It's a short post this week because my laptop charger has melted, yes actually melted, so I'm typing this on my phone. Do you know a new charger costs £65? I know, scandalous, the kind of money you need to go to a Conservative party auction
So here's a brilliant short piece for solo piano by Leoš Janáček (1854-1928), it's the 10th and final piece from Book 1 of On the Overgrown Path, a set of autobiographical pieces written between 1901-1911 which refer to Janáček's childhood growing up in Moravia, and also about the death of his 20-year-old daughter.
Janáček uses a Barn Owl because, like many owls, they have all sorts of mad superstitious stuff associated with them, and in lots of cultures they're a bird of bad omen. That's crazy, because they are absolutely brilliant birds, a bird which no matter how many times you've seen them, it still fills you with the same level of excitement as it did the very first time you saw one.The problem is that they make a godawful noise, and presumably people were/are terrified of noises coming out of barns and churches in the middle of the night.
And then there's the way they just float silently in the half-light, bounce gently over reedbeds and hedgerows, so I suppose they've got a touch of the supernatural about them. Yes, it's fine being a bit spooked an owl, but nailing one to your front door to keep a thunder storm away is probably going a bit too far. Actually, that last link has a really good quote in it:
Another traditional English belief was that if you walked around an Owl in a tree, it would turn and turn its head to watch you until it wrung its own neck.
So here's a brilliant short piece for solo piano by Leoš Janáček (1854-1928), it's the 10th and final piece from Book 1 of On the Overgrown Path, a set of autobiographical pieces written between 1901-1911 which refer to Janáček's childhood growing up in Moravia, and also about the death of his 20-year-old daughter.
Janáček uses a Barn Owl because, like many owls, they have all sorts of mad superstitious stuff associated with them, and in lots of cultures they're a bird of bad omen. That's crazy, because they are absolutely brilliant birds, a bird which no matter how many times you've seen them, it still fills you with the same level of excitement as it did the very first time you saw one.The problem is that they make a godawful noise, and presumably people were/are terrified of noises coming out of barns and churches in the middle of the night.
And then there's the way they just float silently in the half-light, bounce gently over reedbeds and hedgerows, so I suppose they've got a touch of the supernatural about them. Yes, it's fine being a bit spooked an owl, but nailing one to your front door to keep a thunder storm away is probably going a bit too far. Actually, that last link has a really good quote in it:
Another traditional English belief was that if you walked around an Owl in a tree, it would turn and turn its head to watch you until it wrung its own neck.
It's true, they really do. Anyway, this is a fantastic piece of music, hope you enjoy it.
Perhaps it's really obvious, but I have no idea why the picture on the video is of the Large Hadron Collider. Anyone?
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