I often quote to friends what Spanish/Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés said at a lecture that Rosemary and I attended many years ago in Mexico City.
He said that when we read about history that we should be aware that objectivity is a subjective invention of man.
I think that this concept plays an important role in how we as individuals choose our music and our opinion on what makes some of it interesting and some not.
My thoughts on this started when I told my friend Art Bergmann that of all the songs he ever composed my favourite is an early one called Data Redux. The melody sounds like 21st century new avant-garde music. He laughed it off yesterday when he and my friend Brian Stevenson were having coffee at the Contintental Café on Commercial Drive.
If there is one feature of the internet, Google in this century, is that if you know of a piece of music it can be found almost always on Youtube. Because of that I can place a link here to that amazing song.
After listening to Data Redux (unfortunately on my phone and I somewhere I have the record with it) I thought of other music that I subjectively like.
First on my list is the trombone part in Ravel’s Bolero. In my 10th grade at St. Edward’s High School we lived in a huge dormitory with a Gothic ceiling. Brother Rene Lenhard, C.S.C. was our man-in charge prefect. At night he would play classical music so that our cultural education would continue into the night.
Ravel's Bolero - Trombone part
Because I bought records in my youth I still have Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. To me the other side Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory is far more exciting as it has his orchestration of God Save the King.
Another record in my collection is Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue played by his pal Oscar Levant. On the other side is the fabulous but rarely played Concerto in F.
Gershwin Concerto in F - Oscar Levant
Just about everybody is familiar with the works of Ástor Piazzolla. I have a preference for a most different Vayamos al diablo (Let’s go to the Devil).
It was through Early Music Vancouver concerts that I became addicted to listening to chaconnes. My favourite is by a lesser known baroque composer called Tarquinio Merula.
Tarquinio Merula -Ciaccona - Giardino Armonico
In the late 60s when Rosemary and I had been married on Feb 8 1968 we would go to the movies in Mexico City where we had two options. If we went when the film was about to begin the seats were all taken and we had to be separated. If we went 50 minutes early we were subjected to government propaganda of the president cutting ribbons for opening hospitals. More often that not the background music was Aaron Copland's El Salón México. It grew on me and it is one of my fave 20th century compostions. A couple of years ago I discovered on Youtube Leonard Bernstein introducing Copland on Copland's birthday and then Copland conducts (I believe in Carnegie Hall with a luxury of TV cameras) his El Salón México.
I remember to this day when I was going around 16th Avenue and turned to Granville on my way home. I had a cassette of Pablo Casals conducting Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. My fave has always been the second because of the difficult trumpet part. When it began I thought there was something wrong with my car's cassette player. The piece was being played so fast as if there were no tomorrow!
Bach Brandenburg No2 - Pablo Casals
I could go on but I must stop and only cite one more and that is my prized CD Money Jungle with Duke Ellington, Charlie Mingus and Max Roach. I found out in this CD that Ellington was not only a great pianist but that he sounded a lot like Thelonious Monk before Thelonius Monk sounded like himself.
