Matthew Guerrieri offers another musically-minded quiz to aid me in my procrastination.
1. What's the best quotation of a piece of music within another piece of music?
Quote from Haydn Symphony no. 94 in Die Jahreszeiten. It certainly isn't the "best" but it happened to just come up on the iPod.
2. Name the best classical crossover album ever made.
I don't know about best, but I'll cast another vote for Yo-Yo Ma's Soul of the Tango (sorry, Elaine). Also a big fan of the Swingle Singers.
3. Great piece with a terrible title.
This is a tough one. I'll have to modify it to great piece with terrible text. I'll go with Kirke Mechem's Five Centuries of Spring which requires singing the following text: "not only underground are the brains of men, eaten by maggots" courtesy of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Ah...I know! Marais' Le Tableau de l'Opération de la Taille.
4. If you had to choose: Benjamin Britten or Michael Tippett?
Britten
5. Who's your favorite spouse of a composer/performer? (Besides your own.)
It is a pity Alma is taken. I'll say Felicia Montealegre.
6. Terrible piece with a great title.
decline to state
7. What's the best use of a classical warhorse in a Hollywood movie?
Again, "best" is perhaps not the word I'm looking for. Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra in 2001: A Space Odyssey deserves mention since most of the world knows it as "the 2001 theme."
8. Name the worst classical crossover album ever made.
Worst? Probably something by Il Divo. I'll also submit Vanessa Mae's Storm.
9. If you had to choose: Sam Cooke or Marvin Gaye?
Sam Cooke
10. Name a creative type in a non-musical medium who would have been a great composer.
Milan Kundera (I'm still hoping). I don't know if he counts though, since he formally studied composition.
EXTRA CREDIT:
For early-music nerds: Name a completely and hopelessly historically uninformed recording that you nevertheless love.
I don't "love" this, but it is worthy of mention...the "lounge-chant" version of Haec Dies on the eighth edition of the Norton Recordings.
2 comments:
That Marias piece is actually about a gall bladder operation (his own) done with only alcohol as an anesthetic: there is a narration that accompanies the piece that indicates the binding of the limbs, the incision, and finally the recovery.
I broke out in a cold sweat when reminded of "Haec Dies." I wonder if I was in a class with Edward Nowacki or Leo Treitler when I last had to think about that.
Post a Comment