Selling your soul to the devil ... OR ... classical music/singers that make people cry.
Blog title kind of like a Rocky and Bullwinkle episode title except less humorous...at least halfway less humorous.
Friday night (no, this isn't my promised weekend update post - is it already wednesday? working last night totally threw me for a loop), we got on the subject (i don't remember how) of music/singers/etc, and selling of souls to the devil. A brief discussion about some soprano (fuck, is it Maria Callas? please please please let me have gotten the name right, i got enough crap for not knowing who it was in the first place! some music major i am, i was told! i can identify oboe players, not opera singers. and i hate opera. most of it. not mozart, though. and i like operetta - die fledermaus was great! umm yeah), and how performances can bring people to tears.
It got me thinking about pieces of music that make me cry. Off the top of my head, I can only think of two - and I've been thinking about it for a while too.

1.) Make Our Garden Grow - the finale to Candide, by Leonard Bernstein makes me sob. Okay, maybe not sob. But I get misty-eyed thinking about it still...almost four years later? I can think of two reasons mainly that it makes me cry - 1) it was the finale to the last musical I ever performed in (backstage, no less - score one for the pit orchestra and the worst keyboard player SHS has ever know - damnit, that was me), and 2) seriously. beautiful lyrics. beautiful melody. harmony that is out of this world. how many musicals have singers divided into NINE PARTS (we had to cut out 2 parts - so i think it was nine, i think they were able to seven) a cappella at once??? And then to finish it off with a finale by the orchestra? Ahhh, Sonja and I were crying before it was even closing night....

2.) Cantique de Jean Racine by Gabriel Faure. It's just sooooooo damn beautiful. I guess I'm just completely blown away by the sheer beauty of the piece.

Umm...I guess the other part of the title doesn't exactly fit. Maybe I'll elaborate more when I finally get around to writing about this past weekend (it'll be next weekend before that happens).

- posted by L. @ 5:05 PM