The Moldau
Another great melody
Jupiter
One of the great melodies, no?
Cherubini’s Requiem
Inspired by Rick Neese, I looked it up and found this immediately:
Posterity has a habit of elevating the obscure and neglecting the famous. Thus it is that Cherubini, hailed by Beethoven as ‘the greatest living composer’, is today often forgotten; ‘If I were to write a Requiem, Cherubini’s would be my only model’, Beethoven continued and the work was performed at his funeral in 1827. Schumann’s opinion was that it was ‘without equal in the world’. Berlioz considered that ‘the decrescendo in the Agnus Dei surpasses everything that has ever been written of the kind’.
Bo Jackson
Anyone who’s ever played Techmo Superbowl on NES knows that Bo Jackson is the best athlete of all time. Here are some anecdotes illuminating that:
via Bill Simmons
Charles Ives
The way in which Ives pursued his goal of a democratic art, and his career of creating at the highest level of ambition while making a fortune in the life insurance business, perhaps could only have happened in the United States. And perhaps only there could such an isolated, paradoxical figure make himself into a major artist.
The almost short biography is a decent read.
Period Instruments
I don’t understand the attitude that prefers period instruments except as something of an historical novelty. Undoubtedly the piano is a better instrument than the pianoforte, so why play music on a crude instrument?
WERS
http://www.wers.org/playlists/
This is a good indie station in Boston.
This Surprised Me
According to a 2005 report by the University of Central Florida Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, only 8.5 percent of major leaguers were African-American — the lowest percentage since the report was initiated in the mid-1980s. By contrast, whites comprised 59.5 percent of the majors’ player pool, Latinos 28.7 percent and Asians 2.5.
How to Deliver “Deron” in Speech
Pardon my asking:
DEHR-in, or deh-RAWN?
Peter Berkowitz in the WSJ
Conservatives, facing uncertainty about George W. Bush’s legacy, and the reality of their own errors and excesses, have good reason just now to read and ponder Kirk, Hayek and Strauss. Progressives, too prone these days to perceive difficult moral and political questions as one-sided and too keen to characterize their allies at home in the defense of liberty as enemies, have good reason to do so themselves.
“How to Observe Memorial Day”
The “Memorial” in Memorial Day has been ignored by too many of us who are beneficiaries of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice. Often we do not observe the day as it should be, a day where we actively remember our ancestors, our family members, our loved ones, our neighbors, and our friends who have given the ultimate sacrifice:
Allen Vizzutti — Good Lord
From Waiterrant.net
It’s the tail end of the lunch shift. I pretend to watch the office girls walking past the front window as I eavesdrop on two of my customers. I know that’s not very polite but it’s an interesting conversation. Besides, I’m bored.
“I don’t know,” the younger of the two men says. “I thought I’d be happier at this stage in my life.”
Great News!
Room Sound finally released their first full length album. Many of the members are good friends of mine, and my brother contributed to a few tracks (on trumpet).
Check out and support this talented Dallas indie band here.
Quote for the Day
As much as I’m not a political friend of Bill Clinton, this is profoundly true:
“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
An Interesting Tid-Bit
In Prop. 10 of Book III of the Principia, Newton proves that the ratio of density of the air 200 miles above the earth’s surface to the air at the sea level is as 75,000,000,000,000 to 1.
Also, since a frozen globe of water moving the distance of its radius in our air would lose 1/4586 parts of its motion, Jupiter, being a little bit denser than water, in a space of thirty days, in which it would describe a length of 459 of its semi-diameters, in a medium as dense as our air would lose about 1/10 of its motion.
Therefore, in the the rarefied air of the heavens, Jupiter, in 1,000,000 years, would not lose even one tenth of one hundreth of one thousandth part of its motion.
His conclusion: The motions of the planets in the heavens can be maintained a very long time.
That Newton discovered this via his rational mechanics 300 years ago is amazing to me.
The Commander-in-Chief of the World Discusses Global Warmings
Project Alpha and the Spoon Benders
In the late 1960s, a young Israeli man named Uri Geller gained a substantial amount of attention and fame following a collection of remarkable demonstrations on US and British television. In full view of astonished audiences, Uri was seemingly able to manipulate metal with his mind. Spoons softened in his hands, keys curled at the gentle stroke of his fingers, and he was able to cause compasses to wobble at his cajoling. He was also known to restart stopped wristwatches by merely holding them in his hands. According to Geller, these feats were the products of sheer will, a phenomenon known as psychokinesis.
The rest of the article is even more interesting than the psychokinesis.
Intrigue at the ’85 NBA Draft
Just in case they pull down the clip between the time we post this blog and the time you read this, here’s what happens: when an accountant from Ernst & Whinney throws the seven envelopes into the glass drum, he bangs the fourth one against the side of the drum to create a creased corner (we’ll explain why this is relevant in a second). Then he pulls a handle and turns the drum around a couple of times to “mix” the envelopes up. At the 5:23 mark of the clip, Stern heads over to the drum, unlocks it and awkwardly reaches inside for the first envelope (the No. 1 pick). He grabs three envelopes that are bunched together, pretends not to look (although he does) and flips the three envelopes so the one on the bottom ends up in his hand. Then he pulls that envelope out at the 5:32 mark … and, of course, it’s the Knicks envelope.
from Bill Simmons
The accountant comes on at around the 4:30 mark.
In Paradisum
I just sat down at the piano with the score of Faure’s Requiem and played/sang through the whole thing. It’s my favorite requiem. What’s yours?
Pat Metheny on Kenny G
but when kenny g decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great louis’s tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that i would not have imagined possible. he, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that louis armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. by disrespecting louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, kenny g has created a new low point in modern culture – something that we all should be totally embarrassed about – and afraid of. we ignore this, “let it slide”, at our own peril.
Best Recent Acquisition:
Rubinstein playing the Chopin nocturnes.
He Did Study
This post (“find x”) reminded me of a story from my dad’s college career.
For a philosophy exam, he was asked, “Think of a question you think suits this class, then answer it.”
My father simply wrote, “Think of an answer you think suits this class, then answer it.”
He passed it in, the professor laughed, then told him to go write the exam for real.
A Few Days Late
A friend is an investigative reporter for a leading business magazine in China. One of his beats is coal mining, which takes him frequently to Shanxi province. I took him drinking earlier this week and he told me a crazy story, one that his magazine said would never get past the censors.
I Wonder If He’d Use a Duct-Tape Gun.
Catholic pre-K teacher: On Good Friday bad men killed Jesus and he died.
Four-year-old boy: Who killed Jesus?! I will kill him with my gun!
–Queens Catholic Elementary School
P.S. Sheila, since you like Max Roach, I guarantee you’ll like Money Jungle, if you don’t know it already.
