h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here's your Sunday free concert.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lawRnnVgQIw

Before you watch and listen, consider this:

The composer of this tone poem about the Battle of First Manassas - the first battle of the US Civil War, which the Union thought was going to be a picnic until the Confederates almost took Washington - was not only an enslaved African American pianist from Georgia...

Thomas Wiggins was blind. And suffered from autism.

NOW watch the video, as this energetic young pianist - and she's wonderful - tackles music that is far ahead of its time.

And think about it: this was the way Thomas Wiggins communicated with the universe. I find him admirable. He composed his first piece at about four years old, imitating a rain storm. At six, I could about bang out 'There Shall Be Showers of Blessing'. You go, Tom.

Want to know more about this unusual composer? Here is what Mark Twain said about him. It's both insightful and a bit embarrassing if you tend to be a Twain apologist. I don't - Twain's faults were many, and you can see some on display here. But allowing for the primitiveness of 19th-century social attitudes, his account provides a glimpse of Wiggins' rare genius. And he's honest about it, which is more than some would have been. They might have pretended they were less uncomfortable around the uncanny than they actually were.

http://usslave.blogspot.com/2013/02/when-mark-twain-met-blind-tom-wiggins.html

A pianist named John Davis specialises in playing Wiggins' music. Here's another Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8k3g4icEv0

Does Twain need apologists? Not for this, I don't think.
It appears to me that Twain knows exactly what he's doing when writing like he does - and his writing is eminent. Very descriptive. And certainly not derogative.
Negro? Idiot? Perfectly ordinary words to use at Twain's time.

Enough about Twain (or what we may think about him.)

Thomas Higgins was phenomenal. And it is good to know that his music was saved for later generations who (as you so rightfully suggest, Dmitri) may have a better understanding of how clever it really is. (I do not count myself among those (even if I can clearly see here be talent!) Alas, I know too little )



PS: On another note (!) let me point you to another southern composer, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who fascinates me. He's nothing like Higgins but I think you will enjoy him also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9G_yUy0q1A

Quote: Dr. John's "Litanie des Saints" from his cd "Goin' Back to New Orleans" ... recorded in 1992 was the first album he actually recorded in New Orleans. Dr. John writes in the liner notes: "This is loosely based on a work by Louis Moreau Gottschalk from sometime around 1850. Gottschalk was a music prodigy from New Orleans, the first classical composer in the United States to use folk themes. He grew up within a block of Congo Square--that's where he saw the old slave dances and heard the African chants which inspired his work. Later he studied in Paris at some swanky music school and was a concert pianist considered on a par with Frederick Chopin.

I took a chunk of his piece called "Bamboula, Danse de Negroes" and mixed it up together with a chunk of some very old Gris-Gris chant from way back when in New Orleans. I rewrote the lyrics to fit the melody of the chant using a really classically structured piece. The string part that Wardell Quezergue wrote forms a nice intro to "Litanie des Saints." It has a real Gottschalk feel. Then it goes into a kind of habanera feel. We used both African and Catholic litanies, which is correct. In New Orleans there is a subtle mixture of Gris-Gris, Voodoo, Catholic and African religions that occurs nowhere but New Orleans. The chant ends on St. Cecilia, the Saint for Music. And we go into a kind of major key maneuver, a kind of tribute to Professor Longhair.

The language is also a mix--mostly an African patois with a little Creole French and a little Spanish patois. The Neville Brothers are featured with Cyril doing some beautiful magic man vocals."

Twain often needs an apologist, because quite often, he's not nearly as funny as he thinks he is. And more than once, he went off half-cocked, understanding only half the story.

Twain knew this, and more than once apologised handsomely to those he had offended, on his own dime, so to speak, so I forgive him. He was a passionate sort of person, but he no more had all the answers than the rest of us, and I suspect he was wise enough to know that.

Thanks for the link. Here's Gottschalk's original music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOYnuC6twfI

Thanks for that link, never knew that existed!

But I'll have to check it out tomorrow, it's almost midnight here now.

But you may have time enough to enjoy this before it's your bedtime:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnYBkEE05bA

By John's beard - there is a whole goldmine of Gottschalk's music there