Happy Monday, Music Nerds!
It was an exciting weekend here at Music Nerd Central. I went to two concerts, which I’ll be writing up today, and I’m also working on more GRAMMY© nominee interviews. Stay tuned! Meanwhile, below are a few musical tidbits to chew on.
Quick update: Thanks to the generosity of wonderful friends, I’m 25% of the way to my goal of $500 in my Help Miss Music Nerd Eat (and drive and park) At the GRAMMYS campaign! Any further assistance I receive will be most appreciated!
Here’s a video that has been circulating among my Facebook friends (I’d better credit McDoc in particular!). You’ve heard of musical chairs, but how about musical stairs?
From music nerd Monica: musical instruments made of paper? Cool idea! Musical instruments made of paper and played while ON FIRE? Awesome!! (Please note the disclaimer: “We are professionals. Burning things is hazardous.”)
New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini has revealed his rank-order list of the 10 Greatest Classical Composers in History (i.e. excluding consideration of anyone still living.) He lays down his ground rules and thought process in this preliminary article, and his final list also took reader comments into consideration to some degree.
I very much agree with what he says at the outset:
If you were to try to compile a list of the 10 greatest composers in history, how would you go about it? For me the resulting list would not be the point. But the process of coming up with such a list might be clarifying and instructive, as well as exasperating and fun.
Spoiler alert: I’m very glad to see that Bartok made the list, representin’ for the 20th century, along with Stravinsky.
I confess, though, that I’m not a big fan of lists like these. I don’t view greatness as a finite resource to be competed for; rather, I think it’s something that can be, and has been, achieved by many different means, and arrived at by many different paths. I mean, I don’t dig approaching classical music as if it were a fantasy football league.
Wait a minute – on second thought, that would be fun! Brahms tackles Wagner! Mahler gets sacked again! And just think of the half-time show possibilities for the Classical Composer Super Bowl!
I’m sorry, leaving Haydn off the list is just unacceptable. I appreciate the difficulty inherent in making any such list, and would balk at even trying to do so, but Bach and Haydn would certainly occupy the top two slots. After those two it would probably change minute to minute.