any sufficiently advanced blogging is indistinguishable from blather

PDQ Bach was hilarious, I especially enjoyed the final movement of his “Variations on an Unusually Simple-Minded Theme for Piano and Orchestra, S. 1” … ah, that was great! They did a fair amount of visual jokes as well, so the humor did not come entirely from the music, as it might on one of his albums, so seeing him in concert was a much different experience… probably even a better experience.

On June 29 and 30, the National Symphony Orchestra is playing the good old “Video Games Live” concert… I’d love to go see that, who wants to come?

I’m on page 426 of Roots of the Classical and I’ve got one chapter left to read. Almost to the end! And then I have at least 20 quotes to put up… though I might skip some to save time.

Just a bit of blather before I go to bed… I’ve got my first exam tomorrow afternoon (well, today I guess, since it’s after midnight, and this counts as Thursday’s post) and I want to spend the morning studying. Today’s (or technically yesterday’s) studying was disturbed with a lot of nasal congestion, which seems to going away now, which I know you care about. “Wait a sec, I gotta check Sean’s blog for status on his nasal congestion.”

Anyway, the exam tomorrow (er, today) has something to do with computer science, but I’ve never been able to quite figure out what… it’s just a random collection of compiler and coding information, it doesn’t seem to have much of a theme. So in the morning I’ve got to study time measuring and code optimization.

My “Hour by Hour” piece is now over eleven minutes… I worked on that for a bit as a reward for studying, as if rewarding myself with anything does any good… well, I guess it does, because I composed a pretty darn beautiful melody if I do say so myself, which I do. The piece won’t get much longer because I think the climax I’m working on now will be the last. Whew, this is one heck of a piece! Catchy melodies and variations and counter melodies and awesome harmonies all over the place. Woohoo! I think it will be Opus 35. Woohoo, I’m almost to 40! I should try to get to 50 before my 22nd birthday. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Eh, not as good as Mozart… 🙁

Hey, I’ve blogged daily for over a month now, whoop-de-doo!

I was finally able to spend a few more hours on my “Hour by Hour” piece, and it’s total duration is currently about five seconds short of ten minutes… which means by the time the piece is finished it will be longer than ten minutes. I’ll have to go back and see if I can find out which of my current pieces is the longest, for perhaps “Hour by Hour” will conquer them all.

The entries for the GPO Orchestration Challenge #12 are up here. Quite interesting to hear so many diverse interpretations of one theme, no?

My first exam is on Thursday evening, so I’ve got to study for that today.

Those Enigma Variations sure are nice… and varied.

I spent at least a little time studying for my math exam, which I won’t have until the 15th, so I have plenty of time… didn’t really get much more of the book read, though.

I spent some time arguing some more about modern music here. Someone said (or at least this is what I understood his words to mean) that he believed most classical music lovers would also enjoy modern ‘academic’ music, even though the style has changed, if it weren’t for their prejudice that makes them afraid to even check it out. I argued against such a view, claiming that a majority of classical music lovers probably just do not currently care for the majority of the ‘academic’ music that is being written. To quote myself:

I’m not sure how you think it would follow that lovers of classical music would love today’s new concert music just because that’s what ‘serious’ composers are composing now. Why do people love classical music? This is subjective of course but I’d say it’s the music itself they enjoy, not the fact that composers were using the idioms of their day, or the fact that they’re considered ‘serious’, or whatever historic influence they might have had. Just because the idioms have changed doesn’t mean that classical music lovers are just going to automatically follow it or accept it or love it. In fact, it would seem to me changing idioms would be even less of a reason to follow it. If someone was a fan of Mozart and Mozart said “New idiom: atonality!” and followed it up with some high pitch laughter, he’d probably lose some of his fans. Extreme example, of course, I don’t mean to imply that’s what modern music is like, but certainly a large majority of it is not like classical music was 200 years ago. It’s a different genre, a different style, not just a continuation of classical music because of its ‘artistic seriousness’. (You say yourself it’s a different idiom.)

Ah, a nice long quote! I wonder if a majority of ‘academic’ composers would necessarily agree with me?

Whew, long day!

I’m on page 156 of Roots of the Classical and I have plenty of quotes to blog hopefully sometime this weekend. I’m not really spending as much time with the musical examples as I’d like because I want to finish reading the book before school’s out, but I’d say it’s definitely worth the $65 for the paperback. However, while it’s now on my Amazon.com wish list, there are still some things I want a bit more, so I probably won’t be buying it anytime soon. (Afterall, college students are penniless!) It would be worth it to look out for used copies though. Anyway, one thing I enjoy about the book is that the author seems to agree with many of my preconceived musical notions, which is always nice.

I tried working on The Game of Gynwig for a bit, and after an hour I got about two paragraphs written. Blah, it’s hard to write!

Classes are finally over! My two classes today mainly consisted of not-very-helpful reviews, but at least it was easier to pay attention. I still have the final exams coming up, but all in all I’d say this has pretty much been the worst semester… probably even the worst schooling experience of my entire life… glad it’s over! (For the most part!)

I tried to work on my piece of music for a bit, but I was too tired and my own music lulled me into a state of consciousness that was not quite asleep yet not quite awake… so I really couldn’t get any work done on it at all. I guess classical composers never had that sort of problem, writing out their classical compositions on paper and not really being able to hear them the way I do.

I also did my laundry for hopefully the last time this semester. Isn’t that interesting?