Man, this is war – where careers get killed and that’s not a metaphor – Gonzales Never Stop (Rap version)

War and conflict has and will always occur between predators and prey, rivals for mates, siblings, and even between parents and their offspring. While it’s possible that our species could have arrived where we are today in the absence of conflict, historical evidence overwhelmingly supports the notion that conflict played a huge role in establishing the relatively peaceful lifestyle we enjoy today. The problem is that we’re still ‘wired’ for conflict – we haven’t quite ‘given up the fight’. This is especially evident sporting events, where the struggle on the field emulates a ‘mini-war’ of sorts. In the same vein, life’s struggles weren’t lost on composers, who seem to constantly try to capture conflict within music and opera. The entertainment value of conflict within sports and music hasn’t escaped Gonzales, as he recently told Thomas Bärnthaler of Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitunh Magazin:

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art. – Frédéric Chopin

10 years ago, in the fall of 2003, Gonzales began composing a series of short songs for solo piano that would eventually redefine his career and expose his music to a worldwide audience. Disenchanted with his role as producer for French icons such as Jane Birkin and Charles Aznavour, the recent Parisian transplant transformed his feelings of isolation into piano pieces that combined the emotion of Ravel, Debussy, and Satie with the pop sensibilities of Michael Jackson. The resulting album, appropriately dubbed “Solo Piano”, seemed to represent a radical departure from his previous ventures, which were more closely associated with prankster rap and hip-hop.

It would appear that the most successful and prolific authors, filmmakers, and musicians have all been able to master one key aspect within their respective fields of expertise: the mastery of emotions. Their ability to make people fearful, cheerful, inspired, melancholy, and so on, reflects years of experience, trial-and-error, or (in some cases) sheer luck. Authors and filmmakers have the advantage of using or creating emotional states though mental or physical images – no easy feat unto itself, but certainly much easier than evoking the same emotional power without using any words or mental images at all.

Today marks 188 years since the death of Antonio Salieri, which provides an apropos opportunity to reflect on Salieri’s life and death through (of course) the music of Chilly Gonzales.

Antonio Salieri has certainly been cemented in the minds of the current generation as Mozart’s admiring antagonist, but in reality, Salieri was a highly respected composer and teacher who made great strides in Italian Opera, and influenced his students; Schubert, Beethoven, Liszt among them.

“Fantasy” (or “phantasy”) comprises a large part of any entertainment genre; movies, music, theatre, etc. Escaping the confines of reality for a couple of hours is worth a great deal of money to many industries. Fantasy isn’t just the domain of the entertainment industry;