Tag: tone poem

TBT^4: Napoleonic Christmas

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It’s Christmas!  It’s Christmas!  And it’s a Thursday, so yours portly is TBT’ing to a classic of yesterchristmas.

Back in 2019, I wrote this piece about Napoleon.  It took off because it gained some traction on WhatFinger News, which came along after Matthew Drudge inexplicably went woke.  The name of this alternative news aggregator always strikes me as vaguely inappropriate, but they ran my link and it got tons of views at a time when I was getting discouraged with the blog (a perennial issue, it seems—perseverance is a virtue for a reason).

Napoleon is a complex and intriguing figure.  Whatever his personal and professional attributes, he indelibly changed Europe and the world.  It’s hard for us to understand today, fixated as we are on the failed Austrian painter with the Charlie Chaplin mustache, but Napoleon’s impact was still being discussed actively in the early twentieth century.  He totally upended the gameboard of Europe—for good or for ill—and the fear and/or hope of another Napoleon endured for quite awhile.

YouTube philosopher Agora made a great video linking the two figures—and warning about why those links miss some key differences:

The important thing to remember, however, is that humanity’s conception of “greatness” is false.  Remember, Christ Was Born today as a simple baby in the most humble of circumstances—literally bedding down in a feeding trough for barnyard animals.  He Died a humiliating Death on the Cross.  He Rose from the dead and Conquered Death, and Will Return again!

No Napoleon could ever achieve what He Did.

With that, here is 26 December 2024’s “TBT^2: Napoleonic Christmas“:

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TBT^2: Napoleonic Christmas

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Way back in 2019 I wrote a post entitled “Napoleonic Christmas“; it took off thanks to being featured on a conservative news aggregator that, at the time, was presenting itself as an alternative to The Drudge Report, which inexplicably but notably turned hard to the Left after the 2016 election, in which it played an important role in getting GEOTUS Donaldus Magnus elected.

Napoleon has always fascinated me.  Indeed, I wrote an entire tone poem about the enigmatic figure:

I don’t think Napoleon was a good guy, but he was great, in the sense that he was—much like Trump—sui generis, a man unto himself, and a man for the historical moment in which he found himself.

At Christmas, however, the Greatest Man Is a little Baby in a manger.  The Son of God Humbled Himself to become like us.  No Napoleon or Trump (the latter of which I like very much, and who I believe has God’s Hand of Protection over him) could ever do that—or would.

With that, here is 28 December 2023’s “TBT: Napoleonic Christmas“:

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Open Mic Adventures CVI: “Hanging Gardens”

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This Friday, 29 November 2024 my tenth release of the year, Leftovers III, will hit all streaming platforms (including Spotify).  In advance of the EP’s release, I wanted to feature the composition that is the centerpiece of LIII, “Hanging Gardens.”

Subscribers to my SubscribeStar page received an early sneak-peek three days ago.  Now I want to share this lengthy piece with all of you!

Before that, though, just take a moment to appreciate this decadent album artwork:

Leftovers III Album Cover

I think I made that sandwich over the summer, and took a picture of it about halfway through.  No wonder my blood pressure and waistline are showing such high numbers!

But onto the piece itself.  “Hanging Gardens” is the longest piece I have ever composed, clocking in at about 10:46 (I think the YouTube video has it at 10:47).  I actually wanted to make it longer—around twenty minutes—to give it a more symphonic feel, but I reached the point where I a.) had to finish it to meet the 29 November 2024 release deadline and b.) I was out of ideas to pour into this enigmatic suite.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: “Hanging Gardens” Preview

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

It took some rapid, almost-last-minute composing, but yours portly has completed his tenth release for 2024, the EP Leftovers III.  It’ll hit Bandcamp and all streaming platforms this coming Friday, 29 November 2024—Black Friday.

While I have many older, unreleased pieces locked between the FAT32 file system and within the confines of Cakewalk 3.0 (which ran on DOS-based Windows 3.1!), I don’t have access to any super old material for this third Leftovers installment.  As such, I actually composed some pieces specifically for it, which runs somewhat contrary to the ethos of the Leftovers releases.  Leftovers and Leftovers II consisted largely of pieces I’d written (or started to write), but which I abandoned for one reason or another.  Some of them I finished for the releases, slapping on endings or tying up incomplete phrases.  Others were super old pieces that I’d never distributed digitally, so the only way to hear them was by being one of the few dozen people who received homemade burnt CDs with my tunes on them back in the late Aughts.

For LIII, I composed new works.  Some of them are just short snippets that I’d jotted down in my music journal.  But I also wanted to write something long and epic.

The result is “Hanging Gardens” a musical fantasy suite for piccolo, flute, trombone, and tuba.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Open Mic Adventures XCV: “Akhenaten”

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Yours portly released a new album earlier this summer, Heptadic Structure.  It’s an exploration of pieces in 7/4, 7/8, and 7/16 time.  Each piece is twenty-one written measures, for a total of 147 measures across the seven pieces.  Also, 14+7=21.  Math is fun!

You can listen to and/or purchase the album at the following links:

This week I’m featuring the final track from that album, and my second favorite after “Balladic Processional“:  the experimental tone poem “Akhenaten“:

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