It was the Moonlight Sonata that started my obsession with musical Conversations. And no, it wasn't the Mozart link described in the prior entry. It is easy to find how Beethoven influenced subsequent composers. You can jump only a few decades forward to Frederic Chopin, for example: Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonata No. 14, Op. 27, … Continue reading Searching for Truth: The Conversations
Category: Playlists
Soaked in Mozart
In 1787, a 17-year old Beethoven left his home in Bonn, Germany and traveled to Vienna with the express purpose of meeting and studying with Mozart, the greatest composer in Europe. Whether Beethoven actually met Mozart is debatable--the famous quotation attributed to Mozart ("Stanzi, Stanzi, watch out for that boy. One day he will give … Continue reading Soaked in Mozart
A Conversation Without End
Bach is the beginning and end of all music.Max Reger I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach.Niccolai Rimsky-Korsakov Bach is a colossus of Rhodes, beneath whom all musicians pass and will continue to pass. Mozart is the … Continue reading A Conversation Without End
Music History, by Guitar
Classical guitarists get comparitively little consideration and wrongfully so. We will have much to say about the classical guitar, particularly when we get to Benjamin Britten much further down the line. Compared with rock gods and jazz freaks, classical guitarists operate in a world where they are largely shunned by classical audiences and ignored by … Continue reading Music History, by Guitar
Bach, The First Jazzman?
In the film High Society, Bing Crosby takes to the stage to educate "the great and the good" of Newport about the basics of jazz: Take some skins,Jazz begins,Take a bassSteady pace,Take a box,One that rocks,Take a blue horn New Orleans-born.Take a stickWith a lick,Take a bone,Dixie-grown,Take a spot,Cool and hot,Now you has jazz jazz … Continue reading Bach, The First Jazzman?
A Gertus History of Music 