Igor Stravinsky is one of the most famous and influential composers of the 20th century. And yet, while nearly every concertgoer will have heard his Rite of Spring, Firebird, or Petrushka, relatively few know his later works. These three big works were written by the time he was 30, and remain his most performed pieces. But the man lived another 60 years, and kept composing the whole time. He managed to write a few more masterpieces, but none of them ever compared to his early triumphs.

So, what do you do when you give up? Er, rather, what do you do once you’ve passed your moment of glory, your 15 minutes of fame?

Easy. You run off and join the circus. Or better yet, compose some music for a circus.

Yes, folks, 30 years after the great Igor Stravinsky composed some of the finest ballets ever written, he wrote another ballet – this time, to be performed by elephants. Fifty elephants, to be exact (and no, this isn’t a sick joke about overweight dancers – I’m talking about the big gray pachyderms here.) I guess after the movie Fantasia featured a troupe of (cartoon) hippopotamus ballerinas, Ringling Brothers thought they’d take the whole idea one step further and do it in real life. And Stravinsky, who was essentially forced to include his music in Fantasia, was ripe for the task, I suppose.

an attentive ear will hear Schubert’s Marche Militaire quoted in this piece …

Don’t ask me, I didn’t come up with that.

Maybe from boredom, maybe from drinking, or maybe from a sudden burst of creative energy at 4am – whatever the cause, sometimes people write wacky lyrics to instrumental pieces. Sometimes they’re very clever – for example, I’ve heard these words sung to the opening bassoon solo in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring:

“I am not an English horn, I am not an English horn, this goes too high for me, I am not an English horn.”

Another one which is hilarious (albeit on an esoteric level) is this text for the secondary theme in the slow movement of Franck’s Symphony:

“Cesar Franck composed the best he could; his music sounds like Brahms, but not as good.”

But then there’s this one, which is used primarily as a mnemonic device for music students to remember the melody of the minuet from Mozart‘s Symphony in g minor:

“Insane men, ripping out their hair.” Wat?

I can almost rationalize these lyrics: the melody of this movement is somewhat in 2/4 time, while the dance itself is in 3/4 time. It’s like trying to dance a polka when you’re supposed to be dancing a waltz. If you feel the melody in 2/4, then you’ll find yourself adding a beat here or there to compensate, and it can make you insane, possibly causing you to rip out your hair. Whatever, I didn’t come up with it.

I started this blog six months ago, knowing that many blogs are begun and abandoned shortly thereafter. I gave myself a goal – one post a day, for one year. Of course this brought up all kinds of questions. Do I know 365 pieces of music? Definitely. Do I know 365 pieces that are so good they’re worth writing about? Well, I wasn’t so sure about that. But here I am, six months from my start – and halfway to my goal.

Partly, this blog is just a place for me to throw some creative energy into and keep my head fresh with new ideas. The other aim is to introduce Art Music – the music I love and have devoted my life to – to audiences who haven’t been exposed to it. So, on its half-birthday, here’s a champagne toast to Art Music, along with a few other things that typically go with opera – cross dressing, nudity, drunkenness, and bad dancing.