Haydn Orgy!!!

Rain today, under gloomy Boston skies.
S. is still in the hospital, 10 days now. We wait for her return.

Meanwhile, during a quick run to the market, from a car radio, such beautiful music, it suddenly surrounds me, it transforms Everything, makes everything bearable. All the gray and gloom and anxiety--for some hours at least--disappeared!! A thousand, hundred thanks for the reminder, from Dr. G., that this is Harvard's Haydn Orgy week, and had I not heard it on his car radio this morning, I might have missed it!!

For anyone who is interested, from Tuesday, May 6 (today) at 5:00 AM through midnight Friday, May 8th and next weekend will happen WHRB's Spring (musical) Orgy. Listen to 175 hours of continuous music, airing most of the complete surviving works of Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809), in chronological order. [For the complete schedule, click here.]

Harvard Radio Broadcasting Co., Inc. is a private, non-profit corporation operated on a volunteer basis by undergraduates at Harvard College.

Legend has it that the WHRB Orgy® tradition began over fifty-five years ago, in the Spring of 1943. At that time, it is said that one Harvard student, then a staff member of WHRB, returned to the station after a particularly difficult exam and played all of Beethoven's nine symphonies consecutively to celebrate the end of a long, hard term of studying. The idea caught on, and soon the orgy concept was expanded to include live Jazz and Rock Orgies, as well as a wide variety of recorded music.

The Orgy® tradition lives on even today at WHRB. Each January and May, during the Reading and Exam Periods of Harvard College, WHRB presents marathon-style musical programs devoted to a single composer, performer, genre, or subject. The New York Times calls them "idealistic and interesting," adding, "the WHRB Orgies represent a triumph of musical research, imagination, and passion."[1]

What magical music--it soothes, it heals, it makes it seem like everything will, finally, be all right.