OT things of sad beauty

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

My apologies for the plethora of off topic posts here at L.D.lately but 
I just feel really close and safe in this
community and wanted to share with you all.   I'll knock it off,  if 
anyone is bugged by the OT nature of some of them.

(((((())))))))
anyway:

I came back home tonight in a very  melancholic mood.

The great Russian poet, Yevtushenko,  said,  "It's good to have a 
healthy melancholic attitude
towards life."

My father and I both loved that quote and both had a strong sense and 
love for things, melancholic
in life and, particularly,  in music.

Anyway,  I was missing my dad tonight, big time and wanted to share with 
you
all some of my musical memories of his influence on both mine and my 
siblings' life.

My dad was a clarinet player, professional,  in a small big band that 
toured around
Texas during World War 2.   He loved orchestration and he had a very 
strong mentor
in a university professor who turned him on to the world of Classical 
orchestral arrangement........

........He told my father,  "If you love Benny Goodman,  you have to 
come listen to this."
and proceeded to show my father the score  and play for him, a recording 
of "Le Sacre Du Printemps" (The Right of Spring)
by Stravisnsky.     He went on to teach him about classical music and my 
father fell in love with
Bartok, Mozart, Stravinsky, Dvorak, Beethoven, Bach, Debussy, Ravel,   
Ralph Vaughn Williams,  Charles Ives, and
Aaron Copland,  amongst many many  others.   He had an encyclopedic 
knowledge of Classical music which was
amazing given his humble roots growing up in a small town in East Texas 
during the depression.

  He,  along with a wonderful 3rd grade teacher ,  Mr. Balantine (who
made us chill out every day for 30 minutes in school and gave a short 
lecture on the history of a different classical music
composer giving me tons of knowledge for a child of 8/9 years of age)   
gave us an incredible education about classical music.

Thinking about him,  I asked my wife if she had ever heard the 
exquisitely sad and beautiful, Aaron Copland 'Concerto for Clarinet'
which was a piece of music that my father dearly loved and turned me 
onto.    I played clarinet myself , formally,  from the ages of
8-13 in the school orchestra....................that was, until,  I was 
seduced by the rebellious energy of Rock and Roll and started to
teach myself how to play the drums at the onset of puberty.

She said no so,  I found this marvelous and emotional clip of
Michael Tilson Thomas conducting this beautiful sad piece
with the amazing Richard Stotzman playing the lead clarinet.

'Andante'  section for 'The Concerto for Clarinet'   by Aaron Copland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACO5DjpS8YM

If you have a moment,  please listen to it
I love it and I wish to pay homage to my wonderful and dearly departed 
father.

If you enjoy this music and don't know Copland very much,  I"d highly 
recommend that you eschew the things he was most famous for
(including things like the ballet for 'Billy the Kid")   and head 
straight for the masterful '3rd Symphony' and  , of course,
'Appalachian Spring'

If you still want a bit of a melancholic fix......................look 
up 'The Lark Ascending'  by the 20th century British neo-classicist,
Ralph Vaughn Williams (his 3rd Symphony is also a masterpiece of 
melancholia imho).