They say that classical music enhances the intelligence, an old wives' tale that I don't really put that much stock to. I mean, science also says that heavy metal calms the nerves; I listen to heavy metal music, but it doesn't really do much to calm me down, I've discovered. So it stands to reason that it's doubtful that classical music does anything to make you more intelligent. At least to my reason, anyway.
A couple of steps away from my little nook downstairs is the piano my lola used to teach all of her students, myself included. Several steps away from that is the TV. It isn't the same TV I used to watch Looney Tunes with, but it's in the same general area, and I can't help but think of how both of these items have both affected me growing up. But that's not what I'm here to talk about.
I'm actually more curious to know what my lola used to think back when I'd watch Bugs Bunny and the rest of Warner Bros.' old shows. The mid to late nineties were filled with very imaginative cartoons that, unfortunately, weren't very kind in their execution. And they even had the balls to use classical music as the bgm for some of the more violent episodes!
One of the best examples of this violence in early stage cartoons is the Looney Tunes episode entitled The Rabbit of Seville, which brings us Bugs Bunny giving Elmer Fudd a hard time in a production of Rossini's The Barber of Seville - which also serves as the background music for the entire segment.
Taken from Wikipedia's entry about the episode:
Before Bugs' third go-round with Elmer's scalp, he gives one of his feet a pedicure with a can opener, hedge clippers, file, and red paint. That is followed by growing a beard on Elmer's face and shaving it with a miniature mower, and finally a mud masque for the face which Bugs handles like cement.
That doesn't sound very kid-friendly, does it? And yet children like myself gobbled it up. We couldn't get enough. Later on, as adults, I'd learn all about the legendary Looney Tunes directors Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, among other names, and I would go and say "No wonder those episodes were so good."
But like I was saying, I wonder what my lola thought of these episodes, and the way they used classical music for emphasis. My grandmother was a graduate of Music at the University of the Philippines, and one of the stories I remember her telling was that time when she told her husband, my grandfather, that she'd be very happy without a house, so long as she could live inside a piano de colá. Needless to say, classical music was her life, and she loved Chopin.
I wonder what kind of thoughts raced through her mind, as she watched me get entertained by rabbits hitting a duck/hunter/coyote/what have you with a hammer, with Chopin's Minute Waltz in D Flat in the background. For the most part, she hardly told me off - which means she probably didn't see the harm in it, which was, in retrospect, really cool - but I wonder if she sometimes wished that some of the classical music rubbed off on me, and led me to a life of classical music composition.
Yeah, like that'll ever happen. I love the bass way too much. Sorry lola. I'll just listen to the music. I don't think I can ever play it properly, though.