Paid my roof guy in hundred dollar bills, US greenbacks. Hyperactive tax
dodger. At my kitchen table he notices classical music post cards, notices,
etc., says he's a huge classical music fan. "Grew up listening to Grateful
Dead etc. Then one day heard a classical piece...changed my life!" As the
old folks say, "You know you know never can tell."
After my unhappy experience with Shelby Lynne, Saturday evening went to the Boston Symphony.
Two Haydn symphonies and then concert excerpts from Wagner's opera Die
Meistersinger von Nurnburg.
Haydn symphony number 1 is clearly a baroque
symphony, made for a small string orchestra in a Viennese music room. Number
100 is a full blown Classical Symphony for a big orchestra with brass and
percussion, made to blow the doors off a big public concert hall in
London, where Haydn went to be a rock star and make big money... and set
the path for Beethoven's great symphonies.
The Meistersinger is great
stuff, with a huge orchestra, solo singers, and a hundred plus chorus...and
you can't help but hear the echoes of virulent German nationalism. At one
point the chorus shouts at full volume, "Wach' auf!" "Awaken!" .....a Nazi
Party election slogan in the 20s and 30s. And of course it is set in Nurenburg, the site of the Nazi party rally of Leni Riefenstahl's film
Triumph of the Will. Check out Triumph of the Will on youtube. In that film
and in her film of the 1936 Olympics, Riefenstahl created the standards for
dramatic documentary/propaganda film. All those NFL Films low angle shots of
the long pass dropping out of the sky are pure Riefenstahl.
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