I love music. When it plays or even when it doesn’t. If I can’t hear it with my ears, I’ve found I can hear it with my mind, and my heart.
I’m not much of a concert-goer though. Large crowds stress me out. Even back in the day, I would get frustrated and nervous in a crowded place. Most of the time, at “modern-day music” concerts there would be a lot of stupid, or angry drunks. And while I may have been drunk, I was neither stupid nor angry. So. There was that.
But. I also enjoyed different music venues. The Broadway musicals. The ballet. And the symphony. And in those places, the behavior of the crowds seemed a little more refined.
In truth, I have always enjoyed the latter group of music producers over the rock and pop stars. In a completely different way.
In another truth, I am neither a student of an expert on the classics. There are a few pieces I can pick out, but mostly I cannot tell you if Mozart or Bach wrote the note. Or Beethoven or Brahms, for that matter.
I am one of those people who go to these concerts and I have to wait patiently for everyone else to start clapping, so I know when to come in at the right spot. I’ve never blundered at this, but I’ve been to a concert where someone has clapped out of turn. I was mortified for them, even though they were a total stranger. I may be a lone ranger but I will never be the lone clapper, I’ll tell you.
Here is the other difference between the two types of concerts — rock and classical. You cannot open any type of food product in a classical concert unless the cymbals are really going at it.
At any rate, I bring this up because today is the birthday of two musical greats. Two incredible men in the world of music, each who composed score upon score of musical genius. I could write a book on both of them, here. But I will not go into all the long, drawn-out details of their lives.
In the condensed versions. They went to their desks, got out paper and ink, and made lots of little black dots, across a series of five lines. And when they were done, they did it again.
First, there is Johannes Brahms, born May 7, 1833. He is a composer and conductor from Hamburg, Germany. Known for many pieces like The Hungarian Dances, and The German Requiem. He stayed on this earth for 64 years, dying in 1897.
Then, seven years later in far away Votkinsk, Russia, another great composer was born. This time it was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, born May 7, 1840. He wrote, among others, the 1812 Overture and also, Swan Lake. He stayed in the world of the living until 1893, passing by at age 53. There are some experts who think he committed suicide, as so many talented people do. Everyone is carrying a weight we cannot see.
And there it is. The genius in our world, of one variety. An ability so mind-boggling to me, as to find a glorious world of music in one’s head and to set it down on paper, according to an entire symphony of instruments, in perfect time.
Thank goodness the band plays on.
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“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”
― Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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“Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.”
― Richard Buckminster Fuller
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“I’m a misunderstood genius.”
“What’s misunderstood?”
“Nobody thinks I’m a genius.”
― Bill Watterson
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