If you search for something on Twitter, you get the option to subscribe to an RSS feed for that search term — which means that you can get alerted every time someone mentions something on Twitter. This can be fun; here’s what I’ve learned:
- Lots of people Twitter every piece of music they listen to. I’m surprised anyone reads to their Twitter streams…
- Welsh people really do call each other “boy bach”.
- Vivaldi is even more popular than you’d think, and a lot of people regard his music as relaxing. Sigh.
- There is a place in Oklahoma called Purcell, and people go on about it quite a lot.
- There is an athlete called Susan Kuijken. I don’t know if she’s related to Sigiswald.
- Bach’s Cello Suites are probably his most popular works. Good, they should be :-)
- There’s a large number of people who think that “lully” is a cute abbreviation for “lovely”…
- American people often pronounce “baroque” as “ba-roak” — which sounds odd to me, but makes just as much sense as the English “ba-rock” (especially given that the root is in Portuguese, where I imagine the sound of the “o” in barocco would have been halfway between our long and short “o” sounds). On the other hand, if I read the phrase “if it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it” one more time I will start screaming…
Comments 6
LOL! It drives me nuts when people call classical music relaxing. The Four Seasons in particular is about as relaxing as a roller coaster ride…
Posted 23 Mar 2009 at 4:11 pm ¶LOL - “if it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it”. WHy have I not heard this before?
Sorry if you’re screaming right now! I found it funny :)
Posted 23 Mar 2009 at 9:08 pm ¶@Sylvia — Exactly! Perhaps the only time they hear anything classical is when they’re stuck on hold to the electricity company and they hear the slow movements from the Four Seasons, deliberately chosen to calm angry customers and to stop them from greeting the customer service reps with a burst of profanity or threats of violence…
@Kim Ong — It’s OK, I’ve suppressed it to a pathetic whimper now ;-)
Posted 24 Mar 2009 at 12:22 am ¶I would call a piece relaxing if it resolves the tension that it builds. I call it ‘relaxing’ if I have the liberty to listen to a very demanding piece, but with no work pressures on my mind.
That’s not the same as saying it is elevator music, but I think most people use the term relaxing to mean ‘undemanding’ - in that case I definitely agree with Sylvia.
Posted 05 Apr 2009 at 3:40 pm ¶Welsh is my first language and I always call my sons and husband ‘boy’, but not often ‘boy bach’ I’m afraid. This is in the middle of a Welsh conversation :)
Posted 04 May 2009 at 7:18 pm ¶Thanks, Mags! Perhaps the “boy bach” thing is just people messing around on Twitter, then :-)
Posted 19 May 2009 at 1:18 pm ¶