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I've tried to make Brahms, Chopin, Rachmaninov and Leroy Anderson intelligible to modern audiences and to our troops. I may have given some of our troops a beautiful moment in their overseas lives, but to be honest, most people don't appreciate what these men did. Unless you've had the education or have taken the time to go into their work on your own, there is probably no purpose to further projects based on classical composers.

Prior to those projects, I did the various Brill Building composers, the British pop composers of the late Sixties, and songwriters such as Jimmy Webb, P. F. Sloan and Phil Ochs.

Until I get a real brainstorm for a serious composer, I'm going to fall back on the "Rockumentary" project I started in college. It's more mainstream, and I think it will appeal to a larger segment of our audience.

In the meantime, here is that Barber piece for baritone and string quartet from 1935, based on the Matthew Arnold poem.

Samuel Barber: "Dover Beach" w/Barber on vocals from a 1935 RCA recording

Samuel Barber: "Dover Beach" w/Fischer-Dieskau and the Julliard Quartet

This is a two-handkerchief piece. Both Arnold and Barber anticipated the horrors of the 20th Century's wars.

You do a wonderful job.

My Dad (at the age of 17!) did the same kind of thing you are doing. On his ship in the South Pacific, he played Classical records for his shipmates, and told the stories behind the music. The favorite record on shipboard was “Excerpts from Faust” the opera by Charles Gounod. The sailors loved the sexy story and the music was, of course, wonderful. Soon they were whistling the Soldiers’ March while they were swabbing the decks or manning the Anti-Aircraft guns. Instead of ‘Reveille”, the Captain authorized dad to pipe “String of Pearls” through the sound system. So it wasn’t all Classical.

Dad passed away in 2011, and FR was there for me. I loved him so much.

Your Music posts remind me of him.

You should consider Publizing Frank Zappa where all worlds meet, overlap and sometimes colide. He was better schooled in classical music and modern jazz than any rock musician before or since. He sometimes made John Cage look mainstream. Who else could interpret Ravel's Bolero as reggae?

In-A-Gadda-Stravinsky
~ Frank Zappa ~

Ravel's Bolero
~ Frank Zappa ~

Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus
~ Frank Zappa ~

Revised Music for Low Budget Orchestra
~ Frank Zappa & Jean Luc Ponty ~

Approximate
~ Frank Zappa ~