Thanks, Howard. That's really quite funny. Stewart McCoy.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Howard Posner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "lute list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 9:03 PM Subject: Re: State of Lutenet (was Size of the lute world) And as long as I've sort of touched on it, I know this is OT, but in light of recent remarks by Roman, Stewart and Matanya, the following excerpt from a set of program notes I recently finished somehow seems relevant: "While in the hospital recuperating from his heart attack, Shostakovich read through a collection of poems by Alexander Blok.... The dark tone of Blok¹s poems must have matched Shostakovich¹s mood. When the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, a longtime friend, asked him to compose songs for cello and soprano for Rostropovich and his wife, Galina Vishnevskaya, Shostakovich turned to Blok¹s poems. A few days after he finished the cycle on February 3, 1967, he told a visiting friend that though he had conceived it well before Rostropovich¹s request, he was unable to compose it until he found a bottle of brandy that his wife‹who was otherwise vigilant and ruthless in keeping her ailing husband away from potentially harmful substances‹had not hidden thoroughly enough. After a reviving shot of the brandy, Shostakovich said, he finished the cycle in three days." Cheers, Howard
