pianogonzology

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Waltz . . .

. . . me NOT! (the composition 'Wisdom' has evolved [or devolved] back to its original non-waltz format. Click below to hear.)

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltz_(music)
". . . The name "waltz" comes from the German verb walzen, in turn taken from the Latin verb volvere, which describes the turning or rotating movement characteristic of the dance. Although French writers have attempted to connect the waltz to the 16th century volta, firm evidence connecting this Italian form to the earliest occurrence in the mid‑18th century of walzen to describe dancing is lacking. . . Classical composers traditionally supplied music for dancing when required, and Franz Schubert's waltzes (including the Valses Sentimentales and Valses Nobles) were written for household dancing, without any pretense at being art music. However, Frédéric Chopin's surviving 18 waltzes (five he wrote as a child), along with his mazurkas and polonaises, were clearly not intended for dance. They marked the adoption of the waltz and other dance forms as serious composition genres. Other notable contributions to the waltz genre in classical music include 16 by Johannes Brahms (originally for piano duet), and Maurice Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales for piano and La valse for orchestra (Lamb 2001). . . The long period of the waltz's popularity was brought to an end by the First World War, which destroyed the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the Viennese culture which had nurtured it for so long. European light music shifted from Vienna to Berlin, and compositions by composers such as Gustav Mahler, Igor Stravinsky, and William Walton treated the dance in a nostalgic or grotesque manner as a thing of the past. Waltzes nevertheless continued to be written by composers of light music, such as Eric Coates, Robert Stolz, Ivor Novello, Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, Oscar Straus, and Stephen Sondheim. The predominant ballroom form in the 20th century has become the slow waltz, which rose to popularity around 1910 and was derived from the valse Boston of the 1870s. . ."

Wisdom
Composition-in-progress, ©2015 Raymond M. Jozwiak

What do you think?
Tell me at
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html or at
http://www.ohomusic.com

OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak. Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com

My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak

(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

Friday, August 21, 2015

Stupidity . . .

(from http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/stupidity)
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
― Euripides, Bacchae

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
― George Carlin

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
― Harlan Ellison

“I'll take crazy over stupid any day.”
― Joss Whedon

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
― Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Principle

“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.”
― Napoléon Bonaparte

“Stupidity isn't punishable by death. If it was, there would be a hell of a population drop.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, The Laughing Corpse

“If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.”
― Jim Butcher, Vignette

What do you think?
Tell me at
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html or at
http://www.ohomusic.com

OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak. Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com

My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Prospectively . . .

. . . posthaste . . .

Ray Jozwiak provides the Piano Prelude playing a preposterously paced program to preclude any possible passivity on the part of the patrons . . .

. . . this Monday evening, August 24, 2015 @ 7:15PM at the Brewer’s Alley Songwriters Showcase

Brewer's Alley Restaurant & Brewery
(Songwriters Showcase-Upstairs)
124 North Market Street
Frederick, MD 21701 
Telephone: 301-631-0089
Fax: 301-631-1874
http://www.brewers-alley.com/

Clarity
from Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
©2007 & 2014 Raymond M. Jozwiak

What do you think?
Tell me at
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html or at
http://www.ohomusic.com

OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak. Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com

My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Precision . . .

. . . from a dying, biblical Jacob, who in his aged wisdom and natural confusion issues instructions to announce to his sons the occasion of delivering his last words . . .

(from Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, translation by John E. Woods)
". . . "Assemble, you children of Jacob! Come together in your hosts and gather around your father Israel, that he may tell you who you are and what shall befall you in days to come." . . . That was the call Jacob had issued from his tent to his sons, when at last he decided the hour had come for his deathbed speech. For he had his life in his hands and knew exactly what energies were left for him to expend in final words and then to die. He sent out the call by way of his chief steward, Eliezer, that old young man; he recited it for him and had him repeat it several times so that Damasek (Eliezer) would know the words not just more or less, but by heart. "It's not 'come hither,' " he said, "but 'come together,' and not 'draw 'round' but 'gather round' Israel. Now repeat the whole thing once more and don't forget that double phrase, 'who you are and what shall befall you.'. . . Good, at last! I fear I have spent too much of my energy instructing you. Now make haste!" . . . And Damasek tucked his robe up under his belt and ran in all directions, so quickly that the earth seemed to leap up to greet him; he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted: "Gather together, sons of Israel, and assemble your hosts, just as you are, that goods things may befall you from day to day.". . . "

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Fixing . . .

. . . up our performance of Blue Fix . . .

To the one with the key can this thing be known
She’s in tune and in time and she sings with tone
Back to the truth of her core
Back where she waits evermore to shine

Night of vast silence held in suspense
Hints at the content the sense and tense
There in the beam of her moon
Inspiring just the right loon for tunes

Gravitate to the place where no one but you
Believes that it’s holy
Spin around and around until you fall down
Because you’re so dizzy
Spitting into the face of the fate you’d escape
By loving ascension
Older than death closer than breath
Before there were symbols and sounds

How to unstick from the fix you’re in?
With your ear to the sky call the voice of the wind
Gathering kernels and seeds
Forming silk furrows where they’ll be sown
Recalling in keenness of mind
A word that is older than thought and time

Discovering fire again
In a thunderbolt sent through a pen
Pure word

Blue Fix
OHO, rehearsal recording August 2015

What do you think?
Tell me at
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html or at
http://www.ohomusic.com

OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak. Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com

My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak

Monday, August 17, 2015

Thomas Mann . . .

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mann)
". . .Thomas Mann's works were first translated into English by H. T. Lowe-Porter beginning in 1924. Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, principally in recognition of his popular achievement with the epic Buddenbrooks (1901), The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg, 1924) and his numerous short stories. (Due to the personal taste of an influential committee member, only Buddenbrooks was cited at any great length.) Based on Mann's own family, Buddenbrooks relates the decline of a merchant family in Lübeck over the course of three generations. The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg, 1924) follows an engineering student who, planning to visit his tubercular cousin at a Swiss sanatorium for only three weeks, finds his departure from the sanatorium delayed. During that time, he confronts medicine and the way it looks at the body and encounters a variety of characters, who play out ideological conflicts and discontents of contemporary European civilization. The tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers is an epic novel written over a period of sixteen years, which is one of the largest and most significant works in Mann's oeuvre. Later, other novels included Lotte in Weimar (1939), in which Mann returned to the world of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774); Doktor Faustus (1947), the story of composer Adrian Leverkühn and the corruption of German culture in the years before and during World War II and Confessions of Felix Krull (Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull, 1954), which was unfinished at Mann's death. . . In 1930, Mann gave a public address in Berlin titled "An Appeal to Reason", in which he strongly denounced National Socialism and encouraged resistance by the working class. This was followed by numerous essays and lectures in which he attacked the Nazis. At the same time, he expressed increasing sympathy for socialist ideas. In 1933 when the Nazis came to power, Mann and his wife were on holiday in Switzerland. Due to his strident denunciations of Nazi policies, his son Klaus advised him not to return. But Thomas Mann's books, in contrast to those of his brother Heinrich and his son Klaus, were not among those burnt publicly by Hitler's regime in May 1933, possibly since he had been the Nobel laureate in literature for 1929. Finally in 1936 the Nazi government officially revoked his German citizenship. . ."

Sunday, August 16, 2015

The Resilience . . .

. . . of the human spirit is amazing.

Fall seven times, stand up eight.
-Japanese Proverb

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
-Confucius

It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
-Abraham Lincoln

Engrave this Quote Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.
-Bernard Williams