The Man beHind a Myth

It's been awhile since I posted here for reasons I might get around to writing about some time. But I still find occasional inspiration in the odd Facebook conversation. And many of my Facebook conversations are odd. Also, many of my Facebook conversations involve me making fun of violas, Haydn, and Hindemith. I recently proposed that some of my friends (including a violist) who think highly of these two H-men should look to reconfigure Boston's venerable Handel and Haydn Society as the Hindemith and Haydn Society, replacing the annual Messiah performances with the crowd-pleasing tones of Das Unaufhörliche. Who would turn down a chance to see a German oratorio with a title that translates as "The Incessant?"

And the truth is, I appreciate plenty of things about Haydn, Hindemith, and even - horrible as it is to have to hear - the viola. But it's more fun to make fun, so when my violist friend tried to say his deep admiration for Hindemith is not just a function of being a violist (Hindemith was a violist who wrote significantly in alto clef), I said "Ha," and also created this useful graphic to illustrate the Hindemithian hypnosis that is likely at play:


A few days and comments down the road, friend violist offered this amusing graphic which alludes to the composer's intensely critical personality:

The idea of Virtual Hindemith judging immediately brought to mind a memorable Tom Cruise scene from one of my three favorite movies of all time. (Any chance we can get Cruise to star in a Hindemith biopic?) And thus, it wasn't long before I was doing my own video mashup of a stern Hindemith photo with Tom's hyper-focused delivery. My interest in musical mashups should be well-known to anyone who's read 0.3% of this blog, but it was fun to explore the mashup idea in the visual realm. I think it really works!