John Barry-Webb Chiles, Volvo-Mozart, Satie Invents His Own Religion

My last post was about my friend Webb Chiles and his amazing accomplishment of sailing around the world...for the 6th time. During his many passages, he listens to a lot of music. Here is a video he shared on YouTube from the final leg of the journey from Panama to San Diego. On this occasion, he is playing the soundtrack from Out of Africa by John Barry. I made the comment that this music was intended to capture the majestic landscape of Africa, but it does the same capturing the majesty of the ocean.

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I saw a great commercial this week. Volvo is selling a new car and using the the music of Mozart to do so...the Queen of the Night Aria from The Magic Flute, first performed in 1791. Enjoy.

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Erik Satie is one of my favorite composers. I have shared some of his music in previous entries of this journal. I know that he was an eccentric dude, but I did not know that he wrote a Mass...the Messe des Pauvres 1893-1895. He actually invented his own religion called the Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus the Conductor. Satie served as the High Priest. This Mass is scored for 2 voices and  Organ. It was not published during his lifetime. Fellow composer Darius Milhaud unearthed it and brought it to the public a year after Satie died (1926). It is absolutely weird. But it is equally fascinating...and I have probably listened to it ten times in the last month.