35 years ago today, MTV was born. The first music video played was, of course, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” It’s a good song, and the video is a great collage of old footage. If you don’t know it, it’s worth the 3 minutes it takes to watch:

It’s fun, and typical of 80’s New Wave rock; I like it with or without the accompanying video. Looking (er, listening?) only to the music (IE ignoring the words), it’s upbeat and catchy, repetitive and shallow. Add the words, and there’s more to latch onto – it’s your standard critique of technology, the pros and cons that come with any new innovation. “Video killed the radio star, pictures came and broke your heart.” Is it about how beautiful the music sounds, or how sexy the artist looks?

Art Music has struggled to deal with the recent rapid changes in technology (and I’m talking about since the late 19th century here). The invention of recorded music and radio revolutionized the musical landscape – before, you either had to play music yourself or go to where someone else was making music. Then came video …

But I’ll venture to say that NO, video didn’t kill the radio star. Maybe the radio star had to change to adapt to a video world, but there was no murder here. The Art Music world is no different. With cameras and video technology, we can now see a LIVE opera performance thousands of miles away from the opera house, and see intimately close images of the singers’ faces. It’s quite moving, actually, and a different but equally enjoyable experience from actually sitting in the opera house, seeing the action from afar. It’s hard to argue that this is a bad thing.

Art Music recordings and publicity images have also recently adapted in a somewhat desperate attempt to win the attention of Gen-X and Millenials. Formal photos have been replaced by eye-catching shots that give us a taste of the performers’ personalities.

Here’s a video of Charles Gounod‘s Romeo and Juliet; the composer probably never imagined his audiences would ever experience opera in this way – on a computer, sitting by ourselves, looking at the singer from better-than-a-front-row-seat. Video didn’t kill the radio star – it is making worthy things to become immortal.

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

Some people get delightfully embarrassed if you sing a song about them. Think about the feeling you might get when your friends sing you “Happy Birthday”, or when that special someone sang “A Whole New World” to you at the karaoke bar.

And then there are those people who are so self-focused that they feel the need to constantly sing about themselves. This famous aria from Gioachino Rossini‘s The Barber of Seville is practically a love-song that Figaro sings to himself. Does he deserve all this praise? Well, he just might. Try singing along with him at 3:45 – just use the syllable “la”. Not so easy, eh? Not only does he need super-human tongue abilities, he needs to sound good and sing loud at the same time.

Ok, ok, you win – go ahead and sing about how awesome you are. You deserve it.

There’s really nothing weird about singing a song about how awesome you are. Modern-day popular examples include “Ice, Ice, Baby“, “What’s My Name“, “My Name Is” (it’s practically a rite of passage for a hip-hop artist to use a song to promote him/herself).

On this day, in 1804, the legendary duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr took place.

Personal note – I am a direct descendant of Aaron Burr. Yup.

Right now, the world is all about Hamilton the Broadway musical. I haven’t seen it, though I hope to one day, once the ticket price drops below the cost of a flight to Tokyo. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy this duel scene from Tchaikovsky‘s only lasting contribution to the opera world, Eugene Onegin. If you want to read about this particular duel, check the Wikipedia page. I can sum it up for you here though – don’t be stupid and don’t challenge someone to a duel, especially one of your friends. No matter what happens, it will turn out nasty.