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The weekly music feature returns! As does the theme we were exploring before December took over: music inspired by water, or written with a watery “theme”. And today we have two works, by two titans of classical music, neither one of which I had ever heard of before last week when I listened to them for the first time. I feature these two works because they share identical inspiration: a pair of poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The poems are called “Calm Sea” and “Prosperous Journey”, hence the two works Calm Sea and Prosperous Journey. The first is a cantata byDown the rabbit hole….

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It’s January 1, 2026. Wow. We made it. We got through 2025. And if I’m being honest, I’m not entirely sure that 2025 doesn’t slide in right above 2020 if we’re ranking recent years by how much of a shitshow they’ve been. 2025 was a shitshow, and there’s no mistaking it. Normally right about now I’m tucking into a lengthy year-end quiz-thing, but this time…I’m not going to do that. At least, not right now. I’m already working on it, but it probably won’t be appearing until Saturday, 10 January. Why so? Because 2025 was a year that needs some thinkingDown the rabbit hole….

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Continuing our tour of music inspired at least in part by water, we have a bit of film music by the master himself: the title track from John Williams’s score to the 1984 film The River. The movie is about a family who struggles to maintain their farm and their lives beside a river in Tennessee. I’ve never actually seen the film, but the score is highly regarded. The main theme is optimistic Americana with a southern twang to it. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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I know I said the other day that I’ve always had difficulty with the music of Claude Debussy, but that doesn’t apply to everything he wrote. There’s a piano miniature of his that I have always loved, called “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair”. Here it is, played by a cello quintet, because hey, why not. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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Continuing our exploration of classical music that is inspired by water, in one context or another, we have a monumental masterpiece by Claude Debussy. I’ve never had the easiest relationship with Debussy’s music. His approach to music from a place of tonal color-painting, with less emphasis on melody and on form, has generally kept him at arm’s length for me. I’ve generally found it difficult to engage with Debussy’s tendency to create musical mood through orchestral effect and color alone. But…as I’ve engaged more and more with the visual arts in the last bunch of years, and engaged more andDown the rabbit hole….

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Continuing our series exploring classical music about or inspired by water, in one way or another, we have one of the most evocative tone poems of all time: The Fountains of Rome by Ottorino Respighi. Respighi lived 1879-1936, and his gift for using the orchestra for illustrative effect is nearly unparalleled. His music sings with pictorial clarity that recalls Berlioz, Rimsky-Korsakov, and echoes Richard Strauss, albeit with an Italian flavor. His scores are shot through with brilliant light. Fountains is perhaps a bit more introspective than Respighi’s other famous showpiece, The Pines of Rome, but it contains its own moments of showpieceDown the rabbit hole….

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Watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this morning is one of our very rare forays into commercial television each year. We have become such infrequent viewers of commercial television that it’s always something of a shock to us to have to endure all the advertising. We’re always like, “We just watched four minutes of teevee! Now we have to sit through another six minutes of commercials?!” I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about the common practice of using old songs on commercials. On the one hand, it does at times feel a bit…dirty. But on the otherDown the rabbit hole….

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Eighty-three years of Casablanca. This morning I got in the car, turned on the radio, and as I was preparing to switch it over to my phone’s output so I could listen to a podcast, the announcer on WNED indicated that they were about to play a suite of Max Steiner’s wonderful music for Casablanca, because the film opened eighty-three years ago today. That movie has been a part of my world my entire life. I didn’t watch it myself until sometime during, or immediately after, my freshman year of college, but I was always aware of it, and my parents alwaysDown the rabbit hole….

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Here’s something I didn’t know until today when I was driving home: English composer Frederick Delius lived for a time in Florida in the 1880s, during which he managed a local orange grove while he studied with a noted organist in Jacksonville. From this stay arose one of Delius’s most popular works, The Florida Suite. We’re only concerning ourselves with one movement from the suite, because our focus in this series right now is music inspired by water. The orange grove Delius managed was on the St. Johns River, which is the longest river in Florida, running over 300 miles fromDown the rabbit hole….

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A month or two ago when I was doing a series of music posts using music inspired by the moon, one post featured a work by Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi. As I seem to do whenever I find a new piece (new to me, anyway) by Einaudi, I always end up saying something like “I need to explore Einaudi’s music more!” And then I don’t, really, until the next time I’m looking for inspiration. Which brings us to the current series, which is “Music inspired by water”. Yes, I need to listen to the album this comes from, which isDown the rabbit hole….