The Fine Art of Listening

Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, in the icy air of night!
Keeping time, time, time, in a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Maybe Edgar Allan Poe was a little out of his mind, but you have to admit, The Bells is a pretty catchy poem. And maybe Franz Liszt was a little out of his mind, but you have to admit, his La Campanella is a pretty slick bit of piano-piano.

Despite his hair, Evgeny Kissin is not crazy. He makes this impossibly difficult piece look easy!

I don’t know much about Finland – mainly I just know they have weird spellllinnggs and llöts öf döts ïn thëïr wörrdds.

What I do know is that they love and revere their most famous composer, Jean Sibelius, so far as to making his birthday (today, December 8th) a national holiday, the “Day of Finnish Music”. And to top that, his face used to be on their currency (before they adopted the Euro). Not too shabby for a musician …

Sibelius would have been 150 years old today, if he hadn’t sadly died at the too-young age of 91. The natural thing would be to play his most famous work, Finlandia, but it’s Tuesday and I don’t want to get worked up this early in the week. Instead, here’s a delightfully melancholy work based on Finnish mythology, The Swan of Tuonela.

No matter who you are, you’ve probably heard Gioachino Rossini‘s before, largely because of Looney Tunes. There’s nothing wrong with that. His music is so energizing and playful – perfect stuff for watching the Road Runner outwit Wile E. Coyote and by extension, the Acme corporation. More than that, he doesn’t play any musical guessing-games with his audience. When there’s a melody, you hear it. When it gets faster, you know. No special knowledge required.

This is the overture to his opera “La Cenerentola” – Cinderella.

So why is this post titled “Wait for it …”? The first two minutes of the overture is “sit down and shut up” music. Some quiet notes, a couple big chords, some noodling around, some weird harmonic progressions. Stuff to pass the time as opera patrons rush to their seats before the real action begins. (I’m actually convinced that at 2:09, Rossini was actually setting the words “sit down, shut up, sit down, shut up” to orchestral music.)

So if you get bored or lost early on … wait for it. Things start to get going around 2:15.