This year, in the American east, March has come in like a lamb with warm sun, but now that beastly lion (cold wind) has come back to bit us on the bum. Reminds me of a delightful musical setting of a set of Aesop’s fables by American composer Anthony Plog.
Austrian violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler is known as a hot-dog violinist and his compositions, both of which were warm, juicy, and sweet. His best-loved work is Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen, three short pieces for violin and piano that recall the sound of, well, Old Wieners (er, old Vienna).
Written in 1905, Kreisler knew this musical style was out of fashion. For some stupid reason, there is an unspoken rule that new Art Music needs to be fresh and forward-looking, and that imitating or stealing another’s music is bad. So, he attributed the work to Joseph Lanner, who was a genuine Old Wiener Alt-Wiener Viennese romantic, with no artificial fillers. Once the piece became famous, Kreisler removed Lanner’s name and took credit for the music.
I’m telling ya, you never sausage a great violinist!
The month of March is named for the Roman god of war – Mars. And of course, Mars is the planet where the aliens in “War of the Worlds” came from. Don’t worry, though, we’ll conquer those aliens and colonize Mars soon enough.
Mars is awesome. There, I said it. Gustav Holst (1874-1934) must have thought so, too, because he wrote a kick-ass piece of music about it. This selection comes from a larger work called “The Planets” (what a bizarre name for a suite of pieces about Roman gods.) Seriously though, despite the astronomical name, the piece is more about astrological matters – think horoscopes. Each planet, er, god, has its own personality.[/twocol_one_last]
And I’m pretty sure that the great composer John Williams stole borrowed from this piece when he wrote the film score to Star Wars.
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