Started reading Barry Cooper's Beethoven. Haven't
actually read a real-deal biography of Beethoven before -- to my
eternal shame -- but that just makes this more exciting. Haven't really
delved far enough into it yet to write a real response on the book per
se. The copy swam to me in a torrent, so I started it w/o doing my
habitual pre-reading research and comparison of possible alternatives.
Really, I'd like to read a biography of him in German (cuz Sturm und
Drang) but I'll hafta save that for another day. I chose Beethoven since
I've been going through
Real
life has been a rather uneventful see-saw between fairly interesting
work (which itself is a seesaw between feverish deadline anxiety and
languid ease) and exasperatingly dull "life" life. Not bad, all things
considered, although I wish there was more to do around here.
Intellectual
life has been trending towards old highschool proclivities: comics,
cartoons and bucket-loads of music. I'm not precisely sure why, although
it all feels a bit like a coming home. It's possible that copy-editing
work is sapping my invaluable brain-juice more than I know, and my
wordsmithery is suffering. Still, I've been enjoying trying to
systematically improve my drawing (The Illusion of Life is
artistic inspiration par excellence) and listening to music. The music,
of course, has been a long time coming, and my recent purchase of DT
880's definitely constitute an enabler for an addiction.
I've
been going thru Beethoven's String Quartets (hence the biography of
same). I'll listen to the Ninth this evening. For some reason I don't
have the same recall with string quartets as I do with piano sonatas,
say, or symphonies. Not sure if that's a matter of my own familiarity or
lack thereof, or some quality of string quartets themselves (probs the
former). Of course, the differences between the Razumovsky quartets and
the "early" quartets is huge, and I can easily distinguish between the
groups. Mhm. Anyhoo, still thoroughly enjoying it.
Boy,
my writing's lousy. I wonder who uses "boy" like that? I've heard a lot
of people say "man" but all of a sudden boy seems rather odd.
My
language study has slipped ever-so-slightly of late. Again,
copy-editing has kind of diminished my reading stamina, so I've switched
to watching videos/listening when possible.
Speaking of videos, this guy is awesome. I've been going thru all his videos (there's around 315 at the moment). My two favorites so far are
a).
A motivic representation of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge. Being a total
dunce where music is concerned I can't keep up with the huge fuguries in
the piece for long. It's weird how much more easily you can eye that
sort of thing.
b).
This animation of a Chopin nocturne with the "interval types" between
different notes depicted in colored lines. I just think it's purty. "My
God, it's full stars!"
I
doubt either one is terribly helpful for musicians or anyone who
actually knows what they're talking about, but it's a real neat
application of computer technology/visualization and musical ability. It
beats farmville anyway. The guy that does it is apparently a
composer/programmer hybrid, which both makes some sort of sense and
sounds like a supervillain's CV.
What else? That's about it. For the rain it raineth every day.
Probs gonna watch A Most Wanted Man tonight (at Big Pocket's suggestion). I'm in the mood for some spy fun, anyway. We'll see.
You know the best synonym for grey matter? "Brain juice."
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