Chris Hadfield is an astronaut who also plays guitar and sings. He is famous for being the first Canadian spacewalker and also for popular science experiments in zero gravity, as well as his guitar playing skills!
During his free time on Expedition 35, Hadfield recorded music for an album, using the Larrivée Parlor guitar previously brought to the ISS (International Space Station).
That’s a really smart way to travel! No problem with airline baggage handlers then!
Musical insults, you have to take them with a pinch of salt, or you would never carry on! (Perhaps that is the point!)
As a coda to yesterday’s post, here is what one of my greatest heroes, Woody Guthrie wrote about John Cage and Alan Hovhaness, at the same time showing just what a wonderfully clear thinker and straightforward man Woody Guthrie was.
I imagine that any comment should be superfluous, but just in case you wondered, the Museum of Modern Art will exhibit Cage’s 1952 score “4’33” (In Proportional Notation) will be exhibiting this famous piece this month.
In its onward march, science is always trampling over folk-wisdom. But sometimes a piece of research comes along which shows folk-wisdom might have a point after all. There’s been one in the past week, in a paper given at the European Society of Cardiology Annual Conference in Amsterdam. Professor Deljanin and her colleagues in Belgrade discovered a 19% improvement in a vital bit of heart tissue in patients with coronary artery disease, when they listened to their favourite music,
…We are not brains in vats, we are embodied creatures, and ‘mind’ – that is, the experience of being a living, feeling thing – is surely spread out through that body. In any case, the musical experience doesn’t stop at the boundary of the individual person. Music is a social thing, connected to dancing and singing. It becomes most vividly alive in those moments when we do it, rather than passively witness it, says Ivan Hewett
Thanks to Alison Smith for bringing this to my attention
Luigi Mozzani was a famous and respected guitarist who died in 1943. He also made guitars and travelled widely, living in England for 6 months. His most famous work is “Feste Lariane” the favourite of many an aspiring concert guitarist.
He lived in Bologna, which is where he had a large library of music in which Angel Gilardino found a neatly written manuscript of a solo guitar piece which was signed “Respighi” at both top and bottom. The one and the same person who wrote three orchestral suites called Antiche arid e danze per liuto in 1917, 1923 and 1931.
He was evidently keen on the guitar and would have asked Mozzani, who lived in Bologna at the same period (1900-1909). It us very likely that Respighi wrote the guitar piece, not at the request of Mozzani, but as a study to learn about the instrument. He was a master at writing for different instruments and would have asked Mozzani for advice. However, it seems this was not forthcoming, and Respighi may have dropped the matter. Segovia subsequently came to know Respighi, but there is no mention of the piece or any attempt to write something for the maestro which we know of. I think the main problem with the Variazioni is that they are in quite unusual flat keys for the guitar, going from C major, through F, then Bb, G minor, C minor,Ab, Db (eek!)Bb minor. Then he runs out of flat keys and the editor kindly puts us back into C major! Continue reading
Betty Roe – her father was a fishmonger in Shepherd’s Bush – is a distinguished composer (in 2011 she was awarded an MBE) and performer of English song, instrumental music, choral music and musicals She was Director of Music at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art from 1968–78. Her website simply states ‘Musician’. Continue reading
Kenneth Kwan’s facebook post on Chou Wen-chung’s 90th birthday celebration concert in Taiwan prompted me to find out more about this remarkable musician, calligrapher and pedagogue. He found his way to the USA after travels in China evading the Japanese. He was then offered a scholarship to study architecture in Yale after the war He returned to music and eventually met Edgard Varèse with whom he studied for seven years and whose assistant he became.
When Carl Maria von Weber died in 1826, amongst his belongings was a manuscript which came to be known as “Weber’s Last Waltz” although it was actually by Carl Gottlieb Reißiger an ex-student of Salieri who succeeded Weber as Kappellmeister at the court of Dresden.
This waltz became extremely popular amongst pianists, and is primarily of interest to guitarists because it was the favourite piece of the eponymous Roderick Usher of Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher”
“his heart is a suspended lute, as soon as it is touched, it resounds” -quote from “Le Refus” (1831) by the French songwriter Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780–1857)
For those of you who cannot keep still, this might be just the ticket.
Swedish company Pause Ljud & Bild is offering coffins complete with speakers and a streaming Spotify account to keep the tunes rocking in the grave.
For $30,000, audiophiles can jam all afterlife long in one of these special coffins, known as the CataCombo Sound System and featuring two-way speakers and a “divine” subwoofer.
Might even be enough to bring down the House of Usher