Friday Soirée VII: More Light Comedy
I enjoyed the humor so much last week that I thought we'd have a bit more tonight, not just because I had so many leftovers. Besides, the tone tonight is a wee bit different, although I'd be hard-pressed to say just how.
P.Q.D. Bach: Iphigenia in Brooklyn (Cantata, S. 53162)
If there is someone reading this who has never heard of P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742?), I'll be very surprised; there's always the Wikipedia biography, but P.D.Q. Bach is really a cultural phenomenon — can the music's meaning be captured in a few minutes of reading about how the notion of the "last and least" of the sons of J.S. Bach has kept Peter Schickele busy "discovering" this Bach's works and performing them?
The joke has been going on since 1965; the first concert was held in Town Hall (New York), 24 April 1965, and released as "Peter Schickele Presents An Evening with P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742)?". (The official page for the recording.)
One of the four pieces presented was this unique and delectable cantata, "Iphigenia in Brooklyn"; it may still be my favorite of PDQB's works. One feature noted by Shickele in his introduction is that although many composers had previously written for double reeds, P.D.Q. Bach was the only one to have done so without the use of oboes or bassoons. This is that original performance (hence audio only), sung admirably by John Ferrante, bargain counter tenor, who doesn't laugh once.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Julia Child Cooks Up Carbon
Here's another venerable name in American culture, Julia Child. I'll have some things to say about her and her influence on my meager culinary skills elsewhere, but tonight we're all about Julia's contribution to science literacy in America, using her reputation in the kitchen to teach us some important lessons in fun and tasty ways.
In this first segment she's helping to make a point with one of my physicist heroes, Philip Morrison, in his six-part PBS series "The Ring of Truth" (1987). It's a great series by Morrison, a very profound thinker; as Chet Raymo wrote at the time in the Boston Globe (26 October 1987), "The subject of the series is not what we know in science, but how we know it."
You'll note that this seems to be the Japanese-dubbed version of the film, since nobody's lips seem to move at the right time. Thanks to friend of this blog, Jeff Li, for pointing this video out to me.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Igudesman & Joo: "Rachmaninov had Big Hands"
In this short comedy routine, pianist Richard Hyung-ki Joo, assisted by his partner Aleksey Igudesman (their website), performs the famous Prelude in c-sharp minor, op 3, no. 2 of Rachmaninov (see the very scary first four bars of the recapitulation here).
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Julia Child Prepares Primordial Soup
Tonight's pièce de résistance is deftly prepared by Julia Child: Primordial Soup. This is a short film from 1976, apparently produced for exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum. Her subject is the famous experiment of Urey and Miller in 1952, demonstrating that "lightning" (represented by a spark) in an atmosphere that at the time was presumed to be similar to that of an early Earth could produce amino acids, "the building blocks of life".
We know more now about the Earth's early atmosphere than we did then, and quite a bit of the picture we had then about the "primordial soup" has shifted with this new knowledge, but there is no doubt that the experiment was groundbreaking and path setting. It set off many fruitful lines of investigation into the question of how life may originally have gotten started from inorganic molecules by showing that essential organic molecules could be produced by natural effects. In science, often knowing that something is even possible is a great advance and fruitful hypotheses don't have to be correct.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Malcolm Arnold: A Grand, Grand Overture
I hadn't even realized that today, 25 September, is the 50th anniversary of the death of Gerard Hoffnung, about whom I know very little (here's his "official web page") except for his association with the somewhat eccentric Hoffnung Music Festivals. I don't think I can argue with anything in this summary:
The Festival was named after the originator, Gerard Hoffnung, whose humorous cartoons of musicians in the act are somewhat better known in Britain than they are in the U.S. The Festival, which was an annual affair, assembled top-flight UK musicians and singers to perform specially prepared spoofs of the classical repertoire. These occurred in the 1950s. If you've never heard French horn virtuouso Dennis Brain play the garden hose, or a suite for tuned vaccum cleaners, not to mention the Horror-torio based on the doings in Dracula's castle, then you should seek out these recordings [listed later]. Needless to say, Hoffnung Festivals inspired the creation of PDQ Bach. [source]
Now, from what I gather listening to the recordings of the festivals, the musical satire was of a somewhat more sophisticated nature than we sometimes find with P.D.Q. Bach, but there is indeed a family resemblance.
That more refined tone is evident in this "Grand, Grand Overture" by Sir Malcolm Arnold; it's more giggles than guffaws, but there is a certain subtlety in the obbligato parts for the Hoovers and floor polisher. Given the tone of this evening's soirée it seems entirely appropriate to me that we should end with an overture.
This performance comes from the "Last Night at the Proms" (2009), which has lots of traditions all its own, not least of which is a rather rowdy (by English standards) atmosphere. We hear the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by American David Robertson, joined by Sir David Attenborough on floor polisher, and three classical musicians on vacuum cleaners, and also Rory Bremner, Martha Kearney, Goldie and another classical musician firing rifles.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Dessert: Paravonian on Pachelbel's Canon
I apologize to Mr Paravonian that I hadn't heard of him before, but I have now, so there. He seems to be a musician and comedian, demonstrating here that he can talk and play guitar at the same time. I can so relate to his theme, which is that playing Pachelbel's Canon is exceedingly boring for cellists. (You know, I think it was my pusher Jeff Li who put me onto this, too.) I don't know about that Taco Bell thing, though.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]