Test for Echo

Well, at last, a chance to get this weblog up and running (Kepler and Boethius could never have anticipated that one day their notions about cosmic harmonies and interstellar music would get refigured as the Music of the Blogosphere); and, indeed, this seems to be the perfect class for such a venture. Not only can we continue some of our unfinished discussions here (every class inevitably feels unfinished, I find), but we'll also have an outlet for some of our more campy impulses. And maybe this venue will even provide a useful staging grounds for your multigenre essays. In any event, feel free to respond to postings/threads of your colleagues, or to create new threads.

I will keep this first posting short, perhaps with the intent of returning for another in the coming days, and pause only to preview that line from Shelley's "To a Skylark" that proposes that "our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought" (l. 90). In the spirit of Nick Hornby's "Top 5" lists (have you read or seen High Fidelity?) perhaps we can compile some of the most melancholy songs/pieces of all time -- invoking Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins, we can call these the "Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness Awards." I will probably think of better ones immediately after posting this, but at this moment I would toss out the following examples: Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year"; The Beatles' "Yesterday" and "A Day in the Life"; Joni Mitchell's "River"; Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here"; Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees"; Neil Diamond's "Coldwater Morning" (why, yes, of course! his "Tap Root Manuscript" was an amazing record); and maybe I'll throw in the third movement (poco allegretto) of Brahms's Third Symphony, which always moves me deeply. Whaddya think? Any others to offer? (does one go, predictably, right to Simon and Garfunkel and "Bridge Over Troubled Water"?!)