short sunday blog

 

I have spent time this morning practicing piano, therefore I don’t have as much time to blog. Like yesterday I went through my four octave major scales and then played slowly through the Art of Fugue 9 four times. Yesterday I did one of these four play-throughs up to my performance tempo in order to time it. It came out at just over four minutes. There is an awful lot of content in that four minutes and I look forward to performing this piece as today’s prelude.

A few days ago I considered playing this piece on the manuals of the organ. I experimented with different sounds. Ultimately I decided that Glenn Gould was right. The piano is a better instrument for polyphony, better able to bring out voices. The organ was superior in sustaining long notes so that they could clearly be heard. But the inner voices got more lost.

I know that I am not the musician Gould was. Nevertheless I can learn from his ideas, eh?

Researchers solve long-standing mystery of monarch butterfly migration – Modern Readers

Combining the sun’s position and a sense of time, these insects come up with an inner compass. How cool is that?

How Slavery’s Legacy Affects the Mental Health of Black Americans | New Republic

I bookmarked this largely because of a comment that mentioned it referenced some interesting books.

 

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