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Just finished Brave New World, which Salad so long ago recommended to me (coincidentally, it's on the Name That Book list, which is how I found out we had it in the library). Amazing, incoherent insights. Though everything does seem to be chastising me for my disregard or lack of strong emotion; I feel, for some reason, guilty for not being overcome with antiwar sentiment, for allowing reason to intrude on my passion. I can be emotional, too, you know. And I am. But I won't be held in the wrong for something I'm able to reconsider. "Don't bother with your reasons", hmm. Don't just excuse for yourself something that is a matter of deeply held, perhaps instinctual and perhaps conditioned prejudice. Especially when my perspective agrees in a n underlying, fundamental sense, that you're disregarding. You could use it in your argument, in favor of your own perspective, yourself.
On a less convoluted and rhetorical note, Salad's back tomorrow, and I can discuss the Huxley book with him. Oh, and the rehearsal will include the stuff for the Christmas recording (not Madrigals, that's in March). Speaking of rehearsals...
Today at Rice was nearly as enlightening as that day months ago when my encounter with a musically ignorant girl showed me how much I really do know, and how uselessly specialized my knowledge is. Today, Tom took the voice majors out of Chorale to work on Madame Butterfly with them, and left us non-music majors in the room to rehearse with Dr. Farwell. It's amazing how awful we sounded. It was like Lanier, except horrendously out of tune and with no blend. Middle-school level voices. Out of college students. Are we trained singers really that special? Mama and I drowned out the rest of the alto section, and the sopranos sounded like 8-year-olds. And all the references Dr. Farwell was making, to vowel names and the chord progressions and the note names, were totally over their heads. They couldn't pronounce any of the German (which, as a language person, really irked me; we've had three rehearsals, where have these people been?), and they couldn't "read" the music (as I've said, it wasn't the first, or even second, time we'd sung these things). I nearly wept at the butchering poor Brahms's glorious work received. I hope Tom never inflicts that upon us again.
Today at Rice was nearly as enlightening as that day months ago when my encounter with a musically ignorant girl showed me how much I really do know, and how uselessly specialized my knowledge is. Today, Tom took the voice majors out of Chorale to work on Madame Butterfly with them, and left us non-music majors in the room to rehearse with Dr. Farwell. It's amazing how awful we sounded. It was like Lanier, except horrendously out of tune and with no blend. Middle-school level voices. Out of college students. Are we trained singers really that special? Mama and I drowned out the rest of the alto section, and the sopranos sounded like 8-year-olds. And all the references Dr. Farwell was making, to vowel names and the chord progressions and the note names, were totally over their heads. They couldn't pronounce any of the German (which, as a language person, really irked me; we've had three rehearsals, where have these people been?), and they couldn't "read" the music (as I've said, it wasn't the first, or even second, time we'd sung these things). I nearly wept at the butchering poor Brahms's glorious work received. I hope Tom never inflicts that upon us again.
For some reason, despite the perverse spasmodic refusal of my Mac entry-posting client to connect, the little thoughts I have persist in being compulsory to post tonight. Huf.
Unreasonable, rebellious anger manifested in a pounding rendition of the Pathetique (or at least the pathetic three pages that I can play), started after the first verse of my own personal melancholy-song was interrupted by my mom's untimely return from rehearsal. But soon she left. And I finished, though, while listening objectively to myself sing, I have to wonder it the training is wringing out the expression. It's still in a bad range for me, Memory. But then I got to be inchoately incoherent with the pounding B section of that incessant obsession, the creation of Mr. from the Beet garden (that's his name, y'know, old Ludwig).
Wow, my mad ravings have reached a new level of unintelligibility. I had Nia's poem translated by Sunday, but the I spilled water on it so I have yet to fix it and post it where she deserves to see it, let alone write down the little Middle-Earthy tunes running around in my head for it. Mrr.
Unreasonable, rebellious anger manifested in a pounding rendition of the Pathetique (or at least the pathetic three pages that I can play), started after the first verse of my own personal melancholy-song was interrupted by my mom's untimely return from rehearsal. But soon she left. And I finished, though, while listening objectively to myself sing, I have to wonder it the training is wringing out the expression. It's still in a bad range for me, Memory. But then I got to be inchoately incoherent with the pounding B section of that incessant obsession, the creation of Mr. from the Beet garden (that's his name, y'know, old Ludwig).
Wow, my mad ravings have reached a new level of unintelligibility. I had Nia's poem translated by Sunday, but the I spilled water on it so I have yet to fix it and post it where she deserves to see it, let alone write down the little Middle-Earthy tunes running around in my head for it. Mrr.
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