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Saturday, April 21, 2018

Musical Interlude

[For politics, please scroll down]

Enjoy what is perhaps Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's most famous symphony:


[about the above piece]

47 comments:

  1. I begin each, day by thanking God for the miracle of Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and the very few others who wrote sublime music of lasting value. After that I listen to one of the great symphonies, sonatas, chamber works, song cycles, or choral works like this beloved symphony of Mozart. The practice gives me courage and inspiration. For me it is a religious experience.

    If there is any hope for humanity, surely it lies embodied in the great works of music, art and literature that capture the very best that human consciousess has been able to offer.

    I first became acquainted with this and several other important symphonies by playing four-hand transcriptions at the piano –– back in th,e day when I had musical colleagues capable of sharing the joy of playing together for the sheer love of it.

    This started in seventh grade when I was twelve. I was fortunate to go to a good private school where he classes wefre small, and interaction between sudents and their teachers on a personal level was encouraged. Miss K. the music teacher noticed right away my ability to play the piano, and took me under her wing to initiate me into the pleasures of playing duets at the piano which we did every day after lunch.

    Our rendition of Beethoven's first symphony turned out to be quite remarkable. She insisted that we perform the first movement for the school assembly. We were having so much fun it never occurred to me be nervous.

    A lovely memory, –– and one of several significant small events that led me to the happy place I enjoy today.

    Thank you, AOW, for remindng us "to stop and smell the flowers along the way" by sharing these wonderful pieces of music periodically. It's a great reminder that there is much more to life than the constant aggravation produced by pettiness, stupidity, and the absurd machinations of politicians and their handmaidens in academia and the enemedia.

    Mozart's music transcends the meanness and the madness magnificently.



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    3. Yippee Ginsberg said


      Three strikes, and you're O–U-T-!

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    4. You need to learn to embrace subjectivity, Yippers. Perspectives make the "world go round." ;)

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    5. Flopsie Goldberg said

      The view from the mountaintop is always better than the view from the gutter, so os the air there. Those who prefer the gutter have no right to try to drag their betters off the mountaintop and into the sewers. A pox on all vulgarians.

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    6. Mopsie Goldberg said

      At least one person here needs to join AA –– that's ANUSES ANONYMOUS. Too bad the ANUSES are always the last to know how desperately they need help!

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    7. How much crack smoking was involved in attaining the view from the mountaintop? Are you still high?

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    8. Whoopsie Goldberg said

      My sisters and I are always high. We's been dat way since we was boarn. Highness juss cums as natcherly to is as lowness dew to you.

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    9. It ain't music if it doesn't translate well to electric guitar. Mozart passes the metal test.

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    10. I agree with you about Mozart being transcendent, FreeThinke. My port in a storm is Eine kleine Nachtmusik but your mileage may vary.

      I don't know why you let Beamish get your goat. He is the one who thought a string quartet performs under a baton and is famous for his quote, "Yeah, Beethoven's okay."

      Beamish, I'm primarily a jazz fan. Any examples of bebop translating to metal? Maybe Scrapple from the Apple ?

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    11. it's worth noting that some mountaintops higher than about 26k ft are in the "death zone", where the air is so thin that humans cannot survive longer than about a week. I bet the view is amazing though.
      Really I agree with Wilde that we're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at stars. In my opinion great music does not datach us from humanity, rather it helps us feel one another's presence more keenly.

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    12. Topsie Goldberg said

      Wutt done made joo tink dat wuzz "worth noting," Brer Jezzie?

      It ain' got nuttin to do wiff MEWZIK.

      An noboddy done sed nuttin 'bout deetatchin noboddy from anybuddy elts. Daze ownlee tawking 'bout how de best Mewzik connects peepple wiff de Lawd IF day stop jabberin' an juss LISSEN fo a chaynge,.

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    13. "Once is a mistake, twice is jazz."

      Improvisational forms :)

      Note the root of the word improvize is "improve."

      Also note that the earliest metal bands started out as jazz and blues guitarists.

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    14. I don't drink. Everyone I liked to drink with, which wasn't many or often, became recovering alcoholics.

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    15. Beamish,
      Losing drinking buddies is a joy killer.

      In truth, I've never been much of a drinker. That said. I admit that I miss swilling down champagne or daiquiris on New Year's Eve, and on my birthday -- and of course on a wedding anniversary celebration.

      Ah, well. Maybe one of these days I can stop taking these meds which forbid alcohol consumption.

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    16. Former Speaker of the House John Bohner (the only political position in America that requires an alcoholic) is a lobbyist for marijuana legalization now.

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    17. Detachment is what I experience at the top of a mountain and, as with extreme altitude, extreme detachment is dangerous. "Connection with the lord" is your experience with classical music, or rather your interpretation of that experience; obviously I'd interpret it differently since you have to presuppose the existence of something before you can connect with it. I think the experience might have something to do with shared humanity instead, something which the mountaintop analogy fails to capture.

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  2. JEBUS, Ducky, I'm just setting here listening to "The Wall" and feeling mildly sorry for myself with a nice alcohol buzz going and here you go harshing my mellow!

    Ain't you had your a$$ kicked enough this week without stirring the pot?

    Cuz isn't trolling FT, he's just being himself.

    Oh Vera, what has become of you?

    Nothing Else Matters (Steve & Seagulls)

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    1. CRAP! The Canadian Mist is gone. Guess the Jack will have to do.

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    2. I've heard good things about Wild Turkey, Warren.

      Better than Jim Beam, although Jim was a good buddy back in my drinking days. But that was more than a hundred years ago. ;-}

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    3. Warren,
      Jack Black, I hope. Smoooooth....

      I haven't had a drink in over two years. These damn meds won't allow for it. **sigh**

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    4. Jim Beam was my drink of choice, and I'm curious about JB Devil's Cut (100 Proof), but of all the multiple personalities swimming in my neurochems, Jim Beam brought out Reverend Beamish (get it) who preached fire and brimstone and damnation, and not much else.

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    5. I'm allergic to drinking. Makes my wrists break out in handcuffs ;)

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  3. No offense FT, please don't hurt me.

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    1. ME hurt YOU, Warren?

      YAGOTTABEKIDDIN' me, Right?


      I don't want to hurt anybody, but I can't help taking note of the absolute truth in the maxim "One Rotten Apple Can Spoil the Whole Barrel,"

      Interpret that any way you like. I ain't namin' no names –– no way, no how, no time –– and that's a promise.

      ];^}>

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  4. I just listened to Emil Gilel's superb live performance of Beethoven Sonata #28, Opus 101 –– a sonata I was chosen to perform on WNYC radio after i won an in-school competiton at the conservatory many years ago. I played it well –– or so I was told ––, but Gilels just revealed wonderful things about it that had never occurred to me or those who taught me.

    That speaks volumes ––not about me OR Gielels –– but about BEETHOVEN whose works one can study and perform for DECADES and never come to the end of learning more from the composer who I truly believe took dictation dorectly from the Mind of God, –– as did Mozart, Haydn and the rest of the truly great ones.

    God bless ALL the great composers of serious music for providing humanity with an abundance of transcendant experiences –– for those fortunate enough to have ears capable of hearing and minds eager to extend their own apparent limitations

    Both Mozart and Haydn wrote over one-hundred symphonies, Beethoven produced nine, Brams only four. In this exalted realm, however, quantity counts for little. QUALITY is KING.

    Those three guys produced enough magnificent music to fill the consciousness and satisfy the soul of anyone capable of appreciating true beauty, but their work –– tremendous as it is –– only begins to scratch the surface of source of limitless wonder and delight.

    NO ONE can know and appreciate EVERYTHING. What serious music does for me higher mathematics, or a detailed, in-depth study of genetics, history, or anthtopology might very well do for those blest with a different set of mental and spiritual capacities.

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    1. FT,
      NO ONE can...appreciate EVERYTHING.

      Although you won't agree, I think that your statement applies to different genres of music.

      I have found that my tastes in music have changed as I've aged. As you know, my taste in music is eclectic.

      Back in the day (late 1960s-mid-1970s), I listened to what was offered on rock radio (AM radio in the car) and the Mafia crooners -- although I didn't like everything on the radio.

      I was trained in classical music, went "astray" for a while, then returned to the genre.

      What serious music does for me higher mathematics, or a detailed, in-depth study of genetics, history, or anthtopology might very well do for those blest with a different set of mental and spiritual capacities.

      I'm sure that the above statement is true. As the saying goes: "Different strokes for different folks." What a boring world this would be if we were all the same.

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    2. EIther a person believes in the One True God, - OR - he's just another moral relativist –– a Lost Soul with no anchor to windward.

      Just because the violent, demented debacle that was The Sick-sties made the aggressive assertion that everything and everybody must be regarded as EQUAL in VALUE does not make it so.

      As the theme song in Harold and Maude said:

      If you want to be high, be high
      If you want to be low, be low ...


      That's all right, not because I like it, but because it has to be. It's Reality, HOWEVER I would insist that whatever choice you make, you MUST be aware of what it IS you are choosing.

      "LOW" could never be high, –– and vice versa.

      The popular proscription against making "Vajue Judgments" has all but killed us.

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    3. All I know is prior to rebellion, Satan was God's favored musician.

      Whatever you do for the least of these...

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    4. "The only Zen on the mountaintop is the Zen you take up there with you."

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  5. Well, who would have thought Mozart could cause such stress! Any who, I enjoyed, and thanks so much AOW, missed not having a selection last week. I always look forward to your selections.. :)

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    1. It wasn't MOZART who caused the "stress," Bunker.

      I just wanted to be sure you realized that.

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    2. Thank you, Bunkerville!

      I enjoy your respite selections as well.

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    3. AOW, it is getting to the point that choosing and posting my Respite is about all I really enjoy anymore.. The news is so chaotic, and for the most part depressing.

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    4. Bunkerville,
      I know what you mean!

      Next week, I'll be posting a very long piece so that Warren and I have the option of taking a blog break. So much going on here on the home front that I'm overwhelmed.

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    5. I INSIST on making the point –– and having it ACCEPTED –– that it is not MOZART who caused "stress" related to this beautiful post.

      It was –– and REMAINS –– perverse, trollish behavior in the part of a person or persons unequipped to appreciate anything but the abysmal content of their own warped, often demented view of life.

      KNOW the TRUTH. No matter how controversial or unpalatlbe it may seem IT WILL make you FREE.

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    6. FT,
      Good luck with having it ACCEPTED -- whatever the point might be -- by bloggers, who are, almost without exception, a contentious group.

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    7. What I really MEANT, AOW, was having my point of view ACKNOWLEDGED.

      "Accepted" was a poor choice of words.

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  6. creepy...I had no idea that's his 'most famous' and the melody immediately came to my mind when I read that in your intro....wonderful Mozart

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    1. How is any of this "creepy," Z?

      I don't understand what you could mean by sayng that in reference to this symphony.

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    2. She was speaking of the melody popping into her head when she read "most famous" before realizing that it was the "most famous".

      She didn't mean the music was creepy.

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  7. MUSIC hath charms to soothe the savage breast.

    "NEWZICK" on the other hand is like a Siren Call either to commit MAYHEM, MURDER or SUICIDE.

    The ENEMDIA has managed to get the entire nation STUCK on STUPID ever since Donald Trump won the Republican nomination and had the collossal effrontery to WIN the presidency.

    This absurd ADDICTION to PERPETUAL RAGE over bogus SCANDALS and NONSENSE has GOT stop END.

    Go mow the grass, sweep the floor, dig a ditch, improve your vocbulary, read one of the great books, learn a new language, sing a song, wash the dishes, try a new recipe, get a haircut, volunteer at a hospital or nursing home, try raising orchids, read to the blind, adopt a cat or dog from a shelter, try a new restaurant, write a poem, learn how to make your own clothes, HAVE an AFFAIR! –– do ANYTHING but rail on and on and on and on and on and on and on about NEWZIK while swimming in the Cesspits and wading knee-depp in the Open Sewers of American Politics, and International Intrigue.

    P_____H_____E_____W_____!

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