If you drive east on Santa Monica Blvd into West Hollywood and jog over to Sunset and turn left you can find Stravinsky's home. That's Igor Stravinsky, the composer. The reason I bring him up is my old conducting teacher, Emanuel Balaban knew him in Monte Carlo through the Ballet Russe and I ran across some notes from a music lesson and we were studying The Rite of Spring....and one thing led to another as he said that he had visited Stravinsky in Hollywood blah blah ... and that is the address. Frankly, he doesn't look like a friendly face.
The radio program I'm listening to made mention of Stravinsky this morning although I didn't know in what context other than the original score is being sold or recently sold for a huge sum of money. I have a score in my library that I bought for the music lessons and the price is $10 which was huge in 1971.
It is difficult to get into that music. Fun to listen to but very hard work for everyone involved performing it. It even looks difficult on the page but that is mostly because it is folk music and like all folk songs that are very old, the rhythms are not exactly easy to produce in our notation. No kidding. Think of the last version of the Star Spangled Banner that you have heard butchered at football game by the latest no-talent. It would be virtually impossible to write that out in musical notation.
Disney brought us all a version of it in Fantasia. I still remember seeing that when I was a kid and thinking it was the scariest music ever.
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