# Superbowl Sunday: Florida Suite or The Plow that Broke the Plains



## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

It's Superbowl Sunday and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. the Kansas City Chiefs; so the only two classical works I could think of to represent our American football finalists are _Florida Suite_ by Frederick Delius and _The Plow that Broke the Plains Suite_ by Virgil Thomson. _Plow_ may not exactly have to do with Kansas City, but is at least relative to the American mid-west and composed by Virgil Thomson who was born in Kansas City.

If I knew how to do a poll I would.

Since I don't I'll just invite people to discuss.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

In The Plow, Virgil Thomson was using folk music which he lifted from a book by a professor here in Nashville, George Pullen Jackson, on "white spirituals" (the Titans didn't make it to the Super Bowl, but at least Nashville contributed to this score). In the Florida Suite, Delius was inspired by African-American spirituals and slave songs.

As to who I'm rooting for, if it comes down to these pieces, I don't have a preference; I like both of them. 

My preference would be for either one to be played at half time. But that's not the world I was born into.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Years back I was connected with some NFL people who were concerned about how to make Superbowls an immersive, community wide event. My suggestion: wherever it is played, the two teams should pay for their respective hometown orchestras to come along and play a concert or two. One pops, one American composers. The wife of one exec thought it was a great idea. His comment was so vulgar it's unprintable. I tried. Tonight while everyone else is glued to the TV, I think I'll put on Boris Godunov.


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## John Lenin (Feb 4, 2021)

Kansas City Chiefs probably better represented by a song by Doris Day..... any song by Doris Day.... or maybe Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

There was an episode of the original _Odd Couple_ TV show where Felix Ungar, an opera lover, went to live with his brother Floyd in Buffalo, New York. Floyd owned a bubble gum company and hired Felix as an executive manager. When Felix' former roommate, Oscar Madison, came to visit from New York City, he saw that Felix had no talent for the bubble gum business. Felix' big project was "Opera Cards" for kids who don't like sports. So I guess a kid would buy a pack of Opera Cards and it came with a stick of bubble gum, like baseball or football cards, except each Opera Card had a scene from a great opera. One card caption read: "Violetta gets turberculosis"; another card read "Madame Butterfly commits suicide."

It wasn't long after that Felix returned to New York and left bubblegum cards to the experts.


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## Chilham (Jun 18, 2020)

Coach G said:


> There was an episode of the original _Odd Couple_ TV show where Felix Ungar, an opera lover, went to live with his brother Floyd in Buffalo, New York. Floyd owned a bubble gum company and hired Felix as an executive manager. When Felix' former roommate, Oscar Madison, came to visit from New York City, he saw that Felix had no talent for the bubble gum business. Felix' big project was "Opera Cards" for kids who don't like sports. So I guess a kid would buy a pack of Opera Cards and it came with a stick of bubble gum, like baseball or football cards, except each Opera Card had a scene from a great opera. One card caption read: "Violetta gets turberculosis"; another card read "Madame Butterfly commits suicide."
> 
> It wasn't long after that Felix returned to New York and left bubblegum cards to the experts.


Splendid idea!


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

https://www.talkclassical.com/community-forum/


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Coach G said:


> There was an episode of the original _Odd Couple_ TV show where Felix Ungar, an opera lover, went to live with his brother Floyd in Buffalo, New York. Floyd owned a bubble gum company and hired Felix as an executive manager. When Felix' former roommate, Oscar Madison, came to visit from New York City, he saw that Felix had no talent for the bubble gum business. Felix' big project was "Opera Cards" for kids who don't like sports. So I guess a kid would buy a pack of Opera Cards and it came with a stick of bubble gum, like baseball or football cards, except each Opera Card had a scene from a great opera. One card caption read: "Violetta gets turberculosis"; another card read "Madame Butterfly commits suicide."
> 
> It wasn't long after that Felix returned to New York and left bubblegum cards to the experts.


When I was a kid ('50s) they had little sets of playing cards specially designed for games like Crazy Eights, Animal Rummy, etc,
One such was a matching game called Authors, and the cards had pictures of Dickens, Wordsworth, etc. As I recall, my older sister liked playing it.


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