It's really tough trying to make my pick for the final spot on my Top Ten Favorite Classical Composers list (or, being that it is classical, should I call it a Liszt?). Bad pun, sorry. But it really has been difficult. I feel sacrilegious for even considering to exclude Beethoven, but what about someone like Erik Satie? His gymnopedies and gnossiennes are some of the greatest piano compositions ever written, I think. Their style is unique to Satie, nothing else from the classical piano repertoire sounds like those pieces. And yet, I am not familiar with anything else he has done. I don't know how prolific he was. Beethoven was incredibly prolific in so many formats, and yet I would chose Satie's handful of famous pieces as some of my very favorites over any single thing Beethoven has written. With Beethoven, there is a cumulative effect because of the overall weight and power of his work. And there is no doubt he was the greater composer. But we are going for favorites here, as opposed to greatness.
So who is my tenth pick? I am still tempted to choose Beethoven, and I think if I did, my favorite piece would be either the "Moonlight Sonata" or the lesser known piano sonata #30. The thing with "Moonlight" is that I love the slow part. That is music of the highest genius as far as I am concerned.
But then comes the fast explosive part, bubbling up from out of nowhere. And as great as the fast part is, and as technically challenging for even the greatest pianists, I do not love it as much, because it is too supercharged for my taste, and as you know, I don't like what I have termed "piano banging". I know that the piano by it's invention was supposed to be, in part, a percussive instrument. That's why it's full name is the Pianoforte (soft, loud). But for me, I love the silvery tonal qualities of the piano above it's potential for bombast. So as incredible as the second part of "Moonlight" is - and I do enjoy it - I just do not like it as much as the first part which is monumental greatness. As far as other famous Beethoven works are concerned, "Fur Elise", though brief, is also worthy of being called one of the greatest pieces for piano ever written. And the "Emperor Concerto" is legendary, with varying levels of drama throughout, but for me it does not rise to the level of my favorite Beethoven music.
Still, when you include the symphonies and the violin concerto, and the rest of his thirty one piano sonatas, it's pretty hard to leave Beethoven off the list, because of his body of work. Again, many would call him the greatest composer who ever lived. But for me, I am not sure.
I think it's gonna come down to him and one other composer, not as famous a name (and not one that would readily come to mind for most folks' Top Ten), but the other guy I am thinking of wrote a ton of very beautiful piano music, though some might call it unconventional. I will think about it for one more day and name my tenth and final pick tomorrow night. /////
We had good singing in church this morning, with a traditional Irish anthem for St. Patrick's Day called "I Sing As I Arise". It begins way down in the low register, which is hard for me to get volume on, and then builds to the higher tenor notes, which come from the upper chest and throat and are much more "in my wheelhouse" as they say. I also enjoyed singing the weekly hymns, which have come to be my favorite part of being in the choir, because of the great melodies in those songs and the emotional pull they extract from the singer. You can feel it as you go from verse to verse, and especially in the choruses.
You should join the choir. Have I sold you on it yet? :)
Good. See you next Sunday. I'll make sure your robe is hanging in the closet. ////
I did watch a movie tonight, another one of my Tim Holt Westerns called "Cyclone On Horseback". Young Tim runs a horse wranglin' business, where he and his men round up wild stallions for sale to ranchers, cowboys and the like. Horses were the cars of the 19th century. Many folks needed 'em. In this story, Holt has brought along sixty horses for sale to a businessman who is putting up a telephone line across the county in an unspecified state that looks a lot like Corrganville. :)
Of course, this is an Hour Long Western, so we must follow the basic plot rules and interchanges. Right off the bat there is a Bad Guy who wants the telephone contract for himself. He conspires with his "henchmen" (such a great word) to swindle the horses from the initial purchaser, by intercepting Holt and offering him money up front.
It's all a bit confusing because the dialogue flies by very quickly, but Hour Westerns are geared toward your eyes anyway. Talk about piano banging; forget about listening to individual notes, as it were, in these matinee-style flicks. It's all about what's coming at you onscreen. Guns are blazin', horses are running, dust is flyin'. It's not about the script, word for word, as much as it is about the visual cues to tell the story, and the producers trust the audience to get the gist.
That was part of the genius of the B-Movie sector of Hollywood, to be able to crank out so many different types of Saturday Afternoon Serials (hour long movies), and have them draw an audience continuously and also have the plots make sense, despite the lack of a fleshed-out script. This was done through the visuals, the photography depicting the onscreen action. The "B" directors were craftsmen who knew the nuts and bolts of moviemaking, what the studio wanted, etc. It was a machine and they cranked out pictures, but the pictures were always fun and therefore always successful.
This is part of the reason a Tim Holt Western automatically gets Two Thumbs Up, simply because it is fun and never loses your attention. It's got all the Western ingredients, including cowboy music by Ray Whitley, and you just feel good watching it. Times were simpler and you don't even have to be a current fan of Westerns serials to all of a sudden find yourself watching one.
It's similar to how you found yourself just a little while ago joining the choir. Now, you are watching Hour Long Westerns, and it happened almost by magic.
Imagine that. :)
Put in your vote for our tenth and final favorite composer, and I will see you in the morn.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):) (love all night)
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