Irrelevant picture in an irrelevant post!

I hate calculus....










I have homework.... and any post on this blog of mine is me putting-off what i should be doing. Calculus, for example.

I've included this picture from my recent trip to New York. (don’t mind its irrelevance to the post) (and at least the picture has something to do with music!)


So this thought hits me today, a concept of some mundane pathos, if such a thing can exist. Its not something I’ve ever seen or heard expressed in art, and hell, its not really anything i've heard anyone else ever talk about (maybe for good reason) ... I suppose to explain what i mean, i should explain why this thought jumped into my head.

I was waiting for salmon today in the cafeteria (it was quality fish, believe it or not, and a quality lunch). It was late lunch so there were only a few people there. The salmon looked great- an enormous plate covered in orange peals and spices that the woman working there had clearly laid out with great care, and i was the first person to get any. No one else was waiting in line, and the area in the cafeteria was sort of tucked away from what most people see. The woman serving the fish had a depressed look on her face. She seemed to realize the great waste of all this wonderful salmon she had prepared. It was nearly 2- the lunch crowd was practically gone, and she'd have to pack it up by 2:30 or 3 and there would have been nothing left. Where would all that go?

So, wasted food, mundane, eh? Yet there is a sincere pathos (maybe that words a tad bit too strong) ...in there... as this food was the product of one woman's careful work, a work that could not be appreciated by those it was aimed for. (Well, i appreciated it!) still, enough fish to serve dozens, and only one person enjoys it.

In the Myth of Sisyphus (a wonderful work!) Albert Camus wrote- "All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born of a street corner or in a restaurants revolving doors. So it is with absurdity." This is not a great thought or deed, but it is certainly attached to that existentialist notion of the absurd. That is, A thing which has had every bit of its supposed purpose undermined by circumstances. From this absurdity, i say, comes my (or rather the salmon woman's) mundane pathos.

Thats my bullshit for the day. Hopefully it will have some value to someone (or maybe comedic value) or maybe im just hyper-sensitive and all this is true bathos.

meh.

For Arvo Pärt

My newest favorite composer ( it takes a while for someone to be added to the list).

I have a fascination with the expression of spirituality. Its the concept of some noble, heavenly transcendence and all that. (i dont at all buy into that sillyness, but we can all dream) Mr. Pärt's music is surreal, as all spirituality is, and maybe that’s what I love about this type of religious expression. The organ section from The Beatitudes is sublime and this lil' painting o' mine i dedicate to the writer of such a thing. I can only hope it expresses what a second of that music says.

Homage à Pärt.

And im just glad that i can once again upload images onto my blog (blogger had a malfunction for a little while)... so im also exploiting this returned ability.

The other day I played out on the piano some fifths on the lower register of the (and E and B) and then mixed an irregular but quiet rhythm with the tones an octave above middle C- with the shift between the minor thirds B+D and A#+C#. I was just playing around, but there was a subtle yearning from those tones, I said to myself- what does that sound like? and then i realized Mr Arvo had left his mark on me. Funny how a composers style will pop up so suddenly.

Post-Wagnerian Radiohead

As I type I am listening to moody chromaticism- suspended chords in tonal ambiguity. This band's song Sail to the Moon is excellent music, (and this is coming from someone who values harmonic progressions higher than anything else in music). During the piece there is this perfect chromatic shift, exquisite, expressive and worthy of an early Schoenberg. The lyrics fit the tone of the music (or the other way around, i suppose). But lyrics are secondary- and the music is a combination of half-diminished and augmented chords, even hinting at the whole-tone scale. Truly ethereal and beautiful.

I’m currently listening to the uplifting tones of the song We suck young blood. More monotonous, less interesting in terms of musical ideas, but more experimental- still- there’s that moody chromaticism otherwise unheard-of in popular music. It makes them sound "dark" as my friend puts it. Chromaticism is still an easy method of constructing interesting chordal combinations, and this isn’t Bach, it isn’t Beethoven, but its still very good, and worthy of serious listening.

An Online Alban Berg Quiz.

Tears of a Clownsilly has an online quiz on Alban Berg- "what major work of Alban Berg are you?"

Berg, that expressive genius, i wish i had a complete recording of Wozzeck... i only have fragments of it. ( i would also argue that he isn't treated properly by text books.) Anyway, its good stuff, that quiz and Berg's music.

Oh no.

So I showed my father this blog. A mistake-
and what was the first thing he said?

"you're not using proper punctuation and capitalization, why?"

Because I’m lazy and I don’t feel like it. I get my point across, and I write casually, is that a sin against the language? are you offended by it? I suppose some are, some aren’t. But even
Shakespeare spelt things a little funny. I'm not as casual right now as i am, say, during an instant message chat. lol. Besides, im capable of writing a formal college essay, and boring the living daylights out of everyone, but i refuse to do that here, today i write for fun.

But back to my point- I may not be the best writer in the world, and i may not be a great grammarian, but language is about ideas, so everything else is secondary.

Ahhh... College

Its that time of year again, and i will be very busy with all this college business for a little while, until i get situated (then, i expect, with this being a challenging quarter, that i wont have as much free time) But i will try to keep things active and moving. Apologies in advance.

But the good of this is that i will once again have a wealth of concerts to attend. I do compose here and there, and hopefully, if all works out, i could even get one of my longer works performed- an exciting prospect.

Mozart for me.

When i am ill, when i am grouchy because of my illness and generally feeling shitty- i like to turn to dear Mozart.

Last Christmas i had a miserable case of food poisoning, and nothing could make me feel better...not even a sip of water for a miserable stomach. No, only Mozart. I listened to the String quartets and piano sonatas. His perfection, his tonic beauty and balance- it was only comfort i could get for the nearly three days of laying on a couch.

Today is a Mozart day. I play it on the piano, i listen to it now, on my laptop. He is comfort in uncomfortable times. It rests in the purity of his tonality, his harmonic/melodic balance. We hear those terms always applied to Mozart: "purity", "perfection", and before i understood tonality this made no sense to me, it just sounded like frivolous 18th century happy-music. I still refuse to give Mozart all the praise some give him, but i wont ever claim he isn’t of enormous value to my life... no matter how grouchy I am.