I skipped out on the SF Symphony, which was playing pieces by Beethoven and Rachmaninoff that I like but are not among my favorites, and went here instead because they were playing two of my most cherished works of the early 20C: Ernest Bloch's Concerto Grosso No. 1 and Sibelius's Symphony No. 3.
The Bloch was stunningly good. There were a few wobbles in the strings here and elsewhere, but generally the playing was of professional quality. It was crisp, bold, and sharply etched. This is the perfect approach to Bloch's jagged writing, but the same approach sat rather oddly on the atmospheric Sibelius symphony. Frequently, background oscillations in the strings somewhere would be more prominent than the theme. However, the climaxes were gigantically exciting, so there's that. I was pretty satisfied with the Sibelius for adventure, though it was a rather emotionless rendition. Prof. Paul Phillips is the music director and conductor.
A third work on the program I'd known nothing about but it raised my curiosity. It was the Concerto Grosso for Guitar Quartet and Orchestra by Anthony Burgess (1987). Yes, the author of A Clockwork Orange was also a composer, mostly for the drawer - it was a good way to change gears between novels, he said - but occasional performance. This work had only been played once before, ever.
Unfortunately, either as a guitar concerto or a concerto grosso, it didn't quite work. The acoustic guitar is a very quiet instrument, and it's difficult to keep the orchestra from drowning it out. Burgess could have used some tips from Joaquin Rodrigo as to how to do it right. As it was, the guitars - even four of them, played by the Mela Guitar Quartet - could not be heard when the orchestra was also playing. The orchestration had a tendency to blare, which is not something you want to hear in a guitar concerto.
He called it a concerto grosso because there were 4 soloists, about the number for a good concertino group, but he didn't treat them as such. Because they couldn't be heard with the orchestra, instead of blending and counterpointing as in a good concerto grosso, it was alternation between soloists and orchestra, as in a 19C concerto. What's more, he treated the soloists as a single unit, a big 24-string guitar, instead of separating them.
The orchestral writing, besides being blatty, was tonal conservative modernism with no particular outstanding qualities, rather dry and academic to my ear, though some of that could have been the performance.
Kalimac's corner: a journal by DB
Friday, February 28, 2025
Thursday, February 27, 2025
in quest of trackball
When I first started using a graphic computer interface - about 30 years ago; I was a late adopter - I quickly realized that the interface tool I wanted was not a mouse, and certainly not a touchpad, but a trackball.
A trackball is basically a mouse upside down, with the ball that senses movement exposed at the top. Because the device as a whole does not move, it requires less desktop space than a mouse; and because the ball is moved with the user's fingers, the irritation of the desktop surface not providing enough friction to move the mouse's ball does not arise.
I got myself one of this model:
Or two, actually. I took one to work and plugged it into my computer there, and took it with me whenever I changed jobs, rather than use the mouse that was already there.
I've been through five or six of them over the years - the click buttons eventually wear out - but always the same model.
Until now. I went to order one online and found the price had increased to over five times as much as other models of wired trackballs. (I insist on wired auxiliaries on my computer, because they can't be mislaid.) The same manufacturer seemed to have changed its default model to this:
So I got one. What I hadn't taken into account is that it works differently. Where the old version has the ball between the buttons, so you move the ball with your right forefinger and hit the button with your thumb, the new model is the other way around. The ball is to the left of both buttons, and you move the ball with your right thumb.
Maybe I'd get used to this eventually, but I found it incredibly awkward. I had the deuce of a trouble placing the cursor even within a large box, let alone a small one.
I found an inexpensive trackball from a different manufacturer that doesn't look at all like my old one, but it has the ball in the middle. It looks like this:
So far it works fine. I hope it's sturdy and the buttons don't wear out too fast. It has one other potential problem. The ball doesn't click into place in the housing; it just sits there. That means if a cat knocks the device off the desk - a not unknown event - the ball will come out and roll off into an obscure corner and be hard to find. Well, I'll deal with it.
A trackball is basically a mouse upside down, with the ball that senses movement exposed at the top. Because the device as a whole does not move, it requires less desktop space than a mouse; and because the ball is moved with the user's fingers, the irritation of the desktop surface not providing enough friction to move the mouse's ball does not arise.
I got myself one of this model:
Or two, actually. I took one to work and plugged it into my computer there, and took it with me whenever I changed jobs, rather than use the mouse that was already there.
I've been through five or six of them over the years - the click buttons eventually wear out - but always the same model.
Until now. I went to order one online and found the price had increased to over five times as much as other models of wired trackballs. (I insist on wired auxiliaries on my computer, because they can't be mislaid.) The same manufacturer seemed to have changed its default model to this:
So I got one. What I hadn't taken into account is that it works differently. Where the old version has the ball between the buttons, so you move the ball with your right forefinger and hit the button with your thumb, the new model is the other way around. The ball is to the left of both buttons, and you move the ball with your right thumb.
Maybe I'd get used to this eventually, but I found it incredibly awkward. I had the deuce of a trouble placing the cursor even within a large box, let alone a small one.
I found an inexpensive trackball from a different manufacturer that doesn't look at all like my old one, but it has the ball in the middle. It looks like this:
So far it works fine. I hope it's sturdy and the buttons don't wear out too fast. It has one other potential problem. The ball doesn't click into place in the housing; it just sits there. That means if a cat knocks the device off the desk - a not unknown event - the ball will come out and roll off into an obscure corner and be hard to find. Well, I'll deal with it.
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Michelle Trachtenberg
Oh my lordy, Michelle Trachtenberg died. She was only 39. Apparently some sort of medical issue. One site said it was complications from a liver transplant. That's a hell of an operation to have, especially when you're only 39.
She was an actress, well beloved - and I said beloved - by me from Buffy the Vampire Slayer long ago when she was quite young. Many viewers disliked her character, Dawn Summers, for being a whiny teenager. Well, she was a whiny teenager, but unlike another show's infamous teenager with the initials W.C., she was enjoyable and fun to watch. At least I thought so. "Real Me," the episode that effectively introduced her, is one of my favorites, and not just for Harmony and her minions.
As for Trachtenberg, like just about all the rest of the cast, she was superb in her part, really embodying the character. And, in that scene with the henchmen in "Once More with Feeling," she showed herself quite the dancer.
She was an actress, well beloved - and I said beloved - by me from Buffy the Vampire Slayer long ago when she was quite young. Many viewers disliked her character, Dawn Summers, for being a whiny teenager. Well, she was a whiny teenager, but unlike another show's infamous teenager with the initials W.C., she was enjoyable and fun to watch. At least I thought so. "Real Me," the episode that effectively introduced her, is one of my favorites, and not just for Harmony and her minions.
As for Trachtenberg, like just about all the rest of the cast, she was superb in her part, really embodying the character. And, in that scene with the henchmen in "Once More with Feeling," she showed herself quite the dancer.
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
concert review: Dalby Costanza Yakushev Piano Trio
At the artist q&a after this concert, I asked how these members of the disbanded St. Lawrence String Quartet partnered up with this pianist, who was not one who had collaborated with the Quartet while it was alive. The answer sufficiently clarified the nature of the group that I used it to lead off my review.
My editors tend not to approve of discursive leads, but they passed this one. They also passed my saying that the principal work "took a while to hit its groove" and that it finally "clicked." Not very formal language, but it seemed the best way to say succinctly what I meant.
It was an OK concert with a lot of miscellaneous items, and I was pleased to review it, the more so as we hadn't covered anything else yet from this presenter this season.
My editors tend not to approve of discursive leads, but they passed this one. They also passed my saying that the principal work "took a while to hit its groove" and that it finally "clicked." Not very formal language, but it seemed the best way to say succinctly what I meant.
It was an OK concert with a lot of miscellaneous items, and I was pleased to review it, the more so as we hadn't covered anything else yet from this presenter this season.
Monday, February 24, 2025
filibuster review
Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy (Liveright, 2021)
I grabbed this book almost at random off the library shelf, but it turned out to be exactly what I wanted: a history of the Senate filibuster, filling in lots of gaps from what I previously knew of Senate history. I already knew that the filibuster was a bug in the Senate's rule of unlimited debate, being an exploitation of that rule to stop debate, but I hadn't known that, before the further exploitation of the rule in the 1980s, almost the only successful filibusters - that actually stopped bills instead of just delaying them - were applied to civil rights bills. Even racist Southern senators, who would sanctimoniously declare that unlimited debate was the Senate's hallowed tradition - it is, but holding the floor to stop debate isn't - were perfectly happy to vote for cloture, the overriding of a filibuster, when the topic was something else. Like the 3/5ths clause, the filibuster is tainted from its origins.
Jentleson tells clearly the complex story of the revisions of Senate rules that inadvertently led to the situation we have today, where filibusters need not hold the floor but only be signalled by intent and are applied to every bill, so that every one needs a 60%+ majority to pass. It's also clear that the "nuclear option," to require only a 50%+ vote to pass, is not an explosion but a reversion to normal Senate rules. What isn't clear is why, having already applied the "nuclear option" to nominations for lower judges, Harry Reid couldn't change the rule further to apply it to Merrick Garland's nomination.
Though Jentleson earned his knowledge as an aide to Reid, the most interesting part of the book is the discussion of recent Republican obstruction from their point of view, explaining why they do it. McConnell's refusal to allow any Democratic bills or nominations to pass was a desperate attempt to propitiate the radicals in his caucus, who'd depose him as leader if he didn't. And Chuck Grassley? A Republican senator described in Obama's memoirs as having previously supported everything in the Obamacare bill, but who told Obama he wouldn't vote for it even if they gave him everything he wanted, but wouldn't say why? It turns out that it's because McConnell would threaten to deprive him of the Judiciary committee chairmanship, next time the Republicans got the majority, if he broke ranks. But of course he couldn't say that: it'd sound too venal and self-serving.
There's a few small factual quibbles. John Quincy Adams didn't make a deal with Henry Clay to throw him the presidency in 1825 in return for making Clay Secretary of State. That's what Andrew Jackson charged, but Adams was simply too naive to realize his integrity would be questioned. Also, at times I think Jentleson relies too heavily on Robert Caro for the historical material on Lyndon Johnson, but not always.
I grabbed this book almost at random off the library shelf, but it turned out to be exactly what I wanted: a history of the Senate filibuster, filling in lots of gaps from what I previously knew of Senate history. I already knew that the filibuster was a bug in the Senate's rule of unlimited debate, being an exploitation of that rule to stop debate, but I hadn't known that, before the further exploitation of the rule in the 1980s, almost the only successful filibusters - that actually stopped bills instead of just delaying them - were applied to civil rights bills. Even racist Southern senators, who would sanctimoniously declare that unlimited debate was the Senate's hallowed tradition - it is, but holding the floor to stop debate isn't - were perfectly happy to vote for cloture, the overriding of a filibuster, when the topic was something else. Like the 3/5ths clause, the filibuster is tainted from its origins.
Jentleson tells clearly the complex story of the revisions of Senate rules that inadvertently led to the situation we have today, where filibusters need not hold the floor but only be signalled by intent and are applied to every bill, so that every one needs a 60%+ majority to pass. It's also clear that the "nuclear option," to require only a 50%+ vote to pass, is not an explosion but a reversion to normal Senate rules. What isn't clear is why, having already applied the "nuclear option" to nominations for lower judges, Harry Reid couldn't change the rule further to apply it to Merrick Garland's nomination.
Though Jentleson earned his knowledge as an aide to Reid, the most interesting part of the book is the discussion of recent Republican obstruction from their point of view, explaining why they do it. McConnell's refusal to allow any Democratic bills or nominations to pass was a desperate attempt to propitiate the radicals in his caucus, who'd depose him as leader if he didn't. And Chuck Grassley? A Republican senator described in Obama's memoirs as having previously supported everything in the Obamacare bill, but who told Obama he wouldn't vote for it even if they gave him everything he wanted, but wouldn't say why? It turns out that it's because McConnell would threaten to deprive him of the Judiciary committee chairmanship, next time the Republicans got the majority, if he broke ranks. But of course he couldn't say that: it'd sound too venal and self-serving.
There's a few small factual quibbles. John Quincy Adams didn't make a deal with Henry Clay to throw him the presidency in 1825 in return for making Clay Secretary of State. That's what Andrew Jackson charged, but Adams was simply too naive to realize his integrity would be questioned. Also, at times I think Jentleson relies too heavily on Robert Caro for the historical material on Lyndon Johnson, but not always.
Sunday, February 23, 2025
filmed theater review
National Theatre Live, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
This is one of those films of a live performance of a British theater production, shown on a screen in a stage theater as if it were an in-person live performance, got it?
It was a pretty good performance, but one thing was clear above all else: that the Musk-Trump administration had nothing to do with sponsoring it, because they would have abominated it.
For one thing, the production had gay overtones (which added nothing except to make Algy falling for Cecily seem incongruous), and drag/mardi-gras framing (prelude and curtain calls), which added nothing whatever.
More significantly, three of the main characters - Algy and his relatives, Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen - were played by Black actors. (The rest were white.) Not only would their presence infuriate the bigots who resent a minority person taking any job a white person could do, but the casting meant that both of the main romantic relationships in the play were interracial. Oh no, they could go on to have mongrel children (like Barack Obama). Sounds fine by me.
The big scene between Gwendolen and Cecily, where they pass from being new acquaintances to friends to bitter rivals to sisters in adversity, was the acting showpiece of the performance, with Ronke Adékoluéjó as Gwendolen and Eliza Scanlen as Cecily.
Next National Theatre Live production, in April, is Dr. Strangelove. That's right, a film of a stage adaptation of a film. With Steve Coogan in the Peter Sellers roles (plus Major Kong, which Sellers was also originally scheduled to play), so ... maybe.
This is one of those films of a live performance of a British theater production, shown on a screen in a stage theater as if it were an in-person live performance, got it?
It was a pretty good performance, but one thing was clear above all else: that the Musk-Trump administration had nothing to do with sponsoring it, because they would have abominated it.
For one thing, the production had gay overtones (which added nothing except to make Algy falling for Cecily seem incongruous), and drag/mardi-gras framing (prelude and curtain calls), which added nothing whatever.
More significantly, three of the main characters - Algy and his relatives, Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen - were played by Black actors. (The rest were white.) Not only would their presence infuriate the bigots who resent a minority person taking any job a white person could do, but the casting meant that both of the main romantic relationships in the play were interracial. Oh no, they could go on to have mongrel children (like Barack Obama). Sounds fine by me.
The big scene between Gwendolen and Cecily, where they pass from being new acquaintances to friends to bitter rivals to sisters in adversity, was the acting showpiece of the performance, with Ronke Adékoluéjó as Gwendolen and Eliza Scanlen as Cecily.
Next National Theatre Live production, in April, is Dr. Strangelove. That's right, a film of a stage adaptation of a film. With Steve Coogan in the Peter Sellers roles (plus Major Kong, which Sellers was also originally scheduled to play), so ... maybe.
Saturday, February 22, 2025
concert review: Redwood Symphony
With some misgivings, I decided to review Redwood Symphony's Mahler Second last weekend; it's just been published.
Redwood does Mahler very well, but though the quality of the performance was good, this was one of their less enticing interpretations. The dramatic first movement, which should thunder from mighty heights in the manner of Bruckner, was instead ominous and brooding. The problem with that is, when the same mood reappears in the finale, there's nothing left for it to do. It got extremely tedious, and I was reminded again that what Mahler needed was a good editor. I would have just thrown out the entire finale before the point where the chorus enters: that, which normally I could do without, was really good.
This was at the San Mateo PAC, which is the auditorium of the city's main high school. High schools are not famed for having large parking lots (normally they play at a junior college, and those do have huge parking lots), and with a large orchestra and larger chorus all wanting to park there too, it was far more jammed than when I've been there before. I wound up out on the street on the other side of the large campus.
Both a symphony board member and one of the instrumentalists caught me before the concert and thanked me for reviewing it: Redwood doesn't get covered too often. I trust they'll be happy with the result. As for me, I'm not used to being accosted this way.
Redwood does Mahler very well, but though the quality of the performance was good, this was one of their less enticing interpretations. The dramatic first movement, which should thunder from mighty heights in the manner of Bruckner, was instead ominous and brooding. The problem with that is, when the same mood reappears in the finale, there's nothing left for it to do. It got extremely tedious, and I was reminded again that what Mahler needed was a good editor. I would have just thrown out the entire finale before the point where the chorus enters: that, which normally I could do without, was really good.
This was at the San Mateo PAC, which is the auditorium of the city's main high school. High schools are not famed for having large parking lots (normally they play at a junior college, and those do have huge parking lots), and with a large orchestra and larger chorus all wanting to park there too, it was far more jammed than when I've been there before. I wound up out on the street on the other side of the large campus.
Both a symphony board member and one of the instrumentalists caught me before the concert and thanked me for reviewing it: Redwood doesn't get covered too often. I trust they'll be happy with the result. As for me, I'm not used to being accosted this way.
Friday, February 21, 2025
cats in agony
I'm used to taking lots of medicines. The cats aren't.
Tybalt went in to the vet for a teeth cleaning yesterday. He trotted in as usual in the morning to the bathroom where we keep the cat food, thinking he was going to be fed, but he was mistaken. (No food before a cleaning, because it requires anesthesia.) I'm used to the look of dismay and resignation he gives when I shut the bathroom door and then open up the shower stall in which I'd hidden the cat carrier the night before, but the yowls of agony he gave continuously from then on until I dropped him off were heartrending.
Then he came home with a tooth extracted and three medicines we have to squirt in orally twice a day for two weeks: a painkiller, an antibiotic, and a dental rinse. B. holds him and squeezes his mouth open, and I handle the syringes.
Tybalt has been a loving cat. Often he rests over on B's side of the bed, but whenever I lie down for a nap, if I'm lying on my right side so that I'm facing B's side, Tybalt will get up, saunter over, and snuggle down in my arms for a long petting session.
But I don't think that will happen any more, at least for a while. There weren't even any cats meowing for food when I got up this morning, over an hour after their default feeding time (B. was still asleep), and that's unprecedented. The medicine is upsetting Tybalt too much, and as for Maia, anything out of the ordinary freaks her out and she's gone, hiding somewhere.
It pains us to be upsetting our cats so, but what can we do? Besides give up on the medicine, which we probably will do long before the vet's instruction.
Tybalt went in to the vet for a teeth cleaning yesterday. He trotted in as usual in the morning to the bathroom where we keep the cat food, thinking he was going to be fed, but he was mistaken. (No food before a cleaning, because it requires anesthesia.) I'm used to the look of dismay and resignation he gives when I shut the bathroom door and then open up the shower stall in which I'd hidden the cat carrier the night before, but the yowls of agony he gave continuously from then on until I dropped him off were heartrending.
Then he came home with a tooth extracted and three medicines we have to squirt in orally twice a day for two weeks: a painkiller, an antibiotic, and a dental rinse. B. holds him and squeezes his mouth open, and I handle the syringes.
Tybalt has been a loving cat. Often he rests over on B's side of the bed, but whenever I lie down for a nap, if I'm lying on my right side so that I'm facing B's side, Tybalt will get up, saunter over, and snuggle down in my arms for a long petting session.
But I don't think that will happen any more, at least for a while. There weren't even any cats meowing for food when I got up this morning, over an hour after their default feeding time (B. was still asleep), and that's unprecedented. The medicine is upsetting Tybalt too much, and as for Maia, anything out of the ordinary freaks her out and she's gone, hiding somewhere.
It pains us to be upsetting our cats so, but what can we do? Besides give up on the medicine, which we probably will do long before the vet's instruction.
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
was there an election?
DT has claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a "dictator," apparently because Ukraine holds presidential elections every five years but Zelensky is in his sixth year. As this article points out, "Ukraine is currently under martial law because of the full-scale Russian invasion" and the relevant law postpones elections in time of martial law.
Leaving aside the question of whether that makes you a dictator or not - DT said he was going to be a dictator on day 1; now he's even saying he's the king - the article quoted Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) as saying that Zelensky "should hold an election." It then goes on to say, "When reporters noted to Hawley that Ukraine hasn’t been able to hold an election because of the war, Hawley argued that the United States and Britain held elections during World War II."
But here we have British prime minister Keir Starmer saying that it is "perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during war time as the UK did during World War II."
So who's right, Hawley or Starmer? Did Britain hold elections during WW2 or not?
Starmer is right, basically.
The US held elections without interruption during the war, but - the attack on Pearl Harbor aside - the US wasn't in the front lines of the war. Ukraine is being subject to a full-scale invasion. Britain wasn't quite that close to the front lines, but it was under German attack and it did suspend general elections.
A regular election for the House of Commons was due in 1940. The House suspended it by legislation, one year at a time, each year until the European war was over in 1945. Then they held an election.
They'd done something similar during WW1. But those are the only times the British have suspended their then-current law requiring regular elections.
There is a minor exception, though. Special elections to fill vacant seats in the House were held. Those were local and easier to manage. But all the major parties had agreed on an electoral truce. Whichever party had held the seat prior to the vacancy was allowed to nominate a candidate unopposed by the other parties.
However, particularly near the end of the war, voters impatient at not having a choice would sometimes nominate an independent or minor-party candidate in opposition, and sometimes that candidate even won.
But that's the only exception. Britain did not hold a general election during the European conflict in WW2.
Leaving aside the question of whether that makes you a dictator or not - DT said he was going to be a dictator on day 1; now he's even saying he's the king - the article quoted Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) as saying that Zelensky "should hold an election." It then goes on to say, "When reporters noted to Hawley that Ukraine hasn’t been able to hold an election because of the war, Hawley argued that the United States and Britain held elections during World War II."
But here we have British prime minister Keir Starmer saying that it is "perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during war time as the UK did during World War II."
So who's right, Hawley or Starmer? Did Britain hold elections during WW2 or not?
Starmer is right, basically.
The US held elections without interruption during the war, but - the attack on Pearl Harbor aside - the US wasn't in the front lines of the war. Ukraine is being subject to a full-scale invasion. Britain wasn't quite that close to the front lines, but it was under German attack and it did suspend general elections.
A regular election for the House of Commons was due in 1940. The House suspended it by legislation, one year at a time, each year until the European war was over in 1945. Then they held an election.
They'd done something similar during WW1. But those are the only times the British have suspended their then-current law requiring regular elections.
There is a minor exception, though. Special elections to fill vacant seats in the House were held. Those were local and easier to manage. But all the major parties had agreed on an electoral truce. Whichever party had held the seat prior to the vacancy was allowed to nominate a candidate unopposed by the other parties.
However, particularly near the end of the war, voters impatient at not having a choice would sometimes nominate an independent or minor-party candidate in opposition, and sometimes that candidate even won.
But that's the only exception. Britain did not hold a general election during the European conflict in WW2.
Monday, February 17, 2025
presidents' day
As Stephen Colbert pointed out just now, while we used to celebrate Lincoln's Birthday (last Wednesday this year) and Washington's Birthday (next Saturday), now we have Presidents' Day, today, to commemorate all the presidents. And DT is a president, so no thanks.
I actually forgot it was a holiday before I went to the medical center for my regular blood test. Almost everything was deserted, but there was one blood lab open. They said it was really only for emergencies, not routine tests, but they let me get tested anyway. And thus I ignore, if not defy.
Colbert has also found a mapping service still using "Gulf of Mexico," because, as he points out, that's its name. If you search "Gulf of Mexico" on MapQuest, it'll take you to a realty on the Florida Gulf coast, but if you pull back, sure enough it's correctly labeled.
I actually forgot it was a holiday before I went to the medical center for my regular blood test. Almost everything was deserted, but there was one blood lab open. They said it was really only for emergencies, not routine tests, but they let me get tested anyway. And thus I ignore, if not defy.
Colbert has also found a mapping service still using "Gulf of Mexico," because, as he points out, that's its name. If you search "Gulf of Mexico" on MapQuest, it'll take you to a realty on the Florida Gulf coast, but if you pull back, sure enough it's correctly labeled.
Saturday, February 15, 2025
post-Valentine's
As Valentine's itself is not a good day to dine out, B. and I had our Valentine's dinner out on Tuesday, which is the only other day I had free in a busy week. We went to an Italian place we'd tried before and liked, in the little township of Loyola Corners not far from here, and were pretty happy with our fish dishes.
For last weekend when I was out, B. had put in the grocery order an entry for a dozen eggs, the overpriced food du jour, figuring she might make herself an omelet. But she didn't, and there were still a full dozen in the counter when I came back. They need to get used up eventually, so what do I have that uses a lot of eggs? A quiche. Haven't done one of those in a while. So I got the veggies and the cheese and the crust, and made my standard quiche, the one I submitted to the Tiptree cookbook years ago.
And that was our Valentine's dinner. For dessert, slices of a Turkish delight I'd picked up at a new Mediterranean place at lunch a couple days before. Unlike the jelly-like stuff I get at Pike Place in Seattle, this was slices from a roll made of a paste - this one hazelnut-flavored - coated in a frosting studded with pistachio bits.
For last weekend when I was out, B. had put in the grocery order an entry for a dozen eggs, the overpriced food du jour, figuring she might make herself an omelet. But she didn't, and there were still a full dozen in the counter when I came back. They need to get used up eventually, so what do I have that uses a lot of eggs? A quiche. Haven't done one of those in a while. So I got the veggies and the cheese and the crust, and made my standard quiche, the one I submitted to the Tiptree cookbook years ago.
And that was our Valentine's dinner. For dessert, slices of a Turkish delight I'd picked up at a new Mediterranean place at lunch a couple days before. Unlike the jelly-like stuff I get at Pike Place in Seattle, this was slices from a roll made of a paste - this one hazelnut-flavored - coated in a frosting studded with pistachio bits.
Friday, February 14, 2025
concert review: Yuja! Yuja!
The ubiquitous and unsurpassed pianist Yuja Wang made another appearance at Davies with the SF Symphony to play two (fairly short) piano concertos in one concert, one before and one after intermission. The hall was, unusually, packed. EPS conducted.
First came Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand. This was brisk, chippy, in the neoclassical spirit of the day. Yuja emphasized clarity over sheer power.
Then the First Concerto of Einojuhani Rautavaara. I was familiar with the composer but not the work. It had three movements of startlingly differing character. In the first, Yuja pounded out huge dissonant chords while the orchestra played gentler Nordic surges. In the second, Yuja turned to gentle, rather postmodern chord sequences, intermixed with tinkling runs, while the orchestra provided a quiet shimmering background. The third was a wild and rampant toccata.
After this, Yuja played two encores, the first a piece of Glassian minimalism with a lot of tremolo, the second one of her standard encores, an abridged arrangement of Marquez's Danzon No. 2.
What Yuja wears is always a topic of interest for her concerts. For Ravel she wore a long but slit black slinky number. For Rautavaara she changed to one of her sparkling minidresses.
The two concertos were surrounded by movements from Debussy's Images. Having had more than enough Debussy in the first part - his music tends to make me slightly nauseous - I decided not to stick around for the second.
Besides, I was thoroughly soaked. Having been dumped out by the city bus 3 1/2 blocks from the hall, I found that the previously merely persistent rain had enlarged itself into a downpour. It took me over a block to find a spot to shelter and wait it out - intense downpours never last long here - and I caught the brunt of it. My jacket, a light windbreaker, was still very damp when I got home, so I put it in the clothes dryer.
First came Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand. This was brisk, chippy, in the neoclassical spirit of the day. Yuja emphasized clarity over sheer power.
Then the First Concerto of Einojuhani Rautavaara. I was familiar with the composer but not the work. It had three movements of startlingly differing character. In the first, Yuja pounded out huge dissonant chords while the orchestra played gentler Nordic surges. In the second, Yuja turned to gentle, rather postmodern chord sequences, intermixed with tinkling runs, while the orchestra provided a quiet shimmering background. The third was a wild and rampant toccata.
After this, Yuja played two encores, the first a piece of Glassian minimalism with a lot of tremolo, the second one of her standard encores, an abridged arrangement of Marquez's Danzon No. 2.
What Yuja wears is always a topic of interest for her concerts. For Ravel she wore a long but slit black slinky number. For Rautavaara she changed to one of her sparkling minidresses.
The two concertos were surrounded by movements from Debussy's Images. Having had more than enough Debussy in the first part - his music tends to make me slightly nauseous - I decided not to stick around for the second.
Besides, I was thoroughly soaked. Having been dumped out by the city bus 3 1/2 blocks from the hall, I found that the previously merely persistent rain had enlarged itself into a downpour. It took me over a block to find a spot to shelter and wait it out - intense downpours never last long here - and I caught the brunt of it. My jacket, a light windbreaker, was still very damp when I got home, so I put it in the clothes dryer.
Thursday, February 13, 2025
concert review: Joshua Roman
This was one of those concerts so strikingly unusual that I couldn't not attend.
Joshua Roman is a professional cellist whose career was derailed when he developed Long Covid in 2021. It hit him like a truck, with symptoms rather resembling chronic fatigue. Having played the cello every day for most of his life, he put it away and didn't touch it for months.
When he was finally able to get it out and start playing again, the first piece he played was the Prelude from Bach's Suite No. 1, pretty much the foundation stone of the cello repertoire. After so long away, the sheer joy of the physicality of playing and the nourishment he got from making music and from its sound struck him forcefully. It touched him inside, is the way he put it.
Music is for healing and nourishing the body, the emotions, the mind. It's a tool kit for wellness. That is the lesson Roman learned. Though he's never fully recovered, and will - he says - not be the same man again, he has been going around giving concerts illustrating this lesson, and this at Stanford was one of them.
In between talking about his experiences and what music means to him, he played a few unaccompanied pieces: the Bach Prelude, the medieval-inspired in manus tuas by Caroline Shaw, a Capriccio by Krzysztof Penderecki to allow for the need for chaos and craziness in life, and a couple pieces of his own. One of these, written during the original pandemic, was a duet written to express the need for playing together with others, with separate melodies for each of two cellos which interweave and layer on top of each other. He played this with Melanie Ambler, a Stanford medical student who plays healing solo cello concerts for critically ill patients and those in pallative care.
Then, for his favorite concerto, the Saint-Saëns First, Roman was joined by the Stanford Medicine Orchestra, conducted by Terrance Yan. The Medicine Orchestra? Yes, it's a project to bring artistic creativity into the busy lives of personnel at the Stanford Hospital and Medical School. And it shouldn't be surprising that many of those people play instruments, considering how many of the performers at Stanford undergraduate student concerts are revealed by their bios to be pre-meds.
Roman expressed his gratitude to be playing with "an orchestra of healers," and for an encore he offered another one of his solo pieces: he sang Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" - the original verses, which hardly anyone does in full - while accompanying himself with an imaginative cello line.
Roman's cello tone is rich and slightly nasal, but very light in ambiance. It soars rather than weighs down. As a session for healing the soul in a difficult time, this concert was - as the cliche puts it - what the doctor ordered.
But considering why we were here and what happened to Joshua Roman, why were less than 5% of the attendees wearing masks? What is wrong with people?
Joshua Roman is a professional cellist whose career was derailed when he developed Long Covid in 2021. It hit him like a truck, with symptoms rather resembling chronic fatigue. Having played the cello every day for most of his life, he put it away and didn't touch it for months.
When he was finally able to get it out and start playing again, the first piece he played was the Prelude from Bach's Suite No. 1, pretty much the foundation stone of the cello repertoire. After so long away, the sheer joy of the physicality of playing and the nourishment he got from making music and from its sound struck him forcefully. It touched him inside, is the way he put it.
Music is for healing and nourishing the body, the emotions, the mind. It's a tool kit for wellness. That is the lesson Roman learned. Though he's never fully recovered, and will - he says - not be the same man again, he has been going around giving concerts illustrating this lesson, and this at Stanford was one of them.
In between talking about his experiences and what music means to him, he played a few unaccompanied pieces: the Bach Prelude, the medieval-inspired in manus tuas by Caroline Shaw, a Capriccio by Krzysztof Penderecki to allow for the need for chaos and craziness in life, and a couple pieces of his own. One of these, written during the original pandemic, was a duet written to express the need for playing together with others, with separate melodies for each of two cellos which interweave and layer on top of each other. He played this with Melanie Ambler, a Stanford medical student who plays healing solo cello concerts for critically ill patients and those in pallative care.
Then, for his favorite concerto, the Saint-Saëns First, Roman was joined by the Stanford Medicine Orchestra, conducted by Terrance Yan. The Medicine Orchestra? Yes, it's a project to bring artistic creativity into the busy lives of personnel at the Stanford Hospital and Medical School. And it shouldn't be surprising that many of those people play instruments, considering how many of the performers at Stanford undergraduate student concerts are revealed by their bios to be pre-meds.
Roman expressed his gratitude to be playing with "an orchestra of healers," and for an encore he offered another one of his solo pieces: he sang Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" - the original verses, which hardly anyone does in full - while accompanying himself with an imaginative cello line.
Roman's cello tone is rich and slightly nasal, but very light in ambiance. It soars rather than weighs down. As a session for healing the soul in a difficult time, this concert was - as the cliche puts it - what the doctor ordered.
But considering why we were here and what happened to Joshua Roman, why were less than 5% of the attendees wearing masks? What is wrong with people?
Monday, February 10, 2025
nah, a concert review
I've occasionally enjoyed listening to bluegrass music. I still have fond memories of attending the public concert of a dulcimer convention in Little Rock, Arkansas, some 16 years ago, and most of the music fell in that category.
So I decided to take up the Freight's offer of early tickets to a concert by what they assured us was a popular bluegrass band, though I'd never heard of it. And so last night I found myself among the enthusiastic crowd pouring in for a two-hour set by the Del McCoury Band.
This was a different sort of bluegrass. What I'd heard in Little Rock was typically a single performer at a time balancing a mountain dulcimer across her knees. This was Big Band Bluegrass: Two guitars, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, and bass, played by six men (and they were all men) all trying to outdo each other in fancy solo instrumental displays, which they'd trade off on during songs. This kind of show-offery is one of the things I dislike about jazz, and I don't much like it in classical concertos either.
The singing, though live and on mikes, all sounded like it came from a scratchy old 78, and the words were usually unintelligible.
Nevertheless I sat through the whole set, it wasn't unpleasant, and towards the end I had the treat of hearing them do a song I actually knew: Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." I don't think I'd heard anyone but RT do that before, and hearing it translated into bluegrass was - interesting. Things devolved chaotically when the leader - whom I guessed was Del McCoury himself, though he never introduced himself - asked for requests. The torrent of song titles bellowed out from the audience seemed to bewilder him, and they just played what they wanted.
Uniquely for a concert I've attended on the evening of the game, nobody mentioned the Super Bowl. What a relief.
So I decided to take up the Freight's offer of early tickets to a concert by what they assured us was a popular bluegrass band, though I'd never heard of it. And so last night I found myself among the enthusiastic crowd pouring in for a two-hour set by the Del McCoury Band.
This was a different sort of bluegrass. What I'd heard in Little Rock was typically a single performer at a time balancing a mountain dulcimer across her knees. This was Big Band Bluegrass: Two guitars, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, and bass, played by six men (and they were all men) all trying to outdo each other in fancy solo instrumental displays, which they'd trade off on during songs. This kind of show-offery is one of the things I dislike about jazz, and I don't much like it in classical concertos either.
The singing, though live and on mikes, all sounded like it came from a scratchy old 78, and the words were usually unintelligible.
Nevertheless I sat through the whole set, it wasn't unpleasant, and towards the end I had the treat of hearing them do a song I actually knew: Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." I don't think I'd heard anyone but RT do that before, and hearing it translated into bluegrass was - interesting. Things devolved chaotically when the leader - whom I guessed was Del McCoury himself, though he never introduced himself - asked for requests. The torrent of song titles bellowed out from the audience seemed to bewilder him, and they just played what they wanted.
Uniquely for a concert I've attended on the evening of the game, nobody mentioned the Super Bowl. What a relief.
Sunday, February 9, 2025
a panel and a concert
Saturday afternoon I attended a panel on "music and mind" at Stanford. Famed soprano Renée Fleming, who's edited a book on the subject, moderated three Stanford professors of neuroscience and a dean, who described research. One professor talked about training for people with cochlear implants to get them to hear music properly (the implants are designed to clarify voices only). Another described some sort of tactile glove he's developed that helps give Parkinson's patients better control over their limbs; he's hoping to transfer this research into dealing with musicians with focal dystonia (cramps and contractions that affect them particularly when they're playing or singing). The dean spoke of a Stanford arts therapy program open to help students who feel lonely, depressed, etc. Sending students to concerts, museums, etc., may seem a dorky idea for a program, but the therapists, after determining your tastes, find appropriate venues, pay for the tickets and arrange transportation, and above all they match you with other students who want to go to the same things, since not having anyone to go with and not being able to find anyone is a major student complaint.
The third professor spoke in more general terms about brain and bodily states, discussing neural control over exhalation, which all speech and singing is. He said that open improvisation is less traumatic than anything formal or scripted - he cited waiting your turn to introduce yourself at a meeting as particularly anxiety-inducing; it's better to go first. Fleming disagreed; it's when she's practiced an aria to perfection that she gets into the zone, a flow state as she described it. Whereas improvisation - which she's done as a jazz singer - requires thinking, analytics of the accompaniment, etc.
I'm not a performer as Fleming is, but my ideas fall on her lines. Listening to others doing the introductions gives me a chance to mentally draft my own words and a database of others to model myself on, and I get less anxious as it goes along. Whereas free improvisation, like improv theater, panics me, because I don't know what to do, and I can't think of anything under pressure. (My brother, on the other hand, loves improv theater, and does it regularly.)
After the panel, I had just under two hours to travel successively by car, BART, and bus 40 miles to Herbst in the City for a piano recital. Having prepared by stuffing portable food in my car so I wouldn't have to stop for dinner, I managed it in exactly 90 minutes.
Pianist Marc-André Hamelin began by applying his clear, precise, and liquid tones to a delightfully crisp and chipper performance of a Haydn sonata. He then spoiled the effect by playing two pieces of atonal modernist crap, one messy and one stodgy, and one piece of postmodernist pastiche crap (lots of Debussy quotes, a Scott Joplin quote interrupted by Igor Stravinsky, that sort of thing).
The second half was all late Romantic Russians, Sergei Rachmaninoff and his almost-forgotten epigone Nikolai Medtner. I actually liked the Medtner better: it was lighter and less turgid. But the Rachmaninoff pieces, including his rare Second Piano Sonata, could have been chosen specifically to make him look bad, because he's often better than this. Performance: A, insofar as it was possible to tell; Program selection: D.
The program note writer was interested in one thing, describing how hard all this music was to play. Haydn: "these sonatas are at times very difficult." Crap modernist 1 (Frank Zappa, no less): "Zappa himself described the solo-piano version as 'very, very, very difficult.'" Crap modernist 2 (Stefan Wolpe): "this exceptionally complex score." Crap postmodernist (John Oswald): "two measures of the score were possibly impossible to play." Medtner: "a study in fiery virtuosity." Rachmaninoff: "The one thing clear about this music is how difficult it is."
The third professor spoke in more general terms about brain and bodily states, discussing neural control over exhalation, which all speech and singing is. He said that open improvisation is less traumatic than anything formal or scripted - he cited waiting your turn to introduce yourself at a meeting as particularly anxiety-inducing; it's better to go first. Fleming disagreed; it's when she's practiced an aria to perfection that she gets into the zone, a flow state as she described it. Whereas improvisation - which she's done as a jazz singer - requires thinking, analytics of the accompaniment, etc.
I'm not a performer as Fleming is, but my ideas fall on her lines. Listening to others doing the introductions gives me a chance to mentally draft my own words and a database of others to model myself on, and I get less anxious as it goes along. Whereas free improvisation, like improv theater, panics me, because I don't know what to do, and I can't think of anything under pressure. (My brother, on the other hand, loves improv theater, and does it regularly.)
After the panel, I had just under two hours to travel successively by car, BART, and bus 40 miles to Herbst in the City for a piano recital. Having prepared by stuffing portable food in my car so I wouldn't have to stop for dinner, I managed it in exactly 90 minutes.
Pianist Marc-André Hamelin began by applying his clear, precise, and liquid tones to a delightfully crisp and chipper performance of a Haydn sonata. He then spoiled the effect by playing two pieces of atonal modernist crap, one messy and one stodgy, and one piece of postmodernist pastiche crap (lots of Debussy quotes, a Scott Joplin quote interrupted by Igor Stravinsky, that sort of thing).
The second half was all late Romantic Russians, Sergei Rachmaninoff and his almost-forgotten epigone Nikolai Medtner. I actually liked the Medtner better: it was lighter and less turgid. But the Rachmaninoff pieces, including his rare Second Piano Sonata, could have been chosen specifically to make him look bad, because he's often better than this. Performance: A, insofar as it was possible to tell; Program selection: D.
The program note writer was interested in one thing, describing how hard all this music was to play. Haydn: "these sonatas are at times very difficult." Crap modernist 1 (Frank Zappa, no less): "Zappa himself described the solo-piano version as 'very, very, very difficult.'" Crap modernist 2 (Stefan Wolpe): "this exceptionally complex score." Crap postmodernist (John Oswald): "two measures of the score were possibly impossible to play." Medtner: "a study in fiery virtuosity." Rachmaninoff: "The one thing clear about this music is how difficult it is."
Saturday, February 8, 2025
conference report update
I've received a couple of comments on my Fahrenheit 2451 conference report, referring to my paper on image reproduction access in libraries, mentioning the alleged practice of libraries to discard paper originals of newspapers after microfilming them.
I addressed this in the paper, but I didn't want to respond to these in comments, because it's a complicated matter, so here instead is what I said in the paper.
**The book was titled Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper.
I addressed this in the paper, but I didn't want to respond to these in comments, because it's a complicated matter, so here instead is what I said in the paper.
For a period when microfilms were new*, libraries thought they might actually replace fragile originals. But that quickly proved to be mistaken. Nicholson Baker, a gadfly essayist and novelist, claimed in a book published in the year 2001** that the British Library was still discarding original printed newspapers after microfilming them, but every fellow librarian I talked to at the time – and that book got a lot of discussion in libraries – found this claim puzzling. I’d been taught in library school that discarding originals was a bad old idea that was not being done any more, and I was taught that 20 years before Baker wrote his book. So what happened? Had the British Library reverted to bad practice? Had they never got the message in the first place? Or were the discards merely unneeded duplicates? I don’t know. The fact that Baker, on purchasing some of these discarded bound volumes, had no trouble finding a university library willing to take them in shows that the discarding of originals was far from the widespread mania his book depicts it as. But all of Baker’s writings on libraries are so sophomoric – an inextricable combination of wise and foolish – that I can’t take the time to discuss him any further.*Microfilm was introduced in the 1920s, but the period I'm thinking of, I was told, extended to the 1950s.
**The book was titled Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper.
Friday, February 7, 2025
New Yorker, Feb. 10
I get this magazine every week, but only sometimes do I feel like writing about it.
You've heard about the leaning tower of Pisa? Here's an article about the leaning tower of Manhattan, an apartment building so narrow it only has space for one-room apartments, and which was built on infill without drilling down to the bedrock, so this is what happens when you do that. It's still not finished and probably never will be.
Alex Ross, the classical critic, writes about Alma Mahler. Mostly biographical, says only a little about her music. Her first husband, the renowned Gustav, made her stop composing to be a housewife - why would a musician marry a woman who composes if he wants her to stop? - until he actually looked at her music and discovered to his surprise that it was good. I've heard some performed and would rather agree. But by that time she'd lost her creative juices and never got started up again.
Tests the proposition, it is possible to write an article about Alma Mahler without mentioning Tom Lehrer? Answer here, no it is not. Ross only mentions the song to chide its premise and call it "a sniggering ballad." What would he think of Lehrer's song about Wernher von Braun?
Articles about the shortage of soldiers in the US military - proposed solution, lower recruiting standards, which makes one wonder whether they needed to be so high in the first place - and on the shortage of blood available for medical transfusions - proposed solution, artificial blood, but they're still working on that; it's complicated. Includes numerous quotes from a medical researcher actually surnamed Doctor. Surprised me by noting that only 38% of Americans are even eligible to donate blood. That makes me feel less bad about not being one of them. After the mad cow scare I was deemed ineligible because I've eaten beef in Britain.
Article about an artist I'd never heard of (Giorgio Morandi) that actually includes a reproduction of one of his paintings, a useful feature the New Yorker rarely bothers with in its articles on art.
You've heard about the leaning tower of Pisa? Here's an article about the leaning tower of Manhattan, an apartment building so narrow it only has space for one-room apartments, and which was built on infill without drilling down to the bedrock, so this is what happens when you do that. It's still not finished and probably never will be.
Alex Ross, the classical critic, writes about Alma Mahler. Mostly biographical, says only a little about her music. Her first husband, the renowned Gustav, made her stop composing to be a housewife - why would a musician marry a woman who composes if he wants her to stop? - until he actually looked at her music and discovered to his surprise that it was good. I've heard some performed and would rather agree. But by that time she'd lost her creative juices and never got started up again.
Tests the proposition, it is possible to write an article about Alma Mahler without mentioning Tom Lehrer? Answer here, no it is not. Ross only mentions the song to chide its premise and call it "a sniggering ballad." What would he think of Lehrer's song about Wernher von Braun?
Articles about the shortage of soldiers in the US military - proposed solution, lower recruiting standards, which makes one wonder whether they needed to be so high in the first place - and on the shortage of blood available for medical transfusions - proposed solution, artificial blood, but they're still working on that; it's complicated. Includes numerous quotes from a medical researcher actually surnamed Doctor. Surprised me by noting that only 38% of Americans are even eligible to donate blood. That makes me feel less bad about not being one of them. After the mad cow scare I was deemed ineligible because I've eaten beef in Britain.
Article about an artist I'd never heard of (Giorgio Morandi) that actually includes a reproduction of one of his paintings, a useful feature the New Yorker rarely bothers with in its articles on art.
Monday, February 3, 2025
conference report: Fahrenheit 2451
In between the concerts I last reported on, I attended this conference. I'd heard about it from Sørina Higgins, the principal organizer, who is an Inklings scholar I've had dealings with. The topic was "Ideas Worth Saving: The Future of Theology & Thought." Besides theological and Inklings angles, it was sponsored by the Internet Archive and to be held at their offices in San Francisco. That meant it was nearby and I could attend. But it also inspired me to send a note to Søri in my capacity as a librarian, to the effect that "computerization of texts is to provide ease of access. It's not an ideal form for preserving data." And suddenly I found myself listed as a presenter at the conference, with a 15-minute slot to explain what I meant by that.
The Internet Archive offices are in a converted church in the outer reaches of the city, which doesn't mean there's any available parking nearby. It also means a lot of climbing of stairs. The main meeting room is the church's auditorium - it looked more like that than like a sanctuary - up on the second floor, a room whose acoustics were daunted by the massed servers of the Internet Archive humming away in the back of the room. Main presentations were given there (with microphones, fortunately), but the paper breakout sessions were in a couple of tiny rooms elsewhere in the building.
Mine was first in a 75-minute session in a tiny room with a large table, around which a dozen people could fit. I talked about the history of image reproduction in libraries, from microfilm to computer scans, and how those assist access by taking the burden of usage off the originals and thus help preserve them. But they're not archival: they won't last without vigilant updating and replacement. And how do you preserve words over the centuries? "By printing them out on acid-free paper, binding them between sturdy covers, and storing them in a building with a constant cool temperature. In other words, a book in a library."
Then we had another librarian talking about the future of libraries and the role of A.I., a theology professor on the importance of writing and preserved data in the heaven of Judeo-Christian tradition, and a film scholar on the use of film fragments as inserts in other movies, a particularly interesting topic which he traced back to Duck Soup.
The other main item I attended was a panel discussion on myth in Star Wars, anchored by clips from the movies. I remember my own comments on a couple of these. On the opening crawl at the start of the original movie: "We're always being told that stories need to start with action scenes, that expository lumps in particular are deadly. Yet the most popular movie of all time begins with three paragraphs of exposition, in print." On the scene in Empire where Luke meets Yoda without knowing who he is: "I'd like to respond to this scene by quoting a different book altogether: 'All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was a little old man with a staff.'" (Actually that quote as I gave it offhand mangles up two different editions of the text, but the point is clear: Yoda is also little and has a staff.)
There were a few people there I knew, a few more I'd met at the Lewis conference in Oregon last year, others worth talking to, and my only regret is that precarious health meant I couldn't be there for more of it.
The Internet Archive offices are in a converted church in the outer reaches of the city, which doesn't mean there's any available parking nearby. It also means a lot of climbing of stairs. The main meeting room is the church's auditorium - it looked more like that than like a sanctuary - up on the second floor, a room whose acoustics were daunted by the massed servers of the Internet Archive humming away in the back of the room. Main presentations were given there (with microphones, fortunately), but the paper breakout sessions were in a couple of tiny rooms elsewhere in the building.
Mine was first in a 75-minute session in a tiny room with a large table, around which a dozen people could fit. I talked about the history of image reproduction in libraries, from microfilm to computer scans, and how those assist access by taking the burden of usage off the originals and thus help preserve them. But they're not archival: they won't last without vigilant updating and replacement. And how do you preserve words over the centuries? "By printing them out on acid-free paper, binding them between sturdy covers, and storing them in a building with a constant cool temperature. In other words, a book in a library."
Then we had another librarian talking about the future of libraries and the role of A.I., a theology professor on the importance of writing and preserved data in the heaven of Judeo-Christian tradition, and a film scholar on the use of film fragments as inserts in other movies, a particularly interesting topic which he traced back to Duck Soup.
The other main item I attended was a panel discussion on myth in Star Wars, anchored by clips from the movies. I remember my own comments on a couple of these. On the opening crawl at the start of the original movie: "We're always being told that stories need to start with action scenes, that expository lumps in particular are deadly. Yet the most popular movie of all time begins with three paragraphs of exposition, in print." On the scene in Empire where Luke meets Yoda without knowing who he is: "I'd like to respond to this scene by quoting a different book altogether: 'All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was a little old man with a staff.'" (Actually that quote as I gave it offhand mangles up two different editions of the text, but the point is clear: Yoda is also little and has a staff.)
There were a few people there I knew, a few more I'd met at the Lewis conference in Oregon last year, others worth talking to, and my only regret is that precarious health meant I couldn't be there for more of it.
Sunday, February 2, 2025
concert review: California Symphony
Featured work of the evening, Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony. Conductor Donato Cabrera pulled out all the stops for this one, especially in the finale for which he took all the repeats. The result, with the orchestra at full roar, was Mozart the Mighty Conqueror, fully the equal of Beethoven or any of the other heroes who came after.
Far gentler, Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, with the tall and elegant Meng Su playing a crisp and elegant solo guitar. Rodrigo was very careful to ensure the orchestra never drowns out the guitar, and these performers were equally sure to observe his wishes.
Gentler still, Breathe by the increasingly ubiquitous Carlos Simon, a ten-minute exercise in meditation. Fortunately it didn’t try to reproduce the experience of breathing itself, concentration on which I find hideously uncomfortable and is the reason I dislike meditation. Instead, it featured a steady sheen of sound, but nothing spectralist or minimalist, but with fragments of melody on top, some lyric but some rather jangly. At times it sounded like the music of a quiet and peaceful jungle, possibly the one in which the lion sleeps tonight.
Subscribers found at our seats a card with a QR code and its associated URL, thank you, which on inspection proved to lead to a brief video of Cabrera announcing that next season will include Gershwin’s American in Paris, eh, and the obscure discovery of the season, Borodin’s Second Symphony. OK, granted that the Borodin is criminally underplayed, but if he really wants a totally obscure but worthwhile 19C Russian symphony, how about Kalinnikov’s First, which I’ve actually heard a lot of recently, or Balakirev’s First?
Far gentler, Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, with the tall and elegant Meng Su playing a crisp and elegant solo guitar. Rodrigo was very careful to ensure the orchestra never drowns out the guitar, and these performers were equally sure to observe his wishes.
Gentler still, Breathe by the increasingly ubiquitous Carlos Simon, a ten-minute exercise in meditation. Fortunately it didn’t try to reproduce the experience of breathing itself, concentration on which I find hideously uncomfortable and is the reason I dislike meditation. Instead, it featured a steady sheen of sound, but nothing spectralist or minimalist, but with fragments of melody on top, some lyric but some rather jangly. At times it sounded like the music of a quiet and peaceful jungle, possibly the one in which the lion sleeps tonight.
Subscribers found at our seats a card with a QR code and its associated URL, thank you, which on inspection proved to lead to a brief video of Cabrera announcing that next season will include Gershwin’s American in Paris, eh, and the obscure discovery of the season, Borodin’s Second Symphony. OK, granted that the Borodin is criminally underplayed, but if he really wants a totally obscure but worthwhile 19C Russian symphony, how about Kalinnikov’s First, which I’ve actually heard a lot of recently, or Balakirev’s First?
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