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

So the best I could do was "The heavens are telling," a favorite of mine. Same tune, same composer.

I give credit to anyone who can look up at the stars and express awe and amazement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4lSauxyFWo

Thanks paulh A fine tune. I found Spacious Firmament on High on youtube - same tune indeed

That sing brings tears to my eyes. I used to go to every performance of Haydn's "Creation" in my area. Haydn wanted so badly to write music that large amateur choral societies could perform. He lived long enough to see his work performed all over Europe, and well into Russia. His old age was unhappy, with serious aches and pains and disability. People would come to visit him and thank him for his oratorios, and this cheered him up.

The story of his death is truly traumatic: he lived in a suburb of Vienna called Gumpendorf. In the last month or so of Haydn's life, Napoleon's armies swept through his area on their way to downtown Vienna. The shelling and bombs were horrendous. Haydn, confined to bed, suffered form the constant noise and vibrations. Finally, he asked his servant to carry him to his piano, where he played "Gott erhalt Franz den kaiser," which Haydn had written for Austria's national anthem some years before. Haydn did this in defiance of Napoleon. It is reported that his playing was surprisingly forceful given his age and poor health. Four days later he was dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIME48FxVjM


(Alas, the Germans liked the tune so much that they stole it for their own anthem. Haydn also set the tune as the second movement of his
Emperor" string quartet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uyvqD4vR1Q)

I like the harpsichord variations on the theme

I see you once wrote an Entry about Haydn A653005 - have you ever considered submitting it to Peer Review?

Thank you for noticing, Sasha.

I should get it ready for peer review. it's just that I don't know if the sources I used would still be accessible.

For years I intended to make Haydn the main character of a science fiction time machine novel in which he is brought into the future to write music for the Galactic high command.

Did you ever find out if the story about him playing with his nose was true?

I know that once, some lady from the provinces sent him a letter with a coin in it, and asked him to write her some music - the coin was payment. Haydn laughed his head off - and wrote her some music. He was a nice man.

Haydn's contemporaries thought that Mozart and Haydn were very silly men. However, Haydn came off better because he was thought to be a decent and devout man. Mozart had some unsavory friends.

I read a good biography of Mozart, courtesy of our church pianist. Poor man had a terrible time of it.

That's good, Dmitri.

I've just started reading "Mozart, the man revealed," by John Suchet [2017]. Yep, Mozart went through a lot. On those long tours as a child prodigy, he got smallpox, Scarlet Fever, and a number of other diseases. And that was just as a child, in a time when they didn't have antibiotics. He would e scheduled to play for some aristocratic family, and they would leave him in a cold anteroom, so his fingers were cold. Can you imagine having to play the piano with cold fingers? And so many more things he had top ut up with.

And that father of his!. So controlling and egotistical.

Haydn, by comparison, came form such a large family that they didn't miss him when he was sent off for lessons at the age of four or five. He never lived with his family again. He spent some years as a choir boy in Vienna, and when his voice broke he became a street urchin scrounging for whatever odds and eds of work he could find.

Both Mozart and Haydn had creative abilities that prevailed even against domineering fathers or total neglect. Take your pick.

Yes - being a musician there was a labour of love, and not a shortcut to fame or fortune, most of the time.

>>Can you imagine having to play the piano with cold fingers?<<

A piece of advice: don't ever say that to a pianist again. I don't have to imagine it - all of us have experienced it at one time or another in unheated venues. It's amazing how cold spreads up through your fingertips.

Last evening, the church secretary had remembered to turn the heat on, and we were positively toasty.

Sorry, Dmitri. What was I thinking?

I just felt so bad for Mozart when I read about that dilemma. Can I help it that I empathize?

Not at all. The pianists of history appreciate that someone knows they suffered for their art.

For a year, I went to university in Bonn. Classes took place in the main building, which is this one: A87815433 As I state over there, Beethoven spent his childhood running around the place because it was the official residence of the Elector of Cologne.

Before steam heat, that place must have been cold as an icicle most of the time. As it was, it wasn't warm. The rooms have those huge windows - which, invariably, in the middle of winter, some German student would throw wide open, chanting the mantra, 'Frische Luft, frische Luft!' and making all our seminar papers blow around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0szHqIXQ2R8