Apr 08 2014
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Apr 07 2014
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Apr 05 2014
I told you to expect something completely different.
You know, I really am a rebel and as pyrrho once said I rouse my own rabble. Allow me to demonstrate by dispensing with the format.
The first thing is- why include a date? All your posts are date stamped anyway, what’s the point?
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when
we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED)the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
I would never make fun of LaEscapee or blame PhilJD. And I am highly organized.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
–Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)
Perhaps you expected something newsy and grim from me. Well, that’s not how I like to spend my Saturdays. In fact I generally spend them resting up from the early morning cacaphony of sound that is Formula One Qualifying and refreshing my mind from the realities of another week of struggle.
Something I have mentioned before is that in my youth, before my DJ days, I was into long hair music. No, not Twisted Sister- Mozart, Bach, and Brahms, which made my contemporaries instantly suspicious of me. Good, they should have been, my Snape-like air of incipient menace is something I have carefully cultivated for many years.
What is hard for most people today to grasp is that these musicians were pop stars. They think of them as dusty old relics. Let us talk then about ‘The Red Priest‘.
He was called that due to his red hair and the fact he was a priest. The bulk of his work was written for Ospedale della Pietà an abandoned children’s home in Venice; though he had enourmous popularity in general for his Operas, a genre where he’s considered one of the major influences and wrote at least 40 of them (with all these composers periodically ‘missing’ pieces turn up of greater or lesser authenticity).
He was a violin prodigy a skill he learned from his father, a barber turned professional violinist and union organizer, and an instrument he was drawn to because of chronic ill health and breathing difficulties, so it’s not surprising that most of his compositions feature it including the one I wish to bring to your attention today.
The Four Seasons is a set of 4 concertos probably inspired by the scenery of Mantua where he worked for a time at the governor’s court. They are actually part of a larger group of 12 concertos, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention) published in 1725.
During his tenure in Mantua he struck up a relationship with Anna Tessieri Girò who was one of his favorite performers and while scholars speculate there’s no real proof that their collaboration was anything but professional and contemporary rumors were vehemently denied by Vivaldi himself.
Each concerto has 3 movements, a slow one between 2 faster ones.
Spring
The rest of The Seasons are below the fold.
Apr 02 2014
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Apr 01 2014
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.