Hooray, it’s Friday!

While Art Music is typically heard by sitting audiences, much of it is written in rhythms or forms that come directly from dances. Take the gavotte – a French dance, originally performed by peasants, and later adopted by the royalty (who added erotic kissing to the dance moves …) It has a distinct rhythm which makes it easy to identify.

This is a movement one of Bach‘s orchestral dance suites. It’s in trio form – which means there are two contrasting “songs” – the first ends at 1:15, and next you hear a second, contrasting “song”. When he second concludes, the first is played one final time. Trio is a simple but important form which is often heard in symphonies (minuet and scherzo movements), waltzes, and military marches.

Midsummer is celebrated various ways by various cultures on various dates throughout the week after the Summer Solstice. This is good news for my blog, because, not surprisingly, this mystical, magical, and religiously important time of year has a lot of significant music written about it.

Before Cheech & Chong, the best acid trip entertainment was undoubtedly Shakespeare‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Gods, goddesses, fairies, and magic potions, there is even a character named Bottom who gets turned into an ass; now that’s top-quality play-writing! Felix Mendelssohn, like many other composers, wrote incidental music for this play. Here is the overture from the suite.

Hear the rollicking scherzo from earlier this week!

Midsummer is celebrated various ways by various cultures on various dates throughout the week after the Summer Solstice. This is good news for my blog, because, not surprisingly, this mystical, magical, and religiously important time of year has a lot of significant music written about it.

Before Cheech & Chong, the best acid trip entertainment was undoubtedly Shakespeare‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Gods, goddesses, fairies, and magic potions, there is even a character named Bottom who gets turned into an ass; now that’s top-quality play-writing! Felix Mendelssohn, like many other composers, wrote incidental music for this play. Here is the rollicking scherzo from the suite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksLWUBXHQ8w