Classical music fans?

[Elentári]

Tosh wrote:

Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending and the Tallis Fantasia are musts if you haven't tried 'em yet.

I would add to that "Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus" - one of my all time faves

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ4bx4r1VeQ

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

Did you all know there are two classical music threads? Either Voronwë is slipping or he has mellowed from the scythe-wielding thread splitter/thread melder that I knew back in the day. The Classical Music Thread, whose first post is dated May 7, 2006, actually predates this one, although it appears that it may have originally been a child that was split off from its parent thread.

It's never heard blaring out at traffic lights.

Or thump, thump, thumping from two blocks away.

Clearly you've never been behind my minivan at a traffic light, especially toward the end of the Dona Nobis Pacem in Bach's B minor Mass.

You go, girl! Give it Bach to them!

Better count out a lot of the orchestral music I've listened to. What fun to crank up pieces like the finale to Stravinsky's Firebird or Saint-Saens's Organ Symphony.

For music to blast in the car I prefer 'The Ride of the Valkyries' from Die Walküre by Richard Wagner. "Ho-jo-to-ho!" (No, I don't drive a helicopter. Why do you ask?) My car radio hasn't worked for a few years, and my CD player even longer, so if I want to fire back at the hip hop crowd now I have sing "Padre! Mio padre! O padre, sì, ti ritrovo" in my loudest Domingo impersonation.

Eh, brass had its uses.

I was one of those so-called "wimpy" woodwind players. (That's my wife's word. Ironically, I married a former brass player!) Flutes are awfully pretty, but they don't put out much volume. I had originally wanted to play either trumpet or trombone but my mother, who doesn't like brass instruments and the loud sounds they make, persuaded me to play flute instead. In hind sight it was probably for the best, a flute is much easier to carry in a backpack than a trombone, but when I was taking beginning instruments at the university I got a taste of what being a brass player would have been like. I think I would have rather enjoyed it.