Ack! Sorry, folks. This week has been really screwed up, because of usual stuff: a big weekend trip with the family last weekend, lots of writing, and an overnight shift at work that has me wondering what day it is. Well, I suppose none of that’s usual other than lots of writing, but there it is. Anyway, here’s something that I feature for obvious reasons: Henry Mancini’s “Pie in the Face Polka”, from the movie The Great Race. Enjoy!
PS: Oh, what the heck? Here’s the very scene for which this bit of film music was written!
:: Oh my, I forgot about my new feature, Tone Poem Tuesday. Ugh! I’ll really try to remember next week. In fact, I think I’ll write some in advance. Meantime, here’s an oft-featured favorite of mine, the gorgeous choral setting of Shenandoah.
:: Finally, I recently did a favor for a friend who has enjoyed some of the “fantasy”-looking locales of parks in this region. She is a cosplayer, and she wanted some photos taken in costume in the fantasy-like setting of Chestnut Ridge Park, so I cheerfully obliged. The payment? A couple of pies in my face! Huzzah!
My favorite cocktail is undoubtedly the Dark And Stormy, but the wonderful Mojito runs a very close second. Here’s how I make them!
We start with some mint. Here I have eight smallish leaves, lightly crushed between my fingers and thrown into the mixing cup.
Next comes lime juice. For each drink I squeeze one lime, using this nifty squeezing hoodickey:
No, you don’t need a fancy citrus-squeezer. You can stab the lime with a fork and squeeze it by hand.
Next, a tea spoon of fine sugar! The finer the better, really. I use a fine-grind turbinado sugar. Some recipes call for simple syrup instead, but I find that the granular sugar helps with the muddling.
Then, we use the muddler! Yes, I have a muddler:
But you don’t have to use an actual muddler. You can use a wooden spoon. The idea is to get down in there and crush the mint leaves, releasing their oils.
After that, you add rum! This is to taste. I sometimes use spiced rum; other times I use light rum, or gold rum, or even black rum. You can also use flavored rums if you like. Here I use spiced rum. Two ounces: both sides of a shot measure get filled and dumped into the mixing cup.
After this, you add ice:
I use cubes because I’m generally too lazy to crush the ice. Either is fine, really. Most bars where I’ve ordered mojitos used crushed. Once the ice is added, put the top on your mixing cup and shake vigorously. You don’t need a whole lot of shaking; just ten to fifteen shakes will do. Pour the whole kit-and-kaboodle into your waiting glass, and now add the final ingredient: club soda.
I usually make two mojitos at a time, so I evenly split the can of club soda between the two, and I like to first pour a bit of the soda into the mixing cup to “deglaze” it, rinsing out any sugar that didn’t dissolve and getting some remaining lime juice and mint oils. Top off, add mint garnish if desired, and serve it up!
That’s the basic mojito recipe. You can change it up by adding different fruit before muddling — blueberries or strawberries work very nicely — and you can change up the rums. I’ve considered making a mojito with a lemon instead of a lime, but I’m pretty sure that would be sufficiently different conceptually from the classic drink that I couldn’t call it a “mojito” anymore. But there it is — the mojito! Such a refreshing, wonderful drink for the latter half of summer, when the night starts to fall sooner but the heat lingers!
One maddening thing about every single Presidential election cycle is the inevitable cries of “We need a third party!” I always find this concept generically annoying, not because I’m in love with my own party (believe me, there have been many times when I wanted to junk-punch the Democratic Party and/or some of its component parts), but because the two-party system is simply baked into our political system. No, the system wasn’t designed for only two major parties, and the Founding Fathers didn’t especially want only two major political parties, but you can’t always foresee the future, and this is what we got: a system that by its very nature allows only two major parties.
This is all explained very effectively by blogger Christoper Bird, who is very astute about American politics. (This is interesting because he’s Canadian. Oh, and that blog is something of a group effort, but he’s the Big Cheese there and posts as MGK.)
So, first this (it’s a slideshow, so you’ll have to, well, slide your way through it):
And then, as follow-up, this (just normal scrolling now):
1. A lot of responses of "well excuse me I believe I will vote THIRD PARTY" and my response to that is always pic.twitter.com/bqmh7u8ykv
So let’s try something new! I already have Symphony Saturday, but symphonies are far from the only worthy form used by classical composers. There is plenty of music that is symphonic without being an actual symphony, so in this series we’ll explore that wonderful world. One major difference is that while I’ve arranged the Symphony Saturday posts roughly in the chronological order of the works’ composition, I’m not going to do that here. We’re just going to jump through time a lot, and hopefully hear some wonderful things along the way.
So, what is a “tone poem” anyway? Glad you asked! Tone Poem is a term that is often used interchangeably with symphonic poem or any number of other similar terms, denoting a single-movement work, usually intended to be illustrative or at least suggestive of some extra-musical work, be it a particular story or poem or legend or something else. Tone poems tend to be free in their form, usually eschewing the more strict notions of form that most symphonies (particularly sonata-allegro form). As such, tone poems really found their chief flowering from roughly 1830 to 1920, during the Romantic period and the post-Romantic period that followed.
We’ll start off with a work I’d never heard before the other day when I wrote this, by a composer I’d never heard of until I tracked down this list of tone poems. Mieczyslaw Karlowicz was a Polish composer who lived from 1876 to 1909, when he was killed in an avalanche while skiing. The tone poem here, Stanislaw and Anna of Oswiecim, is dense music clearly in the tradition of Wagner and Strauss, but with its own thrilling lyricism. The work is based on a local legend involving the illicit love affair between a brother and sister (more here). It’s amazing how often the great works of art draw inspiration from tragic stories of doomed and forbidden love.
Next week? Gosh, I don’t know. I’m just getting started!
Last week, two friends of ours from our college days happened to come to WNY for a visit, taking advantage of a week with their kids away at a mission trip of some sort to come see Niagara Falls and some other stuff in the Buffalo area. That’s why my posting was nonexistent last week. It was really nice to catch up with old friends, and it was also nice to play tour guide and get a look at this region of mine through eyes that had never seen this stuff before. It’s really easy to get wrapped up in the constant day-in-and-day-out minutiae of what’s wrong with Buffalo and WNY, but it really isn’t all bad. At all. I can happily report that this region made a very favorable impression on one couple from Iowa, especially downtown Buffalo, which resulted in the words “We don’t have anything like this in Des Moines!” being said a lot.
Anyway, we went to Niagara Falls one night for fireworks, which we watched from the American observation platform. Our initial vantage point was OK, but we wanted to move farther out on the platform, and there were just too many people there…until it rained for ten minutes, making half the people bolt for cover. We just waited it out, and then we moved down to where we wanted to be. When the rain cleared out ten minutes later (and it wasn’t even a soaking downpour, just a gentle summer rain that came and went), we had the spot we wanted.
We also attended Food Truck Tuesday at Larkin Square, a new-ish development in the city where a once-moribund area of warehouses has started transforming into something cool, and we hung out at Canalside, the unfinished-but-inviting waterfront development. I came away from Canalside still thinking that it needs more. It feels like a great start. Here’s hoping for more stuff down there! (And I finally got to see the Sharkgirl statue! Every other time I’ve been to Canalside since her ‘installation’, she’s been inside for cleaning.)
Tchaikovsky wrote one symphony that he did not give a number. This work is quite different from his other symphonies, in that not only is it not numbered, but it is a programmatic work that carries a title: Manfred. In terms of order of composition, Manfred falls between the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, which is why it’s featured in this spot, this week.
I had never heard the Manfred Symphony until just a couple of weeks ago. It is a strange work, to be sure — it has moments of absolute brilliance, and it also has moments that make clear some of Tchaikovsky’s later dissatisfaction with it. The brilliant moments, though, are so brilliant that on balance I end up truly enjoying this piece, and wondering why it seems to languish in obscurity, compared with Tchaikovsky’s other symphonies.
From what I’ve read, the work has never really overcome its programmatic elements, some of which led Tchaikovsky into structural problems. (Or so say the critics.) The result is a work that is at times disjointed and inorganic, especially in its final movement. I’m honestly not sure about all that, but I do know that the work is also technically difficult, occasionally requiring virtuoso skill from its players, and it also calls for a very large orchestra, which contributes to the fact that it is not played all that often outside of recording studios. Opinion on Manfred seems largely divided.
Most interesting to me is the story of the work’s genesis. Mily Balakirev had a program, based on Byron’s poem Manfred, which he wanted to see composed into a symphony. He first tried to entice Hector Berlioz himself to do the job, after hearing Berlioz’s wonderful Harold in Italy, but Berlioz demurred, citing his age and ill health. (As Berlioz had a year left to live, he seems to have been quite correct.) The program ended up finding its way to Tchaikovsky’s hands, and Tchaikovsky composed it. The reaction to the work was divided from the outset, and Tchaikovsky himself considered destroying parts of it:
He found progress difficult, but by August 1885 he declared “this will perhaps be the best of my symphonic compositions.” By the time of the première in March 1886, he was qualifying that “because of its difficulty, impracticability and complexity it is doomed to failure and to be ignored,” and by 1888 he declared that “it is an abominable piece, and that I loathe it deeply, with the one exception of the first movement.”
The work’s program is as follows:
1.Lento lugubre – Moderato con animo
Manfred wanders in the Alps. Wearied by the fateful questions of life, tormented by the burning anguish of helplessness and by the memory of his criminal past, he feels cruel tortures to the soul. Manfred penetrates deeply into the secrets of magic and communicates imperiously with the mighty powers of hell, but neither these, nor anyone in the world can give him the oblivion which is the single thing he vainly seeks and begs for. A recollection of the lost Astarte, whom he once loved passionately, devours and gnaws at his heart and there is neither limit nor end to the boundless suffering of Manfred.
2.Vivace con spirito
The Alpine fairy appears to Manfred in the rainbow from the spray of the waterfall.
3.Andante con moto
Pastoral – picture of the simple, poor, free life of the mountain dwellers.
4.Allegro con fuoco
Underground devils of Ahriman. Infernal orgy. The appearance of Manfred amid the Bacchanal. Summoning and appearance of the shade of Astarte. He is forgiven. Death of Manfred.
And here is the symphony itself. Let me know what you think!
Next week: The Fifth, which happens to be one of my most beloved works of classical music!
