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August 29, 2005On the way to class around noon today, one of the hiphop stations was celebrating Michael Jackson's 47th birthday by playing a mix of his songs. For the first time in my life, I hoped that I would hit traffic so I could hear the entire thing. The mix included a couple songs I've never heard, but, sadly, they did not play Thriller. During rush hour (8am or 5pm) the hiphop stations play the most popular songs, many of which are either truthfully awful or now sound awful due to overplay. But during the day, they'll play a lot of older music which is a nice departure from the Bow wow wow yippie yo yippie yea where my dogs at.An even more wonderful thing happened when I was driving home around 6:30. I flipped through the hiphop stations like I usually do, presets 1 2 and 3. I hit 4 to hear Top 40, hit 5 to hear what the jazz station had to offer, and suddenly I was at 6: classical. Then sounded the first notes of something beautiful: Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty. It was the final grand waltz, a triumphant yet unhurried and For all you Disney fans out there (like me), this waltz is in the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty and is paired with the following words: I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream, What followed was a set of pieces near and dear to my heart: Gershwin's three preludes. Jascha Heifetz, a fantastic violinist, was playing with a pianist whose name I didn't catch. I played the preludes (maybe not the second one, I don't remember), and I have only heard them as played by one pianist, but this version had the pianist playing the left hand notes and the Heifetz playing the right hand notes. When comparing the violin and the piano, I say that I prefer the piano because you can play much faster. Well oh my bejeebus. Heifetz gave my reasoning a serious run for its money. Incredible. The third prelude opens up with two short phrases of high notes. Heifetz made those couple notes so sexy -- the violin was singing, a jazz singer in a smoky nightclub. I suddenly feel like classical has come back to me, but I know it's the other way around. I'm much more still these days -- daylight hours are spent studying in the library, and nighttime hours at home. My physical self is not as frantic, and no matter how agitated my brain might be at times, my mind has become more composed and collected in preparation for hours of listening, reading, and thinking. Now, 103.5 is playing The Four Seasons (Autumn) by Vivaldi. Coming up is a Mozart Symphony. Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body. |
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