The Glorious Fourth!!

[shalanna]

Happy Independence Day! Hope yours is a festival of fun.

Our neighborhood had a kids' parade this morning down the main street that leads from UTD to the park. It was cute--the little ones pulling their little red wagons with their dolls (or little brother) inside, girls on tricycles, a little boy leading his dog (the dog was dressed up as Uncle Sam with a bunting and a hat), and a full-sized Uncle Sam carrying cardboard firecrackers! I painted my fingernails alternately red, white, and blue for the occasion.

We probably won't seek out fireworks tonight. I used to love 'em, but now I'm content to see the Boston Pops on TV with a few fireworks in the background. I once worked for a woman whose husband's hobby was pyrotechnics, and one year she had us all come out to her land in the country and watch as her husband and a couple of his good friends blew stuff up and made sparklies. Strangely enough, I was not completely consumed by mosquitoes out there in Tom Bean, Texas. (There really is such a town. Some of our relatives live in Ed Huby, I drove through Bug Tussle once, and we've been to the Fink Festival in Fink. I drew the line at moving to Fate, though, or living on Naked Indian Trail. Shame, though, 'cause that was one big purty house.)

And so to Yahoo's question and answer of the day:

Dear Yahoo!: Who invented fireworks and why are they associated with the Fourth of July?

"Fireworks have been entertaining the easily entertained since the Han
Dynasty of ancient China (206 B.C. to 220 A.D.). So it's difficult to
figure out exactly who invented (or "discovered") the finger-maiming
explosives. However, we can explain why they're so big on Independence
Day.

According to this page from InventHelp, the first fireworks were
bamboo rods set on fire. Rather than being used for celebrations, they
were used for exhortations -- their loud sounds were believed to ward
off evil spirits. "Modern fireworks" didn't explode onto the scene
until the Chinese invented gunpowder many years later.

In the following centuries, fireworks caught fire in Europe, before
the United States (then just colonies) proudly and publicly got in on
the fun. The first Independence Day celebration took place in 1777,
one year after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Again,
according to InventHelp, fireworks "helped steel the early Americans'
resolve and gave them a common feeling of patriotism."

And though the sight of bottle rockets in the hands of children is
enough to make some mothers renounce their citizenship, the tradition
has continued ever since."

Well, and they're purty, too. I like sparklers myself. Used to, anyroad.

Off to sight-read from the Sousa piano transcriptions! (Not really--but you'd be impressed if I *could*, you betcha--you ought to see them.) Have a happy!

Comments

Those Sousa transcriptions

[dennis-havens.livejournal.com]

All things considered, Mr. Sousa was a more-difficult-than-average composer. He played fair, though. Orchestral arrangements were in sharp keys, band originals in flat keys. The piano transcriptions usually were in the band key, but not always.
By 1900 he was regarded as the highest-paying composer in the country, so he expected for his money that his musicians could play a good deal better than rather well. The clarinet obligatti from many of his later marches are considered to be etudes that can stand alone on their merit. He didn't write to produce hard-to-play music; it just often worked out that way.
I suspect that every minute you spend studying and playing his transcriptions will make you a stronger and better player.