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Oct. 2008: I have started a blog!
Journals by Year: 2006 2005
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My
Usenet Posts are something of a running journal of what I have to say on any given day.
My movies-viewed logs are accessible from my Movie Buff page.
(Note to self: keep an eye on Tim's journal.)
Lately (most recent entries first):
April 21, 2007
(In the "A picture is worth a thousand words" department . . .)
The view out my window at 7 a.m. this morning.
End entry for 4/21/2007
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April 10, 2007
I just put my JARS piece up on this webspace.
[Also: Rob Bass's reply from the same issue.]
In other news . . . music. Tons of it. Lots of misses, not too many hits lately. The list of what I've just listened to recently, if I were to make one out, would be too long and unseemly to reproduce here. Chances are, if you throw a dart at random at the RYM top 1000, I've been hearing it lately.
Okay, maybe I'll have something more to add here shortly. What exactly do you say about music? "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. . . ."
End entry for 4/10/2007
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January 9, 2007
Some recent music discoveries, basically in that whole world-unto-itself, the genre that is classical music:
- Just last night: Requiem by Maurice Durufl�. I was reading about this in John Hospers' wide-ranging guide to classical music listening (reposted thanks to Roger Bissell on ObjectivistLiving). He likens it to Faure's Requiem, and loving that work (and the fact that Durufl�'s Requiem is often grouped on recordings with Faure's), I had to check it out. I didn't find it to be like Faure's, but it's haunting and beautiful nonetheless. (Listening to it now again as I write this.) It's got a "modern" flavor that's not off-putting at all.
- A few days ago: The two clarinet sonatas, Op. 120, by Brahms. Got a recording grouped with his complete string quartets, which pretty much completes my collection of Brahms music, chamber and otherwise. (The seeming entirety of Brahms chamber music is all on 4 releases by Philips: (1) The complete quintets with the clarinet and piano quintets; (2) The complete trios; (3) The complete piano quartets; (4) The aforementioned string quartets and clarinet sonatas. I think Philips puts all of Brahms' symphonies on another release and all the concertos on another, so you could have the core Brahms on 6 releases over 12 discs, missing just the late piano works, the German Requiem, the Haydn variations and the two major (Tragic and Academic Festival) overtures. But I now have all these as well, so I'm good to go with Brahms. I'm not far from complete with a core of Beethoven and Schubert as well, and the "basic" core of Mozart and Bach. Oh, and Ligeti.)
- Rediscovered within the past week or so, though I had heard some of it in previous months: Ralph Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 2 (namely the 2nd, slow movement), Symphony No. 3, The Lark Ascending, and Flos Campi (just heard this the first time about a week ago). Transcendent stuff.
- Ditto the RVW preface, Olivier Messiaen's "Quatuor pour la fin de temps," particularly the slow movements about Jesus's eternity and immorality, respectively. Can't say I agree with the titles as much as I do the music.
- Ditto the last preface, Shostakovich's major chamber works, particularly the slow movements. Modernism done well. I'd heard the Piano Quintet and String Quartet No. 8 before, but now also the Cello Sonata Op. 40 and Trio No. 2 Op. 67 (grouped on one recording with Ma and Ax and someone else). And String Quartet No. 3 (though I need to do another close listening of this).
- I finally "clicked" in the past couple weeks with Sibelius symphony No. 2 (now my favorite symphony) and Bruckner's 7th (especially the Adagio -- so what if it sounds like he's ripping off Beethoven's Egmont overture or the violin concerto adagio; it's got a whole life of its own). I see that I had mentioned Sibelius 2 in my last '06 entry, but I "got" it even better than the last time, moving it from top 5 status in my favorites to the top spot.
A lot of these, I fit onto a "final cut" of favorite classical music (as of about a week ago) on a 700 MB CD-R of MP3/WMA files. The disc contains: Faure's Requiem, Beethoven's Emperor concerto, RVW 3 and Sibelius 2, then lots of "adagio"-type movements or single movements including (in alphabetical order): Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto, several John Barry scores, several movements from Beethoven including the big movements of Symphony No. 6, the Brahms Clarinet Quintet adagio, the Bruckner 7 adagio, a couple pieces each from Chopin and Debussy, about 10 pieces from Delius, a film score from Jerry Goldsmith, Khatchaturian's Gayanne ballet suite adagio, Liszt's Gray Clouds, the two adagio-type movements from Mahler 4 and 5, the two "Jesus" movements from Messiaen's "Quatuor", nearly 20 pieces from Morricone, over a dozen movements from Mozart drawing from the Amadeus soundtrack and Decca's Mozart Adagios, Pook's "Masked Ball" from Eyes Wide Shut, Puccini's "Nessun Dorma," the Rach 2 adagio, Debussy's orchestral arrangement of Satie's "Gymopedies," Schubert's "Ave Maria," the aforementioned slow movements/works from RVW and Shostakovich, and the slow movement of Vivaldi's Cello Concerto in E minor as used in Barry Lyndon.
Why not LvB's 7th? Well, it so happens that I lug this 700MB CD around in a small CD organizer along with a few other essential CDs, which includes the Kleiber recordings of LvB 5 and 7, and a couple recordings of LvB 9 (Fricsay '58, Karajan '77), along with some other essential classical (and even some rock!) favorites on other 700MBs. So I'm not missing out on any faves. (Imagine with the wonders of modern tech getting LvB 4 an 8, and all 4 Brahms, and all the major Bruckner, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky symphonies all onto one CD. Imagine, even more crazily, fitting 10, 20, 50 times that much onto a small "player" called an "iPod". Blows the mind!)
Recent philosophical thoughts have included, for some reason, an emphasis on the difference between Rand and Aristotle on "natural kinds." This thinking works its way into a SOLO posting on moral intrinsicism. Other thinking of a less technical nature has been going on a lot in off-topic forum debates at RateBeer.com and RateYourMusic.com (but a little thinking of a more technical or musical-lover nature only very recently at Atlantis_II at Yahoo! groups, after a long posting haitus there). Lately I had a thought on the political discussion forum at RateBeer about Warren Buffet's very heavy charitable giving, and that is: does the charity do long-term good in terms of wealth creation, vs. short-term consumption? What if, if one has a charitable mind and plenty of funds to spare, one were to funnel money into "charitable" capital investment? Say that one wanted to invest money in plant and equipment in countries that could use it most, and re-funnel the profits into more of the same? Doesn't that help solve the underlying structural problem relating to poverty (lack of capital and wealth-creation), i.e., doesn't it make fishermen rather than giving away fish to be consumed? Surely, you'd also need to ensure that politicians in these countries kept their mitts off the capital and that you had a way of empowering these "third world" people with some structural know-how to carry on future re-investments on their own.
Also: Some congratulations and admiration in order to a soon-to-be-named-and-tenured, ever-more-Rand-sympathetic libertarian professor. The person has been to hell and back in an academic ordeal no ordinary human should have to endure. But he is no! ordinary! human! (Cue famous Richard Strauss piece)
Okay, I'll stop for now.
2nd entry for Jan. 9, as I encounter things that pop back into my attention: A recent entry of mine on Diana's NoodleFood, contrasting the methods of Peikoff's advanced lecture courses with the standard M.O. in academia, and how aspiring Objectivist intellectuals need to be well-versed in both. (I'm sure that in Diana's case, I'm preaching to the converted. :-)
3rd entry: Early '07 looks to be a good time for recognition of Ennio Morricone. Along with a concert in early February at Radio City Music Hall in NYC (his first concert in the U.S. after touring Europe for years), he will also be awarded an honorary Lifetime Achievement Oscar after missing out on so many wins over the years despite numerous nominations. (Seems like the Academy may eventually have to do the same for Scorsese....)
End entry for 1/9/2007
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