July 14, 2009

Bad Law?

Igor Stravinsky's Mug Shot
Anything you read about pianist, composer and conductor Igor Stravinsky must mention his arrest for tweaking the US National Anthem. Wiki: "On April 15, 1940, Igor Stravinsky's unconventional major seventh chord in his arrangement of the Star-Spangled Banner led to his arrest by the Boston police for violating a federal law that prohibited the reharmonization of the National Anthem."

There seems to be no record of Igor doing time in a federal penitentiary, so the music police must have let him off with a warning. The law must have been repealed. Somehow, I find myself wishing the current Congress would spend more time deliberating such weighty matters. Some silly music laws would be more palatable than the results of their current efforts to reharmonize our Constitution to suit national socialist thought.
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The old feeder never much liked Stravinsky's stuff. I admit that, as a kid, I liked the adaptation of The Rite of Spring that Walt Disney used in Fantasia. This might be because it wasn't a real ballet, or because Stravinsky himself called it "execrable", only changing his tune after seeing the color of Walt's money.
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Shouldn't Roseanne Barr have been severely punished for this?

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