The Making of Sunday Morning Classics on TBP

By Steve Candidus (Steve C.)

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You can trace the origins of this feature to “Sunday Funnies.”

SMC used to post some classical music in the comments of Sunday Funnies. I always looked forward to them as I enjoyed the break from all of the hard rock and punk rock that dominates the comments on this site.

He said that he posted his selections there because there really wasn’t anywhere else to put them and that he thought it would be a good spot for people enjoying a nice quiet Sunday morning.

When I wrote my article about saxophones it only got about 40 or so comments, but the people that did comment seemed to like it and even contributed some music themselves.

I got to thinking about those two things and thought that maybe we could have a weekly feature on TBP for classical music and maybe even include some jazz for those of us that aren’t into the hard rock music.

Being very much a believer in the old adage that, ‘if you’re so smart do it yourself,’ philosophy and not wanting to add to Admin’s already heavy load by asking him to do it, I decided that maybe I could do this myself.

TBP has been very good to me and thanks to it I have found a very nice friendship with Peter Underwood in UK (Austrian Peter). We have exchanged many and sometimes long emails, and have found a real kindred spirit between us. We are ‘of a kind.’

We are both writers and have been for many years. I have found over those years that I bond well with other writers and have had many long-term friendships with many popular writers that you have very likely read in articles and newspapers for years.

Eric Margolis, Charley Reese (I miss him), Karl Hess (I miss him too), Lew Rockwell, Thomas De Lorenzo, Butler Shaffer (just passed a few weeks ago, but a wonderful friend) and many others.

Writers always need other writer friends to bounce ideas off of and to help with proofreading and editing. Peter is my new proofreader and I am glad to have him as a friend.

“Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

So, when I got the idea to do this weekly feature I asked Peter if he would like to work with me on it. Peter liked the idea and agreed to work with me to that end.

Although I have written a number of articles for TBP, first as a guest writer and now as a writer with posting privileges, I still asked Admin first if it was OK with him for us to do this. I gave him an outline of what I intended and that if it was OK with him, would he please contact SMC and nkit to see if they wanted to join us.

I knew that SMC liked classical music from his aforementioned posting of them in Sunday Funnies and I knew that nkit must have some interest by his posting of some in Friday Fail. Other than that, I didn’t know anything about either of them.

Admin replied that he liked the idea, saying that he was looking for some way to add some additional class to TBP and he gave me the go-ahead, and forwarded my email to nkit and SMC.

They contacted me, were very enthusiastic about it, and both wanted in.

Over the next few weeks, we worked out a format, made the template, and devised an overall scheme of things. To give you some idea, we are on our sixth major revision of the template with about a dozen minor revisions. It’s definitely a process.

We changed the name of the feature from the ‘Sunday Morning Symphonies’ that I had originally proposed to Admin, to “Sunday Morning Classics on TBP.” Changing it to ‘Classics’ instead of ‘Symphonies’ opened it up to include other things like Opera, Ballet, Chorus, Jazz and its various offshoots.

Somewhere along the way, we decided that we should have a name for those of us that are putting this all together and in the spirit of keeping it fun too, it was suggested that we call ourselves ‘The Classic Music Mafia.’ Everybody liked it, so it went into the template.

(We also decided that if we ever get together in person that we will need to have a secret handshake too. Something wickedly cool…)

I used a combination of Jim’s email about adding some additional class to TBP with a comment that Stucky made to me e few years back when he was encouraging me to send my articles to Admin. He said he thought that my writing would ‘add some class to this joint’. I never forgot that and so that too went into the template.

So our closing comment each week has a little of both Admin and Stucky in it.

In our final design, we always start with a full symphony, and then we each contribute what we call ‘a short.’ These can be symphonies, opera, ballet, chorus, or jazz and its various branches. We try to keep them to 15 minutes or less. Anything we want, as long as it’s good.

We try to have something for the kiddos each month too in order to introduce them to classic music.

We don’t want to use videos that are just album covers. We try to find recordings that show the musicians in live performances.

The whole thing is actually a lot of work. The symphonies alone take me several hours to pick. I know what I want. Then I have find it. If I can’t find what I’m looking for, I go on to my next choice.

Once I find some selections, I listen to all of them that I can find to choose the best one. It’s very time consuming. So far, I have been choosing all of the symphonies that we start with, but if any of the other guys want to contribute one I’d certainly be good with that.

(If anyone else on TBP wants to send me some suggestions for symphonies with the URL, I will gladly accept their suggestions and credit them if we use them. Please be sure that it shows the orchestra, it’s a good composition, and the music is clear).

The ‘shorts’ are easier, but they’re still a lot of work to select. We also write some ‘copy’ with each to describe them properly. The guys send me their selections and their copy for them.

Once a symphony is selected and each of us have selected a ‘short’ I combine everything into the template and send it to the rest of the ‘Mafia’ for them to review and modify as needed.

When the template is complete, I enter it into the TBP site and then have to make all of the changes and adjustments to make sure everything looks good and all of the videos are working properly. Sometimes those give me fits, but I am getting much better at it. That is also a learning process…

I hit the ‘submit-button-of-no-return’ on Saturday evening at about 8PM Central Time to get them into the Sunday morning posting slot.

One of our goals was to try to provide this feature without adding any new burden on our good host Jim. Admin has been very good about providing us all with this wonderful site that we call home to our TBP family where we can all exchange opinions and ideas freely without moderation and it takes an enormous amount of time and energy for him to do so. And he does it every single day! The last thing that we wanted to do was add to his workload.

We also do all of this on our own time in order to have our “Sunday Morning Classics on TBP” available for everyone to enjoy each week. As I said, it’s a lot of work, but the camaraderie that we are enjoying in doing it is wonderful. We are all having fun.

Mostly though, it’s our contribution to our good host and to our TBP family.

We hope that you are enjoying it.

“A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.” ― Leopold Stokowski

(My thanks to my friend Peter Underwood (Austrian Peter) for proofreading this essay for me)

Steve Candidus is a writer and history buff that works as a product and application specialist of large AC electric motors in Spring, Texas.

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