If you haven’t seen the movie Amadeus, stop putting it off and go see it!

The movie stretched the facts a bit in order to craft a good drama; you can read about that by googling it. However, there were two things in the movie that were spot-on: first, Mozart was a dirty man who was obsessed with poop; second, his insane genius for composition. Even his farts sound as good, if not better, than the average classical symphony.

One of his most famous operas, Don Giovanni, opens with an equally famous overture. The music is out-of-this-world (standard for Mozart), but even more impressive is the fact that he wrote it 24 hours before the opera’s first performance. Legend says that he woke up drunk on the day of the premiere, rolled out of bed and wrote the piece. It’s more likely that he wrote it the day before. Still, that’s not exactly timely, especially in light of the fact that, in 1787, after writing a piece, the score was sent to a copyist who would have to hand-write the individual parts for the musicians to play – and even then there’s the not-so-small matter of the musicians rehearsing …

So the next time someone tells you not to procrastinate, remind them that one of the greatest pieces of music ever was a drunken last-minute quickie written by a potty-mouth.

Every Friday, there’s a special hour in my house. We call it “gin o’clock.”

Gin o’clock is a special time, and calls for special music. Nothing too serious, nothing too loud, too fast, too slow, too anything. I think today’s gin o’clock song du jour will be Leroy Anderson‘s swanky Serenata.

Anderson’s name isn’t huge in music textbooks, which tend to favor the progressive and experimental composers of the 20th century. He wrote for many genres, but is best known for his short, light orchestral pieces which are truly all-purpose – they work as background music, you can dance to them, drink to them, or just listen. How about a little more respect for one of America’s greatest?

We’ve all done it – you wake up in the middle of the night with the greatest idea to have ever been had by anyone ever. You write it down on a scrap of paper, and go back to sleep. The next morning, you wake up, ready to start on your great idea. But first, some coffee. And you know, a good cup of coffee is best washed down with a cheese danish. After breakfast, well, you need to have a shower to really be awake. Then you sit down at your computer to start planning your project. Check your emails. Facebook. Watch some cat videos to get you in the mood. Your mother calls (interrupting your favorite video, no less!) Now it’s time for lunch.

You get the idea.

Modest Mussorgsky completed only one opera, Boris Godunov. However, he is best known for his Pictures at an Exhibition, and his musical nightmare A Night on Bald Mountain. It is likely you’ve heard these two great pieces, but here’s the thing: the version you know wasn’t actually written by Mussorgsky. Both were originally piano compositions that were later orchestrated by Ravel and Rimsky-Korsakov respectively. And it doesn’t end there. When Mussorgsky died, left no fewer than NINE unfinished opera projects. Thankfully, his friends (a group of composers, known as the Mighty Handful, who were forging a distinct Russian musical style) completed some of the works he left undone. One of those is Khovanshchina, an opera which was finished again by Rimsky-Korsakov.

Mussorgsky’s marvelous sound is crafted from eastern European folk songs and scales against a rich modal accompaniment. It’s also important to remember that much of the magic of his music comes from having great orchestrators who finished the job for him.