Mario Monday
A bit of a while ago I did a retrospective on that most ubiquitous and influential of modern compositions: the Super Mario Brothers theme. Well, maybe it wasn’t a retrospective. What the hell is a retrospective? Aha! I was totally and impressively and unarguably correct in my choice of vocabulary after all. GO TEAM!
Well guess what the fecund soil of the internet sprouted up? Another delicious slab of Mario pie, and this one is a beaut:
I love hearing reworkings of familiar pieces. One of my ultimate life goals is to hear what EVERY SINGLE composer from Bach to Schnittke would have done with Baby One More Time. Yes, I realize that’s a pretty lofty goal. But, errr, where there’s a will…
Lukewarm Thursday Linkage
Holy crap, It’s thursday already?
These get the lukewarm moniker because a) it’s really friggin icy outside today, and b) I’m breaking the rule of three.
- Remember that huge-ass piano from Big? Well it is moving from some rich guys music room into the Philadelphia Please Touch Museum, which I assume means that you get to stomp Chopsticks out all over it.
- Cellists, your crotches are safe. For now. A very famous UK doctor (who I’ve never heard of) admitted to making up the condition of “Cellist’s Crotch” and submitting a letter about it to the BMJ, in which it was published. She said she did it in response to a previous letter describing “Guitarist’s Nipple”.
Oh, hang about, there was another link. Yay three!
- The most expensive concerts of 2008 – non-classical concerts, that is. Anybody fancy comparing the genres? “Orchestra Premium” seats for the Ring Cycle at the metropolitan opera: $2200. (yeah yeah, four concerts, I know)
Plinky plonky
The piano/physics/block-slinging little internet game of the day (and believe me there was a LOT of competition for the title) is this entry from Germany. I’d give you some pointers as to how to wrangle the little beastie into submission, but half the fun is working out for yourself what all the knobs and little colored squares do.
I love the tidy little color palettes in the akkord section, that’s a beautiful way of visualizing the harmonies in a chord. A chord. Akkord. Is that where the word chord comes from? Wiktionary says… no. It actually comes from the Greek word khorde which means “string of gut”. Interestingly the same word is also the root of “cord”, as in rope. Huh. That’s one of those things which seem incredibly obvious in hindsight.
No wait a second. That’s not obvious at all. It’s actually completely surprising that chord and cord come from the same source. I think that means it’s bedtime. After all, you know how the old saying goes: “words start overlapping/lie down and start napping”.
Awesome Beethoven Transcriptions
Guys! After all of the mentions of transcriptions in the last week, and JonJ and Yvonne commenting that there is a well established history of transcripting stuff, I got off my internet arse and discovered several very joyous things. Firstly, the clavier-wunderkind Liszt did piano transcriptions of all of Beethoven’s symphonies — this is probably exceptionally common knowledge to all the seasoned classical listeners out there, but news to me. Secondly, there is a box-set of these available on Naxos, which is itself available on eMusic (see: cheap, good quality, DRM-free MP3s). Hooray!
So far I have listened to the ones I know the best: 6, 5, 9, 7. Only once each so far, as it all just got downloaded about an hour or two ago. Aside from noticing a bunch of stuff which apparently had been completely obscured by my ears during the myriad previous symphonic listens (key changes and modulations seem way more obvious, for example), it’s striking how similar certain sections sound to the (Beethoven) piano sonatas. I don’t yet know if that’s due to Liszt deliberately orchestrating them like that, or if it’s pure Beethoven shining through… or if it’s me trying to be clever. I’ll try and keep you posted on that one. Hopefully it’s the middle one.
Shredder-on-Piano Violence
Pianists of a timid disposition should avert their eyes now:
Well, it did sound pretty horrible.