Blast from the past
As I was listening to my iPod at work today, I had an odd little thought. The song that was playing was the really nifty version of the Scorpions “Hurricane” recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra as backup (and how cool is that!). And I thought, Wouldn’t it be neat if you could travel back in time with an iPod, and have some symphony composer listen to a piece of modern music?
If you could travel back in time just long enough to have some historic musician listen to a modern piece of music, what composer would you choose and what song would you share with them?
I’d choose Wagner, because I think he’d appreciate the rock of today. And the song I’d have him listen to would be Hanging By A Moment, by Lifehouse. Or maybe White Houses by Vanessa Carlton. Or any of the first 5 tracks on the Evanescence CD. Wow, it’s hard to choose.
May 11th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
I’m going to leave out the Bill & Ted jokes, I think…
Okay, seriously. This is a good one, though a tough one as well. I don’t know enough about classical composers to make an informed decision, but my guess is that you would have to pick the “modern music” very carefully, keeping in mind that things like your average electric guitar chord progression would probably sound like just so much noise to anyone from more than a few decades ago. You’d need to pick songs that are recognizably musical in nature (though I admit it might be interesting to run a couple of Beastie Boys cuts past an old master), and not too densely produced. (It can be musically dense, just not “noisy.”) I’d also pick from a range of popular genres and several decades.
In fact, what I’d ideally do is make a kind of survey run past several composers… Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Handel… probably not Wagner, actually. (”To say that Farley makes pies is like saying that Wagner wrote semiquavers.” “Good, are they?” “Terrible. But there are a great many of them.” — Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings)
What would I play them? Probably a couple of Beatles songs, a couple of Led Zep tracks, an early and a late Genesis song, some Johnny Cash, some BB King… and probably some other random selections that I can’t bring to mind right now. (You know me… mind like a steel sieve.)
So, what do you think?
May 11th, 2005 at 9:26 pm
The problem here is that the composer I would most want to run my music selections past is stone deaf. Thus, I would probably expose Mozart to Prince. Interested to know how he would react to Queensryche and Manowar as well.
If I could get one great master to hide sobbing and shivering in tears under their harpsichord, I would think myself amused.
May 12th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
tchaikovsky, definitely. and i’d have him listen to martha wash, cece peniston, liza, gloria gaynor and kylie minogue, for obvious reasons.
May 12th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
Stravinski and anything from “The Moody Blues”.
May 12th, 2005 at 10:11 pm
oops,left out Korsokov and hanging with anything from John Lennon.