Day 167: Back to music
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day
167 — Back to music
16-January-1972
(Sonntag–Sun.)
TRANSCRIPT
Saw Wiener Choir Boys [Vienna Boys’ Choir]—good. I
think they did Beethoven’s Missa
Brevis [no, Beethoven
Mass in
C].
Felt good.
Practiced and then called Munich. Talked to Lucille
D. Might get a chance to go to Munich. Brother Mike
should also be in Europe now. Will be expecting call
from him.
Saw Vienna Symphony—Brahm’s
4th. Beautiful concert. Saw a
lot of the conductor (Ottman) and I liked his
“tired-look” style. Got results.
A good full day of music.
Spent night reading all letters. Enjoyable and funny.
Good.
REFLECTIONS
A good day in Vienna.
Back
to music. Yes, I’m
back to attending music performances in Vienna. It’s
Sunday. First the Vienna Boys’ Choir singing
Beethoven’s Mass
in C. I was
probably wrong about the title, Beethoven didn’t
write a Missa
Brevis and so it
was probably his Mass
in C major. I often
didn’t have the program in a church setting.
Back
to Brahms. At night,
it’s the Brahm’s Symphony
No. 4 in E minor. Brahms
has always been one of my favorite composers. Such
beautiful lyric melodies and lush string writing.
Romanticism at its best. All of my old classical LPs
were sold-off by my brothers in subsequent years. I
need to start rebuilding my classical collection in
iTunes or Amazon.
Missa
Brevis. Many
composers have written a Missa
Brevis (short
mass), including Palestrina, Bach, Haydn, Benjamin
Britten and Kodály. The Missa
Brevis includes
the Kyrie,
Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus
Dei forming
the parts of the mass.
YouTube
2008 to the uh, rescue. Having had
much stress in these past months in 2008 (and not
blogging), I smiled and thought I would revisit the
music via Google and YouTube. I listened to
excerpts
from Beethoven’s Mass in C, Beethoven’s Missa
Solemis with
Leonard Bernstein,
the
Missa
Brevis in F by Mozart
and the Vienna Boys’ Choir singing the
Gloria
from the
Beethoven Mass
in C in a
concert from 1989 in the Netherlands. How do you know
this? Sometimes from the comments.
YouTube
is for fun. All of
this was fun. Isn’t that the idea of YouTube? You
can’t get a solid complete performance of anything on
YouTube but you can browse a variety of performances
varying from strictly amateur to university choirs to
professional concerts. It’s fun. Certainly, new
concert performances that are copyrighted are
generally removed. Not a great musical research tool,
but certainly fun.
There are a ton of YouTube videos featuring the
Vienna Boys’ Choir [Wiener Sängerknaben]. Look ‘em
up.
Don’t forget to use iTunes to preview recordings as
well.
Munich
and my bro. What’s up
with Munich and my brother? I learn that a madrigal
choral group from my school, Montclair State College,
is coming to Munich to perform soon. I call a friend,
Lucille (great pianist) to see if I can meet the
group. My brother is also coming to Europe but I have
no exact details. Of course, that’s what brothers do.
John
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