Happy Birthday Igor Stravinsky! 17 June 1882

 

Watching Musicals As A Classical Music Enthusiast

When I watched Cats about a month ago, I realized that classical music remains with us always in a variety of modern musical forms, including musical theatre.

The Overture to the hit Broadway musical Cats, to me at least, borrows both resonant and/or tonal elements from the Classicism and Romanticism movements, as well as dissonant and/or atonal elements from later composers such as Debussy and to an extent 20th-century composers such as Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. The beginning of the Overture contains almost exclusively musical tension for a solid third of the two-and-a-half minute long piece, leaving the audience waiting and waiting for resolution and when it finally arrives around the 1:10 mark it’s glorious.

That’s just one example of how classical music influences modern musical theatre, and musical theatre is just one modern musical form that has influences from classical music. I am glad that I can appreciate modern music as someone who also has a background in classical music, because this allows for me to enjoy the music through an interesting lens.

Originally posted March 30, 2019 on WordPress

Chopin's Waltz

When I was a kid of about ten I had a classical music interactive activity book. My favorite composer was Chopin (who’s still my favorite composer) but what’s interesting is that his page showed a scene of him playing the piano for his lover George Sand and a puppy, who was dancing to the music.

The sheet music on Chopin’s piano was titled “Little Dog Waltz”, and when you used the interactive pen to tap on the sheet music, Chopin’s “Minute Waltz” Op. 64 No. 1 in D Flat Major would play.

That’s why, for the longest time, I thought Minute Waltz was called Little Dog Waltz, and I didn’t realize that it was called Minute Waltz until probably high school. It’s a fun picture though, a little dog dancing to Chopin’s Minute Waltz.

Originally posted March 23, 2019 on WordPress

To be loved is to be changed