Originally filmed by SF Studios, a Swedish company. Sound of course added on.
Filed under: film, miscellaneous
April 19, 2018 • 9:25 am Comments Off on A Trip Through New York City in 1911
A Trip Through New York City in 1911
January 9, 2018 • 11:58 am 1
Meet the Flintstones
Remarkable work by Ilan Rechtman. I need to find out more about him.
Filed under: miscellaneous, piano
December 9, 2016 • 12:47 pm Comments Off on Madrona Makes Music: Holiday Benefit
Madrona Makes Music: Holiday Benefit
Local readers please note this concert scheduled for Saturday 10 December, 3-4 pm, by the musicians of Madrona to benefit their neighborhood’s homeless shelter, Julia’s Place.
From the announcement: “These local performers, including accomplished professionals and aspiring young artists, present a holiday extravaganza that covers everything from Mozart and Schubert to Stevie Wonder and Leonard Cohen. Guests of all ages are welcome at this free community concert, and every donation collected goes directly to Julia’s Place to assist vulnerable families!”
Madrona Makes Music is presented by local violin studio Suzuki by the Sound.
Performer lineup:
–Distilled, Seattle University alumni a cappella choir
-Aaron Grad, electric theorbo
-Tracy Hagen, cello
-Jen Kovarovic, violin
-Lizzie and Aimee
-Nelda & Clif’s little BIG band
-Rabbi David Basior
-Lewis Thompson, piano
-Violin students of Suzuki by the Sound
Filed under: miscellaneous
September 3, 2016 • 1:46 am Comments Off on The Legend of Sawney Bean
The Legend of Sawney Bean
The things one learns while traveling…. This made for some good tale-spinning while visiting Edinburgh:
The story of Sawney Bean is one of the most gruesome Scottish legends, the plot of which would not look out of place in any modern horror/slasher movie. Evidence suggests the tale dates to the early 18th century.
more on the gruesome legend of the Bean clan
Bonus scare:
Filed under: miscellaneous, travel
March 25, 2016 • 8:44 am Comments Off on Music for Good Friday
Music for Good Friday
December 31, 2015 • 11:28 am Comments Off on Guten Rutsch!
Guten Rutsch!
For my non-German-speaking friends, here’s a quickie intro to this NYE idiom: “In English, the phrase would be ‘Happy New Year,’ but Guten Rutsch literally translates to ‘Good jump’ or ‘Good slide.'”
I suppose a leap of faith always is involved in trying to brush aside the bad memories of a year just passed and to greet the new one as a “blank slate.”
On the other hand, the nostalgic tendency to think about old friends, old times, is a quintessential part of the New Year’s experience. Here’s Matthew Iglesias on the connection between Robert Burns’s beloved “Auld Lang Syne” and NYE:
The speaker is asking whether old friends should be forgotten, as a way of stating that obviously one should not forget one’s old friends. The version of the song we sing today is based on a poem published by Robert Burns, which he attributed to “an old man’s singing,” noting that it was a traditional Scottish song
[…]
One reason a random Scottish folk song has come to be synonymous with the new year is that New Year’s celebrations (known as Hogmanay) loom unusually large in Scottish folk culture … Presbyterianism put down deeper roots in Scotland, leading Hogmanay to displace Christmas as the number one midwinter celebration.
[…]
An 18th-century Scottish ballad … became a midcentury American television ritual, and from there became a worldwide phenomenon — even though almost nobody understands the song.
Filed under: miscellaneous, poetry
October 30, 2015 • 3:29 pm 1
The Hunt for Haydn’s Skull
In time for Halloween, here’s one of my favorite weird stories from the often very weird world of classical music: the story of Haydn’s missing skull.
Haydn was the longest-lived of the great triumvirate who perfected “the Classical Style” (with a life twice as long as that of Mozart and a good two decades longer than Beethoven’s). But he happened to die in 1809, just when the quack movement known as phrenology was suddenly becoming popular in Europe.
Among the leading phrenologists (if not its founder) was one Franz Joseph Gall, and his disciples included a former employee of the aristocratic Esterházy household, Joseph Carl Rosenbaum, who had known Haydn when they shared the same boss. Rosenbaum and a fellow phrenologist follower, Johann Nepomuk Peter, obtained possession of Haydn’s skull from a corrupt gravedigger — it had begun decomposing in the sultry Vienna June — and the skull eventually ended up spending time in both gentlemen’s collections.
Meanwhile, in 1820, over a decade after Haydn’s death, the composer’s patron of old, Nikolaus Prince Esterházy, decided to transfer his former kapellmeister’s remains from the environs of Vienna to his estate in Eisenstadt next to the Hungarian border. Of course as soon as the exhumation took place, they discovered the fact that Haydn was now missing his skull.
The blogger David Nelson has even more juicy details here:
After the skull was discovered missing, the authorities unsuccessfully searched Rosenbaum’s home. Mrs. Rosenbaum had hid the skull under her mattress, and then lay down on it. She claimed that it was “that time of the month.” Then after Prince Esterhazy paid Rosenbaum for the skull, one skull and then another—neither belonging to Haydn—were presented. This meant that on December 4, 1820, a stranger’s skull was placed on Haydn’s remains.
[…]
This bizarre story was finally resolved in 1954. In a ceremony at the Musikverein, the skull “was placed in an urn decorated with a golden laurel wreath surrounded by red and white peonies.” Then a large procession (100 cars!) drove past Haydn’s birth house in Rohrau and to the Bergkirche in Eisenstadt, where the skull was finally returned to its body.
However, because Rosenbaum had given the Prince another skull, with the lie that it was Haydn’s, and even though the ruse was soon discovered, this mismatched skull was reunited with Haydn’s body in the reinterment. So come 1954, when the real skull was at last laid to rest amid much ceremony, it had a mate, and the two have remained in the tomb since then.
More on the skull story http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kmgrx.
Haydn’s crypt in the Bergkirche in Eisenstadt
Filed under: miscellaneous, musical oddities
