Our Man In the Ballpark

Now here's something you don't read on the sports page everyday:

"In the coda of the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, composer Johann Sebastian Bach repeats the same chord sequence over and over again, leading the listener to anticipate one resolution, only to provide a tone completely different.

The only tones emanating from Nationals Park in the top of the first inning Sunday afternoon were the faded drones of an audience that had heard this composition too many times this season — game begins, visiting team assumes a lead, game ends in dreadful fashion. Arizona leadoff batter Trent Oeltjen looped a home run into the Washington bullpen in right field on the day’s third pitch, and the familiar chord sequence began."

via the Columbia Journalism Review.

musical cartography

Q:  Which U.S. state is most like a piano? A: Ohio.

Or so says one mapmaker --and it's not just because it has 88 counties.

I do like this:

A new form of paranoia arises, in which you think that all songs are actually maps. Even that burst of bird song that you hear in the alley behind your house at 3am is, you conclude, an unacknowledged spy's cartography, full of secrets to those who can decode it.

Link

Move over Da Vinci Code and make room for the Ohio Code. 

Check it out folks

Music Map of Ohio

Too Much, Too Litte, Too Late

re: the NYT op-ed on piano competition

I didn't find the read as "explosive" as Jessica, but it is a starting point for further reflection/conversation. More about it later. But for now check it out. More importantly, what do you think?

link

it's raining men ... at the mostly mozart fest

so says the ArtsJournal blog. link.

the other mozart

Meet the Mozart Media player. Maybe not as perfect as the composer himself, but i want one... cheese factor alone scores big points (and, yo, what' up with the hair on those dudes in the ad).

point, click, enjoy

mozart and perfection and everything you never wanted to know

Please. Please don't feed the trolls. 

Is Mozart perfect?

 

and then there's this

A 77-year-old piano that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and has become a symbol for peace is heading to New York next year as the city marks the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
When the United States dropped the bomb on the Japanese city on August 6, 1945, the Yamaha upright piano was in the blast radius. It still retains very low levels of radiation and shards of glass are forever embedded in the black lacquer.

link

e la nave va

Not what Beethoven Had in Mind

 So not helping

The continuous wars between Arabs and Jews has moved from the battlefield to the symphony hall, as Jews in the Galilee, fed up with boisterous street parties after Arab weddings, counterattacked by turning up the volume of Beethoven and Mozart. Injuries have been limited to headaches.

link

The Morning Tube