A little something extra for their birthday.
I love birthdays – I often remind my friends in my birthday note to them that “nowhere is it written that a birthday celebration can only last one day.”
I recently celebrated a birthday (April 30).
Birthdays for friends and colleagues is one thing: but, using a birthday as an inspiration for creating content is completely different.
Someone decided that 50, 75, 100, 150, 200, and 250 were big birthday years.
This is a big anniversary year for Ravel, Satie, Johann Strauss, Shostakovich, and Pierre Boulez.
If you check performers, orchestras, and concert series websites, you’ll see that many are planning anniversary celebrations for those big anniversary years. But if you look deeper, you’ll see that basically they’re just playing music or performances by these celebrants.
I suppose that’s okay. It does seem a little bit lame, and underwhelming to me. But, good music is good music, and good music is there to be enjoyed. And if they’re truly monumental, influential composers, I hope we’re celebrating their music (enough) all year long.
We generally bring gifts to a birthday celebration. For these composers, there are gifts we can bring to the party.
Their stories.
If you’ve got interesting and compelling stories to tell about these composers, add that to your birthday celebration.
Johann Strauss: When his father discovered his son secretly practicing violin, he gave him a severe whipping, saying that he was going to beat the music out of the boy. It was only when the father abandoned his family for a mistress, that the son was able to concentrate fully on a career as a composer. (Wikipedia)
Maurice Ravel: The French composer was expelled from the Paris Conservatory in 1895.
Ravel was meticulous about his appearance and demeanor. Short in stature, light in frame and bony in features, he had the "appearance of a well-dressed jockey", whose large head seemed suitably matched to his formidable intellect.” (Wikipedia)
Eric Satie: “He was a genuinely strange man. His personal habits included eating nothing but white food, wearing identical grey velvet suits every day and carrying a hammer with him on his long daily walks, "for aesthetic reasons." (Facebook - History of Music)
Dmitri Shostakovich:
Here are a few off his best quotes.
“I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in ‘serious’ music.”
“When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.”
“A creative artist works on his next composition because he was not satisfied with his previous one.”
“I think it is clear to everyone what happens in Russia. We are afraid of everything. We are afraid of the past, we are afraid of the present, we are afraid of the future.”
“I live in the USSR, work actively, and count naturally, on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported.
(Classical music.com)
