New! “Student Quote of the Day”
These probably won’t happen frequently, but when a student cracks me up I’ll post his or her comment (and tell them it’ll be here). I won’t use their names … unless, of course, they beg me!
So here’s #1:
I’ve had bad experiences with tempo primo.
Three reviews for San Jose Chamber Orchestra. I’m even mentioned in one. (And it forced me to get out my dictionary, too.)
I’ve been horrible. I have to confess this right up front. I haven’t kept this site up to date, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to. I blog, to be sure, and I do attempt to update, but my list of double reed players in orchestras and the list of double reed instructors in universities, colleges and conservatories are quite out of date. I do apologize.
I should hire readers to go over the lists and see what you can fill me in. I could pay you all from what I earn for keeping up those lists. Or even double or triple that.
😉
But really, if you see errors feel free to point ’em out to me. I’m fine with that! (The lists are here.)
I have the original Tin Ear, that is to say, the First and Prime Tin Ear. So I like music that is guaranteed good because I have no way of finding out for myself. Old stuff like Haydn that there is positively no doubt about. On my own I wouldn’t know it from Music to Clean Up By.
…
I don’t have any preference yet though I think I like the kind that is straight up and down better than what slides around, if you know what I mean.
…
We are broke out with records now as Thomas sent me a box full out of his basement. All I can say about it is that all classical music sounds alike to me and all the rest of it sounds like the Beatles.
-Flannery O’Connor
Last week at the San Francisco World’s Fair, the San Francisco Symphony, under Composer-Conductor Meredith Willson, played a work listed in the program as Prelude to The Great Dictator, by Charlie Chaplin. The program was not quite accurate. Actor Chaplin made up the four themes of the Prelude (“Invasion of Osterlich,” “Hanah Theme,” “Barber Shop Theme,” “Charlie Motif”), but the music was fashioned, and orchestrated, by Composer Willson. Although Actor Chaplin always writes music for his films, this was the first to be performed in concert. Said the critics: “Obvious as most satirical attempts. . . . Interesting. … A pleasant trifle. … It cannot claim to be concert music.”
This is from Time Magazine, September 9, 1940. RTWT
I had no idea Meredith Willson conducted San Francisco Symphony. Nor that he played in the NY Phil. Nor other tidbits I read here.
