Green-Eyed Boy

Composers often like musical puzzles. Sometimes they even insert coded messages into their music. Bach has a piece that's exactly the same played forward and backward. But the problem is that when lesser artists do that kind of thing it can end up sounding pleasing *only* to the intellect, and doesn't touch the heart at all.

Douglas Hofstadter wrote an amazing book called "Gödel Escher Bach," a tribute to these three great thinkers (the mathematician, the artist, and the composer). It's huge, serious, funny, and a celebration of intellectual pleasure. I wrote a couple of songs (the other one is called "Evergreen Blues") as a tribute to Hofstadter.

The A section contains references to the book; the B section contains a tribute to JS Bach, who actually did the same tribute to himself. It was fun putting the whole thing in a slightly chicken-fried jazz style.

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To find out more about "Epiphany: 50 Days, 50 Songs," check out my website at http://www.barrybrake.com
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Category:

Music

Tags:

• barry
• brake
• composer
• green
• eyed
• boy
• melodica
• jazz
• solo
• piano
• epiphany
• 50
• songs
• san
• antonio
• texas

[will2asher]

Who did the drawings?