Today has been such an interesting day. Up early, exercise, remember all of the stuff I have to take with me for all of the stops I have to make.........This has been an experiment in memory retention. Happily, I remembered ninety-six of the ninety-eight details I needed to. Fortunately, the two I forgot were not "deal-breakers".
Part of the morning's sojourn included taking some very old photographs to be professionally scanned to a business I was unfamiliar with, in an unfamiliar area. This business came highly recommended and, while I will not have a definitive impression of its work until my photos are done, I can say that my first impression was a positive one. I was able to chalk this errand off my list before the rain began, although the wind was already cranked up well before dawn. No photos were blown away by the wind and do droplets of rain besmirched the finishes of the vintage photos.
As I drove all over the map, or so it seemed, I was accompanied by my favorite FM radio station, a mostly classical station out of Madison, WI. The variety of air play was its normal mix, but there did seem to be a little heavier attention to eighteenth and nineteenth orchestral symphonies than usual. When the second of the classical symphonies came to a conclusion, my attention was captured by the final notes of the piece. I don't remember the composer, but I do recall the signature "Ta-Dah" of the last two notes......or what I thought was the final "Ta-Dah", only to hear it followed by dum, dum, dum.
I don't know if you are a classical music aficionado or performer, but if you are either, you will recognize the penchant that classical and romantic-era composers had for keeping the listener guessing as to which was the real "last" note - or series of "last" notes. Dozens, if not hundreds, of compositions ended with the iconic, "Ta-Dah", giving the listener the impression of musical completion. In a split second of auditory bliss, the listener relaxes, dropping the shoulders, beginning an exhalation of "aahh", suddenly to find him or herself jolted out of the reverie by more "Ta-Dahs", dum, dum, dums, and maybe even one more "final" final "Ta-Dah". When you think you have listened to the final-final-final "Ta-Dah", a wariness of expectation is still present and only dissipates when the radio announcer's voice comes through the air waves, stating the name of the selection, its composer and who performed the music.
I would love to know how the decision-making process went for a composer to decide how he (mostly he's, some she's) would end a composition. Was the single "Ta-Dah" predicated upon an urgent need to put down the quill pen and use the water closet? Did the chap, perhaps, have a deadline for some Count or Viscount, who was demanding a finished product? Did the composer's quill pen simply run out of ink? On the other hand, if it was a lengthy concluding section, was the composer feeling relaxed? Perhaps he had one too many glasses of wine, sherry, scotch, vermouth, or whatever his beverage of choice was. Perhaps, he had a contract to write X-number of measures and could not come up with another section of development and needed to write "Ta-Dah" after "Ta-Dah" followed by the necessary number of "dum, dum, dum's" to complete the required number of measures.
Many suppositions and theories put forth on my part, none of which have one single ounce of learned deduction to back them up. Therefore, "Ta-Dah" would be totally appropriate at this moment, before the readers add "dumb, dumb, dumb".
Ancora imparo
