This milestone marks the first time the great composer offers a voice part in the original Latin. Further, the maestro goes his Pastoral Symphony one better, in that, rather than simply mirroring nature musically, or even imitating the twittering of birds as in the well-known work of the senior Mozart, here the score actually includes a choral part for a colony of woodchucks. (It is scored molto con brio.)
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Tragically, as the crowning crime of the deep-running Riemann conspiracy, that manuscript -- the only one in existence -- will be purloined tonight at midnight … from a locked room !
For gruesome details on NPR’s complicity in the Riemann conspiracy, click here:
And for all you folks surfing in from our sister station WAMU, you all are used, nay inured to fund drives. But you have never seen a more heartstring-tugging appeal for support than this one:
Enjoy the rest of your springtide day, the very first of merry April.
Have heard this so-called ‘symphony’. Is fraud! Is just a concerto, no more; and is not by Ludwig. Has Brahms’ fingerprints all over it; and not one of his better works, either.
ReplyDeleteYour attempt to connect this Machwerk -- an embarrassing product of Beethoven’s dotage, long suppressed for good reason -- with that masterpiece of the Saint (in the original Latin), is an offense to the Muses. First, the choral setting cannot be of that sublime sonnet, for the lyrics are not in Latin, but in some gutteral Teutonic tongue. Second, contrary to what you lyingly imply, the rodent obligato is not scored for woodchucks at all, but -- and here the manuscript is quite explicit -- for “vermischte Nagetiere”.
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