[78-L] Glenn Miller and Beethoven

[DAVID BURNHAM]

"I don't think I will ever find something new in "In the Mood", whereas I find new aural treasures every time I hear the Beethoven or the Tchaikovsky, and I have heard both of those pieces countless times."

(someone, who put my utterances up there with Zarathustra's, wrote this but when I tried to go back and recover the name, for some strange reason, digests numbers 44 and 45 had disappeared from my inbox)

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I'm glad to hear you say that.  I think Beethoven's 5th is perhaps the most perfect Symphony ever written.  However my wife plays in my home city's Symphony Orchestra and through her and through my own career as a recording engineer I have met many jaded professional musicians who could care less if they ever heard another performance of Beethoven's 5th or any other Beethoven Symphony, or theTchaikovsky P.C.  (Many of them would rather hear "In the Mood".)  I once had the very rewarding experience of introducing a close friend, whose musical tastes only extended to Ray Conniff, L & L Elgart and James Last to classical music through playing for him, for the first time in his life, Beethoven's 5th, (the Karajan 1962 performance).  This was in the late 60s and he suddenly became an evangelist for the merits of classical music.  To this day, he renews his subscription to the Symphony season every year, loves all classical music from the pop concert
 favourites to the obscure and I'm sure his Bert Kaemphert LPs have not seen any wear since 1967.

I'm sure the original Miller "In the Mood" and many other Bluebirds of the Miller original hits suffered from the truncating required to fit them on to a 3 minute 10 inch side.  In live performance they probably lasted 6 or 7 minutes but when the soloists are told they can only do 4 bars, it's hard to be very spontaneous.  This is apparent from the live recordings which have come out featuring the familiar standards in much longer versions.

db