Just one more anvil post; I’m not sure which is my favorite, yesterday‘s or today’s. Yesterday’s is a complete piece, start to finish; today’s is an snippet from an opera …. but it’s Wagner.

This short video is an excerpt from his massive, 15 hour opera cycle known as “The Ring Cycle” – four long operas based on German mythology and part of the inspiration behind Tolkein‘s “The Lord of the Rings.” It’s music that accompanies a scene change; its crescendo and sinister sound make it memorable and loved by Wagner fans. The scene change takes us from the land of the gods to the depths of Nibelheim, an underground city of dwarfs. The dwarfs here tirelessly mine for gems and work at the anvil, hence the unmistakable sounds you’ll hear starting around 1:53.

gotta love this video for the extreme close-up of Wagner’s mutton chops and neard.

Every profession has easy weeks and hard weeks. For musicians, December is simply exhausting (but also, a big money-maker!) For me, the last week of August means Choir Camp – which means managing 60+ young choristers for a week of music making.

I am beat.

But at the same time, there’s something satisfying about completing hard work. Verdi knew this (he composed a huge amount of opera music), and so did the Gypsies who sang the famous Anvil Chorus:

So, to work now!
—Lift up your hammers!

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

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.