Here are some random music facts that you may or may not find interesting. Share my pain.
1. Opera finds it roots in the Medieval and Renaissance Madrigal. ZZZZZzzzzz
2. The Motet (religious Choral work) finds its origins in Substitute Clausula. See, those chant composers liked to write little closing things at the end of a long haunting chant. A little improv. to polish it off. Those little improv. sections got bigger and bigger, with more and more notes added. Composers started exchanging those parts of the Chant renaming them "Substitute Clausula" Later they just axed the Chant's involvement altogether and gave them new words of their own. The Motet was born.
3. Composers liked to slip melodies into their liturgical masses that were dirty secular songs. It would be like me writing a choral work for the local Baptist choir and slipping in "To the Wall" or "I've got Hoes in Different Area Codes" into the flute line. They thought it was funny but when the Pope found out about it he was pretty ticked. If it weren’t' for Palestrina, polyphony would have been cut altogether and it would have been back to chant.
4. Schubert liked little boys. And I don't mean Captain Kangaroo liked em' I mean... glitter-glove liked em’
5. Wagner was an anti-Semitic and a wife thief.
6. Chopin died of TB, loved Mozart while Beethoven Scared him. -Wuss.
7. Tchaikovsky liked dudes. Thus the numerous ballets, or as I like to call them, "gross, cover-your-bulge-please fests." Or as Tchaikovsky simply called them, "Heaven"
7 comments:
1. Interesting.
2. Interesting, as well.
3. Knew that, but still interesting.
4. Too much information.
5. Knew that, thus why Wagner was Hitler's fav.
6. Amusing.
7. Again, TMI.
Is this what they teach in those institutions of higher education?
Kat
Was Tchaikovsky also on drugs? I always wonder that when I sleep through, I mean watch "The Nutcracker." The music is okay, but a bit frilly. I guess that was his intention.
"Is this what they teach in those institutions of higher education?"
Only the good ones.
"Was Tchaikovsky also on drugs?"
You know, he is not my specialty, but somewhere I can faintly remember hearing that he had a little trial with opium. I do know that he was a boozer and shot him self in a depressed drunken state.
Berlioz was the one High on Opium all the time.
how do they know that schubert liked little boys? that's a lot of halabaloo. slander. spreader of gossip! "meine ruh ist hin! mein hertz is schwer!"
Not sure of your sources. Not challenging them, but let's acknowledge the slanderous nature of deconstructors of western culture.
There is no evidence that Handel, for instance, was gay, but some have alleged it recently. He didn't get married, and seemed a pious fellow, and his work was wonderfully worshipful, therefore, say, wasn't he gay?
No evidence to allege this, but plenty of motivation. You points may well be well-founded, but I don't trust The Man.
Best,
Brant
There's just so much to know, and so little time.
Wonder what childhood memories I'm overwriting to absorb all this additional relatively-useless (to me, you understand) information. Hmmm.
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