Friday, January 14, 2011

A Musical Potpourri


Perhaps there is no better goal than to keep a song in your heart. Those notes can cleanse, sooth, energize, inspire...

I thought I would do a little research about those tremulous clefts as a response to the Magpie prompt this week:

- The most expensive sheet music is a first edition copy of The Star Spangled Banner which sold for $506,500, double the expected amount in 2010. Only 11 are known to exist, one in private hands. It was printed in 1814 in Baltimore.
- The most expensive music video ever created is Michael and Janet Jackson's Scream made in 1995 for $7 million. Madonna's Die Another Day in 2002 was made for $6 million.
- The best-selling music albums of all time: Michael Jackson's Thriller over 70 million, AC/DC Back in Black 49 million, Pink Floyd The Dark Side of the Moon 45 million
- The best-selling singles worldwide Bing Crosby White Christmas 50 million, Elton John Candle in the Wind 33 million...
- The 50 most beloved hymns include Shall We Gather by the River, I Love to Tell the Story...
- The world's most loved opera Carmen. The essayist writes,

"In a letter dated October 1866, French composer George Bizet (1838 - 1875) went straight to the point of opera: "As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note."

The opera prodigy and gifted pianist sprinkled far more of the human experience into his much loved opera, Carmen. It is arguably still the world's most popular opera one hundred and thirty-five years after his death from a heart attack at just thirty-six years of age."

- The top current songs in the iTunes store in U. S.: Hold It Against Me Britney Spears, What the Hell Avril Lavigne, Grenade Bruno Mars, Firework Kate Perry
- Best movie soundtracks according to Moviefone: Pulp Fiction, Saturday Night Fever, Purple Rain...

He who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once. ~ Robert Browning