'Tis A Gift To Be Simple

What does one listen to on a lazy Sunday morning? RL is listening to heavy metal, to drown out the 80s classic rock favored by her roommate. I am listening to Histoire Du Tango - Café 1930, a duet for classical guitar and violin, composed by Astor Piazzolla.

IC, who is more of a classical music purist than I am, pronounced it "pretty" and a bit "showtune." I understand why she says that... some passages are... well... over accessible. Which I suppose is code for "showtune." But hey, I LIKE showtunes.

When I have time, I'm going to continue my classical guitar lessons. Because this is my dream: to play this piece. IC (who studied violin during music school) has reluctantly told me that she will play the violin part if I can't find anyone else to do it.

It reminds me less of showtunes than it does IC. And yet I agree with IC, it's not purely classical. Actually, it reminds me of the movie music written by Ennio Morricone. No one can doubt Morricone's mastery and genius. But his is definitely music that is written to be evocative of images. Perhaps I'm biased by the fact that I always hear his pieces accompanied by a movie. But I think it's more than that. His pacing and phrasing is not always what you'd expect to hear in music that is meant to be consumed with your eyes closed. He is clearly following a different pattern; he's clearly following, clearly anticipating, some other action than that internally driven by the structure of the music itself. And so it's inevitable that the images that come to mind are not the secret stories you tell yourself when listening to a piece of music, but the images carefully orchestrated by others.

Yes, the classical music purist in me can't help but be dismissive of that. But the bigger part of me simply enjoys that it is so pretty.