a creative type in a non-musical medium who would have been a great composer.
Mikhail Baryshnikov - imagine if he did the same for virtuosity and extension of the vocabulary of dance in music!
EXTRA CREDIT:
For opera nerds: If you had to choose:
a) Lawrence Tibbett or Robert Merrill?
b) Amelita Galli-Curci or Lily Pons?
I pass on this one.
For early-music nerds: Name a completely and hopelessly historically uninformed recording that you nevertheless love.
The Philadelphia Orchestra’s recording of the Bach/Stokowski Air on the G-string.
periodical roundup August 24, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : Uncategorized, add a commentOne thing that I like about coming home from a trip of more than a week is the amount of “fun” mail that has piled up in the mailbox. For me fun mail consists of (aside from unexpected cash or checks) magazines and catalogs. I’m a typical liberal in that I subscribe to both the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly. The New Yorker is sort of a waste for me since all I usually read are the music listings and reviews and then look at the cartoons - my last stop is trying to guess which of the three finalist entries will win the cartoon caption contest in the next month’s issue.
Of particular interest to me in the September issue of the Atlantic is an article on the lack of morality in the field of gastronomy. I’d never really given it much thought, but it makes sense to me. Given that being a gourmet is perhaps the most selfish of the aesthetic pursuits, it would stand that there would be no small amount of blind eye turning involved in appreciating fois gras, live-boiled lobster and any mass-produced meat products. It’s an excellent article by B.R. Meyers, I recommend it to you most highly, even though he takes author Michael Pollan to task for some oversights in his excellent book (which I loved) The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
Today was a stressful day, as all first days of the season tend to be. There was a lot of music on the stand for this first parks concert, and the first order of business (after the long series of announcements of appointments, resignations, and organizational minutiae) was Wagner’s Overture to The Flying Dutchman. It’s a lot of notes for 9:40 in the morning, and the fingers were running slow, I must say. That having been said, the orchestra sounds quite good for the first service of the season, and it was good to hear our wonderful new bass/utility trombonist Charlie Renault laying down the glue between the trombones and the tuba.
To clear out some of the stress, I rode my bike downtown to meet Heather after her track training session at Duniway track (near the Barbur Blvd. YMCA). It was a nice ride, and since I got down there quicker than I expected, I took a spin around the Esplanade, both east and west sides. It’s sort of a Mr. Hyde and Mr. Hyde path: the east side is stinky, since all of the sewage/storm overflow drains empty on that side, and the noise from I-5 (which is about 10 feet from the east edge of the path) is quite deafening. On the west side it’s quiet and less odoriferous, but there are tons of people clogging the entire path, with dogs pulling every which way and unsupervised children doing kamikaze raids right into your path. Using the bell on the handlebars is akin to trying to change the course of a tornado with a drinking straw. Anyway, 12 miles later, I felt much better and we had a nice dinner and dessert of m&m’s to round out the day. Then we came home and I watched the dvd of the last installment of “Power of Art” on Picasso’s Guernica. Amazing - if you haven’t seen this series (it’s been broadcast on PBS the last couple months) then go rent it on Netflix or at your better video store. It’s a prime example of what art education can be if handled with imagination and good production values.
