“If Music be the Food of Love”–It certainly is!

Beethoven and Mozart and- – –

“Do you even understand this fancy music you listen to asked my father once,” I smiled and told him “there is nothing to understand it just courses like intoxicated blood through the brain.”

I have the BBC to thank for this interest. In the sixties and the seventies I had a transistor radio which caught the BBC in a very scratchy and wavering clarity on short wave. “This is the BBC”, is one of the phrases which used to stir my soul with the prospect of honest news and good music at various times of the day and night. I heard Madame Butterfly for the first time on these wavering waves of radio. To be honest at first I could not appreciate the high pitched singing but over the years the melodies and the tunes behind the Italian words engraved themselves onto my soul.–https://youtu.be/tmfw17L_Deo?si=RszsMYqwf7e5nKha 

Then a friend gave me a Long Playing (LP) of Beethoven’s piano concerto Emperor. For years I breathed it into my asthmatic lungs. It is played on the piano by Claudio Arrau.–https://youtu.be/FKhRyGeyMYg?si=prdFMiXzs5eW3RPE 

Then over the years I have stumbled upon Dvorak especially the New World Symphony conducted by Nejc Bečan with the Gimnazija Kranj Symphony Orchestra – https://youtu.be/O_tPb4JFgmw?si=9Tn3eAwuh3vwH7hP 

I blasted Handel’s Messiah onto my kind neighbours at odd hours of the day.

I stumbled upon the Triple Concerto by Beethoven with Yo Yo Ma on the Cello, Itzak Perlman on the violin and Barenboim conducting and playing on the piano. I thought I had reached the final epitome of the classical music genre with this–https://youtu.be/HgCtmtyKjwg?si=cOvtWN2XIg1V6uow 

Then it hit me like a brick dropped from the seventh floor this opening of Mozart’s piano concerto conducted and played by Mitsuko Uchido–https://youtu.be/yM8CFR01KwQ?si=lBkITLrHHZfz63vY 

https://images.app.goo.gl/pYWdu3Fqn4Pt4wNC9

There is no end to it but it is beautiful music as one stumbles upon these recordings on the internet.

Trance Dancing In a Truck

These people are taking the huge statue which you see at the end of the truck to ceremonially dip into a river. This marks the end of a prayer or Pooja ceremony. In this case it is most probably a statue of Vishwakarkma. Otherwise it can be of Durga or Ganesh depending on the day of the year.

Notice the big black speakers at the rear where the men are dancing. They have also spread some colored powder in joy at each other.

Soundtrack of Life

Background music for real life

https://www.flickr.com/photos/chandleur/7187004884/in/dateposted-public/

Real life does not have background music. That is why sometimes it seems so drab. In the movies even a simple thing like smelling a rose is glorified with an entire orchestra highlighting the moment, the action is slowed down and the heroine’s hair bob like fluffy dark clouds.

Life would be so exciting if it had background music. Imagine a clash of cymbals when you serve that beautiful omelet or sunny side up egg lovingly to your child. A rhapsody while you shave; a symphony while you take a morning walk and a jazz solo when you get a par on the golf course.

Of course a lot of us have iPods with headphones or stereo systems at home to give background music while we work or jog; but I want music every time I sharpen a pencil or write on the laptop. A special serenade when I look at my wife and an oozing Manuel and his Orchestra when we have a family dinner. Of course an overdose of music can be like an opiate which shuts down the mind. It reminds me of the Shakespearean lines from Twelfth Night

‘That strain again, it had a dying fall.

Oh, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odor. Enough, no more.

‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before.’

I suppose I would be quite satisfied if I heart Radetsky March by Johann Strauss Sr. every time I turn on my laptop–

https://youtu.be/FHFf7NIwOHQ