While last week I found the story of Joseph Boulogne Chavalier de Saint Georges’ life interesting, about 15 min listening to the piece I found my mind wandering as the music seemed a bit dull and repetitious. I suspect he may have been the Pat Boone/Donnie Osmond/KennyG of his era. Nothing wrong with that and we all need background music. But he ain’t no Mozart
So today we get to listen to Mozart
On todays selection I love the intricacies between the music and the instruments that continued to keep my attention. It was as if they were having a deep conversation among themselves.
Enjoy
BTW, I’m not a trained critic, once 40 some years ago I took a music appreciation class, paid little attention, took my C and went home. So the current observations should always be considered in that light.
Jack
“A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.”
Frank Zappa
Wow ! Mozart delivered right to your home. Heavenly. You couldn’t get that for the 1st hundred twenty-five years after he died. Man are we lucky to be living today.
Thank you Jack
You had me at Mozart & Piano in the same title. Wonderful!
the guardian:
European leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, will mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the second world war in Warsaw on Sunday. But Donald Trump – who cancelled on his Polish hosts at the last-minute last week, citing concerns over a hurricane barrelling towards Florida – was due to spend the day at his golf club in Virginia.
The conflict began in the early hours of 1 September 1939, when a Nazi battleship attacked a garrison of Polish soldiers at Westerplatte. Poland’s government had moved this year’s commemorations from Westerplatte, near the Baltic port city of Gdańsk, to Warsaw, in anticipation of a visit from the US president, who was to give the keynote speech. But Trump cancelled, citing Hurricane Dorian , and sent vice-president Mike Pence in his stead.
[…]
Two days after the attack on Westerplatte and following a Nazi assault on other parts of Poland, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain made his famous radio declaration that “this country is now at war with Germany”. Despite this, little practical assistance was given to Poland, which was crushed within weeks by the Nazis and invaded by the Soviet Union from the east, according to a pact signed by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin in August 1939 that contained a secret protocol by which the two powers would divide Europe.
Ten years ago in Westerplatte, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, called the treaty a “mistake”, but a recent Russian campaign has sought to rehabilitate the controversial treaty. It has been met with outrage in Poland and elsewhere in central Europe and is one of the reasons why Putin was not invited to Warsaw this year.
[continues]
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis challenged governments on Sunday to take “drastic measures” to combat global warming and reduce the use of fossil fuels, saying the world was experiencing a climate emergency.
Francis issued his appeal, a written message for Sunday’s World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, ahead of the United Nations Climate Action Summit this month in New York, a follow up to the 2016 Paris Agreement to curb global warming.
Calling the U.N. summit “of particular importance,” he added:
“There, governments will have the responsibility of showing the political will to take drastic measures to achieve as quickly as possible zero net greenhouse gas emissions and to limit the average increase in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius with respect to pre-industrial levels, in accordance with the Paris Agreement goals.”
Francis has made many calls for environmental protection and has clashed over climate change with skeptics leaders such as U.S. President Donald Trump, who has taken the United States out of the Paris accord.
“We have caused a climate emergency that gravely threatens nature and life itself, including our own,” the leader of the world’s 1.3 billon Roman Catholics said in the message for the prayer day, which is marked by various Christian Churches.
“Our prayers and appeals are directed first at raising the awareness of political and civil leaders,” he said, adding that governments should “renew commitments decisive for directing the planet towards life, not death”.
[continues]
the last supper
When listening to great classical music, like in a concert hall or whatever situation it is that means I will hear the whole piece, I wait for the moment my mind begins to wander and I am no longer focused on the music itself or the act of “listening”. That’s when I get in some good necessary thinking.
Xrep, it is a marvelous world, not only can you listen to Mozart but even better after that you can enjoy the John Deere polka. Ain’t life wunnerful? You can go high or go low. Now I’m thinking about a brat and beer for Sunday breakfast.
Jack
Nice going Jack. Beautiful music and thought provoking commentary. And some excellent responses;
letting my mind wander is what I like about music
When I listen to modern renditions of Mozart and his contemporaries being played by large orchestras with “the best” instruments in acoustically perfect halls, I crave having a seat on a bench in Heidelberg listening to how it was in the early 19th century. I beg someone, substitute the best period pianoforte for the contemporary Steinway and shrink the orchestra by a factor of ten and let’s hear how it sounds. I want to listen with Mozart’s and Schubert’s ears!
you guys ain’t the only ones transfixed and transported by music
https://youtu.be/XC7z8JU5jZU
My mind wonders during the Sunday news shows; I always enjoy Jack’s picks. I was raised with music. My grandparents had a balcony box at Severance Hall, home of the Cleveland Orchestra. When I attended, I was cautioned not to whisper while the orchestra was playing. Three of the young men from the family farm across the road from our farm were members of the orchestra, the Sholle boys. One was a percussionist, one did the violin and one the clarinet. This was during the 40s and early 50s
dorian sunday morning by NOAA
NYTimes:
I disagree with the position the local authorities in Odessa not to name the murderer in today’s mass shooting.
That is stupid. How can you educate the public if you refuse to tell the truth?
Probably radio silence on orders from the Gov.
either they’re concerned about giving the shooter so much attention that it attracts copycats or (in case the surname identifies a minority in the area – muslim maybe) they’re afraid there will be a backlash vigilante movement on a particular community.
Maybe the shooter’s name is Abbot, cornyn or trump.
he’d want to keep that hidden until mid-November 2020.
I believe the thought is if you name them it will cause others to one-up them thereby creating a name that shall live in infamy, as did:
“Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killer and sex offender, who committed the rape, murder, and dismemberment of 17 men and boys from 1978 to 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts — typically all or part of the skeleton.” wiki
Since the NRA and other maroons on the right are trying to make a false narrative about how to end daily gun violence – telling the truth is the only defense.
Looks like the cone of destruction is moving towards my boats. Not good. Time to make sure the boats are safe. Florida dodged a nasty one, but with shore damage.
…in TEXAS, a state awash in personal firearms, and no armed civilians stopped this tragedy from occurring?
So, the “sometimes only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun” justification for easy access to firearms is total bullshit?
I will echo others, here, Jack, and express that i, too, enjoyed your post. Nice one.
Starting tomorrow morning there is a mandatory evacuation of all of Eastern South Carolina into the Midlands. Schools will be closed indefinitely, etc. Big damned mess with lane reversals on the two major E-W routes.
Here u go, Mr. F:
“Viennese Pianoforte Technique of the 1820s”
…not exactly what you wanted, but close
I can almost see it from here
(The roads)
I have played on some pianos which felt like they were made in the 18th C.
It’s like dragging your Uncle “Fatso” up a steep hill.
“So, the “sometimes only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun” justification for easy access to firearms is total bullshit?”
Bout the only place it continues to exist is in western movies.. But the movies also show that the good guys with a gun hang them up when faced with encroaching civilization, with its laws and taming norms; even Wyatt Earp made them cowpokes check their guns at the edge of town.
and I think I just correctly used a semi-colon.
Thank you Bink, both your files, especially the first, were exceedingly helpful.In the second, the gent pounding Mozart’s pianoforte as if it were a harpsichord really needs to study the doctoral work presented earlier. (I’m harsh on him because it’s past my bedtime.)
Thank you so much for digging through things to find the files, I deeply appreciate it!
…glad you enjoyed it, least i could do✌️
IMHO thinking (1) that more guns with less restrictions and (2) not releasing the name of the dead shooter will lessen the chance of the next mass shooting is just fucking stupid. BB, get those boats secured and you, Flatus and Sturg be safe. I’m still hoping for a hit to West Palm.
And Mozart – ah, Mozart. Thanks Jack. Great job.
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