[Aberdeen, MD] This week’s montage is dedicated to fathers everywhere. I chose music about fathers, for or by fathers, and about things fathers do
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I coulldn’t find any music about “home DIY renovations”, or “Muscle cars”, or “Power tools”. My father’s day tribute will have more to do about “the outdoors”. My father wasn't an outdoors-man, he was more one of those “disaster” DIY kind of guys… But one thing my dad really enjoyed were long walks and, in the summer, baseball. (With apologies to my UK readers who think baseball is based on Rounders which is, after all, a game played by school girls and not a “real man’s sport” like Cricket).
I chose to honour my dad (who passed away about 6 years ago) with Take Me Out to the Ball Game, sung by Carly Simon – this was used as closing credit music to many episodes of Ken Burns’ documentary series “Baseball”.
Since I couldn’t resist, when doing a YouTube search of the Carly Simon song, I stumbled onto Abbott and Costello. Here it is, the classic "Who's On First" routine:
A couple of selections emphasize the Great Outdoors. First, a complete rendition of Haydn’s “Hunt” quartet. Wholly appropriate, as he is the "Father of the String Quartet". Also featured, a movement from Schubert’s “Trout” quintet. The performance is from a CD I own of the quintet featuring Sir Clifford Curzon and members of the Vienna Octet. A complete Curzon performance is available on YouTube:
I don’t know if it’s just me, but why is it that composers, writers and other artists seem to have strained relationships with their fathers?
Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart, Johan Strauss (father and son), Alexandre Dumas (father and son), Emile and David Nelligan, Richard and Franz Strauss (no relation with the other ones)…
I chose selections from La Taviata (Germont's aria from Act II) and André Gagnon’s opera Nelligan to highlight a couple of those relationships. The music of Johann Strauss (Father) and Richard Strauss (intended for his father as soloist) are also on the menu.
Three generations of Shostakovich-es
Maxim Shostakovich conducts I Musici de Montréal and his son Dimitry in the performance of the older Shostakovich’s Second Piano concerto. I chose the last two movements, but a complete performance of the concerto by these performers can be found on my YouTube channel or below:
As bookends to this montage, I chose two “Rock-Troubadour ballads” from the 1970’s: Cat Steven’s Father and Son” and Neil Young’s Old Man – though the latter was apparently written with an old ranch caretaker in mind, Neil Young’s dad led a pretty had life, so you could say that Neil’s words “I’m a lot like you were” seem appropriate for his Father’s day.
UPDATE (2011-06-19) I had to add this video to the blog and the YouTube Channel because it made me smile when I saw it at Church today. Hats off to all dads!
I Think You Will Love this music too.
I Think You Will Love this music too.
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