Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Today is the fall harvest festival and feast day known in the US as Thanksgiving Day. The American tradition came about in Colonial Days when the Pilgrims celebrated their first harvest with a feast day shared with the indigenous population. The day is usually celebrated with the triple header of Food, Family and Football. When I was just a lad there was always the Detroit Lions playing some division rival in the early game then the prime time game was the annual renewal of the traditional Texas vs Texas AM rivalry game in the old Southwest Conference. The winning football team was for many years treated by alumni to a sexual feast afterwards at the Chicken Ranch brothel made famous by the Broadway play The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The musical was then turned into a movie starring Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds which spawned Dolly's hit I Will Always Love You. The song would later become one of Whitney Houston's signature anthems.
For sure we have a lot of Football going on today to go along with the Food and Family elements to the holiday. The NFL has a triple header for an all day feast of Football starting with the traditional early game which today pits the Detroit Lions against division rival Chicago Bears at 11:30 Central Time. Then the Dallas Cowboys, who got in on the Thanksgiving Day Game Tradition in the early 70's, play for First Place int the NFC East against their division rivals the Philadelphia Eagles at 3:30. This is followed by the night cap of the modern NFL's expansion of the Thanksgiving Day Game Tradition into the weekly Thursday Night Football game at 8:00 which this year pits the San Fransisco 49ers against their division rival the Seattle Seahawks to see who can stay two games back of the Arizona Cardinals in the NFC West divisional race.
And if that is not enough Football for you, there are two NCAA games on, both at 6:30, with LSU taking on Texas AM and of great local interest here in Fort Worth the TCU Horned Frogs take on the Texas Longhorns at Amon Carter Stadium. Of course I have to work from 5-11 so the Cowboy game will be on the radio at work while the TCU pregame party warms up. The evening will conclude with either celebrations or commiserations by the TCU and Cowboy fans around here. Let's hope the both win so everyone will be wearing alcohol fired shit eating grins all night. Either way beer and wine sales will be kick ass all night. I just hope it doesn't get too crazy.
I hear today's featured selection for your Thanksgiving Musical Moment yesterday on WRR while I was out an about. The DJ said Thanksgiving was all about Family and this piece of music illustrated the family gathering. Whether it evokes family for you or not is for you to decide as you listen to the Enigma Variations, Variations on an Original Theme for Orchestra (Enigma), Opus 36 penned by Sir Edward Elgar. Today's performance is a classic recording from 1984 featuring Leonard Bernstein conducting the the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
It was Elgar's Enigma Variations that made his name as a composer, at the age of forty-two. Today, Enigma is widely seen as the first real musicial masterpiece to emerge in Britain since the dead of Henry Purcell two centuries earlier. In the manuscript score the word "Enigma" is written over the original theme, with its contrasted strains of major and minor. Elgar later said that this theme represented "the loneliness of the creative artist", and one may assume that it therefore represents Elgar himself. He also said there was "another and larger theme" which "goes" through and over the whole set but is not played. Whether this second theme is a popular melody or a symbolic idea such as friendship has never been established and probably never will be.
First performed in London in June 1899 and conducted by Hans Richter, Elgar dedicated the Variations "to my friends pictured within," and they form an irresistible sequence of character studies, culminating in the composer's rousing, assured self-portrait - as though he were telling those friends, "See what you have made of me.". But Elgar also confessed that the music contained a "dark saving", adding that the theme itself expressed his enduring sense of the "loneliness of the artist". So like many of Elgar's finest works, Enigma reveals two very different personae: the robust, brimming confidence of the self-made English gentleman and the restless, melancholic introspection of the outsider. Thet Elgar gentleman and the restless, melancholic introspections of the outsider. That Elgar was truly both is one of the aspects of his music that makes him fascinating. That is not the whole story: Enigma is also about warmth of feeling, tunefulness, and lively humor, and even - an unashionable word today - Nobility.
At the end of an overlong day laden with teaching and other duties, Edward Elgar lit a cigar, sat at his piano and began idling over the keys. To amuse his wife, the composer began to improvise a tune and played it several times, turning each reprise into a caricature of the way one of their friends might have played it or of their personal characteristics. "I believe that you are doing something which has never been done before," exclaimed Mrs. Elgar. Thus was born one of music's great works of original conception, and Elgar's greatest large-scale "hit": the Enigma Variations. The enigma is twofold: each of the 14 variations refers to a friend of Elgar's, who is depicted by the nature of the music, or by sonic imitation of laughs, vocal inflections, or quirks, or by more abstract allusions. The other enigma is the presence of a larger "unheard" theme which is never stated but which according to the composer is very well known. The identity of the phantom tune left the world with the composer, and guesses have ranged from "God Save the King" to a simple major scale.
This apparatus aside, the variations contain some of the most charming and deeply felt music Elgar ever penned, more than redeeming the work from the status of mere gimmickry. The main theme is hesitating, lean and haunting, and is reprised with the passionate first variation that represents Caroline, the composer's wife, a constant source of encouragement and inspiration.
You may also hear another of Elgar's more famous works, his Cello Concerto in E Minor, Opus 85 with a stellar performance by Sol Gabetta accompanied by the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra recorded live over on my tumblr.
To round out the post and in keeping with the feast day them, there is a feast of fellows all fitted out in their most delightful denim for an awesome edition of Men in Jeans for Turkey Day. However you will not find any 'turkeys' among these fine examples of art in the male form. A little dessert can be had over on my tumblr when you check out your Hottie of the Day! Aron Abikzer. Thanks for sharing part of your holiday with me, see you again soon. Until next time as always, Enjoy!
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