Gives me the chills ...
I just came home from attending a summer symphony concert alone. The very same summer symphony I wanted to join, except the most recent audition info on the website is from 2008. That and I don't wanna be playin' no Brahms in 10th position.
Berlioz is horrific melodrama that blares so long and hard that it withers into boring nothingness. He's like a cutter girl shouting, "LOOK AT ME! THIS IS REALITY! SEE WHAT I'VE BECOME???" through cymbal crashes every other beat. After enjoying the Mussorsky, I unfortunately stuck around for the miserable Symphonie Fantastique instead of hitting up a late night art event across the street.
I actually fanned my open mouth a few times internally shouting, "Ooh uh uh, really?" in that at the end of every phrase would be a crashing conclusion ... only to bring on another section of a movement. My explanation to a friend who didn't know the piece: "Remember that movie Sleeping with the Enemy where Julia Roberts runs away to another town and takes a new name because her husband would beat and rape her in the beach house, and each time he did, he'd play Symphonie Fantastique, so Julia Roberts, when she met a new dude who looked like the non-Paul-Reiser dad in My Two Dads (i.e. a less skeezy George Michael), and he asked her if he could play music, she said, 'Anything but Berlioz. His Symphonie Fantastique gives me the chills.'? Well, ... yeah."
But at least Berlioz's biography is over-the-top hilarious. From the program notes:
"His letters are filled with anguished cries of unrequited love and his inability to eat, sleep, or drink after having fallen madly for a women he may have just met that morning. He would weep for days after reading Virgil. Once while away in Rome he plotted a murder-suicide when he discovered that back in Paris his true love (at the time) was betrothed to another - he stole two pistols, acquired a maid's outfit and wig to use as his disguise, and, in case the pistols didn't work, purchased a few vials of poison just to be safe. He abandoned his plan en route to France when he realized he left behind the maid outfit. Another funny story exists that while lunching with Mendelssohn, Liszt and Chopin, Berlioz, consumed with anguish over his rejection by Harriet Smithson, suddenly leapt from the table and ran off into the fields to die. The remaining three legendary musicians spent the afternoon wandering through the countryside looking for their friend."
On the way home, I found a box with the words "FREE - MEMPHIS STYLE" on its flaps. It contained hundreds of packets of BBQ sauce. I took two so I could shine my pennies at home.
Berlioz is horrific melodrama that blares so long and hard that it withers into boring nothingness. He's like a cutter girl shouting, "LOOK AT ME! THIS IS REALITY! SEE WHAT I'VE BECOME???" through cymbal crashes every other beat. After enjoying the Mussorsky, I unfortunately stuck around for the miserable Symphonie Fantastique instead of hitting up a late night art event across the street.
I actually fanned my open mouth a few times internally shouting, "Ooh uh uh, really?" in that at the end of every phrase would be a crashing conclusion ... only to bring on another section of a movement. My explanation to a friend who didn't know the piece: "Remember that movie Sleeping with the Enemy where Julia Roberts runs away to another town and takes a new name because her husband would beat and rape her in the beach house, and each time he did, he'd play Symphonie Fantastique, so Julia Roberts, when she met a new dude who looked like the non-Paul-Reiser dad in My Two Dads (i.e. a less skeezy George Michael), and he asked her if he could play music, she said, 'Anything but Berlioz. His Symphonie Fantastique gives me the chills.'? Well, ... yeah."
But at least Berlioz's biography is over-the-top hilarious. From the program notes:
"His letters are filled with anguished cries of unrequited love and his inability to eat, sleep, or drink after having fallen madly for a women he may have just met that morning. He would weep for days after reading Virgil. Once while away in Rome he plotted a murder-suicide when he discovered that back in Paris his true love (at the time) was betrothed to another - he stole two pistols, acquired a maid's outfit and wig to use as his disguise, and, in case the pistols didn't work, purchased a few vials of poison just to be safe. He abandoned his plan en route to France when he realized he left behind the maid outfit. Another funny story exists that while lunching with Mendelssohn, Liszt and Chopin, Berlioz, consumed with anguish over his rejection by Harriet Smithson, suddenly leapt from the table and ran off into the fields to die. The remaining three legendary musicians spent the afternoon wandering through the countryside looking for their friend."
On the way home, I found a box with the words "FREE - MEMPHIS STYLE" on its flaps. It contained hundreds of packets of BBQ sauce. I took two so I could shine my pennies at home.