Music, Music, Music

         I love music...all kinds of music...one might say that I am a musical omnivore! It doesn't matter what sort of mood I am in, there is music which will fit the bill. From rock to chant, baroque to folk, I am there. Probably my favorite genre is what most folks call "classical"---that collection of music ranging from baroque through classical to romantic and modern--- the "serious" music. Symphonies, concerti, tone poems, and operas fill my spirit with joy.

       One of my favorite subsets of this music is from the late 19th and early 20th century, the so-called nationalistic music of the late romantic and early modern period...composers like Dvorak, Sibelius, Smetana, Grieg, and Rimsky-Korsakov, to name a few. These composers described their homelands and the people in them with music not rooted in the forms of the older day but in the folk songs and traditions of the real world.

      Back in the days of vinyl records, I purchased a set of the works of Sibelius, a Finnish composer of this time period. His seven symphonies are a delight, and his tone poems a marvel. (His "Finlandia" is well known, and is actually used as a hymn tune in the United Methodist Hymnal is a hymn entitled "This Is My Song.") Anyhow, as record players evolved into CD players and MP3 players, my vinyl records became somewhat of a dinosaur, and I moved on into other things. A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Sibelius crawled back into my memory and I finally looked at Amazon to see what I could do about the problem. Lo and behold, there, for the princely sum of $12 was a four CD set, complete with free MP3 download, of the exact same performance I had owned on vinyl! So as I write this, the sounds of Sibelius' Symphony No. 1 fill my room, and when I add a pine scented candle, I once again tramp the forested hills of Finland in my mind! For me, these musical adventures are better than drugs and a whole lot cheaper.

     A final musical thought...on my MP3 player, I have lots of songs ranging from Santana to Handel's Messiah, and one of the things I like to do is set it on "shuffle" and let the listening begin! It is great fun to hear music from Spamalot, followed by a piece from Messiah, followed by Enya followed by the Kingston Trio...sort of like an endless buffet of surprises!!