2022, holidays, home, Media, Theatre, Uncategorized

Waiting For Einaudi

37 Comments

Latest November I decided to treat myself to a CD of the string group La Pieta playing the music of Ludovico Einaudi. He is a modern Italian composer, still living, and I love his compositions.

I ordered the disc through Amazon from a place in Oxfordshire, England. I was told the order would arrive in time for Christmas. By the middle of December there was no indication that it had shipped. Husband was anxious for it to come because he knew I was really looking forward to getting it. Our conversations were reminiscent of dialog by Samuel Beckett.

“Has it arrived?”

“No, but they said it was coming.”

“When will it come?”

“They said it would be here by now.”

I got a message in mid January that the package was lost in transit. I reordered from another US company, and finally, in mid March, the disc arrived. Of course, although it was brand new, it required substantial cleaning before it would play without skips and pops.

Who is your favorite or least favorite modern composer? Any interesting delivery stories? Have you ever seen Waiting For Godot?

37 thoughts on “Waiting For Einaudi”

  1. Saw waiting for Godot at my high school. Didn’t get it then, don’t get it now.

    Favorite/least favorite “modern” composer is quite subjective. How far does one go back and still call a composer “modern?” If we say “20th Century or later,” then I’ve always liked Copeland. But, Duke Ellington is perhaps the greatest American composer of the 20th Century. I’m also a big fan of Shostakovich. And there’s another jazz composer, Thad Jones, who I absolutely love.

    Here’s my favorite song of his. Wife and I used it as one of our wedding procession/recession songs.

    I was never a fan of Arnold Schoenberg or John Cage. Phillip Glass wrote some tolerable pieces but I don’t revere him.

    No interesting delivery stories come to mind.

    Chris in Owatonna

    **BSP** Come and “Meet the Author” at the Owatonna Public Library Saturday at 10:00 am. We’ll have coffee and conversation and I’ll give a Powerpoint presentation that explains in more detail than you might want to know how I came to be an author starting when I was in my 50s. I’ll also talk about the genesis of my main character, Matt Lanier and how each of the three stories in the series came to be.

    Spoiler alert–I’ll post a few embarrassing (or not) photos of me wayyyy back in the day.

    **End BSP**

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  3. I’m afraid I’ve paid very little attention to modern (I’m assuming 20th century) “classical” composers except for Aaron Copeland and some Philip Glass. I don’t enjoy anything that’s very dissonant, and hardly anything atonal…

    But those who’ve made into the popular culture – I love Leonard Bernstein, and as Chris mentioned, several of the jazz greats. I currently have a book found at the Winona State Library titled “Blues People – Negro Music in White America” – from 1963 by LeRoi Jones that gives a lot of historical background, is truly fascinating.

    We’ve had here in Winona an unfortunate rash of packages being stolen from front porches over the past couple of years, so I’m very careful if I order anything online. So far no problems except s-l-o-w delivery times.

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      1. I’ve seen it twice. It’s a very strange play without much visual stimulus, and where nothing much happens. The first time I saw it, it was a requirement for a contemporary drama class I was taking at the time, and I really thought it was a waste of time. Some years later, however, I was intrigued enough to go see it on my own initiative when produced by the Guthrie Theater. Still not sure what to make of it. Is it The Emperor’s New Clothes all over again? Or is there really something there? I may have to see it a third time to decide, but at this stage of my life, I don’t know how likely that is to happen.

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    1. That is the piece that got me hooked, too! My daughter played the violin in high school, and wanted to play it for a recital, but her teacher had her play Meditation from Thais by Massenet instead. Welcome to the trail.

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I sent several packages to the wrong address this winter. I was certain that I changed the address to AZ but something happened, so that the N95 masks and the dog treats were delivered to the MN address. I cannot figure out what happened during the order that changed the address. It is so frustrating. I checked. I double checked, and still the platform did not send the goods where I needed them. My neighbor house sits for us, so she just stacked the packages with the mail she did not forward. But we still had to find the dog treats there, that clean teeth—man were they expensive when we found them over the counter.

    I have not ever seen Waiting for Godot. Everything thing about it seems utterly dull so I have avoided it. The one riff on it I thought was funny was from Alexander McCall Smith who featured it in a plot line as one of his flights of fancy. A very narcissistic character in one of his series is a volunteer mom at school in the 2nd grade. The kids are to put on a play and the mom chooses this play with two characters, and casts her son as the main character, then casts his mortal enemy in the class as the other character. Because the cast has only two people, no other parents, families, children, or the teacher have the least interest in the play in which little happens. Everyone, including her son wander off and the entire production falls flat. No one but her attends, and she can hardly get her son to show up. It made me giggle but did not motivate me to explore this play any more.

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    1. OT. I made it through the first back at the office. What lousy weather! What kind of welcome home is this? I have had to wait a week to set up my cold frame and plant my cold weather seeds. That is the project for tomorrow.

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  6. Tired of Waiting
    Favorite: Lennon and McCartney
    The subject of God would be OT although some Occupational Therapists might believe they are God and make you wait.

    Liked by 5 people

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  9. Yes, one of the keys to the play is to drop the ot from the title.
    Isn’t one of the joys of the arts how we all find our thing, our

    Liked by 7 people

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    1. (Vey bad fingers!) — own forms to which to respond?
      I listened to an Einaudi album in Amazon music. Sorry fans of him, that is the sort of music that I find no response to. I am not a fan of much piano music.
      And I do very much like Waiting for Godot. I had AP students read it in the late 1980’s. They got it immediately. I had them read at the same time “Snow” by James Joyce, a very subtle story in which like Godot, not much happens. They got that story as well. Robin Willams, Steve Martin and Bill Irwin did Godot on Broadway and played it for laughs. Fun and funny for me, despite Steve Martin’s weak acting. You probably do not know of Bill Irwin. A superb performer in many genres, such as being a clown, and I am not fond of clowns. For fans of Northern Exposure, if you can go that far back, he was the nontalking man who falls for Marelene.
      I do not like much music in the genre of modern. I like Copeland, especially “Fanfare for the Common man and “Quiet City, as well as “Appalachin Spring”, but his star has sort of fallen, in part I think because he is not modern. (And BTW the correct pronunciation of it according to Copeland is “Row–dee-oo” and not “Row-day-oo”.)
      I do not respond well to Shakspere (one of his spellings of the name) I a former English teacher say that. Do not attack me for this or try to straighten me out about this. I find much of it overwrought and tedious. I get all the thing about the language, admire, praise it o the skies. But . . .
      We all find our place in the arts, if we search.
      The 1930’s to 50’s were a very rich time for American composers, all over the place, jazz, the theater, and classical sorts of music.
      Amazon music, or Apple is fun. I have gathered up all the Requiems I can find, 7 of them. Also found some wonderful of forms of choral music.
      There is a delightful play called “Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread.” I bert he loves it. The characters keep going back and repeating some of the lines, then new ones, then back again and so on.

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  11. I worked on a production of ‘Godot’ way back when. The director, Dr. Maurice Barry, was a Dr. of psychiatry at Mayo Clinic so I feel like he had a good understanding of the show. (And he threw the great New Years Eve parties I may have spoken of).
    The set was only an all black tree made up of junk.
    Besides the two main characters that are ‘waiting’, there are two other characters that bring a message. One of those characters has a speech that’s about a page and a half long. Pretty much said on a dead run with hardly a breath in between lines. Or at least in this production it was. I don’t recall what the script says about it. It’s just a really long speech.

    I was also in a spoof on Godot called ‘Waiting for Nobody’. Two truck drivers that never do get where they’re going. And they meet space aliens along the way. It was very strange. I hope you never have to see it. 🙂

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  12. I was not familiar with Einaudi’s music, so I’ve spent a fair part of the morning listening on YouTube. So far, I love what I’ve heard of Life – Ludovico Einaudi by Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà.

    I’m not well versed in “modern” or “contemporary” composers. Aaron Copland, Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich are the about the extent of it in “long haired” music that I’m familiar. I have heard some Schoenberg, John Cage and Philip Glass as well, but can’t say that I have developed much of an affinity for any of it. I will say this, though, I do appreciate it when a contemporary piece is sandwiched into the program of a live performance of a good orchestra. A lot of people, including me, find it challenging to seek out music we’re not familiar with and tend not to, so I appreciate the exposure. Sometimes it sparks and interest, sometimes not. You can bring a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink.

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  13. I think it’s interesting that so many of us are placing Stravinsky in the modern era when he was writing 100 years ago. He is of course my choice as well because I couldn’t think of any other modern composers – I recognize the names and have heard the music of some of the other composers mentioned here today but probably could not have come up with them on my own without assistance. I do like Stravinsky very much.

    I was the stage manager for production of Waiting for Godot when I was at Carlton. And while I like it and I think it has some interesting philosophical points, having to sit through all of the rehearsals and then two weeks of the play was a little sleep inducing.

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    1. I consider anyone whose life has overlapped in a significant way with my own as within the “modern” era. Stravinsky died in 1971, so he most definitely qualifies on that score. Another reason why I put him in that category is because I remember being struck by how different his music was when I first heard it. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it at first. It wasn’t till I saw The Firebird and Petrushka performed at the Bolshoi that I was sold. To me he ushered in a whole new era and musical sensibility.

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