chipper
kateshort and I are currently taking a break from spending the afternoon wrapping presents for family & friends. Normally, in such a situation, we'd set up her computer to play random MP3s from our rock music library for a few hours, but today she agreed to switch over to the classical music library for the afternoon instead, setting it to play only "moderate", "fast", and "pretty fast" instrumental songs for interesting background music that won't put us to sleep (as I've set the tempo field for most of the classical songs, and have separated the vocal classical music from the instrumental).So instead of the usual Pink Floyd, Rush, Cars, Madonna, Depeche Mode, and so forth that we'd get (and that you'd read about if this were a MySpace-cloned "Check the first 10 random songs in your music library" meme), we've been listening to (among many others):
Finlandia, by Jean Sibelius
Lohengrin: Prelude to Part 3, by Richard Wagner
The Four Seasons: Autumn, and Winter, by Antonio Vivaldi
The Firebird Suite, by Igor Stravinsky
Rhapsody in Blue, by George Gershwin
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, by Wolfgang Mozart
Orpheus in the Underworld: Overture, by Jacques Offenbach
"Emperor" Concerto, by Ludwig van Beethoven
Mlada: Procession of the Nobles, by Bedřich Smetana
Don Giovanni: Overture, by Wolfgang Mozart
It's been fun playing "What's that tune" with those that I know well and seeing how fast I could get those, and see for how many of the others I can at least guess the composer. (Nailing "Don Giovanni" just from hearing it all the times I've watched Amadeus, and getting "Rhapsody in Blue" in one note have been the high points of that.) It's also been fun to discuss with
kateshort the meaning of classical music terms like tone poem and what a B-A-C-H fugue is, hum along with the ones I've played at some point, as well as hearing some the other songs I'm not all that familiar with that are on some of the CDs I've picked up because of the presence of some other song I wanted to have.In short, good times. (I'm mostly feeling better, too, thank goodness.)
Feudalism: Serf & Turf
