BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: MUSIC

for Ivan

TAYLOR MAC 

"You can't hide when you sing. You can try to, but you always end up telling some kind of truth about who you are." 
                                                 Taylor Mac 

Jennifer Schuessler. "A Wilder Socrates? No Question."
 in The New York Times (January 21, 2022
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FRANZ LISZT & HIS PIANO

“My piano is to me what a ship is to the sailor, what a steed is to the Arab. It is the intimate personal depository of everything that stirred wildly in my brain during the most impassioned days of my youth. It was there that all my wishes, all my dreams, all my joys and all my sorrows lay.”
          Franz Liszt

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ON EXPLAINING THE MEANING OF A PIECE OF MUSIC

Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece he had just played on the piano.
      What Robert Schumann did was to sit back down and play the piece of music again.
 
**
MOZART'S FOR THE BIRDS!


"Not only did famed composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart cherish his companionship with his starling, but he also gained inspiration from the little bird. He bought the starling in 1784 at a pet shop in Vienna. As the story goes, the bird was singing Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major,” prompting Mozart to take him home as a pet. There's even a book about the unlikely companionship, called “Mozart’s Starling."

History Quiz (March 14, 2023)

**
 SINGING MICE

"Though humans have lived alongside mice for at 
least 15,000 years, few of us ever heard mice sing,
because they do so in frequencies beyond the range
detectable by human hearing. As pups, their high-
pitched songs alert their mothers to their whereabouts;
as adults, they sing in ultrasound to woo one another."
...
...a male mouse could alter the pitch of its song to
compete with other male mice for female attention."

Sonia Shah. "A Manner of Speaking" in The New York
Times Magazine (September 24,2023)
**

**
THE TWIST & HANK BALLARD

“The Twist” — both the song and the dance move that went with it — originated with R&B musician Hank Ballard, who released the tune with his band the Moonlighters in 1959. Ballard claimed the dance was inspired by the fact that his band moved on stage as if they were "trying to put a cigarette out." Singer Chubby Checker recorded the song in 1960 as the dance swept the nation, reaching No. 1 twice on the pop charts.
Source: Song Facts
https://www.historyquiz.com/quiz/60e87a6e727bed00095896cc?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6413e10c816737929b888715

*
"My definition of music is anything that sounds good to the ear. If a peanut rolling across the floor sounds good, that's music."

     Willie Nelson

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HOW I MANAGED TO FLUNK MY HISTORY
OF MUSIC CLASS

“Phillips, kindly tell the class what you think
About the German composer Heinrich Frick.”
“I didn’t read the assignment, I confess.
But didn’t he compose Porgy & Bess?”
**
**
THE BEATLES 1968 SONG "BLACKBIRD"

"The lyrics “Take these broken wings and learn to fly” have inspired many people from many different walks of life in the 50-plus years since Paul McCartney wrote “Blackbird.” But at a concert in 2016, he revealed that he had written the song with a very specific issue in mind: civil rights in the U.S. Although he has mentioned the connection several times over the decades, it was particularly poignant when he talked about his inspiration during a 2016 concert in Little Rock, Arkansas."

from INTERESTING FACTS

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FALLING ASLEEP AT A CONCERT

Unicio J. Violi fell
Asleep
In such a way
No one would suspect,
Forefinger at his temple
As if he were 
Constant to the cello's play.

At length, inverted mordents
Tumbled in little spies
To nibble 
At his ear, to tweak
His nose, or twine
About his hair. Scores of nubile

ladies laved all nakedly,
& the melodic garden
Of his sleep
Sprawled oblivious
To all the gelid keys,
Goldenrod & amethyst,
Moon-piqued rivers in a sweep

To Xanthus & beyond.
Pianissimo,
The lark spirited to heaven;
A hawk,
Startled from its lune,
Struck a vibrant chord to run

In frantic shadow
Above the orchards & the vines.
Pleached among the river-banks,
A fair heather
Forgedv the consequence
of his imagination. How many times

He wavered upon the brink
Of love only to fall down
Mightily,
Exhaling a sigh, a constellation
Dipping in precise
Orchestral shining,
The lunar surface of apparition

Cleaved upon his sight
Until every corner
Of his fugued garden glistened.
Gossamer ladies in a tryst
Measured their nakedness
In fraxinalla. 
A fox sobbed, he listened.

Thrush & lark poured forth
A stave of radiance,
Light was liquid 
In his throat, as he danced
In fluid merriment
Until a single trumpet bid

Him wake. He woke with a start
& left the world behind.

Louis Phillips