No Haydn from the Glory

 Joseph Haydn was a piviotal figure in classical music.  He lived from 1732 to 1809, was friends with Mozart, and is often refered to as the father of modern symphony.  He was born in Austria, and other than a brief stint in London, lived there all of his life.  He was a devout Catholic, who prayed the rosary when he was having trouble composing, and began each manuscript with "in nomine Domini" ("in the name of the Lord") and ended with "Laus deo" ("praise be to God").

He was apparently also human, and had one or more children with Luigia Polzelli, a singer in the Eszterházy establishment with whom he carried on a long-term love affair, outside of his childless and loveless marriage.

The sacred music that he wrote was extraordinary.  His masses were bold, dramatic and of a temper that speaks to a deep, living faith.  Unfortuately, they were barred from liturgical use by the reform of Church music instituted by Pope Pius X, in some instances on account of the alterations and repetitions effected in the text, and in others because of the operatic character of the music itself, which Mendelssohn is reported to have styled "scandalously gay".  Perhaps one of my Catholic readers can advise in the comments if that is still the case today.

All of this is really a lead in to point you to a fine performance of The Lord Nelson Mass as well as the Little Organ Mass that's available on Magnatune.com for free streaming or low cost download.

The Kyrie alone is worth the trip.

So listen, enjoy, and be uplifted.

They do have a sense of humor.

I recently discovered an internet forum for classical musicians, and found, to my surprise that they actually tell classical music jokes.  Aparently, Violists (Viola players) are the dumb blondes of the classical music world.  I'd guess that's because comparatively speaking, the viola is a fairly simple instrument to play.  I've always loved the viola, but what do I know?  Here's a sample of the jokes.

A violist and a percussionist were walking in a park. The percussionist saw a dead crow and said to the violist, "Look, a dead crow."

The violist looked up and asked, "Where?"

Q: Do you know the difference between a coffin and a viola?

A: The viola has the dead person on the outside.



Q: Do you know why violas are bigger than violins?

A: They're not. Violinists heads are just bigger.

And my favorite:

An American orchestra had just arrived in Europe for a two-week tour. One hour before the first concert, the conductor became very ill and was unable to conduct, and the orchestra suddenly had to find a substitute. The orchestra manager asked everyone in the orchestra whether they could step in and conduct, and the only person who was willing was the last chair violist.

The manager was very nervous about this. "We can't audition you,'' he said.

"No problem,'' replied the violist.

"There's no time to rehearse. You'll have to do the concert cold.''

"I know. It'll be all right.''

The violist conducted the concert and it was a smashing success. Since the conductor remained ill for the duration of the tour, the violist conducted all of the concerts, getting rave reviews and standing ovations at each one.

At the next rehearsal, the conductor had recovered, and the violist took his place at the back of the viola section. As he sat down, his stand partner asked him, "Where've you been for the last two weeks?''

Enjoy, and be amused.  I'll see if I can find some viola music to blog about.

Mozart in the Age of Enlightenment

 This is just a quick post to point you to a new album on Magnatune called Mozart in the Age of Enlightenment.  Like all of the recordings on Magnatune.com, you can stream the whole thing for free, or download uncopyprotected versions in a variety of file formats at very low cost.

It's a collection of pieces played on the fortepiano, which was the bridge instrument between the harpsicord and the modern piano.  The theme, the age of enlightenment, is interesting also.   From a brief piece on NPR:

Much of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s life and music were shaped by the Enlightenment and its principles. Mozart began his career as a servant to the Archbishop of Salzburg. In fact, up until this period, composers were often just highly-skilled servants to the church or royal courts. But Mozart’s travels to England and France had exposed him to the ideals of independence and equality. He sought to sever his obligation to the arcane hierarchy that employed his services so rigidly. Eventually, Mozart found greater freedom in Vienna, where he supported himself with public concerts and commissions, and through teaching engagements. Mozart’s opera “The Marriage of Figaro” epitomized the new ways of thinking by giving servants a central role. Previously, servants were comic figures to be laughed at; but, building on ideas in the play by Beaumarchais, Mozart presented them as equally worthy of serious attention as any noble aristocrat.


So listen, enjoy and be uplifted.

Two iPods = trouble

Update:  I'm getting tons of hits on this post from people doing Google searches, so I guess this is a common problem.  If the information here solves your problem, or if you know of another solution, please leave a comment so that others can benefit from your experience.  You can also stay and learn something about classical music.  8^)

I know that this isn't specifically  about classical music, but it is music related and I am an IT guy.  Two years ago, I bought my wife an iPod Mini for Christmas, which she loved.  It had to be replaced seven (yes seven) times by Apple under the AppleCare extended warranty, but when it was working, she loved it.  And no, she wasn't careless with it, drop it or in anyway cause the problems.  I think that hard drives and portable music devices are a bad combination.

Since the AppleCare contract was about to expire, this seemed like a good time to 
upgrade to a second generation Nano, which I expected would have far fewer problems since the storage is flash memory instead of a hard drive.  So I ordered one from Apple, with a sappy sentiment engraved on the back, and that was her big Christmas gift (along with an armband, Applecare extended warranty and iTunes gift card).  It was a big hit.

The problems began when she hooked it up to our windows based computer at home to transfer all of her music onto the new Nano.  It stopped showing all of her MP3's.  She got "file missing" error messages all the time.  So she called Apple support, and the first person she spoke to told her that it was defective, and to return it.  No way, she said, it's a software problem, and she demanded to speak to a product specialist.  When she got a hold of someone who actually knew something about the Nano, he told her that iTunes has problems with two iPods hooked up at the same time since it assigns them the same drive letter.  He walked her through how to assign a new drive letter to the Nano in Windows, and that solved most of the problems.

The only problem that she continued to have was that she would get "missing parameter" errors when she tried to move large blocks of files to the Nano.  I have run into this before with my Sandisk Sansa player, and it has to do with going through our USB hub instead of using one of the USB ports built into the computer.  So I moved the Nano's USB cable to one of the Dell's own ports, and that problem went away.  Her whole library of songs transfered to the Nano without a problem in about five minutes.

Life is good.

Working Classical

Back in November, I blogged about a new orchestral work by Paul McCartney called Ecce Cor Meum (click here to read the post), and I recently found an earlier CD of his lying around the house called Working Classical. I think that my wife must have bought it at some point. While not much of a classical music fan, she does like Paul McCartney.

The title is a cute pun on "working class", of course, and reflects McCartney's pride in his working class, Liverpool roots. The concept behind the album, which came out in 1999, was to orchestrate some of his best known and loved pop songs and reinterpret them in classical form.

There are also some new pieces, namely Haymakers, Midwife, Spiral and Tuesday. Just as he takes pride in his humble origins, he clearly takes pride in the classic songs that he's arranged for orchestra here, including such oldies but goodies as Maybe I'm Amazed and My Love.

The orchestrations are competent and the LSO gives it's usual fine performance, and it's really interesting to hear these tunes done over in a new idiom. It now has a place on my MP3 player, and I recommend the CD to any McCartney fan.