Tuesday, February 13, 2018
For some reason
For some reason I was remembering the horrible corruption of classical music that we were force-fed in elementary school. If I hadn't ALREADY been firmly locked into classical by then, these abominations would have ruined it.
We sang this to the tune of Haydn's 92nd:
Papa Haydn's dead and gone
but his mem'ry lingers on.
When his heart was filled with bliss
he wrote merry tunes like this.
WE DIDN'T SING THE GODDAMN BANG! That would have made the piece slightly fun, if still hopelessly dumb.
Worst of all, to Beethoven's 9th:
Ode to Joy was taken from
a symphony by Beethovum.
WHY, for Christ's sweet sake? Ode to Joy is already a SONG, and it already has ACTUAL ENGLISH WORDS** which rhyme properly. The actual words are not controversial by '50s standards, and might have been slightly inspiring to kids.
Instead, we sang a dry badly-rhymed dictionary description ABOUT the song, set to the tune OF the song. Unspeakably blasphemous. (I've mercifully forgotten the rest of the atrocity, and Google mercifully fails to supply it.)
Applying the same principle to a more modern song that happens to be running in my mental jukebox:
Obladi is a song by the Beeee-TLES
which includes a number of nonsense words.
Obladi also makes an asserrrrrr-TION
pertaining to the continuity of existence.
= = = = =
**For clarity, I'm thinking of the hymn 'Joyful joyful we adore thee', not the Schiller poem. The Schiller, with its violent mysticism, wouldn't have been suitable for 4th graders in public school, and the English translations are clumsy.
¶ 2:54 PM 
