Musical notes

Over the almost 12 years I've written this blog (unbelievable to me - I thought I'd just try it out), I've written about music relatively little - I think five times - twice on Louis Prima  - Sing, Sing, Sing (12/10/07 - really about his song of that name) and Ladies and Gentleman: I give you Louis Prima (5/16/08). Then The music goes round and round (9/1/15) in which I just discuss my favorite pieces of my favorite musicians, and Music is not my life (12/10/16), which memorializes my pathetic attempts to learn to play an instrument. Last, was La Vie en Rose and other things that make me cry (1/14/16). La Vie en Rose was a song made famous by Edith Piaf and probably written by her (unclear in France's system, she wasn't entitled to claim to have written a song - I know, weird). 

Like everyone I know, I love music. That is, I don't think I have ever actually met anyone who has told me that they don't love music, though I suppose it's possible. This blog has always been about what I am thinking about lately, and that happens to be music, though, naturally, I have no idea why. Mostly I listen to symphonic music (colloquially, like most people nowadays, I just call it all "classical", to warn those who are dying to tell me that this one was baroque and that one romantic). I've even been reading biographies of those usually classified as the greatest composers - Bach, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven (along with Mozart, I believe Bach and Beethoven are the most universally revered, and I suspect Tchaikovsky is in most classical listeners top 10). It is interesting to me how many of the composers just seem plain nuts. I'd exempt Bach, who, though certainly driven, seemed to have a normal life including a family. Tchaikovsky - nuts. Beethoven - nuts. Mozart - I haven't read a biography yet on him, but it is suspected he had Tourette's syndrome or some form of autism. Mental illness and extreme creativity have often been linked in the popular mind, though I don't know if there is some authoritative epidemiological study on it and it's not my purpose here.

My purpose is, actually, just to review or recommend some new favorites. I'm not going to presently revise The music goes round and round, and a look at it tells me I still feel roughly the same about the best of my favorites. But, I know one change. Louis Armstrong would get a new entry - Skokiaan. I heard this song on a documentary about New Orleans, played by a modern band, and they attributed it to Armstrong. It's not really his, but he did an amazing cover in his own unmistakable way. It immediately became a standard on my workout ipod list.  Here's Wikipedia's first two paragraphs, footnotes excluded:

""Skokiaan" is a popular tune originally written by Rhodesian (Zimbabwean) musician August Musarurwa (d. 1968, usually identified as August Msarurgwa on record labels) in the tsaba-tsaba big-band style that succeeded marabi. Skokiaan (Chikokiyana in Shona) refers to an illegal self-made alcoholic beverage typically brewed over one day that may contain ingredients such as maize meal, water and yeast, to speed up the fermentation process.The tune has also been recorded as "Sikokiyana," "Skokiana," and "Skokian."

Within a year of its 1954 release in South Africa, at least 19 cover versions of "Skokiaan" appeared. The Rhodesian version reached No 17 in the United States, while a cover version by Ralph Marterie climbed to No. 3. All versions combined propelled the tune to No. 2 on the Cash Box charts that year. Its popularity extended outside of music, with several urban areas in the United States taking its name. Artists who produced their own interpretations include The Four Lads, Louis Armstrong, Bill Haley, Herb Alpert, Brave Combo, Hugh Masekela and Kermit Ruffins. The Wiggles also covered this song on their Furry Tales album. The music itself illustrates the mutual influences between Africa and the wider world."

It's infectious and a song I hope to hear it live someday. Here's a link to an Armstrong version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doJfIVW93fs

Another piece that is hardly new to me or likely you, but which is of much older vintage than you'd think is Minuet in G minor. This was attributed to Bach for over 300 years because it was found in his wife's yearbook he would prepare for her, until the 1970s when a researcher recognized it not as Bach's, but from Christian Pezold (sometimes Petzold), a contemporaneous organist-composer of Bach, now long forgotten, who also came from a musical family. I can't seem to track down any English language discussion of the subject, but I've read that Bach scholars are fairly in consensus about it. Still, if you go on the internet, you'd more likely find it attributed to Bach. Can't fight the internet. Like time, it is infinitely more powerful than any man or woman. The minuet would be quite familiar to you from a few modern sources. The Toys did a version based on it in the '60s, written by Hall of Fame composers Linzer and Randell, called Lover's Concerto (even though, of course, it's not a concerto) and were soon followed by an even better version of it by The Supremes. Then, in the 1980s, a now little-remembered movie (I say that because I've asked people about it and they don't remember), Electric Dreams, had a duet played by a sentient computer and a celloist who thought she was playing with her neighbor. The music is from the minuet, but made more modern and exciting. 

Here is the link to the Supreme's Lover's Concerto - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU8MuWJm_cY.

Here is the link to the Electric Dreams' duet - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVE8taDWmMc. Give it a minute or so to get going. It starts slow but it's worth it.  It's also a good movie, though it now seems outdated, that you can also find on youtube.

Sometime in the past year I also discovered a guitarist who gives street performances and records his music free for our consumption online, though you have to pay for many concerts. I know I recommended him to Bear, but I'm not sure anyone else. He's a German Jew born in Ukraine where he spent a few years and since then has lived all over the world including in New York. He looks like a hippy Jesus freak and burns incense on his guitar while he plays. You get the image. But, his music, sort of Flamenco and Gypsy, is to my ear beautiful and I read somewhere that his Song of the Golden Dragon has over 40 million youtube views. So, though it may not be your cup of tea, it is apparently a lot of people's (which is how I feel about rap - not my cup of tea, but it sure seems popular).  Here's a link -

Song of the Golden Dragon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gphiFVVtUI.

I don't think this next artist has much of a following and I doubt the harmonica is going to get her there. But, this piece by Indiara Sfair called Improvisation in C Minor works for me. She recorded it over a backing track by someone Arthur Sowinski. Whoever he is, I guess he makes them for people like her.  She should try out for America's Got Talent. She'd have a shot if she picked a few good pieces to play and wowed them.

My next to last selection is not new or unheard of or long forgotten. It's been famous for over 200 years - Beethoven's Piano Sonata in C Minor aka The Moonlight Sonata. A German music critic gave it it's sobriquet a few years after Beethoven died, and many more people know it that way than by the formal title, including me. It's a haunting piece written in three movements. I really don't understand why one piece is a sonata, another a fantasy, another an etude, etc. or some more than one, but Beethoven himself called it Sonata quasi una fantasia, essentially, a sonata in the style of a fantasy. Many people have thought that the idea that the music evoked moonlight was laughable, and I usually don't the idea of music really having any meaning except to us as individuals - though we are often given suggestions by the composer or others that seem to fit. I have little doubt you could call many a musical piece War to one group and Peace to another and have them both sure it was aptly titled. In any event, since I sleep so poorly, I find there are times that I desperately need a nap in the afternoon, but can't get quite there. I found that the Moonlight Sonata helps.

There are a few other pieces by Beethoven I've become very fond of recently as I study him. One is his Creatures of Prometheus, written for his only full-length ballet. It's excellent on its own accord, even if not the best of Beethoven, but, in the finale, even a non-musician like me can hear an earlier version of the final movement of the much more famous (and greater) Eroica. Another piece of his I've come to love is his Missa Solemnis, which is really a generic title for Solemn Mass, which many other great composers have composed, including Mozart's Missa Solemnis in C major and Bach's Mass in B minor. I'm generally not a big fan of masses. I just don't get the interest in Bach's St. John's and St. Mathew's masses - in fact, I can't listen to them, though I've tried a few times each. However, I love his Mass in B minor and the two mentioned above by Beethoven and Mozart.  Usually, if you read or hear the title Missa Solemnis, without attribution to a composer, they mean Beethoven's. 

My Beethoven appreciation studies also led me to another somewhat older contemporary of his, who he thought the best of them (the feeling, by the also irascible Cherubini, was not mutual). Not that anyone puts Cherubini in Beethoven's league, but you get a sense of Beethoven's heroic style in some of his works and I like it. 

I haven't put links to any of these classical musicians because they are long works probably no one is going to listen to and you know where to find them if you want.

I will leave off with a young youtube star who I know I've mentioned before by the name of Daniela Andrade, a singer who plays soft acoustic covers of many famous songs in her own style, usually by herself with just guitar and a microphone but sometimes with a friend.  Talk about being lulled to sleep. If I didn't share a bedroom, I've sure I'd use her work for bedtime too. I first found her while listening to different versions of La Vie en Rose. When you are home reading or taking a nap, just put her on youtube and let go. I can't say what my favorite covers from her are, but, I love her version of Shakira's Hips Don't Lie (on which Shakira guest appears), Gnarles Barkley's Crazy and her haunting versions of Christmas time is here which she subtitles on her video f/t Cutest Dog in the Galaxy (you'll figure it out). Come to think of it, I love her Have yourself a merry little Christmas too.

Hips don't lie - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3_DL0q9oq4

Crazy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzxag7U3SnkCrazy - 

Have yourself a merry little Christmas - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wratYG6H-B4

Christmas Time is here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iAaEH_dR_Y

I don't know that I will find any converts. Musical taste is like any other taste and that means subjective. I doubt my ever-lovin' gf would like any of it much, but, she did agree to go to an Estes Tonnes concert with me in December, so, there is hope.