Music – Page 2 – Achilles & Aristotle

West Side Story

What a belting soundtrack! The number one selling US album of the 1960s; one listen and you know why. I’ve just written about ‘America’ on ‘Relevant Complexity’ but there’s any number of toe-tappers here.

Lovely to see my little Miss today tripping the boards among the ‘Jets’, backed by Bernstein’s punchy soundtrack and some great choreography, dance and fight scenes. A performance to remember and a soundtrack well worth rediscovering.

Leonard Bernstein’s ‘America’

From the first hand clap to the final crescendo, it sets the hairs on the back of your neck tingling…

The hopes, the fears, the inequality and the immigrant’s fight for the right to the American Dream; Leonard Bernstein’s sprawling, madcap ‘America‘ is his home country’s very embodiment.

Having watched my daughter dance her socks off in her own ‘West Side Story’ today, and unable to shake the melody – I had to find the soundtrack.

Having tried half a dozen versions, for me the remastered Original Motion Picture Soundtrack has it best. Wonderful caterwauling and catcalling; and the most rumbustious, towering orchestral accompaniment.

Ballsy, brash and wonderful – just like the country, ‘America’ has it all.

West Side Story Original Soundtrack Recording

Life, Music

Joy

Having just posted it on my other blog ‘Relevant Complexity‘, something about it felt to me like it deserved its place here too. Perhaps because the “Ode” brought joy to my day and lit up my week.

Beethoven’s 9th: Ode to Europe

As I find my bearings in the ‘classical repertoire‘, there can be few finer guides than Canada’s National Art Centre’s Marjolaine Fournier and Jean-Jacques van Vlasselaer’s “Explore the symphony” podcasts.

I stumbled upon this fabulous couple searching for the background to Prokofiev’s ‘Alexander Nevsky’; and in the process fell a little in love with Canada.

A country that has the imagination and culture to support, bring together and promote the French Canadian double bassist Fournier and the richly accented scholarship of van Vlasselaer, is a very fine country indeed.

And their podcast on Beethoven’s 9th Symphony reminds me what a fine continent Europe is too…

The 9th is Beethoven’s masterwork, and its “Ode to joy” is instantly familiar. But I was fascinated by van Vlasselaer’s story of who Beethoven was; and where he fits at the crossroads of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, bridging the Classical and Romantic periods. Beethoven with the “Ode” celebrates liberté, egalité and fraternité, at the dawn of artists as Artists – no longer paid retainers of aristocracy.

But what matters most is the music. As van Vlasselaer points out, a ‘masterwork’ is a masterwork, because for any age and any generation it is a source of wonder. We may all recognise, Beethoven’s 9th, but everyone should stop, marvel and listen to it again from time to time.

‘Ode to joy’ is also the anthem of the European Union – and was itself a direct product of the complex, interconnected peoples, borders, histories, ideals and culture which are ‘Europe’.

For all the challenges it faces in the 21st Century – and the bloody, brooding history it endured in the 20th – ‘Ode to joy’ reminds us of what Europe is; and can be, at its very best.

Beethoven – Symphony No 9, ‘Choral’ (LSO, Haitink)

Children, Life, Music

: ) or : (

Last week, someone I’ve known for some years described me thus: ‘A generally glass half empty person, whose glass seems a bit fuller than usual’. Anther person countered: ‘No he’s not, I’ve never thought of him as gloomy, it’s just the way he describes things. Look at his socks’. Hmmm.

Truth is they’re probably both right, but I do feel quite cheerful these days. Happiness is a product of the mind, body and soul, but also what you do with your time and who you hang about with. Still happiness is sometimes in the eye the beholder.

I’m reading about the life of the great composer Handel (or Hendel as apparently you should pronounce him). And despite sometimes being described as gloomy in his latter years, when he lost his eyesight – an anecdote suggests he still had some good cheer.

On the suggestion that (as a great organist in his own right) he should share a performance with another great British blind organist, he roared: “But my dear man, this would be the blind leading the blind!”

Pondering it, I idly asked my son what he thought last night, as he brushed his teeth.

“Do you usually find me a happy person or a sad person?”

He thought about it for a minute and said.

“Hmmm. Somewhat in between.”

That’s about right, I reckon – but my glass is generally a bit fuller these days.

Achilles, Aristotle, Art, Life, Music, Philosophy, Photography, Poetry, Science, Sport, Writing

Relevant Complexity

Here’s to a brand new year.

And to celebrate I’ve bashed out a new blog, based on what I’ve learned about life, the world and everything since I started Achilles and Aristotle in 2010.

Time flies – or rather it doesn’t; a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. But ‘Relevant Complexity’ was a fairly early discovery, I first wrote about it in January 2012 here.

Like all good things in the writing life, the more you write about it, the more you think about it, the more it changes you and what you do – Aristotle said as much.

I’ll plan to keep both blogs going: this one as a reminder of what I was up to in years to come; the new one to remind me to live for the day and enjoy a life full of ‘Relevant Complexity’.

Achilles, Children, Life, Music, Odysseus

Lights Down

Months back – having discovered ‘relevant complexity’ in Saint Saëns Organ Symphony no 3 – I booked two tickets for the Royal Albert Hall.

After a long old week, neither me or the missus fancied it much. I tried to offload the tickets to my folks – nothing doing. So I asked my daughter if she wanted to go? ‘Why yes’ she said brightly.

Pace 6pm. And smartly dressed, armed with a bag of sweets, we set off. After a nice vanilla ice, we took our seats and had a good look at the splendid scene. Huge dome, red plush, gold fittings – and the enormous great organ which massively towers at one end of the Royal Albert Hall.

We reckoned that organ was about the size of our house; the illuminated organ ‘loft’ about the size of her bedroom. But a good deal tidier I pointed out to her; and a good job too or the organist would never find his music. She was not amused.

Then lights down, orchestra in, conductor up and away we went. Berlioz to get the players warmed up, then onto Saint Saëns. But my little one was nodding. A pale face, tired eyes, fiddling with her little shoulder purse – she was knackered.

A whisper: ‘How long to the organ?’ 12 minutes I said. A minute later ‘how long to the organ Dad?’ Five minutes I lied. Five minutes later: ‘how long to the organ?’ Two minutes I gestured silently.

And her eyes gently closed and she was asleep. Moments later BAHHHM! And the roof of the Albert Hall nearly blew off. Her eyes snapped open. ‘That’s the organ’ I said.

She stared wide eyed. And then the lead in her eyelids weighed them down again. And silently she slept through one of the loudest crescendos – on one of the largest organs in the world. Just a twitch of her brow at the final booming finale which made your tripes vibrate.

Proud of her. She did great. A memorable night out and a good chuckle. We were both shattered. But sometimes you have to dig deep to get the best from life. A night out with my big brave girl was a performance I’ll remember forever.