Nobody understands me …

Well, Berlioz, let’s start with your hair. With a haircut like that, nobody is going to take you seriously!

Forget my hair! The hair is nothing. What I want is for people to understand my music!

Fair enough. So, what sort of music do you have for us today?

Ah, it’s my Damnation of Faust! I just adore this book by Goethe, even though it’s by a wretched German. As soon as I read it, I knew I had to write music for it.

Sounds good! So what did you write? a Faust Symphony like Lizst? an opera like Gounod?

Of course not! It has soloists, a choir, an orchestra …

Ah, so you wrote an oratorio! You know Schumann did that too …

Absolutely not an oratorio! Nobody wants another bloody boring cantata. My audiences made that clear when they first heard my masterpiece.

An opera then?

Well, it’s … eh … sort of … a “dramatic legend.”

Ok. So it’s an oratorio.

No, it is much more than that. My roles are to be acted and lived, not merely sung.

Ok, so let’s make it an opera.

We tried that already. My music is too magnificent to be brought down to the level of mere tomfoolery on a stage with idiotic costumes. *sigh* nobody understands me …

*pause* Well then, let’s talk about ways you might improve your hairstyle.

Lots of kids want to grow up to be president. Then one day, they realize that being president is probably the worst job ever. The second you’re elected, you’re hated,  despised, and abhorred by millions of people. Then, if anything bad happens – anything – in the next four years, it’s all your fault.***

So I will salute those people who held this very difficult office with a march by John Philip Sousa – “The Gladiator“, because of the bloody arena of politics and the wounds and stress that come with having this job.

An interesting side note – Before writing this, Sousa had only written a few marches, and these were unpopular. He was actually pursuing a compositional career in operettas – light operas that were the precursor to the modern musical. “The Gladiator” became a huge hit and within ten years, he had written all his best-known marches; his place as the master-of-marches was established.

***And for the record, if a meteor carrying zombie ninja Nazi dinosaurs armed with laser crossbows and death rays fell to earth and conquered humankind, it’s all Obama’s fault!

If are from the Philadelphia area, and listen to Art Music regularly or semi-regularly, you are probably aware that the classical music station has something called the “Sousalarm” every morning. (get it? Sousa, as in John Phillip, sounds like and alarm? sounds like snooze alarm? just making sure …)

I grew up with this – every day, right at 7:15, the radio would play a march of some sort. It’s the perfect way to wake up and get moving. The days are now getting longer, thankfully, but it’s still hard to get out of bed. Why not try a march to get yourself moving?