For my 2018-2019 Project – timed to conclude the month after my 59th birthday in 2019 – I will listen to Beethoven and Mozart. (Or maybe even just Beethoven for the full year, depending on how much I dig listening to Beethoven’s symphonies from the perspectives and interpretations of the conductors.)
This isn’t my first rodeo.
Every few years, I self impose a year of exploration – usually involving music, movies, and literature.
For example, I started doing this sort of thing nearly a decade ago (June 10, 2009 – June 8, 2010, to be precise) when I spent one year…
Listening to every one of Mozart’s compositions from the famed Philips Complete Mozart Edition, which was – at that time – the most complete and revered collection of Mozart performances assembled. (180 Days With Mozart and Me)
Watching every Oscar-winning movie – from the silent Wings in 1927 to, at that time, Slumdog Millionaire in 2008. (81 Days With Oscar and Me)
Reading every novel Hemingway wrote. (70 Days With Hemingway and Me)
Reading Aristotle’s Poetics. (30 Days With Aristotle and Me)
It was a grueling, unrelenting schedule. But I loved it. I learned so much. Plus, the bragging rights, alone, on something like that were worth it. In fact, to be honest, I undertook the project because I wanted to accomplish something big before my 50th birthday. I didn’t want another year to go by without doing something spectacular. That, to me, was my idea of spectacular. Some cats like to skydive. Or run with the bulls in Pamplona. Or, I don’t know, discover a cure for cancer. Not me. I like to stimulate my mind and assuage my hunger for creative discoveries. Go figure.
I tried it again a year later (June 30, 2011 – June 28, 2012) starting with the films of Billy Wilder (27 Days With Billy Wilder and Me) and the entire creative output of Bach (155 Days With Bach and Me). But I stopped shortly into the Bach exploration because of a family emergency and because I could not stand to hear one more period-piece instrument play Bach. I detest the harpsichord. In small doses, it’s wonderful. Very Baroque. But day after day after day it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. I had to search for another Bach complete works set that used contemporary instruments. I found one.
But the momentum was broken. I never returned to that project.
Yet, I missed that mental and emotional stimulation – so much so that I overcompensated for the next one. Not content with just one year, this time I set up a schedule for three solid years and called it 1095 Days With the Masters and Me.
I got through the first year and a half, which consisted of:
The complete works of Haydn (Oct. 1, 2013 – Feb. 27, 2014) – 150 days
The complete films of Woody Allen (Feb. 28, 2014 – April 14, 2014) – 46 days
The complete works of Beethoven (April 15, 2014 – July 9, 2014) – 86 days
The Great Gatsby, every novel, every movie version (July 10, 2014 – Aug. 3, 2014) – 24 days
The complete works of Brahms (Aug. 4, 2014 – October 1, 2014) – 58 days
I loved it. Learned a lot…especially that I was totally flipped out by Beethoven. I mean, that guy touched my soul like no other composer (save Mozart) had to date. If I accomplished nothing else, at least I discovered how much I love Beethoven.
I had two more years lined up:
But I couldn’t do it.
Three years of listening, reading, researching, blogging proved to be too daunting. Plus, I learned two things about myself – and key to my projects:
1. Reading and blogging is impossible (for me) to do at the same time. I can listen to music anywhere, and did. That was fun, and easy. Ditto for watching the movies of Woody Allen, or – before that – all the Oscar winners. I could blog and watch them at the same time. But reading and writing was not possible to do at the same time. So my workload for that project doubled. I had to read at one point during the day, and blog at another, and
2. I prefer creating a new web site with every new project. My 1095 Days site was one huge site that was impossible to navigate quickly and didn’t afford me a creative break between artistic discoveries. Yet, creating all those different web sites would have been another Herculean task.
All this while I was trying to service clients and work on my screenplays.
So, I walked away from 1095 Days With the Masters and Me after a year and a half. (Thankfully, not before I discovered Beethoven!)
I hadn’t imposed one of these year-long explorations since.
Well, until I discovered Anton Bruckner.
I was hooked by Anton Bruckner from the minute I heard Symphony No. 8 on WBLV FM 88.9, a local Classical radio station. I don’t remember now if it was Herbert von Karajan or Klaus Tennstedt conducting.
I bought two CDs immediately after it was finished: Karajan conducting the Eighth on the Deutsche Grammophon label and Tennstedt conducting the Fourth and the Eighth on the EMI label.
According to Amazon, I bought Karajan first, then Tennstedt 10 days later. (Both in 2009.) But that’s doesn’t mean I heard Karajan first. But it’s likely.
Doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that, as I learned first-hand, music is subjective. I had listened to Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Brahms, Caruso, and Beethoven. And it was Mozart and Beethoven that hooked me, especially Beethoven. Mozart’s creative output was 2-3 times greater than Beethoven’s. But Beethoven packed an emotional wallop for me that instantly grabbed me.
Same for Bruckner. He grabbed me.
I can’t explain why I was immediately drawn to the symphonies of Bruckner. All I know is ever since I heard Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 I’ve wanted to hear all of his symphonies, and hear them from the perspective of various conductors.
So, in 2016, almost seven years to the day after I first fell in love with Bruckner, I decided to make it happen. (I’m not kidding, either. According to Amazon, I placed my order for Karajan’s Bruckner on June 16, 2009. I placed my order for Jochum’s box set of Bruckner symphonies on June 19, 2016.)
Eager to get started, I created two more web sites which set up two more self-imposed music projects:
63 More Days With Bruckner And Me
Those 207 days were some of the most enjoyable of my life. I discovered I absolutely loved the works of Anton Bruckner.
But that was 2017. As the old saying goes, “What have you done for me lately?”
I’ve been hankering for another musical project ever since.
So…
My project for 2018-2019 will be in two legs:
162 Days With Beethoven and Me (July 21, 2018 – December 28, 2018)
(I’ll take the last three days of 2018 off, then…)
200 Days With Mozart and Me (January 1, 2019 – July 19, 2019)
Total: 365 days, with only three days off all year.
And that’s not just any Mozart, either.
I plan to listen to every disc in the new, definitive, Mozart 225 box set. Yeah. You got that right. The mother of all Mozart collections.
But that’s if I don’t get so hooked on listening to Beethoven that I don’t gather up another two dozen conductors and turn my six-month Beethoven project into a 12-month Beethoven project.
Time will tell.