As You Like It

   Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen. Tonight I wish to present to you our annual song contest which began as of today. In this exciting competition, several pieces of music will vie for championship and you, my lovely readers, will be the judges. The music selected for tonight comes from various songs Miss Christianna E. Hellwig, our music expert (Right?), has heard, and enjoyed or been amused by over the course of this year. After having listened to each song at your leisure, you will comment and vote for the song you liked the best. The winning entry will be spliced and diced by our music expert in her next post; meaning you will learn everything you ever wanted to know, or didn't, about said piece of music. Does that sound fair?

    However, being that this is a musical event, before we announce our music finalists for this year's competition, you must allow yourself to be regaled by a musical interlude.
  It is Autumn, my fair audience, is it not? And therefore, allow me to present to you, "Autumn" from the four seasons written by the eminent baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi. An interesting fact to note about this piece is that our music expert, Miss Hellwig, played this piece for her last violin recital. Unfortunately, I am sorry to relate, it ended rather disastrously so we will not present her rendition here.
  Now of course, good people, I am trusting that being the case that you are all human beings living in the twenty-first century, you have all heard the four seasons at some point in your life. To have not heard them yet is a travesty not to be born by any civilized English speaking individual. Therefore if this is the case, though I dearly hope not, haste thee to the concert hall or, ahem, youtube, and look them up immediately, no questions asked. Of course, you may be partially redeemed by listening to the aformentioned season which I am sharing with you now.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that. If you're interested in such details, you might like to hear that the soloist was Julia Fischer, and she played with the "Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields."

  But, on to the contest; we have four songs for your consideration; are you ready? Please don't cheer too loudly, after all, you do want to hear each song's entrance, that is a very important part!

  Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome our finalists; in no particular order, we have:

   Finiculi, Finicula!
     A Napoleonic song written for a tenor. This version is by Mario Lanza whose rendition our music expert actually prefers to that by Luciano Pavarotti, which is quite unusual.

  Next, please welcome, Here is Love!

  A beautiful welsh hymn. Do beware of the images on this particular video, fair ladies!

   Thirdly, a song from a movie track which has become quite famous;
      The Theme from Schindler's List!

                                     
This particularly moving piece was written by John Williams and performed by Itzhak Perlman, Miss Hellwig's favorite violinist.


Finally, my friends, for something more upbeat, CATalunia!

 Though this song does not have an extensive vocabulary, it may make you double over for an extensive amount of time as it did our music expert.


 And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, the choice is yours. Please leave your votes in the comment box, and stand by until the results are announced.

  Until then, good people, we bid you a fond adieu.