Monday, January 10, 2011

The music of the morning


You know how you get music in your dreams? Last night I had this Bach fugue on my mind. It was the fugue I wrote about the other day. The music wove in and out of my dreams all night. Sometimes I was just hearing its cool layers. Sometimes I was playing it on the piano and in my dream I thought, I had not realized I had this thing memorized.

This morning, Monday morning, I am wondering if it is a good thing or not to have a piece like this on your brain all night. I mean, I love this music, and things could be worse, because I had just been to this hip-hop dance master class and I could have had hip-hop on my brain. But still, that fugue was starting to drive me crazy.

This morning I must politely show it the door.

So as not to offend Bach I will usher in instead his Coffee Cantata, a piece that has special relevance to me on Mondays.

I would die without my cup of coffee in the morning! Above is a portrait of me drinking it. It is by Canadian painter Oliver Ray. I cribbed it off is Web site.

My husband, Howard, he is giving up coffee temporarily, for whatever reason. "Fine, if you think it makes you a better person." That is what my boss at the Niagara Gazette said to me years ago when I tried the same experiment.

What I love about the Coffee Cantata, besides the robust music of course, is how it proves to us that coffee was debated about even in Bach's time. Even in the 1600s people were hemming and hawing about whether you should drink it or not. It is irrefutable proof!

This great chorus, the YouTube version only has it in German, so I will translate.

It means "Stick it, our ancestors drank coffee and we are going to drink it, too."

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