Ode to Ravi
Tom Fakehany
I've been asked why, in my last post, I picked on Ravi's Volleyball
song. Could I write better I was querried? Well, maybe not, but here
is my effort to be sung to Popeye the Sailor Man.
I'm Ravi the Dinking Man,
I'm Ravi the Dinking Man,
I make creative Volleyball reports,
On guys in Side-Out shorts,
I'm Ravi the Dinking Man.
L. Ravi Narasimhan
Hmm, I tried that on my mighty Wurlitzer and couldn't quite get the
rhythm down. There is, as Mr. Bernard Shaw may have once said in his
musical criticisms, an ineffable, yea, ineluctable mismatch
between the score and the libretto such that one is left wanting at
the finale.
Perhaps what is needed is a rousing Coda a la
"Goetterdaemerung" or at least some concluding structure a la the last
few measures of Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto where the soloist
and the timpanist ring down the most basic elements of melody and
rhythm in a soothing rallentando al diminuendo before the soloist
casts caution to the wind and bursts forth in an almost martial fusillade of
overlapping and interlocking chords leading to the inevitable, almost
carnal, rapprochement between the soloist and his orchestra.
A humble suggestion, with some basis in reality, would begin;
There was a young man from Madras...
--- Oski
Out on a limerick
--
Ravi Narasimhan
Dept. of Physics, UCLA
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~oski