What Is It About Vivaldi?

Sitting on hold and feeling my life slip away minute by minute, I listened to the opening strains of the "Four Seasons" and wondered yet again, what is it about Vivaldi? Do voice mail systems come with a requirement that this and only this can be the recorded music? They never play much expect the beginning of "Spring" but they play it over and over and over and over. Would the world end if there was a little Mozart or a hint of Rossini? Possibly even Beethoven or a few notes of "Kill the Wabbit"? Too much of anything, even Vivaldi, will dull the senses, which is probably the objective of the insurance companies - soothe and sedate with music and hope for the best.

In addition to jazz and blues, my daddy loved classical music - what my mother called that longhair crap - and he played it for me often from his collection of old, vintage albums. I didn't appreciate it much then, preferring his Pete Fountain records to Chopin, but beautiful music tends to grow on you and by the time I reached college, I'd discovered Debussey and Handel, and was coming to love all the classical composers. You couldn't sing along with Mitch but The Messiah stirred my soul and to this day I remember each note of the soprano part of The Hallelujah Chorus, perhaps my all time favorite work next to Mozart's "A Little Night Music", the second most preferred voice mail selection. I studied to "Ave Maria" and "Claire de lune" and Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", sometimes losing my focus for stopping to listen.

If there was one love in my daddy's life, it was music. He listened to it, played it, appreciated it, and passed it on to me and I think of him often whenever I hear a hot New Orleans trumpet, a ragtime piano, a gospel quartet or a classical orchestra. Music was in his heart as it is in mine, as I hope it is in all of ours.

Rock on, Antonio.