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Last night was a date night for Becky and me. We dropped the girls off with some friends for a couple of hours and headed to Casa Las Glorias for the Mexican food I’d been craving all week. Darn tasty stuff. (What’s this white stuff on my nachos? (Sorry, square peg joke. Carry on.)) Unexpectedly, they had a musician strolling the aisles at the restaurant, singing and playing the guitar. He was singing what I’d consider to be typical Mexican restaurant music, and doing a good job of it.

He finished another song in Spanish, thanked the patron at the table next to ours for a tip, and then started on another guitar strum. This one sounded vaguely familiar. I was trying to place it, and then he started singing, and I was dumbfounded. “Well it looks like five thousand miles broke the camel’s back… but it’s not as though I had a plan to win you back…” At this point Becky looked at me quizzically, because she recognized the song, too. No way. NO. WAY. The strolling guitarist in Casa Las Glorias is playing a Caedmon’s Call song?!? What the heck!

The young man continued strolling and singing while we finished our dinner. He had an assortment of Mexican songs, but he was also verging into pop music territory with some John Mayer, Dave Matthews, and the like. When we finished dinner I gave him a tip and we discussed Caedmon’s for a couple minutes. He was surprised to find another fan in the restaurant. He admitted that the latest album he owns is Back Home, and I encouraged him to get ahold of Share The Well and that they have a new album coming out in August. Then we parted ways; he kept singing, we headed off to continue our evening out.

I have a feeling it’ll be many days before I hear a Caedmon’s Call song sung in a restaurant again.

I’ve had two songs running pretty much on repeat today. This happens to me on frequent occasion; I get stuck on some song and I will just loop it over and over. It usually takes a day or two for the compulsion to go away.

The first one is Nothing Left To Lose by Mat Kearney. Why this song? It gives me a feeling of calm; laid-back, content, happy. Not so much that it makes me calm, content and happy, but that it reminds me that it’s possible. I’ll admit right here that it doesn’t have a lot to do with the lyrics - I probably couldn’t sing along with the song if I wanted to - it’s more to do with the music, the melody. Good stuff. Why is it stuck in my head? I think it started back on Sunday while we were eating breakfast at McDonalds while waiting for the rain to stop. This song came on over the McD’s muzak system, and my brother Andrew and I both pretty much simultaneously started singing along. It was pretty cool

The other song is Coldplay’s Swallowed In the Sea. Again, I haven’t taken a lot of time to try to figure out the lyrics. What I love in this song is the way they build it sonically. It starts out pretty sparse, just some keyboards and a little bit of pad. Then they build it in, first with the drums, and finally with the guitars and vocal harmony, until at the end they’ve built up this massive sound… it’s so… there.

Am I the only one that suffers from this compulsion? What songs have been stuck in your head lately?

So last night I had the chance to do some practice on the pipe organ at Central Park Presbyterian Church in preparation for the talent show coming up a week from Sunday. I showed up at 6:45 and the kind man had already turned on the lights and turned up the heat so I could practice. I pulled out my copy of Tocatta and Fugue in D-Minor and got right to it.

Two hours later was reminded of a time soon after I started taking piano lessons when I swore I never wanted to play the piano again. The song in question was the Suzuki classic Lightly Row, and the challenge was to make the left hand play something different than the right hand was playing. Fortunately, I got through it, and my hands have been happily individually dexterous for years now. Enter the pipe organ, which includes two manuals of keys, plus two octaves of pedals.

For twenty-some years now, I have trained my brain that the left hand follows the notes on the bottom staff. But not on the organ! Early on in the Bach piece, there is a little pattern where the hands play some separated chords, just stepping down: B-flat, A-minor, G-minor, A. The pedal moves in parallel, playing D C B-flat, A. It must’ve taken me 30 minutes of practice to try to play those two lines. My left hand just kept getting lost.  I think I pulled something, somewhere in my brain.

I found I can play the pedals pretty well by themselves; the intervals are pretty easy to figure out, and with a little practice I’ll know where the notes are without having to look. I can play the pedals and the right hand together without too much effort. But the left hand just doesn’t want to cooperate. I’ll try to get over to the church again next week for some more practice and we’ll see how much I can get worked out. Worst case, I’ll creatively omit some of the harder pedal parts for the talent show… I’ll feel bad about doing it, but it’ll be better than not playing it at all.

One other thing took getting used to with that organ: the timing. Since it’s a real pipe organ, driven by real air, there is a perceptible time lag between when you press the key and when you hear the note. When you’re playing long held notes, it’s not that big a deal. But when you’re playing Bach with all the sixteenth-notes, you have to mentally force yourself to make your fingers do the right thing and ignore the timing. It took me a while to get that figured out, but I think it makes sense now.

Classical music has had a big influence in my life. My parents are both lovers of classical music. (Probably my dad more than my mom, but I’m not too sure there.) It was pretty much all we had on at home growing up. Lots of ::wikipedia(“Bach”):: and ::wikipedia(“Beethoven”):: all the way through ::wikipedia(“Rimsky_Korsakov”,“Rimsky-Korsakov”):: and ::wikipedia(“Igor_Stravinsky”,“Stravinsky”)::. I started playing the piano at age 7 and thus entered a bunch more classical music. I played lots of Bach, Chopin, Beethoven, Debussy, and Grieg. I really enjoyed it. I was the nerdy kid who at age 12 listened to a NPR program where they compared two new recordings of Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, and enjoyed it. But I digress.

It’s hard to say which composer or era is my favorite. I love the Baroque for Bach (Das Wohltemperierte Klavier) and Handel (The Messiah, Water Music). I dig the classical and romantic periods: the beauty of Mozart, the intensity of Beethoven, the breadth of the piano works of Chopin. I about wore out a tape of Haydn Cello Concertos whilst growing up, and Dennis Brain’s legendary recording of Mozart Horn Concertos is never far from my iPod’s playlist. But then you get to Rachmaninoff. Of all the composers, I adore Rachmaninoff. I fell in love with his second Piano Concerto in my teens, managed to learn enough to hack my way through the easier bits of it, then in college reacquainted myself with Vespers and more of his solo piano works. They’re ridiculously difficult to play, but remain my favorites. And don’t let me forget the French guys like Debussy and Poulenc.

I have to confess that my appreciation for “classical music” written in the later parts of the 20th century wanes quite a bit. I have yet to develop the love for Stravinsky that my father has. Neither am I real fond of Ives, Barber, or Bartok. Aaron Copland is on my “love him” list, though, as is Ralph Vaughan Williams. As for real modern stuff, I’m not really current on it. I’ve heard a bit of Alan Hovhaness that I liked. By the time you get the late 20th century, the orchestral stuff I really enjoy has mostly been written as film scores by guys like John Williams, John Barry, and James Horner.

So, more than you wanted to know about my tastes in classical music, right? Feel free to leave comments below.