Mel Brooks and his musicals

I am a big musical fan. Something about the spontaneity of the songs and the upbeat attitude of my favorite numbers really resonate with my positive outlook on life and makes me feel happier than I was before. That is to say, some musicals lift me up. Others, just make me laugh!

I fell in love with Mel Brooks' work when I saw Blazing Saddles as a teenager. I didn't understand more than a third of the references to the different cultural, or sexual, things that were mentioned, but I was thoroughly riveted by the silly plot of the movie existing within a movie (which we don't find out until the end of the movie, also funny). Everytime I watch it I catch more references and I learn more about Mel Brooks' inside jokes. For instance, he uses the melody from "Springtime for Hitler" from his musical, The Producers, to introduce a German performer in Blazing Saddles. He also casts the same actors in multiple films. In Blazing Saddles and History of the World, Part One, Dom Deluise, Madeline Kahn, and Harvey Korman are all featured. Another one of my favorite Mel Brooks movies is The Producers. Both the modern version and the original are good, but I really love Nathan Lane as Max Bialystock.

Quick bit of music info:
Anton Bruckner had a musical program in mind for his Fourth Symphony. Here is a quote from The Cambridge Companion to Bruckner:
"In the first movement of the "Romantic" Fourth Symphony the intention is to depict the horn that proclaims the day from the town hall! Then life goes on; in the Gesangsperiode [the second subject] the theme is the song of the great tit (a European bird), Zizipe. 2nd movement: song, prayer, serenade. 3rd: hunt and in the Trio how a barrel-organ plays during the midday meal in the forest."