Creative quartet!

Oh wow. Wow wow wow. I stumbled across this video of a quartet of very creative musicians. Watch and enjoy.

The link is here. The Twitter post says:

What a marvel! A staging with all the creativity. Only these fantastic girls could have chosen such an amazing musical cocktail, with a sensational staging.♥️😄🎧 pic.twitter.com/Cm6viPE0WA

— Love Classical Music 🎺🎻💖 (@AlexTran677026) February 18, 2025

Fire those cannons

You're probably familiar with the magnificent "1812 Overture" by Tchaikovsky.

This long piece of music culminates, of course, with a crash of cannon and ringing of church bells. Understandably for most performances, these are usually played with timpani drums for the cannon and deep chimes for the church bells.

But once in a while – you get the real thing. And when you do ... well, wow. Just wow.

I found a YouTube video showing the tail end of the Overture played by the Boston Pops Orchestra in 2019, where some military personnel are shooting actual cannons at the appropriate place in the music. Want to see how it's done? Watch starting at about the 50-second mark in the video below. Fascinating.

 

For decades, the Boston Pops was led by the legendary Arthur Fiedler. Under his leadership, the orchestra became one of the best-loved and most-recorded orchestras in the world. When I was a kid, we often watched the performances on television, which no doubt helped cement my love for classical music.

A little night music

The Monday before Thanksgiving, Younger Daughter had her first performance with the Coeur d'Alene Youth Orchestra.

The performance was held in the Kroc Center, part of a much larger facility. They already had it beautifully decorated for Christmas.

Before the Youth Orchestra played, the Junior Orchestra had its performance. Some of these kids were so young their feet didn't even hit the floor. Yet overall the sound was quite decent and promising.

The Youth Orchestra has kids between the ages of 14 and 18.

Although it's not always easy to eke certain standards of dress from a group of teens, participants in the orchestra have a strict dress code: below-the-knee black dresses (or blouse/skirt combos) for the girls, tuxes for the boys. No low necklines, no sparkly jewelry that would detract from the performance. The orchestra is modeled after professional orchestras complete with a Concertmaster.

Younger Daughter was diligent about practicing and attending rehearsals, and did beautifully.

Because the orchestra was heavy on strings and light on brass, woodwind, and percussion, the conductor added two older, experienced musicians to bolster these areas. As Younger Daughter put it, it was either that or the foundation would fall apart.

Before each piece, the conductor explained a bit about the musical selection.

He chose some very ambitious pieces, such as Jupiter from The Planets (by Holst), portions of The Unfinished Symphony by Schubert, and "Into the Storm," a modern classical piece by Robert Smith commemorating the brutal 1993 snowstorm that devastated the East Coast. This was Younger Daughter's favorite piece, and she said it was the one that made her feel like she was part of something magnificent when the orchestra was playing it.

Despite the concert going so well, Younger Daughter was relieved when it was over. But they played beautifully and we were glad to attend... although during the performance we all heard the enormous crash of torrential rain on the hall's roof. Driving home was a nightmare through enormous puddles of standing water and slush on the highway, as well as a nasty mixture of snow and rain. We were relieved when that drive was over!

Happy New Year!

To end the old year on a happy note, the fine folks at Thoughts from Frank and Fern sent me the following photo:

They're holding two of our tankards plus a copy of my book. How sweet is that?

As I post this, I have some homemade macaroni and cheese in the oven, a glass of wine at my elbow, Mozart on my Pandora station, and I will doubtless be in bed by 9 pm (my party days are long over).

May God grant you all a blessed, healthy, and prosperous New Year, dear readers.

A musical education

Everybody has a favorite genre of music. Mine happens to be classical.

While there are many different genres of music I enjoy -- folk, bluegrass, Irish/Celtic, John Denver, once in awhile 60s or 70s rock -- my heart belongs to classical music. There's just something about it that sends my soul soaring.

For years I listened to the only local classical station I could get on the radio, KAGU 88.7 out of Gonzaga University in Spokane. First thing in the morning, I would turn on the radio to a low volume and allow the music to softly play all day long, until I turned the radio off just before bed. The family learned to tolerate this peculiarity.

But the station isn't very powerful and way out here in the boondocks it's often hard to get. Unless the radio dial was precisely at 88.7, I would get bleed-through with another, much stronger station (at 88.5 on the dial) that would completely eradicate Mozart or Beethoven with some truly awful stuff. A few months ago it got so bad that I ceased listening to the radio altogether because I couldn't get the station at all. For that period of time the house was eerily quiet.

Then my girls introduced me to Pandora.com and I was hooked. (For those unfamiliar with the website, it allows you to listen to free music of whatever genre you choose.) I (cough) "borrowed" Older Daughter's computer speakers (and -- cough -- haven't returned them yet) and am now happily listening to my beloved composers once again. Because I hated the strident and abrupt interruptions when Pandora played advertisements, I paid a yearly fee (I think it was $36) for ad-free service.

Recently as a family we've been watching the superb BBC production "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall, available on YouTube. (Mr. Goodall's intro remarks conclude with, "There are a million ways to tell the story of music. This is mine.") While we've only watched four of the episodes so far, I am finding them fascinating.

After forty years of being a classical music buff, I'm suddenly receiving a more advanced musical education. With a radio, I'm subject to the whims of either pre-taped music or a deejay's preferences. If I'm lucky, a piece is announced at the beginning and the end, so often I couldn't catch who wrote what. But on Pandora, I can see who the composer is, learn when he (or she) wrote the music, and begin to pinpoint the styles and periods I prefer.

And thanks to the BBC "Story of Music" series, I'm learning what made each musical period distinctive. I never realized, for example, how much I specifically enjoy the Baroque composers. I've always loved Bach, Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven, of course, but now I'm discovering the beautiful precision sounds of Albinoni, Corelli, Telemann, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, and the like.

Mr. Goodall tells how the people during this Age of Invention (Baroque) were obsessed with cogs and wheels and laws of gravity and other scientific marvels. Music was not immune from this widespread discovery of order and motion, hence the precise, chord-rich works of the Baroque composers. The enormous advances of clockmaking -- with the need for intensely precise gears, cogs, wheels, and timing -- is no accident, and neither is the precise and beautiful works of music that came out of this era.

The Baroque period was also the beginning of the full, lush orchestral sounds that characterized Mozart, Beethoven, and Handel's greatest and most familiar works. In short, this Age of Invention was a major stepping stone in classical music as we understand it today.

So my musical education happily continues as I wade my way through the beautiful Baroque composers to my heart's content.

Ahhhh.