For the nerds amongst you (for such there be), the music accompanying the death of Gandalf in one of the Lord of the Rings episodes (when his comrades burst out of the mines of Moria) is 'highly influenced' by sections of the Dvorak.
Friday, 24 April 2009
Speakers turned up to 11
While the office is empty, I can listen to whatever I want. Yesterday it was grimy, lovely Straight Edge. Today it's Dvorak's Requiem Mass while I prepare for my 19th-century literature class. It's an astonishing, powerful, heart-rending piece. No cheesy major-minor slide is missed in his quest for raw emotion. Even better, Dvorak was an atheist and wrote the Mass after he slagged off church music to a bishop - who challenged him to write something better.
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3 comments:
Dvorak was also a prescient lad. During a visit to America he said that
"the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the Negro melodies"
(this is taken from a letter to the New York Herald, June 3rd 1893 which has become known as the 'The Dvorak Statement'). Most tunes lead back to the mixture that jazz, gospel/spirituals, blues, all kinds of R&B, etc, provide the prime ingredients of, and he sussed that long before the culture industry started stealing, exploiting and re-frying black culture.
I hope I'm not the only one to recognise the Spinal Tap reference!
I also noticed that Spinal Tap reference!
But life is so much better with the music turned up to the 11 mark :)
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