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Jesper Hvid
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#136

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Bottom post of the previous page:



This one is not really about the weather. It depicts the turmoil of the composer's soul. Two sides to the sublime, in nature. One external, one internal. Both are of unsurpassable beauty, but only one is truly art. So, art is artificial. A human construct. But it is inspired by nature, and thus a part of nature, of the very Cosmos. It is a thing dictated by various intricate chemical brain-based processes by another, greater, power. This is the paradox of paradoxes. And the answer is, there is no true distinction between beauty in nature and art, and even spiritual human affairs of the most subjective kind, are only part of the endless, meaningless eternity, within which all things exist, or have existed, at one time or another, forever. There is no paradox. Art is nature, nature is sublime, and the sublime, simply is. But the human mind adores romanticism, because it enables, and fuels, the cognitive dissonance, particular to our species. We will lie about EVERYTHING, if it suits our temperament, even for the shortest of whiles. Cowards as we are, we automatically attack that which we do not understand, merely because it defies our feeling of superiority, whether inside the herd mentality, or on the personal level. A rather pompous way of saying we suck, but we do. Our only common trait, is our instinctive fear of the unknown. Only the pastoral will do, as the sublime makes us uncomfortable. This is what Nietzsche meant, about gazing into the abyss. It is not the idea of the boogeyman in the dark, as an outside sinister force, it's the unwillingness to see our own nothingimage, reflected by the mirror of the soul.



So we invent witches and sabbaths, senile popes, crosses, and flying hags on brooms. The human condition is one of shameful alibi. Of cognitive dissonance. The mind has invented ways of shutting off the reflection of the abyss. We will never progress beyond that point, we will only adjust, to suit ourselves. "A man's got to know his limitations", as Dirty Harry said.



And so he shall, the little universal irrelevancy that he is. Stephen Hawking was a sentimental old romantic, at heart.

Enjoy the weather!
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#137

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Another, darker, side to the great composer. Double-meaning, both as to title and content. This has more frenzied fury and contrast than all his combined seasons. Truly a baroque masterpiece.
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#138

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0:00 a quiet cafe in a sleepy European town, waiter sets a table for one. 0:42 our hero drinks some wine and reads a newspaper. 1:05 local policeman rides past on a bicycle. 1:17 dog chasing a cat knocks a man off a ladder and the man is left dangling from a shop sign and trying to save himself by swinging on a lamppost. 2:04 finally he falls into a horse trough and berates the dog. 2:21 our hero ruffles his paper but realises he's now a bit drunk. 3:01 he pays his bill and staggers off up the road. 3:35 trips over the cat and falls in the horse trough.
As hilarious as that is, it does hold truth. Shostakovich's demonic waltz is, as all waltzes, a danse macabre. This was just one of the non-funereal ones. But it contains every bit of the haunting weirdness and bizarre satire of life itself. No significant composer ever failed in pointing out by way of the imagery of music the strange and ludricrous nature of human existence.
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#139

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All Graham Plowman's ambient Lovecraft-pieces sound alike. They are apparently used for "scored readings", musically enhanced audiobooks. So that's it, we now not only have to have someone read us the stories, we also need someone to provide the atmospheric setting, because the human imagination no longer plays any part in it. I honestly don't think you can truly appreciate weird fiction, unless you have lived in a pre-internet or computerless age. You have never had the opportunity to read it in the suitable surroundings.
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#140

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A flashmob performing Ode to joy in Nuremberg. No idea why I got this stupid grin on my face.
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#141

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Antonov wrote: 6 years ago
I tried to get my wife-to-be to agree with me on having the Radetzky march as our song when we walk out of the wedding ceremony. I was, ehrm, shot down. So to speak.
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#142

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Don't they use Mendelssohn anymore?

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#143

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Chopin's "Posthumous Nocturne". He was so great, he even composed a piece after his own death... :haha:



Or maybe it was only discovered after he died. That seems more likely, wouldn't you say.
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#144

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Jesper Hvid wrote: 5 years ago Don't they use Mendelssohn anymore?

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You mean for the Vienna new years' concert? I thought they almost always used the Radetzky March as the last piece.
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#145

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I didn't realise you were getting married at the Vienna New Year's concert.

Be that as it may, I always thought the appropriate piece for that particular sort of thing would be the Slave Chorus from King Nebukadnesar...

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#146

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#147

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#148

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#149

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Amazing what dementia can do for a composer.
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#150

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You can hear him gradually losing his mind in this:

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#151

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John wrote: 5 years ago

A flashmob performing Ode to joy in Nuremberg. No idea why I got this stupid grin on my face.
Possibly for the same reason I tend to smirk at this:

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