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I can see you're all looking for a good laugh!
Sorry, 2 weeks from now my reply will still be ...maybe next year! (lol)
I need to master the ability of at least pretending I don't make a mistake, before I'll tackle Vivaldi.
Best you'll get out of me by the end of this year is a short tune.
@Jim Dunleavy - after I read you submitted Pavane (by Gabriel Fauré) for your virtual orchestra, really piqued my interest (now another distraction)! (lol) I've heard it before but didn't know the name or the composer and I really like it! Hope you'll share the finished project.
Btw, wish I was ready to attempt the amount of focus I'd need for Vivaldi... maybe next, next year!
Thanx for the encouragement... or was it a "Double Dog Dare Ya"?
- Emily








ELCB said
I can see you're all looking for a good laugh!Sorry, 2 weeks from now my reply will still be ...maybe next year! (lol)
I need to master the ability of at least pretending I don't make a mistake, before I'll tackle Vivaldi.
Best you'll get out of me by the end of this year is a short tune.
![]()
@Jim Dunleavy - after I read you submitted Pavane (by Gabriel Fauré) for your virtual orchestra, really piqued my interest (now another distraction)! (lol) I've heard it before but didn't know the name or the composer and I really like it! Hope you'll share the finished project.
Btw, wish I was ready to attempt the amount of focus I'd need for Vivaldi... maybe next, next year!
Thanx for the encouragement... or was it a "Double Dog Dare Ya"?
- Emily
Playing both violin parts? If you're referring to the double violin concerto in A minor, the two violin parts are similar enough that, if you've learned one of them, the other shouldn't require much additional practice.











All you Fiddlers who normally may not think of playing classical music! Can you relate to some of the classical composers' sense of humor? Hope you might even develop a new interest from it.
@Gordon Shumway -
Really enjoyed the Gould video! Nice he pointed out Mozart's overly abundant use of clichés and fillers in his later works.
Gould also made some important points about creativity and use of improv when composing. Personally, seems to me Mozart just didn't find the inspiration in his later years, like he had when he was younger - or he could have burned out, considering the massive volume of works he produced.
The video is what I was looking for, except I wondered if Gould was pulling "a Mozart" on the audience (e.g., me) by using clichés of his own, to help fill a rather long television time slot.
Thank you for sharing it!
@AndrewH -
Sorry, I should've made it clear - my 1st few sarcastic replies were made before I had heard the piece or viewed the sheet music and yes, I saw how much alike the parts are, even gave it a 2nd thought! (for a split second)
Btw, not sure if Kevin's Vivaldi request was serious and there's so many other pieces I'd much rather spend my time on. So, I'll have to address this after the Holidays.
Thanks for the encouragement.
- Emily










.........@Jim Dunleavy - after I read you submitted Pavane (by Gabriel Fauré) for your virtual orchestra, really piqued my interest (now another distraction)! (lol) I've heard it before but didn't know the name or the composer and I really like it! Hope you'll share the finished project...........
It's a lovely piece isn't it.
Try and stop me sharing the video when it's done! lol










Bob said
@Jim Dunleavy Was that Pavane on the flute or the violin.BTW I just picked up a Yamaha 225 flute for $25.00 at an estate sale (yard sale). Always wanted to play the flute (the next Galway!!!).
We played a special arrangement, not the standard orchestral version. The main theme is still on the flute though, then passes round the orchestra as in the standard version. Flute's my main instrument so I applied for flute or violin, but (as usual) there were loads of flute players so I got to play the violin part (harder for me!).
Good luck with your Yamaha - they're good flutes. I would get it looked at by a technician though, otherwise you'll potentially be fighting against it all the way - the slightest leak from the pads will make it almost unplayabel.








Another piece with an interesting source of inspiration: Carl Nielsen's 2nd Symphony, subtitled "The Four Temperaments," was inspired by a comically bad painting.
Late in his life, Nielsen wrote:
"I had the idea for ‘The Four Temperaments’ many years ago at a country inn in Zealand. On the wall of the room where I was drinking a glass of beer with my wife and some friends hung an extremely comical coloured picture, divided into four sections in which ‘the Temperaments’ were represented and furnished with titles: ‘The Choleric’, ‘The Sanguine’, ‘The Melancholic’ and ‘The Phlegmatic’. The Choleric was on horseback. He had a long sword in his hand, which he was wielding fiercely in thin air; his eyes were bulging out of his head, his hair streamed wildly around his face, which was so distorted by rage and diabolical hate that I could not help bursting out laughing. The other three pictures were in the same style, and my friends and I were heartily amused by the naivety of the pictures, their exaggerated expression and their comic earnestness. But how strangely things can sometimes turn out! I, who had laughed aloud and mockingly at these pictures, returned constantly to them in my thoughts, and one fine day I realized that these shoddy pictures still contained a kind of core or idea and – just think! – even a musical undercurrent! Some time later, then, I began to work out the first movement of a symphony, but I had to be careful that it did not fence in the empty air, and I hoped of course that my listeners would not laugh so that the irony of fate would smite my soul."
Just for an idea of the kind of person Nielsen was: here are some photos of him taken in the mid-1880s, when he was around 20 years old. Back when posing for photos was still serious business, he practically invented mugging for the camera!











@AndrewH -
That's a GRrrrrEAT story!
I will now definitely have to listen to Carl Nielsen's, "The Four Temperaments" - just up to my ears, at the moment, with a zillion little Xmas gifts I haven't finished wrapping for all the Grandkids (I'm cutting it close)!
Still chuckling to myself - anyone who would pose for a photo back in the 1800's with a good impression of a Boris Karloff expression (along with the others)... my kind of person!
Thanx, Andrew!
- Emily
@Bob, @Jim Dunleavy -
Our daughter played flute in High School Marching Band (unfortunately no Orchestra there), she still occasionally plays (I love it). Close to 40 years ago, when she 1st expressed interest in the flute, we kept our eyes out for a good used one - ran across a nice Gemeinhardt for not much more than what Bob paid! It only needed new pads, the seller obviously didn't know what they were selling. Luckily, because one of my Better Half's sisters plays flute & Sax, he knew of it's value.



ELCBK said
Really enjoyed the Gould video! Nice he pointed out Mozart's overly abundant use of clichés and fillers in his later works.
Gould also made some important points about creativity and use of improv when composing. Personally, seems to me Mozart just didn't find the inspiration in his later years, like he had when he was younger - or he could have burned out...
Or maybe he just needed the money and had to churn the stuff out.
If Hildesheimer explains it in his biog, I missed it.
Andrew
Verified human - the ignominy!








@ELCBK, this seems like it might be exactly what you're looking for. Tonight I stumbled across a YouTube channel with a bunch of short, fun animated videos telling the stories of some famous pieces of classical music.
https://www.youtube.com/c/Clas.....Explained/
For example, here's the one on Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition:











Well, I'm still not going to play Vivaldi, but got to thinking about how I've joked about cartoons & movies being my "School of Music".
We don't really have a place for trivia about famous violins of the Hollywood Film industry, but films & television definitely exposed me to some great music and helped me learn to appreciate it!
Think you all might enjoy this from Jeremy Cohan!
- Emily
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