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

...is right twice a day.

Welcome back from NYNY.

Remember I was asking about Ottoman influence on Mozart? Well, hopefully you'll be back in time to catch Radio 4's 'One Country to the Tune of Another', about the influence of Turkish music on Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart.

It's on Listen Again at the moment, but probably only for a week. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/atoz/index.shtml#o

Whereas a clock that is one thousandth of a second fast or slow will only be right once every x years. So muc for being right; my motto is "it's good to be right but it's better to be together". Works for chamber music anyway. Just discovered in a Chambers mini-dictionary, with helpful and interesting notes, that "Gung-ho" comes from a Chinese phrase meaning "work together".

Anyway, thank you for your welcome home, which I have studiously avoided reponding to until I arrived back at my own desk. Yes the Turkish thing is fascinating, but yes the currently available episode of "One country to the tune of another" is on a different topic, Russia.

Mozart's Turkish pieces show (I think) a pretty contemptuous attitude; he characterises it as a lot of tinny percussion over utterly basic harmony with non-existent counterpoint. I think if Mozart was exposed to present-day popular music his comment would be "Turkish music".

At the same time Mozart found excitement in the barbarism of Turkish music: the last movement of the violin concerto in A raises a great frisson.

While in New York I took in a studio production of "Cosi Fan Tutte" which features some fake Turks, and being Mozart the caricature carries real character.

But what a production! On a tiny stage with a piano taking up half of it, six singers with voices from the good to the gorgeous, impeccable ensemble, impeccable Italian, every nuance and opportunity of humour played to the hilt. Stunning, and all for $5 a seat (the theatre seated 60 or so). The US is extreme in all directions, and there is no one more brilliant than brilliant Americans.