L.A. Guitar Quartet - 4 Variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - Music
Years ago, after moving from Venice to Pacoima, I realized as I was setting up my new abode that somehow, in the move, I had lost my two boxes of Christmas ornaments, which I had been collecting since childhood.
I was commiserating one day with my sister, and shorty thereafter, she presented me with an ornament that she had made by hand, a rocking horse made of felt, that I immediately cherished, and still have to this day.
This began a tradition, that we kept up until her death, of gifting one another with new ornaments every Christmas, sometimes handmade sometimes not, but always unusual in some way.
As a sort of adjunct to this, I began collecting Christmas music, and one of the albums I collected several years back was a 2-disc set called "Winter Solstice on Ice," which was the soundtrack to a television special, and introduced me to this piece.
My mother had an album of the Mozart variations, with which I was familiar, but I had never heard them played like this. This quickly became one of my all time favorite performances, and put the L.A. Guitar Quartet on the map for me, with whom I had not previously been familiar.
This is one of those pieces that can even win over those who think they don't like classical music. It is a joyful piece, played by four guitarists at the top of their game, and I defy anyone to get through the entire piece without smiling.
If I ever need a song to dispel a foul mood, this would be a great choice, because it is simply so much fun to listen. Enjoy.
And I would love to hear your take in the comments.
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O, Twinkle!
O, the variation, the Suzuki tape!
One year, all three kids were in Suzuki, and we'd listen to that tape everywhere the old van took us. Oops: the cassette tape got stuck and couldn't be removed, so we were held hostage by Twinkle variations until husband finally found the right size pliers to pry it out. The car pool kids form the neighborhood dreaded the day it was our turn to drive. (Our tape was not by the LA Guitar Quintet. Oh no. Solo violin, Suzuki simple....)
The violin versions were what my mom had, as well, though I'm not sure it was the Suzuki version. Awesome stuff, either way.
Ah, yes, the joys of a stuck tape. In my first car it was an eight track, for those of us who even remember them, lol!
Funny, but having always been a huge Bach fan, I was actually not much of a Segovia fan in the beginning, because he took so many liberties with what was written. How dare he! I was far more a fan of John Williams, the (then) young classical guitarist, from Australia.
My first car was a Datsun 1200, which had said eight track, and shortly after I got it, I bought "Switched on Bach," which took FAR more liberties than Segovia ever had, but I loved it instantly, and damned near wore the tape out.
I loved the second as well, though the first was always my favorite, as it had both "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" and "Brandenburg No. 3," which are both long time favorites of mine.
And this was long before I discovered that Walter Carlos was now Wendy Carlos, not that that would have mattered to me in the slightest. In any case, he/she was a synth God, and I treasure the recordings to this day.
Synth? Synth?? I'm only beginning to develop an appreciation for it. It took me years just to build up tolerance :) - when Queen went synth, their unique sound went downhill, I thought.
"Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" - our daughter played it to death after finding her favorite version of it on youtube:
Great version! I love their visual presentation of it, which I think helps even non-musicians to appreciate what they are hearing more . . . or perhaps that's just me.
I did the same thing to my mom, though no YouTube back then, I commandeered her Renaissance and Baroque boxsets from the Time Life Classical series, which actually had an excellent version as well, though I'm sorry to say I don't recall the name of the organist. But whoever it was played this with amazing feeling and depth.
It still blows my mind to think of comments by JS Bach's contemporaries, who said that he could play better just using the pedals than most organists could using both hands AND the pedals. That's one of my first points in time, if I am ever able to time travel, to go back and listen to him play this in its entirety, along with Brandenburg Nos. 2 and 3. And a zillion of his other compositions.
He is still my favorite classical composer, hands down. I'm a sucker for counterpoint. ;-)
His son, JC Bach was excellent as well, but JS Bach's compositions spoke to me in a way few others have. I learned to play Jethro Tull's take on his Bouree as a teen as a result. ;-)
Here's another one she listened to a LOT:
I am old enough to remember when the 8-track tape deck was a new and marvelous feature to have in a car. Dad bought a used car, pulled out the tape deck, and SOLD it. Gaaah! Dad! (He also disassembled a piano and hauled it out to the barn, where it rotted, rather than pay for lessons.)
Wow.
How I missed this when you posted it I don't know, but it brings to mind Neale Donald Walsch's recollections of his own dad smashing apart his piano when he was a boy, and his own crushing sorrow, when he refused to come out of his room, or even get out of bed, for four days after the fact.
My dad made a few bonehead moves in his life, haven't we all, but I'd wager that destroying a musical instrument was never among them.
You lost a sister, too! I'm so sorry!!! Not the kind of thing we want to have in common with others. Do you discover some friend you naturally gravitated to has also lost a sibling or parent at a young age? It changes us, and we seem to sense the person who survived such a loss is different, somehow, from others our age.
a tradition, that we kept up until her death, of gifting one another with new ornaments every Christmas, sometimes handmade sometimes not, but always unusual in some way.
Yeah, it was funny, but in my meditation group, which started up in 1998, several of us in the core group had a sister named Carol. And my sister was the first who passed on, but I didn't really find that it changed my relationships with the others in any way.
Then again, my next-door-neighbor here came from a large family, as did her husband, and both had siblings who were many years older, who have since passed on. And yes, that has been a bonding point for us, because there is an understanding that is (usually but not always) absent in those who have yet to go through it, with someone really close to them.
But I was fortunate, in a way, because long before Carol's death, I had been given a triple whammy of losing three people very close to me in just over a year, and had had to come to terms with that, which was a huge growth cycle for me. And Carol was very much a part of that.
"growth cycle" - funny you should mention that - only yesterday, I read about this new way of looking at PTSD: The Human Phoenix, by Lenore Skenazy | https://www.creators.com/read/lenore-skenazy - she mentions Mark Miller's new book, "Jolt: Stories of Trauma and Transformation." Time and again, he finds people who have not post-traumatic stress disorder but its sort of good-witch twin: post-traumatic growth. and Returning to "normal life" after a trauma is what we deem resilience. But Miller's book is about something else: coming back from trauma with such an expanded sense of empathy and purpose that simply going back to everyday existence is not enough. Note: not everyone "grows" or should be expected to. He is very sensitive to ongoing sorrow and doesn't want to exacerbate anyone's by suggesting that the "best" trauma victims march forth with a huge and wonderful new purpose. No one says trauma victims must grow. And no one knows who will and who won't.
Funny, that is exactly what happened to me after my "Longest Winter," when I lost three of the people closest to me, in short order. I guess I'll have to post "My Longest Winter's Ending," the poem I wrote about that period. Who knows, it may help someone going through something similar.
I was an empath before any of it started, and my family always had a healthy viewpoint toward death, as part of life, so when my dad died, followed shortly by my mother-in-law, to whom I was close, I was "okay," and functioning, albeit on a very basic level.
And, really, I was barely functioning at all. as I was paying my dad's final bills, and those of my husband's company, but my own I was shoving into a drawer, even though we had the money in the bank to pay everything. I just couldn't deal with it all. And, even though my meditation group was there through it all with me, on another level, I felt very much alone.
And then the September 11th attacks laid us all low for a time. I remember awakening out of sorts, though I didn't know yet what had happened, and most of my meditation group reported the same. We all knew, on a basic, fundamental level, that something was off.
And then, before I had had the chance to heal, came the death I hadn't expected, a former lover who had become one of my closest friends and confidants, and the closest thing I ever had to a true mentor. I was devastated, and suddenly thrust into abject existential grief, where I considered my heart a traitor for continuing to beat.
And yet, I had a husband at home, rightfully expecting me to continue being a wife, but I no longer knew how.
They say that grief takes a full year to get over, but mine took me three years, before I was really worth being around again, and not completely wrapped up in my own pain and suffering. And, ironically, one of the few people who truly understood what I was going through, was my then-husband, who did his best to help me through it, even though it was breaking his own heart to do so.
Although he was always basically a good guy, I give him an immense amount of credit for being a far bigger man, then, than I thought he was capable of being. And even though our marriage disintegrated in the process, as I began to realize how much of myself I had given away, and began taking my life back in bits and pieces, I was grateful that he was willing to remain my friend through it all, at least until I moved to Tennessee.
I considered my heart a traitor for continuing to beat - that's a poem in itself!
Three years to recover (to function again, in the ways we must, on a daily basis) - that's intense. Sometimes I think I have never recovered (functioned properly) in the aftermath of those "phoenix" events Skenazy writes of. Some people rise above it all, stronger and more altruistic. Others merely cope. And some go to pieces. (See "Rachel's Contrition" by Michelle Buckman.) I hope you're saving up all these posts (replies), Cory - yours are always keepers!
Thank you, @carolkean.
Yes, with that line I was actually quoting myself, from I piece I wrote about a year and a half after his death, that was not a poem, but did wind up being a spoken word piece I read publicly a couple of times.
I did it as an exercise in metaphor for a nature writing course I was taking online.
It was the usual high school exercise; take a word from Column A and a word from Column B, and form your own unique metaphor, with a paragraph or two in explanation. And while it wasn't called a freewrite, in essence that's what it turned out to be, as it was pure stream of consciousness for twenty or thirty minutes.
And, once I had written it, there, finally, was what I had been trying to say all along. It just poured out of me onto the paper. I have changed it very little from that day.
My resulting metaphor was "Death is Like an Avalanche," which I posted here on Steemit about two weeks ago.
And yes, I went through all the responses to grief you've mentioned. But that's for my next post, and thanks for the inspiration, yet again. ;-)
"I considered my heart a traitor for continuing to beat -" no surprise that the line has struck a chord in others, and you'd written it and read it publicly long before the words resonated here at Steeemit. You have so, so, so many stories to tell! Have you read @tygertyger's family history? Somehow I sense you both have something in common as writers - a sense of history, family, place, passion, and culture - hers may be mostly Russian, partly Czech, but nationality isn't the common element. The gift of story is.
I wasn't aware of @tygertyger's family history, but I've come across her posts from time to time, including yesterday.
Clearly there is a reason for that, and I thank you for bringing her to my attention, as I will make a point of seeing more of her work. And interesting, as my husband is Polish, one of my best friends is Ukrainian, and one of my sister's daughter's-in-law is Czech, so that part of the world has long been on my personal radar.
Thanks again.
If you haven't read her, you will - she's awesome! Lenore Skenazy @FreeRangeKids
Generalissimo of Free Range Kids Movement and popular (hilarious, life-changing) speaker. As seen on The Daily Show [email protected] | freerangekids.com
Thanks for the recommendation; I'm unfamiliar with her work. I'll definitely check her out.
I am so sorry about your Christmas ornaments 🙁
Thanks!
I was really upset at the time, but in intervening years I've had a great time collecting more, and have helped friends and family members to augment their collections as well. That might have never happened had I not lost that first batch.
Nods
;-)
Nice to make your acquaintance. Be blessed.
Thank you and U2 :)