Satirical Vignettes

Why is it, if an amateur musician moves in next door/across the street/across the hall, they are always noodlers? You know: every day or so they pick up the instrument and noodle for half an hour or so. Noodling is when you just play random groups of notes, resembling no known melody or meter.

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The Oracle of Delphi said that Socrates was the wisest man in Athens and Socrates, sure that this could not be so, searched high and low for a wiser one finally concluding that if he were the wisest man it was simply because he knew he didn't know. Many are sure that they know something, but ones that are sure they do not know are far rarer. Am I sure this is true?

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And for a palate cleanser, some Scarlatti with anti-aircraft fire (around the 2 minute mark). Why? Because it was recorded in Paris by Wanda Landowska just before the Germans arrived in 1941.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKX42sJ8ako&feature=emb_logo

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Horace Walpole once wrote in a letter that "Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel."

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And while we are on quotes, here is my favorite from Edward Gibbon: “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.”

Now ask yourself, what are the prevailing modes of worship in our time?

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Let's end with some non-satirical Bach. This is the so-called Third Lute Suite by J. S. Bach, an arrangement of the Cello Suite No. 5 for Baroque lute. The lutenist is Klaudyna Żołnierek. I particularly love the two gavottes, found at the 15:24 mark, which I just learned myself this year.