Twelve tone tournament


Photo via Larry Hodges' Celebrities playing table tennis, where there are lots more musicians practicing their back hand.

More twelve tone links here.
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Comments

Chris Foley said…
I wonder who Schoenberg is playing against? Stravinsky?
3:52 am
Pliable said…
Interesting question Chris.

Does the answer lie here?

One of the pieces that I'm doing is the Schoenberg/Marx brother's tennis match. Who was the person who always wanted to be Schoenberg's student? I can never remember.

Adolf Weiss?

No. No. No. The populist. Gershwin! Gershwin, Harpo, Oscar Levant, and Schoenberg used to play tennis every Wednesday. If not Harpo, then Groucho and sometimes Chaplin...blah blah blah. That was the standard foursome. I always understood that John Cage was the ball boy. Is it possible that it's him. Yes, but then I suspect Schoenberg's finger is in the pie there somewhere.

Schoenberg used to apparently carry around, I didn't know this either, he used to travel round with a violin case. People would actually query him, "Arnie, I didn't know you were a fiddler." He was not a fiddler. He had table tennis paddles and a net in the violin case. He was a maniac table tennis player.

Whatever, I bet it wasn't Toscanini.
7:31 am
jason said…
Also recommended is a photo at the website for a San Francisco radio show "Classics without Walls." Heitor Villa-Lobos lines up a behind-the-back shot at the billiard table, with his hat pushed back on his head and cigar in mouth. http://www.amural.com/cww/basics/the-photo/
1:42 am
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