Tom Connor wrote:

>Bernard Chasan wrote:
>
>>I still remember the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination almost
>>thirty years ago.  And what I remember most vividly is the Schubert
>>Mass (his last) which a Boston station played.  It was what I needed
>>to hear.
>
>The prior year in Boston Leinsdorf had programmed the Beethoven 3rd
>Symphony.  Then, on Friday afternoon November 22, the funeral march
>was included in the program.

Karajan was conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in Washington's Constitution
Hall just a few days after Churchill's death.  He added the same movement
to the program.  Churchill had led a long and fullfilled life and a hero's
march on the occasion of his death seemed eminently appropriate.

I feel different however where death is unexpected, premature, and possibly
violent.  The evocation of a "loving father above a canopy of stars" from
Beethoven's Ninth after the hideousness of 9/11 angered me almost as much
as the event itself.  Of course, I didn't have to listen.

Walter Meyer