On June 14th, 1777, congress passed a resolution that “… the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”

What else could we possibly listen to on this day, except The Stars and Stripes Forever, by John Philip Sousa?

Fun fact (at least for me) – this piece was premiered in the city where I live, not one mile from my house!

I am a composer – one of the many things I do to keep myself busy.  For some people, composing comes easy; for others like me, we struggle.

So whenever I hear the music of Felix Mendelssohn, I am filled with two intense emotions. The first is one of great joy and love, because his music is just so amazingly beautiful it hurts. The second is one of jealousy and anger because, dammit, I want to write like that! His music is structurally perfect but never too predictable, emotionally passionate without being saccharine. I think he simply wrote the textbook on what good music is. I dare you to find one less-than-perfect moment in the first movement of his Violin Concerto:

According to Wikipedia, the Viking Age began on June 8th, 793, which makes today the beginning of the 1224th year of the Viking Age. Still going strong.

I posted some Wagner yesterday, so it feels wrong to post Wagner again – but I just can’t help it. This aria is a love-song that a bad-ass Nord (who is also a dumb-ass) named Siegfried sings to a Viking’s most valuable possession – his sword. The little troll guy running around that Siegfried abuses is a horrid nuisance who also happens to be the sword’s creator.

This opera comes from a set of four operas by Wagner, known as the Ring Cycle, which tell a story from Norse mythology which bears great similarity to The Lord of the Rings. This epic opera cycle is so significant that you can hear its influence in the music of practically every medieval / fantasy movie ever made.

the video ends abruptly … Wagner arias are hard to contain into bite-sized chunks – I wrote about this yesterday.