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RE: Anatomy of a Classic Chess Game - Paul Morphy's Night at the Opera
I was thinking just this morning that it has been 10 years since I played a game of chess. Your article took me back to my chess days as a youth. My father, a chess enthusiast, taught me how to play as a boy. He played 3rd board on the Commercial Chess League in New York. He had quite a chess library and he turned me on to the genius of Paul Morphy, replaying many of his games.
I played 3rd board on my high school chess club team. While I never became a great player, I can usually beat the typical casual player. I probably could have delved into the game more since I have the kind of mentality that can obsess over a game. Nevertheless, I suppose I found music and the pursuit of women more exciting.
Thanks for a trip down memory lane;)
Sounds like cool experience when you were younger. I didn't have that, only in the last few years when my pursuit of music and women slowed down ;-) If you ever feel like playing a few games I use gameknot.com it's a great casual site. I hope to do more chess posts, but actually my next history project is music related I'm excited about it, a study of rachmaninoff's 3rd concerto, maybe you'd be interested.
Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto sounds interesting. I checked out a YouTube and would enjoy learning the backstory. While I have a lot of classical music credentials, I was more interested in popular music over the years. I still listen to classical, but have been mostly working on playing great songs of the 20th century in recent times. Here is a sampling of what I'm into...
I find the backstories of musical works interesting. Most songs are not written in a vacuum and there is often an interesting human story behind them. You might find a couple of the notes about the songs in the above collection amusing.
"Soul Eyes" is a composition, with lyrics, written by Mal Waldron. It was first recorded on March 22, 1957, for the album Interplay for 2 Trumpets and 2 Tenors. One of the tenor saxophonists on that recording was John Coltrane, who brought the song back to attention by recording it in 1962 for his album Coltrane, when he had become more famous. This was only the second ever recording of the song, which has since become "part of the basic repertory of jazz performers" – a jazz standard. Waldron wrote the piece with Coltrane in mind: "I liked Coltrane's sound and I thought the melody would fit it."
"Skyliner", arranged by Billy May, was written as the theme music for the late 1940s US Armed Forces Network program "Midnight In Munich", broadcast from the AFN station in Munich, Germany, and hosted by Sgt. Ralph Moffat. Thanks to the station's immensely powerful twin 100 kW transmitters, AFN Munich could be heard as far away as the UK; this, and the popularity of Moffat's show, evidently helped "Skyliner" and other contemporary American swing hits gain wide popularity across Europe and become hits in the UK.
Indeed, a game of chess certainly would be a fun distraction from my usual routine:)
Hey great comment man, I like the project you have going on I'll keep up with it, meanwhile you've inspired me to put some new things on a playlist. appreciate it,