“And why not?!”
To this.
I wanna play! Just think, you don’t have to worry about reeds and as you perform and you are thinking, “Man, I can’t wait to have a beer after the show,” you know you really can have that beer. And soon.
Do watch the “making of” video as well!
I think I’ve managed to read all of Robertson Davies novels. And I’ve certainly loved them. Alex Ross has a quote from the The Lyre of Orpheus
I’ve put up Robertson Davies quotes in the past. Here’s what I’ve shared:
Mrs. Gilmartin smiled, and suddenly I saw what may have drawn her and her husband together; they had been united by music, that siren who makes so many bad matches.
No, it’s the musicians and I must say they are an accomplished bunch, but odd, as musicians tend to be. Is it the vibration from their instruments, do you suppose, working on the brain? All that fraught buzzing?
To this day I am indulgent toward orchestras that are trying to lift themselves in the world, while critics are busy assuring them that they are not the Vienna Philharmonic and never will be.
We both work hard like stink from Friday through Sat., preparing the goodies, which I must say are pretty lavish?scones with jam and whipped cream are a popular item and cucumber sandwiches by the hod. Because they eat like refugees, being musicians mostly ….
We seem to specialize in musicians because they are really the most clubbable of the artistic community here ….
Why musicians? It just happens but I suppose there is some deep reason for it. The painters are a very special lot and feel themselves beleaguered because they are trying to drag Toronto taste into the twentieth century and it’s an uphill pull. Sculptors hardly to be found; no call for it except effigies of dead politicians and they are getting very expensive (bronze, of course) and are generally farmed out to somebody in Montreal who specializes in that sort of thing and does it from photographs. Writers?well, we’ve tried with writers but no go; they are so quarrelsome, and they expect booze, which we can’t run to. Certainly not the way writers guzzle it. So it’s musicians, chiefly.-all of these are from The Cunning Man
I am continuing to read, very slowly, Alex Ross’s book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
Anne-Carolyn Bird blogs about sitting in “the best seat in the house” to hear Die Walkure. (Thanks for thinking of me, ACB! I’m flattered!) She also has a bunch of exciting jobs coming up. And then I went here to listen to her sing. Wow. Wow. Wow.
Okay … so I wrote a very silly poem:
For ACB
I’m not jealous, no sirree. Not me.
I’m not green, not I, nope. I won’t cry.
She might sing a lullaby or aria
and make me weep,
but I can’t help but wonder
if she’d only blunder
when I’m in great need.
Could she make my oboe reed?
Yes, totally lopsided in beats and all, but I’m only an oboe player. You don’t expect better, do you? Of course if it were set to music you can make it all work. Get to work, composers! And just so you all know, whenever someone blows me away by whatever it is they do I always respond with, “But can he/she make an oboe reed?!” Of course any wise person will just look at me askance—what fun to use that word, “askance”!—and say, “Well, can YOU?!”
Hey, ACB, wanna do the Vaughan Williams Ten Blake Songs sometime? 🙂
Anyhoo, congrats to Anne-Carolyn and all her exciting news! I wanna hear specifics asap!
I decided to check out Boosey Radio. I’m listening to the station “Sunny Saturday” (only because that’s what is first up … not my choice as I’m not necessarily into sunny). It hops from one movement of a work to another. We began with Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (one movement only), and we hit on Beethoven, Holst, Vivaldi, Mozart, Gershwin, Grieg … not necessarily in that order.
The thing is, I like seeing a full work of art when I’m looking at an art work, and I like reading the whole novel, not a chapter, and if I go to an opera performance I want to see and hear the whole thing.
And I want the same thing with music. Even on radio or when I’m listening to CDs. Our younger son is a “hopper” when it comes to his iPod. He’s the same way with things on TV sometimes. Maybe it’s a generational thing? Maybe the remote control generation—meaning they never knew anything else, certainly I use the remote control too!—just views all of this differently.
I have done the iPod “surprise me” thing. And sometimes it works just fine. Sometimes not. But it’s not the norm for me.
I wonder, too, if composers get bugged if someone listens to one movement of a work of theirs and says, “Okay, got it. Enough.” Or are they just happy to have anything at all—even if incomplete—heard?
Just thinking ….
(And I just changed stations to “Mood Indigo” which is more my style.)
So there’s this comparison of a real orchestra to a synthetic one.
Gee, no difference at all. Not a speck.
Or perhaps there is.
I’ll never tell. 😉
(But you all know me well enough … yes?)
So audiences and critics are not very nice to opera singers who cancel out due to health. You can read that here, and I’ve read blog entries by bloggers who are somewhat ticked as well. I can understand it, since tickets are often purchased simply to hear one particular singer. But then there is illness and family emergencies. Things happen. I say if a singer has an injury they should get a break. If there’s a family emergency give ’em a break.
And I say if I have a bad reed I should get a break too. 😉
Marie Osmond would like to sing opera.
Just so you know.
