A Slow Process Today

Tuesday's truck night literally kicked my ass.  After coming home and falling asleep while watching NCIS: New Orleans, I took an impromptu day off from the blog and slept all day.  I mean all day and into the evening before arising in a fog around 9:30 PM.  I also found the urge to nap irresistible around 10 AM this morning.  I lay down for a 'short' nap and slept until 1 PM.   So I am gradually getting my act together enough to put together this post.  Bear with me, it is a slow process today, lol..  

Luckily for your and I, I was productive over the weekend.  When I decided to create Ensemble Week, I went looking for some excellent examples of the form to share with you all week.  I was eminently successful, bookmarking all the videos into an Ensemble Week folder.  So the Music all week has been basically plug and play.  The Men, however, are another matter entirely.  It is my duty on a daily basis to sort through my over 150,000 photographic man art portraits to decide which ones to utilize for display that day.  Always a pleasurable task but somewhat time consuming nevertheless.  Once the Music and the Men are together, then it is a simple matter of putting all the pieces together both here and on tumblr.  That brings us to now.  

We therefore continue our exploration of the Musical Ensemble with this lovely Quintet in C Major, D 956 by Franz Schubert with an unusual score.  In classical instrumental music, any additional instrument (such as a piano, clarinet, oboe, etc.) joined to the usual string quartet (two violins, a viola, and a cello), gives the resulting ensemble its name, such as "piano quintet", "clarinet quintet", etc. A piece of music written for such a group is similarly named.  This Quintet however,  is scored for 2 Violins, Viola and 2 Cellos giving it its unique resonance.  Today's performance posted below is by the Brandis Quartet plus Wen-Sinn Yang as the 1st Cellist.

Over on my tumblr you will find one of Brahms most beautiful works in his String Quintet in F Major, Opus 88, also with an unusual score.  It is a "Viola Quintet" in that it is scored for String Quartet with a second Viola.  Brahms composed the work in three movements and described the quintet to his friend Clara Schumann as "one of [his] finest works".  He also told his publisher Fritz Simrock, "You have never before had such a beautiful work from me.".  The performance there is by musicians from Marlboro Music, Mitsuko Uchida, Artistic Director. 

Then, porque es Jueves, esta tiempo para mucho, macho hombres en pantalones fecha de denim (bacause it is Thursday, it is time for many macho men in pants made of denim).  You will find them in abundance in this edition of Men In Jeans posted down below.  Then over on my tumblr, you will find Colin Wayne, Your Hottie of the Day! who is so hot he makes you want to slide those jeans right down to the beach and worship at his alter.  Thanks for the visit, see you again soon.  Until next time as always, Enjoy