The Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert was excellent, as it usually is.
This year it was led, for the first time, by Daniel Barenboim. I disliked Barenboim for ages, for reasons I cannot really recall, beyond maybe divining a certain moral turpitude in his actions at some point that offended my then black and white sensibilities.
I disliked him even though he led perhaps the best orchestral concert I've ever seen, in the very same hall he was in today, except leading the Chicago Symphony. I cannot recall one of the works, however, they performed Debussy's La Mer and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, both of which were revelatory performances of works I had up to that point been less than impressed with.
However, the highlight of the evening was when, after numerous ovations, Barenboim swung around, sat the orchestra down, and the opening chords of the overture to Tannhäuser pressed into the hot May air.
By this point, everyone, exhausted, elated, just started crying and hugging each other. The music had crept up on people, and caught them terribly off guard.
Just imagine it - a whole bunch of rich, old, young, fat, skinny, poor people hugging each other in gratitude that the CSO would play Wagner for them. If only we could get people to keep clapping after the curtain drops at the Canadian Opera Company...
Nevertheless, I still hated Daniel Barenboim.
And then I forgot why I hated him, but as a legacy of that hatred, I still avoided him. And then one day, I happened upon a book of his conversations with Edward Said and it occurred to me that I had absolutely no reason whatsoever to dislike the man.
And then I saw his performance of one of the Beethoven sonatas last year on American public television, and realised that I could no longer ignore the man. And now I realised just what I've been denying myself, although it had been right there in front of me, all along.
Thoughts get in the way, don't they? But rather than lamenting on the lost years where I absented myself from his music making, I will concentrate on what he still has to offer.
So perhaps the best thing about New Year's isn't just that it's a fresh start, but also an opportunity to really change one's mind.
Anyway, here's a highlight from yesterday's show - the muscians walking offstage in protest to his lazy, slapdash conducting. (Some things never change)
Friday, January 02, 2009
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Incontinence
I had an old friend over to my place this afternoon, someone I bumped into last week who I hadn't seen in a long time.
He always seems to be doing stuff, as in, his life seems productive, but not in the crass capitalist way, like he made 55 widgets yesterday.
Rather, he seems to be on the path of the life worth living. Anyway, seeing him on New Year's Day, the 11th anniversary of my moving here to Toronto in search of a grander life, was a helpful, nay, necessary reminder of why I am here, and not in Calgary, or even Vienna.
Speaking of which, Mark Kingwell had an article in the Saturday Globe about idleness. Although I'm certain it is in part to help sell paperback copies of his Idler's Glossary, it is delightful nonetheless.
As always, I recommend you ignore the comments by "readers", unless you are a sociologist, and then, they may supply you with something useful, like how people who desire their own subjugation resist the possibility that it is they and not their overlords, who threw away the keys to their shackles.
I am busily looking for mine...if you find them, don't hesitate to drop me a comment.
He always seems to be doing stuff, as in, his life seems productive, but not in the crass capitalist way, like he made 55 widgets yesterday.
Rather, he seems to be on the path of the life worth living. Anyway, seeing him on New Year's Day, the 11th anniversary of my moving here to Toronto in search of a grander life, was a helpful, nay, necessary reminder of why I am here, and not in Calgary, or even Vienna.
Speaking of which, Mark Kingwell had an article in the Saturday Globe about idleness. Although I'm certain it is in part to help sell paperback copies of his Idler's Glossary, it is delightful nonetheless.
As always, I recommend you ignore the comments by "readers", unless you are a sociologist, and then, they may supply you with something useful, like how people who desire their own subjugation resist the possibility that it is they and not their overlords, who threw away the keys to their shackles.
I am busily looking for mine...if you find them, don't hesitate to drop me a comment.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Taking Stock
I took the always crowded King Streetcar to work this morning, just as I did this day last year.
Except a lot of things are different, one of those things being that I don't live near the King streetcar anymore. If only that were all that was different.
The Transcontinental is both a pale reflection of my "real" life, and an all-too accurate representation of my inner life. It is full of certain hopes and desires, of ambitions, some realised, most not at all, and it tells a particular story about me, but one that seems not very familiar to my self-conception.
I am happy that so many more people have visited the Transcontinental this year than in previous years, but I am discouraged by the fact that despite the visits, fewer people comment. When one starts to think about this, they start to think about how they can "attract" people here, and I too think often of that.
One of the things I think I need to do is write better. The writing here seems more laboured and yet also lazy, although not because I have posted more. Something is missing.
There is a part of me that wants to do some kind of list, set some kinds of goals here for the next year, but I look at the goals I've set here, like my January 1st, 2007 goal to post every day, and how it, like all the other goals, was not achieved.
So maybe my new year's resolution for the blog is that I'm not going to set any goals, or make any more promises here. I am just going to keep going, and see where things take me, because that approach in other aspects of my life, where I take up those lines of flight, has been enormously productive.
And, as you can see, the site looks completely different. I hope you like that too.
Happy New Year!
Except a lot of things are different, one of those things being that I don't live near the King streetcar anymore. If only that were all that was different.
The Transcontinental is both a pale reflection of my "real" life, and an all-too accurate representation of my inner life. It is full of certain hopes and desires, of ambitions, some realised, most not at all, and it tells a particular story about me, but one that seems not very familiar to my self-conception.
I am happy that so many more people have visited the Transcontinental this year than in previous years, but I am discouraged by the fact that despite the visits, fewer people comment. When one starts to think about this, they start to think about how they can "attract" people here, and I too think often of that.
One of the things I think I need to do is write better. The writing here seems more laboured and yet also lazy, although not because I have posted more. Something is missing.
There is a part of me that wants to do some kind of list, set some kinds of goals here for the next year, but I look at the goals I've set here, like my January 1st, 2007 goal to post every day, and how it, like all the other goals, was not achieved.
So maybe my new year's resolution for the blog is that I'm not going to set any goals, or make any more promises here. I am just going to keep going, and see where things take me, because that approach in other aspects of my life, where I take up those lines of flight, has been enormously productive.
And, as you can see, the site looks completely different. I hope you like that too.
Happy New Year!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Small World - Tabling Heine
Earlier today, I was reading Raminagrobis, a wonderful blog that I first encountered via the Varieties. Having read the latest post, I was going to add the blog to my roll. However, I'm working on a paper on Heine, and so wasn't going to do it today.
In Die Harzreise, Heine mentions schoolboys declining "mensa" in the genitive. I was curious to see if he was in any way referring to the ecclesiastical use of the term, as my paper concerns secularization.
So I googled "mensa latin grammar" - and Raminagrobis was the first hit! Turns out he posted on the various cultural differences between latin grammars. Heine's reference made me wonder if mensa isn't also common as an early paradigm in German Latin grammars, and sure enough, page 21 of the Lateinische Grammatik here at google books, the first declension is "mensa" , although this 1837 grammar uses "via" on page 38...
Anyway, and this is certainly no strong counterexample to the cultural differences in noun declensions Raminagrobis cites, but it seems that the shift from "mensa" to "agricola" in German grammars of Latin appears to be a more recent one, as I am pretty sure that Heine here is playing with what would have been common knowledge at the time.
And with that, perhaps the most esoteric blog post I've ever written.
In Die Harzreise, Heine mentions schoolboys declining "mensa" in the genitive. I was curious to see if he was in any way referring to the ecclesiastical use of the term, as my paper concerns secularization.
So I googled "mensa latin grammar" - and Raminagrobis was the first hit! Turns out he posted on the various cultural differences between latin grammars. Heine's reference made me wonder if mensa isn't also common as an early paradigm in German Latin grammars, and sure enough, page 21 of the Lateinische Grammatik here at google books, the first declension is "mensa" , although this 1837 grammar uses "via" on page 38...
Anyway, and this is certainly no strong counterexample to the cultural differences in noun declensions Raminagrobis cites, but it seems that the shift from "mensa" to "agricola" in German grammars of Latin appears to be a more recent one, as I am pretty sure that Heine here is playing with what would have been common knowledge at the time.
And with that, perhaps the most esoteric blog post I've ever written.
Friday, December 12, 2008
The Smoking Bishop
The thing I most enjoy about Christmas is the sheer variety of traditions that magically appear around this time, most of which either never existed until a few years ago or were long dead until someone with a web page and a 19th Century cookbook resurrected them. So maybe it's not the variety of traditions appeals to me, but the receptiveness to the new through the back door of tradition.
And there's an always fruitful and pleasurable avenue of exploration of the eternal recurrence of holiday traditions - the myriad ways in which one can get soused with warm drinks!
To wit, via the Valve, a link to a holiday drink I had never heard of, but solely on account of the name desperately want to try - the Smoking Bishop.
It sounds like a nice mulled wine, but if this NPR program on the beverage is any indication, the recipe at the Valve may not be the one you want to be going with...Instead, I would suggest you trust the Irishman towards the end of the broadcast segment who modifies it slightly for our modern, naïve tastes, and makes it "taste good"!
Enjoy!
And there's an always fruitful and pleasurable avenue of exploration of the eternal recurrence of holiday traditions - the myriad ways in which one can get soused with warm drinks!
To wit, via the Valve, a link to a holiday drink I had never heard of, but solely on account of the name desperately want to try - the Smoking Bishop.
It sounds like a nice mulled wine, but if this NPR program on the beverage is any indication, the recipe at the Valve may not be the one you want to be going with...Instead, I would suggest you trust the Irishman towards the end of the broadcast segment who modifies it slightly for our modern, naïve tastes, and makes it "taste good"!
Enjoy!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Elliott Carter! Daniel Barenboim! James Levine!
All in one studio - together at last.
What else would prompt me to post three times in one day?
A Transcontinental exclusive!
What else would prompt me to post three times in one day?
A Transcontinental exclusive!
Elliott Carter, 100 years and still alive despite the fact that he killed classical music for the People
The best part about Eliott Carter's centenary is that, for perhaps the first time ever in modern classical music marketing, the composer we are lionizing today with concerts, retrospectives, symposia, ephemera, salutary compositions, and sombre critical inquiry over the very fate and nature of classical/modern/serious music is the following:
ELLIOTT CARTER IS STILL ALIVE
It's nice to think that he's around to get some kind of bemused enjoyment out of all of this.
And the entire classical blogosphere has typed lauds into their blogs as well, a veritable youtube symphony of praise.
That's pretty much it. Oh yes, and this:
Serialism forever! Tonalität ist tot!
Nuts to you, Sandow and Gann, with your zany post-classical future of classical music wickedness!
Schönberg! Schönberg! Schönberg! (although he too, is dead)
ELLIOTT CARTER IS STILL ALIVE
It's nice to think that he's around to get some kind of bemused enjoyment out of all of this.
And the entire classical blogosphere has typed lauds into their blogs as well, a veritable youtube symphony of praise.
That's pretty much it. Oh yes, and this:
Serialism forever! Tonalität ist tot!
Nuts to you, Sandow and Gann, with your zany post-classical future of classical music wickedness!
Schönberg! Schönberg! Schönberg! (although he too, is dead)
Der Vorleser: The Movie: The Discussion
As a budding germanist, I should probably have some kind of quota for posts which relate to my field of study...barring this, here's an interesting conversation from WNYC between actor Ralph Fiennes and Leonard Lopate about the upcoming movie adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's novel The Reader.
That reminds me - I'm very critical of Canadian media and society what I don't think works, but I rarely, if ever, attempt to offer any solutions.
Listening to WNYC reminds me that I need to address that. To that, I think exactly what Canadian society lacks from a media perspective is, um, WNYC...the big question is how to make that happen...but more on that some other time.
UPDATE: The player isn't working, so here's the direct link!
That reminds me - I'm very critical of Canadian media and society what I don't think works, but I rarely, if ever, attempt to offer any solutions.
Listening to WNYC reminds me that I need to address that. To that, I think exactly what Canadian society lacks from a media perspective is, um, WNYC...the big question is how to make that happen...but more on that some other time.
UPDATE: The player isn't working, so here's the direct link!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)