Klarinet Archive - Posting 000406.txt from 2000/06

From: Kenneth Wolman <kwolman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] busts
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 09:31:48 -0400

At 12:53 PM 6/10/00 -0400, you wrote:
>The trouble with all the busts I've seen on the market is that they make
>these great composers look like boring old farts, which none of them were!
>I've been looking for a nice-looking small bust of Bach for years -- one that
>shows those fierce eyes the way they look in all the painted portraits of him.
>
>Lelia

Heh. Dead-on. I'd like to see one of Georg Frideric Haendel during or
immediately after he composed The Messiah.

Haendel, as nearly as present-day psychiatry can posthumously diagnosed,
suffered from bipolar illness, i.e., he was a severe manic-depressive. He
wrote The Messiah between August 22 and September 14, 1741...roughly three
weeks. Most likely he did it while riding a manic high fueled by very
little sleep and probably a lot of coffee. What he must've looked like at
the end of that siege of composition can only be guessed at, but I doubt he
would have looked like one of his formal portraits. A bust of a man
looking half-crazed would be a conversation piece, to say the least.

But the music ain't shabby:-).

Ken

--------------------------------------------------------
Kenneth Wolman kwolman@-----.com
11 Broadway, New York, NY 10004 212-425-4200, x. 363

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