Some gaming violin/orchestra things... - just way too much midnight excitement :)
It has been a really wonderful day to myself, listening to the complete 6-hour score to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, fairly newly available from the Japan-exclusive Special Edition 4-Disc Soundtrack that was released in April 2018 (yep, it’s such a good game, I’m still thinking about it almost 3 years later and looking to replay it with a friend over Christmas break!) and working on an assignment on the gavotte, a topic I chose. I went out and played some violin for the first time in a little while - I’ve not played it as much lately, but I’ve sorely missed it. I’m hoping at least over the break to play a little bit every day if I can. When I return, I hope to play some pieces with my cellist friend: Ravel’s Duo at least, and maybe a Duo Haydn wrote. (We weren't able to play it on the 12th, as I had said in my November entry - so hopefully it will work out when we return in mid-January after a longer break than I am used to!)
I rediscovered this lovely gamer violinist on YouTube, and just thought I would share her channel here. She does incredible covers of music from all kinds of different games. I spent an hour this evening listening through a bunch of them.
View her channel here!
On that same vein, I also thought I’d share a couple of my favorite gaming concerts from this past decade, celebrating some of the greatest music that has come out of gaming from the Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda series - both series I know I’ve mentioned numerous times on this blog! Both concerts took place in Japan and in Japanese, but you can still obviously enjoy all of the music. This just makes me super happy not just for all my favorite games, but of course for the violin and orchestral music as well, reassuring me I am definitely on the right track in life! Music is so special!
I suppose this can be part of my celebration of the decade, as I have been doing with games. Perhaps later on this month I’ll do another post celebrating where I have gone musically throughout the decade before we head into the New Year!
Distant Worlds - Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Concert (2012)
The Legend of Zelda Tokyo Concert (2018)
(Just some more personal updates...)
Yesterday, I went to the music library at UIUC and picked up a whole bunch of scores to listen to! (I get so distracted while I’m there - I came in for a couple works for my assignment on the gavotte I was mentioning; I left with neither score I needed for that and way more. My highlights are: Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, the entire ballet, to listen to for the first time just to help me get Christmasey before I head home; John Williams’ Star Wars Suite! (There’s a whole section on his music!) - this can help me get excited for Episode IX I suppose; and Britten’s Scottish Ballad. I picked up a couple other scores of works and composers I’ve never heard of, so that will be fun to listen to as well. Planning on devouring all of this music after the weekend is over before I head home for break!
Something else for me to do on the violin, I got a 1901 edition of Ševcik’s Op. 8, Exercises for the Change of Positions and Preparatory Scale-Studies for Violin. I dunno, picked it up at the free table at the library. I’ll bring it with my fiddle when I need a work break tomorrow and flip through it tomorrow.
And real quick... Sorry, this blog is all over the place - I’m just super excited at the moment and wanting to get everything out! I am tracing the lineage of the gavotte as a dance movement, from Lully and early works to Bach’s Partita in E Major, Grieg’s Holberg Suite, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella (what a great blending of Baroque and Classical styles with Stravinsky’s staccato sound world!), and Prokofiev’s First Symphony (“Classical”). Even Brahms' "lost" gavottes that were found as sketches that are the sources for the second movement of his Quintet in F Major, op. 88 (the Allegretto middle section). All of these works have a gavotte in them. (The Wikipedia entry on the gavotte was actually helpful to point me to more works!) I guess I mentioned some of this in my November update too, so here it is again...
Alright, it's 16 December 2019 - just another channel to share, with a TED Talk to boot on how he combines his passion for games with the violin:
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