The Classical Music Guide Forums

I'm curious...would any of you be interested in a composer t-shirt? This is an idea that's sort of been tossed around between me and a few other people recently, so it's somewhere in the future if it does come to fruitition...however, it'd be nice to poll the potential audience before starting any sort of potentially money wasting process. That said...I don't have a picture yet, nor do I have photoshop, so I'll have to wait for someone else included in the project to help with that. However...to give a general idea of the shirt patterns, it would be something like this as a starting point:

Richard Wagner
Picture of Wotan, or Thor holding hammer, etc.
The Ring of the Nibelungen

Sergei Rachmaninoff
picture of the painting The Isle of the Dead
The Isle of the Dead

etc.

Any interest in the idea? Any possibility of buying this sort of thing if I can get the idea off the ground.....?

Let me know; I appreciate the feedback. And I apologize if this should be in the non-classical area, but I feel it fits here.

Well, I have a Beethoven T, a Neitszche (sp) T and a Shakespeare T already, but a Bocklin T would be fantastic, even if sometimes I prefer the H.R. Giger reworking of The Isle.

I'm a big t-shirt fan and, in fact, wear one or two every day in the summer. I have a few Mahler symphony shirts from now defunct HMV Manhattan stores and a number of Mostly Mozart shirts.

Would you be interested in creating a Dittersdorf shirt? It would sell right off the monitor screen for sure.

I wouldn't wear a Wagner shirt but one with a laughing Bruckner would be an immediate buy.

I would like to point out that Ralph dressed up in the equivalent of what used to be called a huck-a-poo for the occasion of our meeting. It seems that he was afraid they would not seat him in the Indian restaurant we ate at if he wore one of his usual message T-shirts. If you ever doubted that our chief poster is the most enlightened of gentlemen, doubt no more.

As for me, I was enjoying the liberation from the enslaving convention known as the necktie when I noticed on his courtesy visit last spring that my new principal is the formal type. Sigh, it was nice while it lasted. I wore a jacket and tie for my two chorus concerts last year and keep a suit to wear on the plane if I happen to be called back to the States for a funeral, which God forbid. None of these things fit anymore, which does make the occasional necessary use rather comic.

Thanks for the responses. I wasn't even aware that t-shirts like this were made before. (I was sure SOMEONE had to have came up with the idea before, though....)

As for particular composers....I'm simply throwing out examples at this point. Of course, we'll have to start with the bigger composers so we can print enough copies to sell them at a relatively cheap price and still make enough money to stay in business...but assuming that works, I'd love to go deeper into the idea with not so well known composers.

jbuck919 wrote:I would like to point out that Ralph dressed up in the equivalent of what used to be called a huck-a-poo for the occasion of our meeting. It seems that he was afraid they would not seat him in the Indian restaurant we ate at if he wore one of his usual message T-shirts. If you ever doubted that our chief poster is the most enlightened of gentlemen, doubt no more.

As for me, I was enjoying the liberation from the enslaving convention known as the necktie when I noticed on his courtesy visit last spring that my new principal is the formal type. Sigh, it was nice while it lasted. I wore a jacket and tie for my two chorus concerts last year and keep a suit to wear on the plane if I happen to be called back to the States for a funeral, which God forbid. None of these things fit anymore, which does make the occasional necessary use rather comic.

*****

I don't wear t-shirts to class but I'm the only male faculty member who always wears just a shirt and black jeans. Everyone else is tie and jacket or suit. I can't stand dressing up except for court where, of course, image is a lot. And conventions exist.

I often wear message t-shirts to school on non-teaching days.

Students, of course, have no dress code. This past semester one woman regularly wore a t-shirt with the designer name, FCUK and another, a truly rich young lady living well off her dad's fortune, wore a shirt that announced in glittering letters "Skinny Bitch."

Well, lemme see, wardrobe presently includes SFB (naturally), Steinway, British Museum and Moana Hotel Honolulu...that's for starters...

The old Tower classical annex in Philly used to sell composer t-shirts. I bought their Beethoven shirt.

This is funny! I've been thinking about classical-oriented t-shirts for a bit now My idea was having the word "EROICA" in a bold font of some sort on the back and a small 'motif' of the symphony or whatever it's called (the underlying musical concept of the symphony) on the front.

The only thing that worries me is that Eroica looks like another 'E' word which wouldn't suit a t-shirt too well...especially if looked at briskly

Hahahaha, you make a very good point with the last part. Not to mention...if you listed the section of notes, I don't think many people would understand. Hell, I can't read music....(yet) You wouldn't believe how many times I've seen people have a typo and spell "Eroica" as...the other word.

Some years ago a telemarketer for the New York Philharmonic called a colleague to try to sell a season subscription and she clearly told him that a highlight of the fall would be "Beethoven's 'Erotica' Symphony."

This store offers some composer, classical music, opera, etc. T-shirts:

http://www.cafepress.com/

Try typing words like "Puccini" in the "SEARCH" box.

Disclaimer : I am not associated with the store in any way.

...well damn. I think the idea still has validity as the shirts me and my partners in business (well, okay, nothing's official yet...) have ideas a bit more creative than simply a picture of the composer. Not to say that that isn't a perfectly valid shirt.

EDIT: and they seem to have a rather...limited selection. err..I mean....

Ralph wrote:Some years ago a telemarketer for the New York Philharmonic called a colleague to try to sell a season subscription and she clearly told him that a highlight of the fall would be "Beethoven's 'Erotica' Symphony."

You know, they probably sold one hell of alot of tickets to ignorant fans by advertising that "Erotica Symphony"...