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Classical Music and Football

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    Classical Music and Football

    Great Desert Island Discs with (Celtic fan) James MacMillan who wrote a piece for Jim Craig of the Lisbon Lions and another for Neil Lennon.

    He cites Marc Anthony Turnage (Arsenal), and Shostakovich (Zenit Leningrad) as big football fans. Then of course there's Michael Nyman (QPR) and earlier Elgar (Wolves). Any others.

    #2
    Nigel Kennedy made a big deal of his fandom.

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      #3
      Paul Potts is a Cardiff supporter.

      I've heard Johannes Brahms used to run with HSV because he was born in Hamburg, but I don't reckon he could have afforded the train fares from Vienna.

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        #4
        Alban Berg was a big Rapid Vienna Fan.

        In KarlHeinz Stockhausen's opera Friday there are dancing couples dressed as Cat and Dog, Football and Boot and Arm and Syringe

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          #5
          That’s a brilliant article, Nef. Herzlichen Dank.

          Bookmarked for my next trip

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            #6
            Schoenberg's son Georg played for VfB Moedling in the 1920s

            Pavarotti - Juventus fan and played in goal at youth level

            Carreras - Barcelona fan

            Domingo - Real Madrid fan, offered FIFA role by Blatter in 2011

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              #7
              Source on Schoenberg's son playing for Moedling

              http://schoenbergseuropeanfamily.org...as3_chap4.html

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                #8
                Domingo



                Carerras



                Juve didn't make replicas big enough for Pavarotti back in the day.

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                  #9
                  Paul Hindemith used to watch Football in Berlin in the 20's. Don't know which club though

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                    #10
                    Cunning bastard, yes he looks so elegant doing it I didn't even notice he was flipping us off with both hands.

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                      #11
                      Not only is he holding a football shirt, he is also wearing a footballers' watch.

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                        #12
                        Why has he got a 1 on the back of what is, quite clearly, not a goalkeeper's shirt?

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by Janik View Post
                          Nigel Kennedy made a big deal of his fandom.
                          Yes, Aston Villa.


                          Daniel Barenboim may transcend mere mortal notions of nationality... except he says he never misses an Argentina match.

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                            #14
                            I went to see Nigel Kennedy during Villa's relegation season. He was wearing a Villa shirt with Agbonlahor's name and number on the back. His enthusiasm for them isn't necessarily cast into doubt by him being a bit of a plum.

                            The TV footage of him and Brix Smith trying to entertain the England squad at the 1990 World Cup is hilarious. George Benson really had nothing to fear from these new rivals for the footballing ear.

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                              #15
                              Kickers Offenbach

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                                #16
                                Geordie opera singer Graeme Danby singing the sublime Blaydon Races before a Tyne-Wear derby:



                                I love this tune and the words (in the Geordie dialect), it’s such a rousing, stirring anthem. Whenever I hear it in connection with football I feel that I’m one of those matchstick fans in an L.S. Lowry football painting ("Going To The Match", natch), the lyrics transport you back to that era.

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                                  #17
                                  From the archives of my formerly semi-regular feature for WSC's Howl!

                                  Long Players: The Glorious History Of Football’s Full Length Recordings
                                  Dmitri Shostakovich - The Golden Age
                                  If you were ever gripped by the urge to don a replica kit and ballet shoes and pirouette around your living room to a socialist-realist ballet, then you probably danced to football’s first concept album, Shostakovich’s The Golden Age. Written in the late 1920s, it’s about a Soviet football team that travels to the west only (in the words of the sleeve notes) to have “its heroic sporting and social endeavours constantly… undermined by hostile administrators, decadent artistes and corrupt officials.”

                                  Listening to the flowing, brassy bombast of the music, you might not make the connection to football, but there is a referee’s whistle at the start of track 22 on CD1, ‘The Football Match’, in which “the opposing teams forcefully act out their cultural and ideological, as well as sporting differences.” Sounds like a thriller. Though not as tense as other hard-hitting tracks, ‘The Embarrassment of the Fascists’ and ‘The Bourgeoisie In Panic.’

                                  All this proley proselytising wasn’t good enough for the picky Stalinists, and the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians scotched the project. If you’re keen to see how the whole thing pans out visually, you can watch it on YouTube, played out in a game of three acts by the Bolshoi Ballet.*

                                  *Put a new link up here - when I wrote the piece in 2008 it was spread across YouTube in 14 parts. No idea if this new link is the Bolshoi Ballet or not, but at least it's all in one take. If you have 1 hour and 55 minutes to spare to watch football-based socialist ballet.

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                                    #18
                                    I'm happy I didn't live in an era when it was the norm to go to the beach in a three-piece suit.

                                    "Dad, dad, come on in, the water's great!" Mais non, Claude-Emma, je dois tenir la parapluie. [under her breath] "Jesus fucking Christ."

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                                      #19
                                      The women had it far worse, as seen in the same photo.

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                                        #20
                                        Those photos are great. And if we are expanding to sport we have Arthur Honegger and his piece Rugby

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                                          #21
                                          Didn’t go to see the "football opera" MIRACLE! An Opera of Two Halves about SAFC, enough operatic theatricals and histrionics at SAFC on and off the pitch as it is for me. It was dirt cheap for an opera though, £10. Wish I had gone actually, I could count myself as an opera-goer, dead posh (though I've been to two in my life, a long time ago and mainly by accident, once in the Czech Republic 20-odd years ago to accompany a friend I was with and once in Italy in 1985, purely because the setting was breathtaking, an antique theatre near Rome).


                                          Music in the Minster presents:

                                          MIRACLE! An Opera of Two Halves
                                          Sunderland Minster, High Street West, SR1 3ET
                                          Friday 27th - Sunday 29th November 2015

                                          Drama, teamwork, passion, training...opera and football have more in common that you might think. So what better subject for Wearside’s first opera than Sunderland AFC? Written by award-winning author David Almond and composer Marcos Fernandez, Miracle! An Opera of Two Halves has been commissioned by Music in the Minster - a registered charity that brings experts from the world of opera to share their skills with the communities of Wearside.





                                          Hmm, I can see why it was only £10 now, they didn’t exactly bust the budget with lavish costumes and wowing sets by the looks of it.



                                          (I’m a mean, cynical stone-hearted bastard, really am, I should be ashamed of myself knocking something like that, an all-volunteer enterprise showcasing the amazing talent of proud Mackems, I really shouldn’t be so callous, Big Society, local event for local people, giving back to the community and all that. I’m sure they all had fun, wish I’d been there TBH, shame I can’t sing for toffee,biggest regret of my life. I’m just bloody jealous really.)
                                          Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 18-10-2017, 19:49.

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                                            #22
                                            Colin Matthews who completed Mahler's 10th Symphony is a Leyton Orient fan

                                            Also I learned that Shostakovich also has his referee's badge.

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