Category: Music

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When memory fails…

…there’s the web.

For some obscure reason (well, obscured from my knowledge), I thought about Tattoo today. No, not body disfiguring by savages or Ricardo Montalban’s one-time sidekick, Tattoo the bugle call. I was rocking along just fine until the third phrase (the first two are virtually the same) of this longest of standard bugle calls eluded my flagging memory, so…

Via google, I hied meself off to the definitive bugle call resource on the web, at the U.S. Army Band’s site. Aha! That’s how that third phrase goes, I realized. Nice that the site includes both an mp3 file and the “sheet music” for download/listening/viewing/printing.

Reason #1,546,432 why I love the web. (Yeh, for those of y’all who read my reason #1,546,328, I’ve found a few more since then :-))

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New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day: Pig in a Blanket

That’s me: staying warm n toasty and “pigging out” on Bryn Terfel while enjoying some home brewed wheat beer (yeh, yeh: from a kit ;-)).

*heh*

This kinda stuff can easily carry me through New Year’s Day.

🙂

Bryn Terfel - We'll Keep a Welcome

Bryn Terfel – We’ll Keep a Welcome

and

Mr. Beer Whispering Wheat Weizenbier Refill Brew PackMr. Beer Whispering Wheat Weizenbier Refill Brew Pack

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Adam’s Blog, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Big Dog’s Weblog, Pursuing Holiness, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Leader of the Band

Thanks to Leaning Straight Up I learned on first rising this a.m. of Dan Fogelberg’s passing. LSU posted an appropriate Fogelberg performance, but I thought this one particularly poignant (keep in mind that Fogelberg’s dad was a high school band director during Fogelberg’s youth):

A quiet man of music
Denied a simpler fate
He tried to be a soldier once
But his music wouldnt wait
He earned his love
Through discipline
A thundering, velvet hand
His gentle means of sculpting souls
Took me years to understand.

The leader of the band is tired
And his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through
My instrument
And his song is in my soul —
My life has been a poor attempt
To imitate the man
Im just a living legacy
To the leader of the band.

Well, Dan, you left a musical legacy of your own. Requiescat in pace.

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Principles of Classicism

Bear with me for a bit. This is all about why I’m a fan of classical (though especially Classical–the lowercase “c” is different) music. It’s not (exactly) what you may think. At least, not entirely.

In music, the term Classic Period refers to a period from roughly the middle of the 18th Century into (and perhaps a little beyond) the first decade of the 19th Century during which certain “givens” of musical expression were practiced and the major forms of most of what is viewed as “classical” music were developed. Do note: in architecture, the graphic arts and the like, the period is more likely to be called Neoclassicism.

(That darned lowercase–or uncial–c”. *heh* So “Classical Music” is NOT what most folks think of when “classical music” is referenced… )

One of the primary reasons I am a fan of Classical (and even much classical) music is not just because the music is complex, beautiful and compelling but because it is the expression of a particular ethos which our society sorely lacks nowadays.

Aside from technical matters of form, the principles of Classicism as found in Classical Music were

  • balance
  • clarity
  • accessibility
  • expressiveness
  • edification

Although two of these principles are still found in abundance in contemporary music (though not in contemporary “serious” or “academic” music, IMO) it is the lack of the others, especially the last, that has seriously harmful effects upon our society. Continue reading “Principles of Classicism”