Frederick the Great: A Most Lamentable History Breaching Space and Time.

Before we begin, I’d like to mention a new historical webcomic that’s just come to my attention: Mirror Sense! Its focus is the 17th century, and the chatter sections are filled with good ideas for further reading and fascinating tidbits on the court and society etiquette of the time. Beyond that, the art is something entirely new on the history webcomics scene. Not to undersell the rest of us, but often the art is here as The Stuff That The Words Are Stuck To – in Mirror Sense, it is an object of contemplation all in itself. They are just about 12 pages in – so now’s the perfect time to catch up!
Now then, Nobody has yet guessed the identity of the music from the last panel of Episode 491 yet to claim their free art, so here are two clues to speed you on your way:
1) The piece is from the first half of the 20th century (you probably guessed as much already)
2) The composer hails from Russia.
More cannot be dragged from me until we reveal the winner after episode 493!
In the meantime – Dizzy Gillespie. Here is a nice bit of him from around this time which highlights why he is considered the father of bop trumpetry. There is a straight line from him to Miles Davis and James Moody, who are still considered by many to be The Final Word on this instrument in this idiom. I confess a particular indifference to jazz trumpet, but you have to admit that Gillespie opened up the spectrum of possibility for the instrument in ways inconceivable just a half century before. The angularity of his lines and his use of the highest registers bleed into classical music as well, giving modern composers the ability to conjure an air of oppressive panic (and yes, that seems to be the ONLY emotion that modern composers allow themselves these days, but hopefully that pendulum is swinging back) at will. And that’s something.
– Count Dolby von Luckner

If I wanted to keep with the whole “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” feel of the scene, I suppose I should have written Liszt’s 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody as the notes emanating from the two pianos. For some reason, I was drawn to these as a might Funkier. And so…
CONTEST TIME!!!
I will draw, free of charge, any quasi-historical subject and ship it, free of charge, to the first person to write to TheCount@ftg-comic.com correctly identifying just what that music is in the last panel! Caution: at least one of the streams has the notes in backwards order so as to have the right sequence assuming the piano as the SOURCE. Hint: It is a piece from the classical repertoire, not jazz. So, fellow classical music nerds, to your sheet music vaults!
– Count Dolby von Luckner

Every half decade or so, I make a systematic attempt to discover whether or not I like jazz yet. I had high hopes this time around, as there’s nothing I like better than finding some new area of human creativity to be excited about, but no such luck. I will say, though, that I make something of an exception for our boy Thelonious Monk here. His sense of experimentation bordered on the reckless, with sometimes disastrous, but always tension-filled results. Take a look at this 1966 clip of him performing Blue Monk – zoom ahead to about 3:10. He sits down at the piano and it’s like he’s never seen one of these things before – he starts poking and prodding it – you can almost see “I wonder what this’ll sound like?” running through his head as he hovers and hesitates over the keys. That’s Dangerous playing, and I respect it a lot – there is a willingness there to engage with the nuts and bolts and Stuff of music, come what may.
Granted, this is a later performance, when some of his medical issues were reaching for him. But even as a younger man, his reputation was that of an “elephant” at the keys. Louis Armstrong HATED him. But for me, that very elephantishness is the thing which makes him the most fascinating figure from the Charlie Parker era to watch and listen to.
– Count Dolby von Luckner