One of my favorite bits in Shostakovich Op. 43
This section from the third movement of Shosty’s wildly rampant Symphony No. 4 is one of my favorite bits from the whole great big opus (and I seriously mean great, in the dictionary definitioney type way: it’s a 65 minute monster) is that which I have shoved below. To get you in the mood, It’s the second big climax of the movement – there’s just been a building, driving fugal section which you can kinda hear the tail-end of in the snippet below. It keeps rising, tensing up even more -and then snaps at 0:37 into a wonderfully flowing, weighty Russian melody. It’s the bit after that which is especially fun though…
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… in the cheeky little section starting at 1:02, there is a fanfare played on a select few of the brass instruments which is repeatedly punctuated by blasts from a bunch of other members of the orchestra. If you listen to the pattern of these blasts they are first in groups of one (this happens seven times, up until 1:08) then it’s a group of two (dum-dum) then two groups of three (da-da-da) then a four, and finally a very quick five.
Whenever that bit comes on in the car the steering wheel gets smacked in time to those “counting” orchestral hits. Either that, or my poor suffering girlfriend’s leg.
Another thing that’d be nice…
You know what’d be absolutely bloody fantastic, except no-one in their right mind would do it? If there was an online music store in which you could buy an album, and you could instantly download the MP3s, but then they’d also ship out the CD to you. Since most people probably just rip the CD when they get it anyway (based on very conclusive scientific figures which I just made up a few seconds ago) it’s just a way of encouraging people to buy from you, for a little bit more cost and convenience.
I’m pretty confident that this idea is completely unworkable due to licensing issues and copyrights and other hugely boring, legal and depressingly fundamental issues. By the time the record companies realize that they wouldn’t really be losing much cash by allowing this to happen we’ll probably be getting all of our music beamed directly into our minds, and no-one will even remember what a CD looked like. Oh well.