Weird about not getting Callas. I tried all three and only the third, which apparently you don't get, was Callas. Let me try one other way to send it to you. Maybe?
Let's talk music, no genre boundaries
This is an offshoot of the jazz thread. I and others found that we could not talk about jazz without discussing other musical genres, as well as the philosophy of music. So, this is a thread in which people can suggest good music of all genres, and spout off your feelings about music itself.
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I am posting Julian Bream playing three Villa Lobos preludes on guitar. The most beautiful guitat pieces I have ever heard. I was learning them when I quit my classical guitar lessons because of my divorce. These have as much duende (or whaterver the word is in Brazil) as anything I’ve ever heard. Villa Lobos was a street musician and his heart and soul was still in the streets of Brazil when he wrote classical music. Perhaps you’ll enjoy these, or at least watching Bream’s face as he plays them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JZ68_pxL9M Here's a poem I wrote about Villa Lobos: Villa Lobos
in shady corners along walls where mud meets mud & old men in tatters sleep cool in the dusty air
a lover tiptoes from the softness of lips to the cold precision of strings |
RE: Bream, I love the emotion. BTW, I used to be in a band in Maine with a guy who, as part of his MFA degree program, had spent several months living with Snyder. Apparently, Snyder’s wife was not in the habit of wearing clothes during the summer months and this became such a distraction for my friend that in the end, he asked her to put some clothes on. This was the 70’s in CA, when nudity was "no big deal". . . or at least, that’s how you were expected to view it, if you were a cool counterculture brother.
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Bream plays those pieces with more emotion than anyone else I’ve heard, including John Williams and Pepe Romero. So, if it’s emotion you’re looking for in classical music, you might start with Wagner. Not his operas themselves, but the preludes and overtures. Parsifal, Tristan and Isolde, Tannhauser, and Lohengrin. One of my favorites is his Magic Fire Music. I ran into Snyder a few times in the 70's and 80's when I went to hear him read. He was much admired for his Zen schtick, but as I look back on it, I think it was kind of ruse socially. Not that he didn't feel it in his poems. But I think he was a misogynist, like most men, and he used the Zen thing to excuse it. I went in to talk to him with my very pretty sister, and after that he was much more interested in taking her on motorcycle rides than talking about my poetry. Although, in his own sparse way, I thought he was an excellent teacher. |
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