Nothing, Infinity and You

As I sit having breakfast at 5:15 PM, amidst senior citizens who feel perfectly comfortable having dinner at a breakfast place, I am subjected to “Feliz Navidad” by Jose Feliciano. After many years of hearing this song, I finally realize that, lyric-wise, there’s not much to it. It’s just a few words (nineteen, to be exact), repeated over and over again. I guess it’s not as bad as “You Are So Beautiful” by Joe Cocker (fifteen words), or even the “Batman” television series theme song (one word). That last one really got me thinking.

There are ancient songs with few words, like most baroque arias. The opening of Vivaldi’s cantata “Gloria” has four words, and his third movement of “Nulla in mundo pax sincera” has only one, but where the great masters stretch a word or two over a complex and melodic opus, modern day “artists” use the word’s meter to create their masterpieces. These result in very shallow and highly uninspiring works like “Feliz Navidad” (which is a perfect example of meter-to-music matching).

With this in mind it’s hard to achieve appreciation for quality work these days especially when people are highly motivated by such music. Anybody who remotely uses more than four chords in their music or uses common devices that were “ho hum” in the ancient world like creating a whole album in the key of A Minor (natural minor, which is even more “ho hum”), are regarded as “highly skilled”. Ring a bell?

Oh yes I *did*.