Klarinet Archive - Posting 000870.txt from 2002/11

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Music for Dogs
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 00:01:38 -0500

Avrahm Galper wrote,
>However ,variety is crucial. If you play classic FM
>all day, they quickly filter it out and ignore it.

That's pretty much the way I react to classical FM lately, too, unless I'm
barking at the radio. Here in the Washington, D. C. area, the latest trend
seems to be female announcers with fake-intimate, bubbly-sugar voices, who
*gush*. Ick.

And we hardly ever hear a whole piece of music any more. It's first movement
of this and middle movement of that, with no regard for key signatures.
They'll segue right into a piece of a piece that's in a key jarringly remote
from the one they've just played. But what I really, truly, viscerally
*hate* is when they cut the piece short, not even at the end of a movement,
but mid-movement, *in the middle of a note.* Who in the world do they think
can stand to listen to this mess?

No wonder classical radio is failing! It deserves to fail!
Bark-bark-bark-bark!
<End rant.>

Willie Kercher wrote,
>>On nice days, my wife and I would go out and practice in
>>the shade of a pine tree in our yard. We gave it up after a
>>while as our Basset hounds would come sit at our feet and
>>howl the 3rd and 4th parts. None of the other dogs on the
>>street would do this, just the two with big ears and feet

In days of yore, my brother's dog, a feeble-minded runt cocker spaniel named
Silkie, used to howl companionably along when either of us played the
clarinet. She sounded like a miniature wolf, doing her duty for pack and
territory. She howled for my alto clarinet and his bass clarinet, too. She
howled for my recorder. She sat attentively beneath the piano and howled
when I practiced. She howled for singers. She howled for the radio and the
TV and the record player. She howled to go outside, she howled to come
inside, she howled for dinner and she howled for attention. She pointed her
pretty little nose at the moon and howled for every-damn-thing, except for
the kids who hot-wired our car and stole it from the driveway one night.

For Grand Theft Auto ten feet from our front door, she didn't howl one note,
the worthless meatbag. (We got the car back, more or less, after the kids
wrecked it. The parents got their kids back, too, in one piece. Each.
Although I gather they may not have *stayed* in one piece each, once their
folks got done with them.)

Lelia

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