Why Mozart Sucks

Well, he doesn't suck, I just don't enjoy his music very much.

If you've ever been in my presence when someone goes off on how wonderful Mozart is, you may be aware that I usually react with a groan, a negative rebuff, or some other dismissal of the man.

Mozart was a great composer, a musical genius, and few composers will ever possess the pure raw talent that he did. I occasionally (read: rarely) enjoy playing his string quartets - they're light and fun. But the fact of the matter is that from a musical standpoint, Mozart is simply boring.

Mozart mastered the style and form of pre-Beethoven classical music perfectly. However, unlike Beethoven who followed, he did little by way of innovation. Obviously in some pieces of music this just isn't true, but they're very few and far between. It's all very pleasant to listen to, but for me, it lacks substance, and that's something I really enjoy about music, something Beethoven and some of those that followed him did wonderfully.

You may undoubtedly be saying, "Hey, I know for a fact you love Rachmaninoff! That guy composed in a style that was outdated in his time and did nothing innovative whatsoever. Why is he better than Mozart?" Answer is that I don't think Rachmaninoff was necessarily "better" than Mozart, I just enjoy his work a lot more. The emotion that Mozart failed to instill in his music is present in Rachmaninoff, but both composers lack the innovation of a Beethoven, a Berlioz or a Mahler.

Obviously there is a lot to learn from studying Mozart's music; this is merely the best way I know how to explain why I personally don't like his music.

Also his cello parts are boring as hell.

Big Bowl of Pasta

I've been meaning to establish a personal blog for some time, as I have nowhere to post more in-depth thoughts or discussions, and Twitter and Facebook don't really serve that purpose for me. There does exist the lovely D4: The Blog, of which I am a contributing member, but there are things that I would like to post that do not belong there. As such, I felt the need to establish something of my own, and here is it. You may undoubtedly have some questions.

What are you going to post here?

Anything I feel like posting, duh. It'll range from music to politics to mixology/oenology to my life, though I promise I'll try to avoid this last one. Occasionally I'm going to try and post some things in the form op-eds.

You have an account on Wordpress, why is this on Blogger?

This is on Blogger for one reason - Google Wave currently has a bot developed to connect Google Wave directly to Blogger, and one does not yet exist for Wordpress. I may transfer everything to Wordpress in the event that such a bot is created. One of the reasons I was pushed over the edge in creating this was because I was hoping to test the functionality of the Google Wave Blogger bot. It doesn't appear that it's functional at this point in time quite yet...or rather, I have been unable to find instructions as of yet as to how one can link Bloggy (the bot) to my blog.

"Big Bowl of Pasta" has a deeper meaning, right? It's gotta be a metaphor for something really intellectual.

Nope. I hate deeper meaning.

As the illustrious Caitlin Rinn can attest, it's just a nickname. I have a hard time judging how much pasta I'm making without measuring, and I hate taking that extra step, so I just use sight to determine how much is enough. The result is heaping bowls of pasta for dinner, which Caitlin noticed was happening all too often and thus made that a nickname of mine. I couldn't think of a name for the blog, and that just sprung into my head, so there you have it.

To be honest, yes, I could easily think of many ways to turn it into something metaphorical and deep, but I'm not going to do that. You can if you want.

That's all for now, I suppose. Check back tomorrow; while I'm sure I'll fail miserably at it, I'm going to try and write something new every day.