Welcome! This is a continuation of the Mon Oct 26, 2009 topic.
Today's Topic: Music and Animals, Part 2 - Musicians
There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. ALBERT SCHWEITZER
This diary is a politics free zone, meant for relaxing and unwinding for a few minutes, before going back to the serious stuff.
Feel free to add your own photos and comments. Pet care and concern comments are always allowed, of course, but otherwise, please keep it lighthearted and friendly.
Today's Topic Today's Topic: Music and Animals, Part 2 - Musicians
Link here for part 1 from Mon, Oct 26th: http://www.dailykos.com/...
MUSICIANS AND THEIR PETS
• Mariah Carey – Singer, composer and more has a woozle, a jack russell terrier, named Jackson P. Mutley or Jack for short. Jack even has his own fan web sites.
• Billy Joel is another singer that likes woozles.
• Yoko Ono - a singer and artist preferred pooties.
• Paul McCartney had an Old English Sheepdog named Martha. He wrote 'Martha My Dear' about Martha.
• Neil Finn wrote about his woozle, Lester, a Dalmatian. The song was written when Lester nearly died after an incident with a vehicle. The lyrics can be found here. here.
The lyrics are quite far down on the page. (Lots of other animal stuff on this site.)
• Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam). Stevens wrote 'I love My Dog' about a dog he had a a child, a dachshund.
The Artists Muse written by Toni Gardner
Pets help people they bond with become calmer and more creative just by being there.
http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/the-artists-muse
The presence of a pet has consoled and inspired the creative mind of countless generations of writers, musicians, painters, and poets. Pets have probably befriended artists since crude images first appeared as smudges on the dark walls of caves. Henry James conjured the twists and turns of his novels' scheming inheritance hunters with a cat draped across his shoulders. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner mulled the concepts of abstract painting while walking their dogs across open fields. The notoriously finicky founder of New York City Ballet, George Balanchine, reportedly declared of a friend's cat, "At last, a body worth choreographing for."
. . .
Musical compositions draw from animal actions, as in Domenico Scarlatti's delicate "Cat Fugue" or Igor Stravinsky's catlike clarinets in "Berceuses du Chat."
. . .
Pets have the ability to comb out the tangles of self-consciousness, lighten the spirit, and connect us to inspiration and creativity.
. . .
You needn't be a practicing artist to understand this. Anytime you allow yourself to experience the world through a pet's perspective — by walking, working, playing, even just observing or resting alongside one — you are transported away from internal clutter and conflict. Then any of us can reach the same conclusion that so many artists have understood over the millennia. The simple truth is that pets add poetry to all our lives.
Entire article found here: http://www.webmd.com/...
According to Keirsey.com, in a section on their site named: About 4 Temperaments, Composers, “A similar bond may be seen between some Composers and animals, even wild animals. Many Composers have an instinctive longing for the wilds, and nature seems to welcome them.”
Link here.
Carnival of the Animals
One of the pieces of music I think of when the topic of music and animals comes up is Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns. I was disappointed to learn that Mr. Saint-Saëns did not write Carnival of the Animals because of a love of animals, but “Carnival was written as a musical jest, and Saint-Saëns believed it would damage his reputation as a serious composer.” Per Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Interesting entry on Camille Saint-Saëns in Wikipedia, which includes audio links for some of his music, especially "Carnival".
More animal themed music can be found here: Songs with Animals in the Title http://www.songfacts.com/...
As expected, there are many songs about animals that are for children.
A good example is the symphony Peter and the Wolf
In 1936 Sergei Prokofiev was commissioned by Natalya Sats and the Central Children's Theatre in Moscow to write a new musical symphony for children. The intent was to cultivate "musical tastes in children from the first years of school". Intrigued by the invitation, Prokofiev completed Peter and the Wolf in just four days. The debut on 2 May 1936 was, in the composer's words, inauspicious at best: "[attendance] was poor and failed to attract much attention".[citation needed] He could scarcely have foreseen quite how successful his playful classic would become or how consistently it would delight and inspire children and adults of all ages for years to come.
Reference Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/...
A sampling of more music written primarily for children:
Jungle Book, Walt Disney's Fantasia, and Hovhaness: Mysterious Mountain/And God Created Great Whales
If you have a favorite musician, and know of their pets, feel free to mention it in the comments.
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♥ ☺ ♥ Holiday National Adoption Weekend ♥ ☺ ♥
PetSmart Charities®
Holiday National Adoption Weekend
November 13 - 15, 2009
PetSmart Charities®, PetSmart®, Purina® Pro Plan® and Tidy Cat® are presenting the Holiday National Adoption Weekend. The three-day sponsored adoption event takes place Friday-Sunday, November 13 - 15, 2009, in all PetSmart stores. The goal is to find homes for more than 15,000 pets in need.
Contact the store in your area for participation times of local animal welfare agencies at the following link: http://stores.petsmart.com/
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Credits and Thanks
Many thanks to icanhascheezburger.com, source of the LOLpics.
Thanks to the following sites used for research for this diary.
Squidoo: There is information about some composers mentioned in the diary, including lyrics to their songs, at this
site called "Squidoo". Lots of other stuff, too.
Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Keirsey's 4 Temperaments at: http://keirsey.com/
WebMD: http://www.webmd.com/...
Songfacts: http://www.songfacts.com/...
♥ ♥ Special thanks to all the Pootie-Woozle people for all they do to make this world a better place. ♥ ♥
Visit sites below to donate food to animal shelters at no cost to you.
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