“Oh, how my soul praises the Lord. How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior! For he took notice of his lowly servant girl, and from now on all generations will call me blessed. For the Mighty One is holy, and he has done great things for me. He shows mercy from generation to generation to all who fear him. His mighty arm has done tremendous things! He has scattered the proud and haughty ones. He has brought down princes from their thrones and exalted the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away with empty hands. He has helped his servant Israel and remembered to be merciful. For he made this promise to our ancestors, to Abraham and his children forever.”
Last year, you may remember, I wrote of my fascination with the performance history of Handel's Messiah. I teach the work as the last piece in my undergraduate music history course, and so every year consider anew how this work captivates the Western world, has seeped into high and low culture in numerous and unexpected ways, and in some ways has become a parody of itself. No section of Messiah is more abused than the "Hallelujah Chorus," which appears in countless movies and commercials in settings from the slightly appropriate to the absurd. And so, in the spirit of Christmas, I offer to you this Christmas Eve my favorite abuse of that venerated musical work:
Here it is, two days before Christmas and since your presents have not all arrived, I knew that many of you were wondering what you could possibly get me for Christmas. Wonder no longer. I'd take one of these:Seriously, NASA has decided to sell off its orbiters when the shuttle program ends in 2010. The price tag? A mere $42 million which is a bargain considering that it includes the $6 million cost of transport and detoxification of the shuttle. You can get Atlantis, Endeavor, or Discovery, but the word on the street is that the Air and Space Museum will be getting one, so only two are up for grabs.
Of course, if $42 million is out of your price range, I'd take one of the 10 decommissioned shuttle engines - they are only $400,000 to $800,000 each, plus shipping and handling.
It must be new trick week around here, because in addition to sitting up, Noah began eating last Friday. We gave him a spoon to play with as a distraction and starting spooning in the rice cereal. He took it like a champ. It looks like he may follow his brother in eating; Sam's always eaten anything and everything (he's one of the few kids I know that goes out to eat and selects broccoli over french fries on ocassion). It could also be that Noah is just a laid back kind of guy and takes everything in stride: Well, almost everything. He did let big globs of cereal fall out. But as of this morning, he's eating almost all of what we prepare and even asking for more.
Look at Noah's new trick - he's sitting up. He's been working on sitting unsupported for about a month now. In his baby papasan chair, he began doing crunches to be upright. Then we put in in the boppy for a bit of support, but he just wanted to fall over and gnaw the soft boppy cover for a while. So we finally discovered that putting a toy in front of him distracted him enough that he would sit for long periods of time without falling over.
Invariably, though, Sam comes running by, and Noah wants to follow him. Tump goes Noah, squeal goes Sam as he runs away, scream goes Noah as he's thwarted in playing with Sam. But with sitting up, crawling can't be too far away, and then watch out Sam, or more specifically, Sam's toys.
We spent all day at church today because tomorrow night, our choir is presenting Bach's Christmas Oratorio with Joy singing the soprano solos and yours truly making his debut as a timpani player. Since Joy is singing some hard solos and duets, she's been practicing most evenings after supper before we put the boys to bed. Sam loves to hear Joy practice, loves to accompany her on the piano or his egg shakers or his (duck) whistle even more, and loves her warm-ups best of all, especially her vocalization on "neenga." While she practices, she often tells Sam the story that she is singing, which has been a wonderful way to introduce Sam to the Christmas story this year.
But the other day Joy decided she'd been practicing a bit too much. She came to that conclusion after hearing Sam come up to me in the kitchen and proudly proclaim that Mom was singing about God and Jesus and David and a little boy named Neenga.
That's right, google, the London Symphony Orchestra, and Tan Dun have teamed up to create a symphony orchestra through viral marketing. There are things I love and things that give me pause about this idea.
Things I love: Most symphony orchestras are stuck in the 19th century. Occasionally they dip their toes in early 20th century music. Every great once and a while they plunge into 21st century music. But in both those cases, they tend to play the music that, though written in the past 100 years, sounds like it was written 200 years ago. For an organization traditionally mired in the past to embrace modern techniques is a marvelous step forward.
Engaging Tan Dun to write a piece was a masterstroke. Tan has credibility among classical musicians through his orchestral writing and the general public through his score for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. He is ideal to bring in a wide swath of musicians.
Michael Tilson Thomas is brilliant at bringing in young people and using technology to reach a wider audience. If anyone in the current classical music world can pull this stunt off, he can.
Things that give me pause: I know that some viral marketing campaigns work, but for the most part viral videos and ideas spread without the obvious guiding hand of advertisers. Take a look at the requirements and look again at some of the people in the video. I'm not sure this will catch on with the population they hope to reach.
Many of the best players are technologically challenged. Trying to reach musicians through the internet is a bit daunting to me. also, they say they want to create a truly international symphony, but what is the reach of the internet and will musicians in nations outside the US, West Europe, and Japan have the capability to find out about this project and then record a video with good enough sound quality for the judges to accurate gauge their performance?
Still, even with that worrisome twitch behind my eye at the artificiality of the endeavor, it is exciting to see usually stale orchestral playing branch into new avenues. What do you think?
“Oh, how my soul praises the Lord.
