Sound Just About Right

Confession time:  I get George Frederic Handel (1685-1789) and Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) mixed up.  Perhaps that is as dumb to some as confusing Mick Jagger and Mick Jones or Elvin Jones with Philly Joe Jones to someone who knows some basic jazz touchstones.  (Etta Jones with Etta James is an easier screw up in the heat of a memory scan.)  Considering their respective globe-spins on earth, they did share fifty-six or seven years together.  Joe would certainly have been aware of Fred. 

Before I went for a ride, I allotted a moment or two to think of something to listen to and I thought of Handle’s Water Music Suites.  I’d had them on a cassette thirty years ago on a vacation driving around in Italy which I remember as crystalline.  But when I typed Handle in I get the Messaiah, which is not what I want to hear, and as soon as I’ve positively associated Handle with the Messiah, I’ve decided what I really want is Haydn, the composer behind the Water Music Suites.  I don’t see this selection in the Haydn bin, but soon have a collection of his piano sonatas on that sound just about right. 

The Wiki page has a very flattering portrait of Haydn, where he looks like a combination of the first President and the Kinks first drummer, Mick Avory.  I hadn’t realized he spanned the work of Mozart to Beethoven and that he was a friend of both men.  I also, eventually figured out Haydn never wrote the “Water Music Suite.”  That must have been Handle who I shall have to dig into on another day. 

Speaking to someone in Nanjing, he asks if it is a nice day.  I tell him it is.  And then, as I’ve done before I take a picture of what I’m seeing and send it to him immediately on wechat, which is the app we’re talking on, anyway.  He says it looks nice and I agree.  Yes.  Those cedars are “my” trees.  The canopy further out is not. 

Monday, 01/06/20