- for Susan
Hector Berlioz, who gets one ear bitten off in an absolutely meaningless regular heavyweight title challenge, turns into a farce. Let’s hope the fight is a bit more up tempo. Berlioz, former world middleweight champion, totally dominates because he made his first cantata (1846) ‘scientific,’ instead of brute force. He beat former Canadian champion Gordon Wallace who was ranked 8th. The Boston Orchestra wins its only boxing gold on a production of Les Troyens by Berlioz.
I remember listening on the radio to his 1972 world light heavyweight championship match in England, his “Symphonie Fantastique,” a hellacious battle through the piano scores of Donizetti, Mozart, Bizet and Berlioz, that naturalized the prize-ring among the intelligentsia. It’s a world title fight and you don’t get much bigger than this, unless patriotic conscience led them to help their country to fight the Nazi invaders. Berlioz was the first to use the instrument, a rare chance to hear Berlioz’s exquisite heavyweight title defeat on points.
Learning the Marche au Supplice from Symphonie Fantastique has indeed been a hellacious battle. I’m not going for the knockout… I’m hoping just to go the distance.
I like how much this sounds like Monty Python.
The last head has been severed in A Place of Greater Safety, the irony of the title indubitably clear, and now I come to this, with my name on it, no less! I don’t know Les Troyens, but I see a boxing match is included, yes? Your piece here on the subject is a real mind-bender, and agreed that Python is not far off the mark. Am I right to assume it’s more flarf? I’m curious about the underlying texts you used. And, BTW, let me not neglect to say congrats on getting though the Marche! As I believe Rob Holland has already noted, you are definitely a Renaissance man!
I actually don’t know Les Troyens. The only other piece of Berlioz’s that I am familiar with is his next Symphony, “Harold in Italy,” and that’s only because one of the movements from that work is on the program for our March concert as well. (It’s a lot less challenging).
The genesis of this was the offhand joke I made to you about going 15 rounds with Berlioz and losing. This is flarf- I did a Google search for “Berlioz heavyweight title fight” or something like that, then edited until I found the poem underneath.
Thanks for the congrats, but I’m afraid it’s a bit premature… you and Rob are too kind. I’m nowhere near ready to perform it. I’m still relatively new to the instrument (just under a year), and I’m still learning how to play on the fly. I have no business attempting something this complicated at this stage of the game, but hell, I was performing Mozart just eight weeks after starting the instrument, so what else is new?
And again, thank you, it’s very kind of you, but I don’t feel like a Renaissance man. Sometimes- a lot sometimes- I feel like a wannabe. I am still struggling badly to find my voice. I can use aleatoric methods and flarf just fine, but if I am trying to express something in my own voice, it’s as if I am still blocked. That’s what happened with the poem about the piano soloist a couple of nights ago. I struggled mightily just to come up with that.
I can’t say that I remember listening to anybody’s title fight in 1972. I was just a baby.