Ping
A handsome man, who mysteriously held the cognitive dissonance “I am a second rate composer” with “I compose music like turning on water”. The French Military March of the Suite Algerienne is one of the greatest of that form. Posthumously teamed up with poet Ogden Nash and humorist/impressionist Jonathan Winters in Carnival of the Animals (Amazon), musical humor he wouldn’t allow to be released in his lifetime, presumably because of its effect on his academic reputation. (He-hawing jackasses played by violins, dancing dinosaur bones played by xylophone.) Look at one of his dozen or so photographic portraits, a magnificent Monty Wooleyesque white beard impeccably trimmed & combed. An attempt at seriousness with one eye, but an irrepressible smile in the other eye of a really, genuinely nice man.