1. The Spokane Symphony's program this weekend includes a composition I wrote about a while back. It's one of the pieces that always moves me to stop whatever I'm doing and stare, soul-struck into the the great beyond. It's Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis". I first heard it in January of 1996. I was with a woman with whom I would be a classical music traveler for just over a year and both of us were visibly moved when the Eugene Mozart Players closed that concert with this Vaughan Williams masterpiece.
It holds musical, spiritual, and nostalgic value for me.
Not only will the Spokane Symphony play Williams' stirring fantasia, they will also play the tune Thomas Tallis composed, the theme Williams borrowed from to create his own piece.
I planned to go to The Fox on Sunday and attend the matinee performance.
I accidentally bought a ticket, however, for the Saturday night concert.
My plan was to avoid driving back to Kellogg in the late evening, but I'm going brace myself, enjoy the concert, and make the drive I had hoped to avoid.
(By the way, on Thursday, January 29th, I'll drive to Spokane in the morning and attend the lecture about this concert being given at the Northwest Museum of Art and Culture at noon.)
2. It hit me hard today, as I listened to Prof. Greenberg lecture on two musical forms, the symphony and the concerto, that I really haven't focused much of my listening to classical music on either Franz Haydn or Wolfgang Mozart. In the last handful of lectures I've listened to, Greenberg has rhapsodized about both of these giants of the Classical Period and has worked to explain the unique genius of both artists.
I am on the verge of ecstasy that I decided to listen to the 48 lectures of this Great Course. I'm just over halfway through the course and am especially stoked that my inexplicable neglect of Haydn and Mozart is becoming a thing of the past.
3. I am grateful for Artificial Intelligence making it possible for their creators to bring Tabitha and Mitten's adventures to life at Tabby Topics and for making it possible for me to keep up with the ongoing storylines over at NYC Alley Cats.
I watch them on Facebook.
They make me laugh -- and when they pop up, so do the cat podcasters.
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