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[F_minor] Something Old and Something Blue/Grey




Fred and All --


Guess you didn't hear, but after 5 years of intensive supercomputer analysis, NASA has finally decoded the first radio message we've ever received from intelligent life in outer space.

Here's the message:

SEND MORE CHUCK BERRY





(this joke was found carved on a Mesopotamian ziggurat from 4300 BCE)

Anyway, somebody just mentioned that I posted Cornelia Foss' painting of GG -- it was rather difficult to find and filch, but I filched it anyway -- and here it is:

http://vleeptronz.blogspot.com/2009/01/2008-painting-of-glenn-gould-by-goulds.html

Love, in oil on canvas, from 40 years of his lover's memory.

==========

"But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

-- Thornton Wilder, "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" (1927)

quoted by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair at NYC memorial service for 9/11 victims

==========

Bob


----- Original Message ----- From: "Houpt, Fred" <fred.houpt@rbc.com>
To: "Anne French" <afrench6@cox.net>; "Singh" <k_dawg71@hotmail.com>
Cc: <f_minor@email.rutgers.edu>; <maryellenjensen28@hotmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 9:40 AM
Subject: RE: [F_minor] Something Old and Something Blue/Grey



On another "note" (sorry, I couldn't resist the pun, forgive me), consider the possibility that Glenn's music making will go on forever. Why? Remember this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record

? Well, for those who don't recall, NASA made sound recordings of many
types of human sounds and put it on a golden disc.  On this disc we have
this:

The Well-Tempered Clavier

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tempered_Clavier>

, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue No.1 in C major played by GG. I thought about this yesterday. The spacecraft will take over 40,000 more years at it's current speed to reach the vicinity of the closest star on its trajectory. However, it occurred to me that there was no certainty that it would be stopped by or go into orbit around that star. I realized that it could continue on its journey throughout our galaxy and maybe pop right out of our galaxy and drift to the next one and on and on.

Theoretically, it was possible for our human made calling card to go forever on its way across the universe (sorry, I slipped in another musical reference....that's what you get from my musical head).

And GG has good company on that golden disc. How about Chuck Berry belting out "Johnny B Goode" as well as the more sober tones led by the late and sadly missed David Monrow and the Early Music Consort of London. As well we have the 1'st movement of Beethoven's 5'th (naturally) as well as the animalistic Rite of Spring. One only can imagine what sorts of shock value these recordings might have on some ET in the future.

Regards,

Fred Houpt
(must remember to make a pilgrimage to GG's grave site this summer)

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