Monthly Archives: June 2010

the chorus

(clears throat)

The website for the chorus project I’ve been working on since April is finally at a point that I can make it more public. I’ve probably said some vague things about it before now, but, basically, we meet every week to record a poem with music, and the chorus forms from whoever shows up.

I now have sound files up for every week except two, the time and location of our next meeting announced, and a page archiving the best takes we’ve done. Here it is. Please have a look, or come work with us on Saturday.

http://paralleloctave.wordpress.com

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something very provocative

“Does every performance of a Mozart sonata only include what Mozart put there? I remember years ago a very interesting conversation where somebody asked Milton Babbitt that question. Babbitt had noticed something very provocative in one of the symphonies of Mozart, something about the way Mozart used a certain register only for certain instruments, and it really was the kind of thing you’d expect Babbitt to do, and a kid put up their hand and said, “Mr. Babbitt, did Mozart put that there?” and Babbitt said, I think quite aptly, “It doesn’t make any difference.” ”

– Bruce Brubaker interviewed at New York Pianist, via his AJ blog, PianoMorphosis

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the means of correcting catastrophic failures

"…in the same way whalers had to sail farther and farther for their prey, oil companies are drilling deeper and deeper to tap the gulf’s oil, to levels made possible only by the most advanced technology, operating near its limits. The Coast Guard has warned that this technology has outpaced not only government oversight but — as events have shown — the means of correcting catastrophic failures. An admonition from Nietzsche that Mr. Hoare cites in reference to “Moby-Dick” seems just as pertinent to the spill: “And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.

Mr. Delbanco cautions, however, against the tendency to read environmentalist moralizing into “Moby-Dick,” as often happens when it is applied to contemporary disasters. Melville did, memorably, wonder whether the whale “must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe.” But one gets the sense that he would have considered the loss a greater one to literature than to the ecosystem. ”

Randy Kennedy, "The Ahab Parallax: ‘Moby-Dick’ and the Spill," in the NYT

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R.I.P., José Saramago

“José Saramago, the Portuguese writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998 with novels that combine surrealist experimentation and a kind of sardonic peasant pragmatism, has died at his home in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, his publisher said on Friday. He was 87. ”

– Article via the NYT

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poetry, quotes

when I think, I am very apt to do it in rhyme

This quote is from the letters of the poet William Cowper, which I’ve been enjoying reading despite the fact that I’m not very familiar with this poetry. The man writes some good letters, though. So good that I find myself recognizing passages from them, like this one, and realizing that they must have been quoted elsewhere. Here, he is apologizing for his work on account of the season in which he wrote it.

“My labours are principally the production of the last winter; all indeed, except a few of the minor pieces. When I can find no other occupation, I think, and when I think, I am very apt to do it in rhyme. Hence it comes to pass that the season of the year which generally pinches off the flowers of poetry, unfolds mine, such as they are, and crowns me with a winter garland. […] This must be my apology to you for whatever want of fire and animation you may observe in what you will shortly have the perusal of. As to the public, if they like me not, there is no remedy. […] …it would be in vain to tell them, that I wrote my verses in January, for they would immediately reply, ‘Why did not you write them in May?’ A question that might puzzle a wiser head than we poets are generally blessed with.”

– William Cowper, letter XXX, to Joseph Hill, 9 May 1780, from The Centenary Letters, a selection ed. by Simon Malpas, Great Britain, Carcanet: 2000 (40-41)

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Baltimore, the chorus

sunny day:

very, very sunny. Wandering around Guilford taking pictures for incoming writers.

Parallel Octave improvising chorus meeting this Saturday, at 2 pm. More info here. Texts: Blake’s “London” and A.E. Housman’s “When I Watch The Living Meet.” Today, I’m going to get trained on one of the better sound recording systems that the DMC checks out, so we can use it for that session. Its name sounds a lot like “Moranis,” which I can’t help but confuse with the recently-reported-to-me news that there’s going to be a Ghostbusters 3.

This evening, it’s the 20th anniversary of Normal’s Books and Records here in Charles Village, and there’s a party at the 14K Cabaret.

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Baltimore, F&F, Poland, the chorus

word for word

(1) There is nothing like a dishwasher full of wine glasses to remind you that last night was good. Yesterday, we had a party for the return of C and D from their recent marriage.

(2) I was in DC today, meeting up with JK. Haven’t seen her since Wroclaw last year. We had breakfast in the mall by the Pentagon City Ritz Carlton, surrounded by hundreds of American star-striped banners, and then I spent some time in her hotel room reading various theatrical papers she had — an introduction to an anthology of new Turkish plays, an advertisement for the Polish Theatre Perspectives journal, a prospectus for a dance festival in Poznan and elsewhere.

The materials she had with her were so pertinent to my current chorus interests that, at one point, I stopped and copied out an entire article, word for word, in my journal. I’m not certain what part of it is actually the most important, or what I will need to go back to, but I didn’t want to miss reading a word of it.

I must go back to Wroclaw soon.

(3) (Bloomsday readings from Ulysses at the James Joyce this evening.)

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