Musica in Extenso

Thank you for joining us this week. It was a really beautiful farewell event for us and I’m very thankful for having such great people as friends.

For this final post you can read my final conclusions and the message of our Artistic Director, Melinda Beasi.

Today, on (Friday) May 13th (2022), Musica in Extenso is saying goodbye to its community and friends with the following (really impressive) statistical numbers:

3202 followers;

1985 posts;

blog birthday: 13 August 2011; domain birthday: 27 October 2016;

a special shout-out for @une-barque-sur-l-ocean (thank you again, Noémi);

the list of our precious guest editors: Curtis Lindsay, Mathieu Cé, Lada Karasková, Editor-in-Chief of Today in Tokyo, Richard Blaquiere, Eric L. Scott, Rylan Gleave, Audrey Mintah, Marisa Ewing, Eric Britt, Matthew Olshefski, Elīza Ķirse, David Pulsford, Zoe Johnson, Breanne Collins and Noémi Baki-Szmaler;

special thanks to: @fitz-fool @dirtyriver @iidsch @yumartist @themusicaldesk @lesser-known-composers @wozziebear​ and @frosty–giants​;

also a special shout-out for @pinavirag for the help and support

It’s hard to believe we’re finally here at the final entry for Musica in Extenso. It’s been such a spectacular run here, and I think I can speak for everyone in saying that this ending is bittersweet. While it seems clear to us that the blog has run its natural course, I know I’ll miss the camaraderie between our whole staff and our wonderful followers. 

We hope we’ve brought you some joy and perhaps introduced you to some piece of beautiful, thought-provoking music you hadn’t heard before. We also hope we’ve entertained you and given you something special to listen to every day, either new or familiar. Best wishes from all of us to all of you! - Melinda Beasi, Artistic Director

Editor-in-Chief, @cantationem​, @cherryboie & @mikrokosmos​

August 13 marked my 14th anniversary on Tumblr! Even though we’re not active here anymore, I’m so grateful for the community we built together. 🥳

Don’t hesitate! Just open Netflix and find a cozy, Christmassy movie. Harry Potter is always a good choice, but feel free to go with Home Alone if you prefer. :)

If you’ve finished the movie, don’t close Netflix yet. Instead, search for Fireplace (especially if you don’t have a real fireplace in your house). Light your favorite scented candle, put on some pleasant music, and enjoy your evening. Don’t forget to add a hot chocolate to your mix! :)

If you don’t have a Christmas playlist, here’s a gift from me: my own Christmas Spotify playlist. You can find it here: > LINK HERE ... Thank me later! :) P.S. - The playlist includes not just Christmas-music.

Are you an opera fan? December is the perfect time to indulge in some classic Christmas operas and ballets. La Boheme, The Nutcracker, and Die Fledermaus are all must-sees. Don’t miss out on these performances; they’re sure to sell out quickly.

Here’s another great idea for singles, couples, and friends: take a lovely walk in the city. Visit the local Christmas Market or Fair and enjoy a cup of coffee. (Make sure to try the Starbucks aromated coffees; they’re a must-have!)

If you want to have a great evening at home, consider buying some sweets and organizing a taste test. You can also try out a new apple pie recipe.

Don’t forget to decorate your home with some shiny ornaments. They’ll bring a smile to your face and make your space feel festive. :)

Read a nice book that gets you in the Christmas spirit. Choose something that captures your imagination and brings you joy.

Spend more time with your loved ones. It’s a free, healthy, and simply wonderful way to spend the holiday season.

If you want to do something good during this time of the year (or anytime!), consider donating money, clothes, or anything else you can spare.

+1 - And finally, don’t forget to read Musica in Exteno. :) - K.

As we get closer to Christmas, I can’t help but wonder if this holiday season feels the same as our childhood’s most cherished one. I’m not sure anymore. Sometimes, I get this weird feeling that since 2020, we’ve been stuck in this tiny, dark time capsule. In these years, we’ve had some major events like a pandemic, wars, and a lot of political issues, propaganda, and human rights problems. What happened suddenly? I mean, there were problems before 2020 too, so?

The truth is, the media is scaring everyone to death for ratings. Of course, I’m not saying that the news doesn’t reflect reality… but the media really puts a lot of pressure on people with all these news alerts and breaking news.

I think that now we really need to enjoy our lives and appreciate everything we have. Appreciate the food on the table, appreciate our not-so-great jobs (I know, I know…), appreciate our family and friends, appreciate a dinner with our loved ones, appreciate a walk in the city, and appreciate another Christmas (even without snow)… appreciate another Christmas, meaning, that another year is over.

If you’re reading this and “another year is over” makes you sad somehow… try to enjoy your next one much better and live it intensely. You never know what the future holds… and as I see what surrounds us day by day, I’ve lost my faith in humanity.

Be a better person, for a better future. Live in the present and find some joy in little things. - K.

We all know that this year, we commemorate the genius Italian composer Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924). Hundreds of special events, galas, and musicology conferences are dedicated to the memory of one of the world's favorite opera composers.

My first encounter with his music happened when I was working as an opera chorister. It was the famous La Boheme: formidable music and the most tragic, dramatic, and heartbreaking finale I ever heard. Then came Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Manon Lescaut, and, for sure, also the very underrated but masterpiece La Rondine.

I always admired his operas, not only for their inventive orchestration but also for the psychological drama of each of his characters. Who can forget Magda's Chi il bel sogno di Doretta aria from La Rondine... or who can stay put without shredding a tear after Mimi's heart-wrenching aria Donde lieta usci from La Boheme?

Let's celebrate his wonderful music! PUCCINI 100 (for me: 100%! ❤️)

/ Feel free to share with me your favorite Puccini opera (or aria) in the comment section. /

Let me share a personal note today with you. Thank you!

I will not lie to you... Riverdale was the first series that I followed in real-time, weekly. I was so excited every week when the new episode dropped on Netflix. I was 25 years old when it started. Now I'm 31. Wow... this evening, after 7 unprecedented seasons of Riverdale, we will say goodbye to this guilty-pleasure, comforting show.

I had a very different life in those years... now everything has changed, just like this show. We've seen some major changes in this show through all these years, and I think we can say that we've been witnessing television's weirdest and craziest show ever.

I'm sure many of us will miss this magic squad, all the adventures, all the insane storylines and villains.

Goodbye Archie, Veronica, Jughead, Betty, Cheryl, Tony, Kevin, Reggie and Tabitha!

Goodbye, Riverdale! - K.

Hello, again, my beautiful Followers! Never taught that we will meet again, but as I said in the title... never say never!

On 13th May, you read our final post on Musica in Extenso, but... as you see, here we are again after one year, and I want to share something with you, a really special project to my heart: Satoshi ft. my children's choir in an amazing remake of "BELIEVER" by Imagine Dragons. It was an amazing experience, especially because Imagine Dragons came to Romania at the Untold Festival this year, and we prepared this remake as an hommage. I think we made something cool, and I wanted to share this video with you.

I hope you will like it. Feel free to share it with your family and friends!

P.S. I would like to post here more personal things in the future... so I think we keep in touch! :) - K.

Hello to everyone who’s followed MiE over the years,

I was just thinking of how long I’d been a returning guest editor here. I appreciate this project because Krisztián’s planning and scheduling helped motivate me to write even when I didn’t want to. And writing about music is my favorite thing to do. My most frequent contributions here were for Russian Composers series, so I thought I’d share this gorgeous miniature from Scriabin. His early period is popular among pianists but overall kind of gets sidelined for being too much “like Chopin”, and his later works are more historically significant and influential. Of course that doesn’t mean the more ‘conservative’ pieces are dull or not worth listening to. His musical personality is strong throughout his career, and in this Prelude he creates a dreamy and languid atmosphere with a simple floating melody, and the constant wave of triplets makes each hand sound free from each other. Thanks for tuning in with us!

Hello MiE world, 

Long time no see and I just realized that’s the last time I write that for this blog. Damn, I just went to read my description and wow, so much has changed! 

I’m eternally grateful for this project cause it broadened my taste and my way of perceiving music that I don’t even recognize myself anymore. I think one of the things that this journey has taught me is that I can be multiple and enjoy various genres and presentations of music. 

So, as a part of my musical evolution I want to share with you an artist that brings together many things that I enjoy now: bringing technology, harmony, instrumentalization, the visual production and of course the feelings and soul that goes into this performance I’m sharing. I’d like to think of it as how I’d like to approach music in my life cause I’m starting that Dj/Producer journey.

I hardly know what to say today. It’s time for my own farewell post to Musica in Extenso, and the truth is, I really don’t know how to say goodbye. It took me a while to track down my very first post here in April of 2014, after a Romanian college student contacted me on Tumblr out of the blue to ask if I’d like to join his blog (then called “The Nob”) as a contributor twice a week. I don’t know why he invited me. I don’t know why I said yes! I’m usually very protective over my time and reluctant to commit to things that require a regular schedule. But he did invite me, and I did say yes. And here we are, eight years later, saying goodbye to the blog, but with eight years of friendship between us, across oceans and generations. I’ve felt honored to witness our editor-in-chief’s journey from college student to fully-grown adult with a beautiful wife and a bona-fide career and one of the kindest, most generous hearts I have ever known.

Here’s what I said on my personal blog the day I reblogged my first post here:

So, recently I was asked to contribute musical selections at the Tumblr known as the NOB. Today was my first post there, featuring portions of Randall Thompson’s The Peaceable Kingdom. I offer it to you as well for your morning listening!

A personal anecdote: I sang some of this piece with the Carnegie-Mellon University Concert Choir when I was a student, and my friends and I liked to interpret the oft-repeated text “as when one goeth with a pipe” as a fond ode to violence rather than the spritely expression of gladness most likely intended (like a million undergraduates before us, I suspect, but we thought we were hilarious).

******************

Reblogging for the evening crowd.  Okay, that was a lie. Reblogging for the pipe joke.

I never wanted to make an epic finale... If I want to be very honest with you, I never thought that Musica in Extenso and this blogging experience will get its final moments. But as I said earlier... everything comes to an end... eventually. Why I’m saying this? Because that’s true. After all these years, after all these experiences in my personal life, in my career... now I know, that there is always an ending. Not always in an epic way and it’s not always about a happy ending... but as they say, an ending is maybe a new beginning and I really believe in this one. 

Today on Musica in Extenso (wow... maybe this is the very last time I’m writing this) we will not have some dramatic music or something sad, nostalgic. No, today I want to celebrate the end of an era. Yes... the end of an era, because here, on Tumblr I had something constant, a permanent schedule: for 11 beautiful years I had a nice place where I posted music, I shared my thoughts, my happiness, my musical preferences. I was growing up here... when I registered my account I was a student. Well now I’m a grownup man. Seriously... 11 years. I can't believe this. 

I had a wonderful community here with amazing people, friends from all over the world and that is truly awesome, right? I mean, that's how I met our only and one Artistic Director, Melinda Beasi. That’s how I met the wonderful Juan M. Orozco. That’s how I met the fantastic Nick Olinger. I mean... seriously... without them, this blog would be so boring (boring as hell). I’m so grateful for their contribution and I’m a very lucky person to have such nice friends. We never met in real life, but I hope that one day we will have the chance to sit down, drink a coffee and to have a nice chit-chat, about music, about art, about us.

That’s our short story! If you want the longer version... well, you will have to read all our posts. All of the posts will be saved here and you will find anything you want (for example: musicainextenso.com/tagged/femalecomposers). 

I hope you will enjoy reading and listening. I hope you will find some happiness when you will visit this blog in the future. As is said, today on Musica in Extenso: the sparkling music of Gioachino Rossini with the finale of The Barber of Seville. Why? Because it is simply amazing... as my people, here at Musica in Extenso.

Thank you for everything! Thank you for being here with us, thank you for every like and reblog! Thank you for reading and following us through all of these years! 

All the best! ❤️ - Editor-in-Chief

____________________

Dear Friends, dear Followers, dear Musicians! After 11 years of classical music blogging, Musica in Extenso and it's amazing editorial board will present next week the very last event. 

The farewell event - entitled as “The Finale” - will be presented between 9-13 May, so if you liked our blog or if you’re a classical music fan, we invite you - one more time - to join us and to say goodbye, together. 

Stay tuned! - Editor-in-Chief, Melinda Beasi, Juan M. Orozco & Nick Olinger

@cantationem​, @cherryboie​, @mikrokosmos​

As I reach the final post in this series finale, I’m filled with a sense of nostalgia I can hardly describe. When Krisztián, our illustrious Editor-in-Chief, first invited me to join what was at the time a “lifestyle” blog, did either of us ever guess it would result in a years-long friendship, spanning some of the most important and tumultuous periods of both our lives? I certainly didn’t. Did either of us imagine blogging this long? Again, I did not. Yet here we are, and here I am, wrapping up the 15th installment of my Female Composers series as we head into the final moments of this blog. I’m thrilled by how popular this particular series has been, how much I’ve personally taken away from it and how much it matters to me. Thank you, Krisztián, for encouraging me to go forward with this series and helping me discover so much wonderful music, both for our followers AND for myself.

It seems absolutely necessary that I end this series by giving one final shout-out to Germaine Tailleferre, who is without a doubt the composer I’ve featured the most over the course of this series. It also feels right, after years of focusing on her chamber works, that I finally give some air to the work she did on a grander scale, specifically this Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1924), commissioned by the Princesse de Polignac who, like me, had a special appreciation for Tailleferre‘s perfect marriage of neo-classical and 20th-century sensibilities. I’m a particular fan of the concerto’s second movement, but the whole thing is truly delectable, and I offer it up to you all as my final gift of this series.

Pianist: Josephine Gandolfi; Orchestra: UC Santa Cruz Orchestra conducted by Nicole Paiement

I. Allegro Moderato 

II. Adagio 

III. Allegro