It’s such a luxury to me to have family around. People to talk to whom I not only care deeply about but also have a lot in common with. So this blog will probably not be very long since I am sitting in the living room with Elizabeth, Jeremy and Alex (Eileen is asleep). I have to be in Muskegon around 9:20 to accompany the high school violinist I have been practicing with. In the meantime I am making coffee for the three of us.

From Word to Silence, by Raoul Mortley | Bond University Research | ePublications

I am constantly amazed at what’s available online. The book linked above was footnoted in Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Silence: A Christian History. Motley is an Australian scholar and this work is about the relationship of Hellenistic concepts to evolving Western notions (Jewish and Christian). It’s two volumes and very erudite. I love it that I could read the preface and look at the table of contents instantly after seeing the book in MacCulloch

Joe Biden: A Plan for Central America – NYTimes.com

The Vice President wrote an article in yesterday’s NYT. I bookmarked it to read later.

Rod McKuen, Poet and Lyricist With Vast Following, Dies at 81 – NYTimes.com

I remember this guy well.

Government Allies Are Said to Have Slaughtered Dozens of Sunnis in Iraq – NYT

This article came up in a conversation with Jeremy (Daum, my son in law) this morning about historical genocides. This happened this week.

French Police Question Boy, 8, After Remarks on Paris Attacks – NYTimes.com

France goes nuts.

U.S. Textbook Skews History, Prime Minister of Japan Says – NYTimes.com

Japans asks for a rewrite of history. Ahem.

It’s after noon in Holland Michigan. This is very late for me to be blogging, but this is not unusual when I have visiting fam. Elizabeth, Alex and I spent time in the kitchen being quiet so Jeremy could rest.

After a while, I went and purchased bagels, cream cheese and lox. Eileen skipped the lox but Elizabeth Jeremy and I feasted on them. Very good.

I just got back from listening to Rhonda play portions of an upcoming recital. She is a good player and it is flattering to be asked. I know that the way I look at music is pretty unique (eccentric?). So much so that it won’t necessarily be that helpful to Rhonda. But I did give her my feedback for what it’s worth. And I do enjoy thinking about music and interpretation.

Strobe Tuners by Sonic Research – Turbo Tuner Home Page

An academic organ dude on Facebook reported that he was surprised to see the famous early music person, Jordi Savall, use an electric tuner in a concert.

I eavesdropped on the ensuing comments and found this link to a tuner that will do different temperaments. If I ever get my harpsichord back in shape I will be interested in this.

Follow your convictions – this could be the end of the politics of fear | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

Daughter Sarah put this interesting article up on Facebooger. A lot of idealism in this. Would that it would happen.

Rev. Richard McBrien, 78, Dies; Theologian Challenged Catholic Orthodoxy – NYT

This dude was chair of the theology department when I was in grad school at ND. I don’t think he approved of my interdisciplinary degree. He felt that musicians should get a bachelors in theology before studying liturgy. I’m glad he didn’t win that one.

First of 3,000 Child Soldiers Are Released in South Sudan – NYTimes.com

I have been following child soldiers longer than I have been reading the NYT online. Very disturbing practice: training the very young as killers. Glad to see these people released.

World Renowned Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease

I clicked on this out of idle curiosity. The url is disclose.tv. This makes me not take it too seriously, but it’s kind of interesting.

Attack on Israeli Soldiers ‘Most Serious Flare-Up in Years’–if Arab Deaths Aren’t Taken Seriously

Time and time again I have watched reporting that doesn’t take the deaths of the other seriously. Oops.

Daughter Elizabeth, Son-in-law Jeremy and Granddaughter Alex arrived at the GR airport yesterday. Eileen drove to get them. I couldn’t join because I was meeting with my boss and the curates at that time.

Nephew Ben and Niece Emily drove over from the Ann Arbor area to see them. So  when I finally got home from church the house was full. All good stuff.

Ben, Emily and I went over to see Mom (Elizabeth and Alex will visit today).

We sent out for take out (me to Margaritas) and had a nice meal together.

Unfortunately there is a major snafu with Alex’s visa. She doesn’t have one to return to China. Somehow there was a mix-up and Jeremy and Elizabeth didn’t do the easy thing of getting a return visa while in China (Alex can go easily one of their visas in China). Here it’s more complicated.

While they were visiting in Toronto, Jeremy was deathly ill. So he was very worried about this last night. I think he stayed up all night working on it online. This morning he decided the best thing would be for him to take a train to Chicago and talk to the US Consolate there. There is also one in New York and Toronto (if I understand correctly).

He is in bad shape but of course determined to smooth this out for his family. We have offered to do anything to help but this is probably the best thing for him. Alex and Elizabeth. I saw him off on the Chicago train this morning. He will mostly like return on it this evening.

Elizabeth was also ill last night. Sheesh. Hard to watch people you care about go through shit, but it is wonderful to see them. Alex is so much more alert and aware than she was the last time I saw her.

I was gratified to read Mason Martens opinion of Vierne in Rollin Smith’s bio of him: “Vierne is so much more interesting than Widow.”

Amen say I.

I went to the college library yesterday and checked out Smith’s bio of Vierne.

It is a beautifully made book that I could easily get lost in.

I looked on Amazon this morning and the paperback is about $75. The hardcover apparently is $400 more ($475) and can be had used for $250. Yikes. I have a feeling I will own this book eventually. I could use my annual music allowance from the church to purchase it. But $250?

I pulled out all the Vierne I could find at church yesterday and laid it by the organ. I played through the first piece in his “24 Pièces en style libre.”

I have played many of these over the years, but am feeling a new attraction and curiosity towards Vierne.

I was going to bring scores home for study while reading the bio. Then I realized they are all online anyway. I can pull them up that way for study and leave them by the organ for playing.

I messaged Martin Pasi yesterday and asked for permission to post the specs for Opus 26 (The organ he will build for Grace Episcopal Church will be Opus 26). He said yes and I did so since a few organists were asking me for details of the installation.

I post it here because some readers might have missed it there or are not on Facebooger (Hi Rhonda!).

My daughter, her husband and my grandkid arrive today. Eileen and I madly prepared yesterday. I  have a full day of work and need to stop blogging and do some stuff like prepare the psalm to take with me to college to finish off for the bulletin a week from Sunday.

Marcus Borg, Liberal Scholar on Historical Jesus, Dies at 72 – NYTimes.com

Borg’s wife was an Episcopal priest. How ’bout that?

C.I.A. Officer Is Found Guilty in Leak Tied to Times Reporter – NYTimes.com

Transparency is one thing that President Obama’s administration has pretty much failed at. Disgraceful.

In the most recent program of On The Media, there is a segment that I found very enlightening.

In it, Kent Greenfield explains how the legal personhood of corporations is important and how it is intended to work.

And that the problem in our electoral system is not primarily corporate money but “money full stop.”

He compares the amounts of corporate money donated in the last election to money coming from individuals. It is shocking how much more money is poured into our system by actual individuals than corporations.

There is a lot of corporate money, to be sure. Chevron, the most politically active public corporation in 2012, spent $2.5 million in that year’s election cycle; the Chamber of Commerce, the largest corporate bundler, funneled over $35 million into various 2012 races. But both were dwarfed by the torrent of individual money. Adelson alone threw almost $93 million into various races during the same period, and the Koch brothers ran a network of shady groups that spent over $400 million.

(jupe note: this is from the article linked below)

Let Us Now Praise Corporate Persons by Kent Greenfield | The Washington Monthly

I have bookmarked Greenfield this article  in Washington Monthly to read later.

I spent some time this morning looking at piano music by Louis Verne online.  I have been enjoying learning movements of his third organ symphony. I wondered what his piano music is like.

Groves online is almost dismissive when it says that it “continues the impressionistic tone painting of Debussy.”

I am more interested in how it relates to his larger opus of organ music, some of which I have learned.

I read the entire Groves article on Vierne this morning.

It was written by a Rollin Smith who has also published a bio of Vierne.

This book is sitting over in the college library.

I had the catalog text me 

Woo hoo! I love it when tech is so helpful.

Yesterday in class the teacher mentioned the song, “Take me to the church.” The class seemed to recognize it, but I didn’t. The teacher told me not to watch the video (above) but just listen to it. I like to think that she recommended it to me to listen to because she liked the song not because it has sort of religious words (albeit bitter).

I do like the part about “we were born sick you heard them say it….. ” and “I was born sick but  I love it.” (link to lyrics) It makes sense that a campus that is so drenched with Calvinistic Christian stuff would have students who enjoy this kind of bitterness.

I know I do.

 Republican Governors Buck Party Line on Raising Taxes – NYTimes.com

In the same On The Media program mentioned above, there is a segment on “debunking conventional wisdom.” I was discouraged to discover that I believe some of the debunked stuff. Like now the Republicans have to govern. The article above talks about state governors (and mentions and quotes our own Michigan Governor Snyder) about increasing taxes. I like it that a few Republican Governors are showing evidence of governing. I dislike that I generally thought that it was time for the Republican congress to govern. Obviously (according to the On the Media guy) they will benefit more in the next presidential election if stall accomplishments. Oy vey.

What should I do about Youtube? | Zoë Keating

My nephew Ben linked this on Facebooger. I find it a bit frustrating that my own perception of music seems so irrelevant.  While I sympathize with Keating, I deplore the  complete commodification of music in the minds of so many people. Ah well.

Slow Cooker Coconut Red Curry Vegetable Soup – Tasty Yummies

Ben’s sister, Emily, put this one up. She made it recently (added meat). I think it looks pretty good. Thinking of trying it.

Finished reading What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund this morning. I have been reading both it and Wiman’s The Bright Abyss for a while. Satisfying to get them both read.

The back flyleaf says that Mendelsund is “associate art director of Alfred A. Knopf and a recovering classical pianist.”

I spotted this book while Christmas shopping in a bookstore last year. I made a note and managed to get a copy from the library. Mendelsund has created an intriguing mix of prose and design about his subject which is stated in the title.

Mendelsund wanders through many books that he is obviously very familiar with, examining what is going on in our heads when we read Anna Karenina  or Through the Lighthouse and others.

He gets a lot right and it is interesting to read his clear insights that are on the brink of consciousness of readers, but that we are too busy doing to reflect on that often.

Again I find myself typing in interesting stuff from my stickies.

In the last chapter, Mendelsund gives a beautiful synopsis. It is so clear that I am putting the whole thing here if you would like to read it.

When we apprehend the world (the parts of it that are legible to us), we do so one piece at a time. These single pieces of the world are our conscious perceptions.What these conscious perceptions consist of, we don’t know, though we assume that our experience ofthe world is an admixture of that which is already present, and that which we ourselves contribute (our selves—our memories, opinions, proclivities, and so on).

 

“Authors are curators of experience. They filter the world’s noise, and out of that noise they make the purest signal they can—out of disorder they create narrative. They administer this narrative in the form of a book, and preside, in some ineffable way, over the reading experience. Yet no matter how pure the data set that authors provide to readers—no matter how diligently prefiltered and tightly reconstructed—readers’ brains will continue in their prescribed assignment: to analyze, screen, and sort. Our brain will treat a book as if it were any other of the world’s many unfiltered, encrypted signals. That is, the author’s book, for readers, reverts to a species of noise. We take in as much of the author’s world as we can, and mix this material with our own in the alembic of our reading minds, combining them to alchemize something unique. I would propose that this why reading ‘works’: reading mirrors the procedure by which we acquaint ourselves with the world. It is not that our narratives necessarily tell us something true about the world (though they might), but rather that the practice of reading feels like, and is like, consciousness itself: imperfect; partial;  hazy; co-creative.

I snapped this pic with my phone last night as Rev Jen announced to the parish that we are purchasing a new pipe organ to be built by Martin Pasi. I immediately threw it up on Facebooger even as we were sitting in the room.

Pasi will begin building later this year. Installation is set for Fall 2016. I can’t believe this. I have been filled with disbelief throughout the entire process. Now I just hope I live long enough to enjoy playing this instrument for a while.

I have been dipping deeper into organ literature and spending careful rehearsal time with Bach and Vierne. It’s not conscious but I know my motivation to play beautiful music on my shitty present instrument has to be influenced by the fact that there are better instruments and one is soon coming to the place I work.

I finished reading My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman this morning. I don’t feel ready to write a review. It takes me a while to savor a book and understand my relationship to it. Also when I read a library copy of a book, I tend to put stickies in places where I would  make notations in a copy I owned.

I often make a google doc for notes on a book. I have such a doc for My Bright Abyss. When I finish reading a library book, I sit down and make sure I have copied into that doc all the passages that have stickies. I have as yet to do this with My Bright Abyss.

Christian Wiman has cancer. It could kill him. He is also a poet and a lover of poetry. His wiki entry only gives a birth date so I assume his cancer has not killed him yet. This book is a series of discrete paragraphs and quotations of poetry and prose in which he lays his life alongside Christianity.  At the end of the book he says he has lived a “solid year of suffering” in which he has had a “sharp sense of death.” Presumably we readers have lived a bit of this alongside him after having finished his book.

He was raised evangelical and can’t quite shake a lot of stuff that seems to stem from either that or other weird Christian understandings. I think I enjoyed his brutal honesty the most. I like brutally honest Christians I guess. His honesty is, of course, not kind to Christianity. But at the same time he sees his own hunger for God and meaning from the lens of impending death.

Many times in the book, I was put off by his Christianity. But other times I felt that he was articulating ways of thinking that are close to my own:

… to be a Christian has to mean believing in the resurrected Christ, though I grow less and less interested in the historical arguments around this: Did a man named Jesus really rise from the dead three days after being crucified two thousand years ago? The arguments are compelling on both sides, but the whole process of putting faith on trial, the incessant need for an intellectual RESULT, feels false to me. It seems like a failure of vision even to ask the question, much less get tangled up in it.

A few paragraphs earlier he gets even closer:

I am left with the vital and futile truth that to live in faith is to live like the Jesus lizard, quick and nimble on the water into which a moment’s pause would make it sink.

The Jesus lizard. This totally works for me. Also apparently (inevitably?) the name of a band.

Then he mentions that Jesus is not his “friend.”

Christ. He won’t go away. An editor objected to one of these chapters because there was ‘too much Christ’ in it, but I always feel that I am evading Christ, avoiding him, almost as if I am, with the old liberal Protestant reticence that masks a fundamental impotence, embarrassed by him. And yet there is an intensity there to which I can hardly bear to turn, a torn place in my soul, a blood rupture. He is not my ‘friend.’

So there you have it. Wiman seems drawn to classical poetry and quotes copiously from Browning and Tennyson and others. He also likes a lot of Christian poets I don’t and some I do and admire (George Herbert for one).

I relate to his struggle with meaning, faith and art. I don’t always agree with him, but I do believe him.

A Police Chief Turned Pastor, Working to Heal the Nation’s Racial Rifts – NYTimes

Good portrait of David C. Couper. I bookmarked his blog and sent him a Facebook friend request.

John Bayley, Oxford Don Who Wrote of His Wife, Iris Murdoch, Dies at 89 – 

Bayley seems to have written some interesting books besides the stuff about his wife. I’ll have to check them out.

I spent several hours yesterday revising the Marimba part of the the third movement of my Pentecost Suite. My original ideas included sections where I have the player move over the entire marimba from one end to another quickly and then back again and again.

Rhonda’s marimba player, Matt Beck, indicated that the part was extremely difficult especially at the metronome marking I gave (quarter note = 120).

When I looked at the section, I realized that the marking was wrong and that I was thinking several notches down (quarter note = 96). This would make it easier.

But I would love to hear all three movements (Rhonda said she was happy with just performing the first movement and calling it at that). And the part that Matt was saying was difficult was not an intrinsic part of my ideas.

I simply thought it would be a charming accompaniment (I still do). But no need to make someone’s life miserable over some silly accompaniment figures, eh?

I remember consulting with Greg Secours, a local percussion guy, when I wrote the piece. He signed off on it’s doability. But he may not have noticed that dang metronome marking, if indeed it was there.

Anyway, Matt was helpful with his comments in emails and I think I have come up with something much easier but retains the original flavor.

I could make it even easier I suppose and have offered to Matt to continue to adjust it to make it more realistic for performance.

Traffic on this web site went up some this week reaching a high of 57 hits on Wednesday. I’m not sure what this means particularly. But it does show up on  my Google Analytics.

I cashed a check for a funeral yesterday (Yay! I got paid!) and used it to begin a computer fund. It shouldn’t take too long to raise the money needed to buy a Mac Mini for the house.

Eileen pointed out that I come up with ideas to make her life easier but they don’t necessarily do so. Case in point is the large laptop I bought with the idea it would make our (her) life easier since it was more powerful and newer.

Oops. It is slower and clunkier than the smaller laptop I purchased for my use. I think I despise Windows 8 and all “improvements” that so many tech designers put in my life. 

I was never in love with tech for its own sake only for what I can use it for. This is probably a flaw in me as a consumer and user.

This morning I spent several minutes clarifying some basic musical harmonic analysis that Kerala Snyder threw out in passing in her bio of Buxtehude. After a bit, I decided that she had mistakenly identified a chord function. (For trained musicians,  she called a dominant seventh chord with a flat fifth a Neapolitan sixth…. ) It is possible that her training taught her something that I don’t know about this chord. But my basic understanding of classical harmony is pretty solid and tells me that she misidentified a chord.

We had an interesting discussion in piano trio rehearsal yesterday. The Mozart we are scheduled to play a week from Sunday went very well. The other players were very complimentary of my playing. The piano has an important role in these Mozart piano trios, often difficult passages, if not the most difficult passages. I have been practicing hard on this trio.

Dawn the cellist said something like, “Steve, I know you don’t consider yourself a classical pianist, but sometimes your playing is quite good.”

I tried to clarify that while academics may find my odd blend of musicianship not quite orthodox that my disparaging comments reflect more how I think I am perceived by many trained musicians. My own confidence in myself and the way I do music is pretty strong.

I pointed out how I have been working on a Ligeti piano etude that requires a stretch my 63 year old fingers could not even do when I was a young man. I came to the conclusion that I could still perform this etude in an interesting musical way that did  not quite accomplish what Ligeti’s notation indicates (the stretch should be done with no pedal, I added a bit of pedal and fingered it differently).

Dawn then remarked that she had played with the Grand Rapids Symphony for 39 years. For 38 of those years she didn’t feel as though she were a professional musician due to her lack of music degree and training.

Amy immediately began to point out how professional Dawn is in her musical life (which is quite true). Then Dawn said that in her last year of playing she understood that she had something to offer musically and was a professional musician.

I think that’s cool. That despite the bruising most of us get in the musical world, Dawn was able finally to see herself and her abilities clearly.

This is the most crystal-clear image of space ever taken – Quartz

I liked this picture so much I made it my desktop background on my laptop.

Unlocking Scrolls Preserved in Eruption of Vesuvius, Using X-Ray Beams – NYTimes.com

This is exciting to me. I know we have lost many Greek and Latin plays and works. Wouldn’t it be cool to finally read some of them?

The Sun Appears to Stop Printing Topless Pictures – NYTimes.com

Eileen did not know about this practice. I mentioned it to her and that though I do like naked women it was probably a good thing to discontinue. Unfortunately, the next day they resumed putting topless women on their famous Page 3. The whole thing feels like a publicity stunt that worked.

A Cheeseburger, a Suburban Traffic Stop and a Ticket for Eating While Driving 

Really? A ticket for eating a hamburger while driving?

Smartphones Don’t Make Us Dumb – NYTimes.com

Due to the proliferation of possibilities, it’s not the screens that diminish our attention span so much as the ease with which we can find something else when we get bored or impatient with what is before us. I am guilty as charged.

I listened to President Obama’s State of the Union this morning.  Prior to his speech my Representative Huizenga  (or an assistant) put up a teaser asking Faceboogers to say what they wanted him to talk about. Man people hate Obama. Most of them wanted him to resign with the speech.

I think it was a good one. I think it’s hopeful that a man in his position can summon idealism and continue to call people to their better selves even as so many here in Western Mich (and other places) despise him.

I find him understandable and trustworthy even when I disagree with him (which is not often). I also find it very sad that so many Americans cannot even summon respect for his office if not his person when they disagree with him.

Apologies about the quality of this recording. I put it here because I was proud of my playing of this piece. I played it even better live last Sunday.

It’s my goal to keep fresh stuff on the Facebook page I am managing for the local chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Many organists in groups I subscribe to on Facebook routinely post videos of themselves playing. Even if the quality of the recording above was better I find self promotion vaguely distasteful and wouldn’t put up just any video of myself playing. I have however put up videos of other people on the Holland AGO Facebook page.

I have also once again attempted to “friend” the local organ prof at Hope. I put up a video of him doing a masterclass and would like to include him in the Holland AGO Facebook page but am unable to do so since we are not connected (his choice no doubt). I will probably suggest that one of the other people Facebook with whom he has chosen to connect put him in the group (which is possible I think).

Last night’s choir rehearsal was a bit of a struggle for me. I continue to try to be the person in the room who is in a good mood. I have the usual problems of people whose attention is wandering, who are tired and don’t listen to me and though they may be enjoying themselves they don’t seem to notice that they are.

Walking to the car, one of the singers told me they had fun at the rehearsal. I was surprised. We are doing some good music: Bach, Mozart, Purcell. I do like the music but sometimes my own stuff must limit how well I see what I’m doing.

My copy of Victoria Meredith’s Sing Better as You Age came in the mail yesterday. It’s a workbook for singers. I plan to evaluate and possible make copies available to some of my singers who are dealing with aging voice problems.

I continue to put my heart and soul into my ballet improvs.

I feel like a glorified bar musician much of the time, but one who is spending a lot of time playing and learning music. I think I am sufficiently in love with the two movements from Vierne’s 3rd organ symphony I am learning. I like the slow third movement but especially like the melody the last movement is based on.

I am exploring learning some Brahms and Purcell for upcoming Sundays. It looks like they will be trashing my preludes for Lent again. I don’t know how I feel about that. Less music to perform, but also the prelude is when i suspect people might be listening.

 Nativist Lawsuit on the Texas Border – NYTimes.com

It’s hard for me to fathom how people get to be judges in our society and are still so stupid. Maybe they just reflect the general dumb population? Naw that’s too cynical.

Kim Fowley, Rock Producer and Svengali, Dies at 75 – NYTimes.com

Another fun obit. This one inspired me to pull  up the album below on Spotify for a future listen. Fowley was in the studio when the Mothers of Invention recorded their first album. AND he promoted the old rock song “Alley Oop.” What’s not to like?

Yesterday’s post was leisurely, today is another short morning so this one will not be.

I have been running across new ideas.

Julie the ballet teacher mentioned the book The Power off Awareness: ideas that shape the world by Neville Goddard in class on Monday. Yesterday I checked out the online audio book and listened to ten minutes this morning.

My first impression is that this New Agey book written before the New Age movement (1952) does what these sort of thinkers do which is compile a bunch of philosophies and ideas and sort of mix them up. In this case in the first ten minutes I heard lots of Bible (even alluded to) and Emerson. Also when people talk about “I am” Biblically or otherwise I always think of Popeye.

I couldn’t find an objective buy 1000 valium online source of information on Goddard quickly this morning. But his ideas and books seem tailor made for the insane Interwebs.

Last night after our rehearsal, the young violinist, Natalee Vander Wood, I am accompanying chatted to me about a free presentation online software she was learning at school.

It seems to be power point on speed (as we used to say). I am planning on learning more about it and then showing it to others. Stay tuned.

In the book, My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer, Christian Wiman mentions tons of poets and authors. He continues to mention Marilynne Robinson.

I think I tried to read her and found her goofy. But anyway, I am planning to look a little harder at her.

This is really all I have time for this morning.

I’m sitting and waiting for the Comcast service person. On Sunday we had intermittent service. I called the help line and spoke with a person with a heavy Indian accent (of course). She was helpful, but I objected to her scripted attempt to sell me more service before fixing a problem. I mention this to her as a critique of her “routine.” She was undaunted of course, no doubt reading from a script.

This morning the internet seems to be working. It acted up yesterday afternoon. We have been using our phones to connect our devices (computers, tablet). Our phone service has a small allotted time of online data each month. After that it becomes very expensive.

Cable dude is here. I’m working offline.

The Facebook conversation I started about switching to Apple products has been helpful. Jen Adams, my boss at church, noticed this conversation and on Sunday morning she mentioned that the church would go in half with me on a new laptop. She and her partner, Beth Trembly, are avid Mac users. I knew she would probably do this, but our church is stretching itself financially to cover costs and I hesitated to ask for more bennies like this since part of the stretching was Jen’s attempt to bring my salary  closer to guidelines suggested by professional organizations such as the American Guild of Organists.

It was much nicer for me that she volunteered to do this. I feel more ethical about that for some reason.

I still am thinking of my original plan to purchase a Mac Mini for the house before the laptop. Primarily I am thinking of doing it this way because the Mac Mini is so much cheaper than a laptop. All of this purchase activity is going to have to wait for a while. Eileen and I have agreed that it would be best to wait until we buy down our Discover debt (our only debt these days) or until I receive a bit of an influx of extra income from stuff like the upcoming Solo and Ensemble gig or the funeral Saturday (for which I haven’t been paid yet).

So there’s that.

Since I have finished reading the bio of Mao I have a small hole in my morning routine. This morning I filled it by returning to a bio of Buxtehude I was reading last summer. Written by Kerala Snyder I became a bit disenchanted with it. This was especially after reading John Gardiner’s splendid book on Bach. Snyder is much more typical of the academic world of writing. That’s not a good thing for me. I prefer books that grab me with their ideas and clear simple prose like the Gardiner.

However I am very interested in learning more about Buxtehude. I picked up where I had left off. In this section of the book, Snyder is doing a blow by blow of genres, discussing specific examples of works.

I thought it might interesting to play through Buxtehude’s concerto, Jubilate Domino, BuxWv which Snyder was specifically discussing.

It was easy to find the score online. I then went to the college Naxos page which refused to load.

I checked and the Oxford English Dictionary came up quickly so I figured it was a glitch between Hope and Naxos.

I then checked YouTube and found this lovely recording.

It conveniently scrolls the music score while it plays. How bout that?

I have to remind myself when I read or hear conversations about the internet that few people are using it to connect to a wide range of materials like this. These material would otherwise require more time if not money to access.

So the cable guy has come and gone and the internet is fixed.

It was a faulty exterior connector. Excellent.

How Expensive It Is to Be Poor – NYTimes.com

In the online comments to this article was this telling sentence:

 Americans hate the poor.

Unfortunately this seems to be true.

Tadeusz Konwicki, Leading Polish Novelist and Filmmaker, Dies at 88 – NYTimes

There were several good obits yesterday. I bookmarked this one because this man’s work sounds interesting.

The mystery of American Sniper’s plastic babies – Telegraph

Plastic babies in the movies. Weird.

I am running a little late this morning. Did Greek, but skipped reading Dylan Thomas. Yesterday the music went very well at church. I thought the choir sang well. The Gibbons prelude and postlude also went well. Actually it went very well. I mentioned to  Eileen beforehand that these two organ pieces were under prepared since I have been concentrating on some harder literature I am learning.

Why did they go well? They are not that difficult, I guess. Although they do have tricky parts and the postlude had lots of quick running scales. But when I first began learning them, especially the prelude, I did not understand exactly what Gibbons was up to. But by the time yesterday’s performance rolled around, I think I did understand them.

When I think of the meaning of the music, I play better of course, but I also seem to play more accurately when it is the meaning that is in my mind rather that concentrating on playing correctly.

I had noticed this earlier in the week at piano trio practice and discussed with the players as well. It probably seems self evident, but it feels like a little insight to me.

In Nigeria, the Terror Continues – NYTimes.com

I keep thinking about these troubles.

Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others – NYTimes.com

Three reasons:

1. smart teams are teams where no one person dominates and all are listened to

2. smart teams are teams of people who pick up cues from each other and read people well

3. smart teams have more women than men in them

Redefining Mental Illness – NYTimes.com

redefining it better…. I like this stuff

Holder Urges Better Data on Shootings Involving Police – NYTimes.com

It is shocking that this data is not routinely gathered and analyzed.

Sarah’s comments on a previous post inspired me to ask my facebook family and friends to comment on Mac Books and Mac Minis. This ended up being very helpful. I did not know how many of my friends and family were using Apple products so it was informative to read the comments of those that spoke up.

I will probably begin with a purchase of the “Mac Mini” which is as far as I can tell just a CPU. This will give Eileen and me an opportunity to see how we do with the Apple interface. I am also very hopeful that Eileen will find it more reliable and faster than anything we have had in a long time. We both watch each other’s frustration when we are unable to get our PCs and laptops to do what we think they should.

Sarah decided to purchase a Mac Mini yesterday and she blames me for getting her thinking about it. I will probably take a bit longer to move on this. Not only am I still learning about the world of Apple, Eileen and I are working with a reduced fixed income. I say fixed because both the church and the college are only giving me incremental annual raises  which are not enough to change our life style. This may ease up a bit when and if Eileen goes on social security. At any rate large purchases (even $300-$600) need to be kept at a minimum at this stage.

I finished Mao: The Real Story by Alexander Pantsov and Steven I. Levine this morning. Apparently the book (as opposed to the ebook I read) has 724 pages. But the prose of the book really only takes up about 570 pages. The rest of the book is made up of footnotes, indices, 2 appendixes and a bibliography.

I started this book after returning from a visit to China last year. I had begun other biographies, but this one seemed to be most level headed. Even it is pretty hard on Mao. But it does use resources that have only relatively recently been made available to historians.

In the Epilogue, the authors sum up nicely:

Mao was not like Hitler, he did not start WWII, he was no racist, and he did not have plans to exterminate tens of millions of people on purpose. It is true that he was responsible for the deaths of more people than any other dictator in twentieth-century history, but most of the deaths were primarily caused by his monumental mistakes in economics. Pantsov, Alexander V.; Levine, Steven I (2012-10-02). Mao: The Real Story (p. 575). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

I am copying this quotes from my PC Kindle reader. I have included the automatic attribution which I usually delete or rewrite.

A talented Chinese politician, an historian, a poet and philosopher, an all-powerful dictator and energetic organizer, a skillful diplomat and utopian socialist, the head of the most populous state, resting on his laurels, but at the same time an indefatigable revolutionary who sincerely attempted to refashion the way of life and consciousness of millions of people, a hero of national revolution and a bloody social reformer— this is how Mao goes down in history . The scale of his life was too grand to be reduced to a single meaning. Pantsov, Alexander V.; Levine, Steven I (2012-10-02). Mao: The Real Story (p. 575). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

I do feel like I have a better understanding of the Chinese Communist revolution after reading this book.

After practicing Greek and making coffee I interrupted my  morning routine to carry out one of my assignments from last nights American Guild of Organist officers meeting. Namely creating a Facebook page for our local chapter.

I think if you click on the pic above it will take you to the actual page. I added some members.

I can only invite people who are my Facebooger “friends.” But I think they can invite other people. I invited a ton of people that might be interested in our local chapter. I figure they can always uninvite themselves. Most of our members are not on Facebook, but the board may have been thinking of increasing our visibility as a chapter.

I also linked in the website of the local chapter.

Again, I’ve attempted to link the pic above to the website. I’m due to go off this board next year and volunteered to do both Facebook and the website if they wanted me to. They asked me to do the Facebook page. It won’t be much work. But it did take up my morning.

Eileen and I spent over two hours yesterday cataloging choral music at church. It was very helpful to have her along. We now have 8 drawers done. Cool.

One of my basses emailed me yesterday apologizing for missing rehearsal (!) and asking what we were singing. He said he might be able to “run it down” presumably online. I sent him links to the online score and youtube of our anthem.

I continue to throw myself into organ practice. Yesterday I actually started learning the Cantilene from Vierne’s 3rd organ symphony.

This is a bit out of character for me although I do play most of Vierne’s famous 24 Pièces en style libre. I figure I own the music and this would make a good prelude soon.

Amid Threats, Duke Moves Muslim Call to Prayer – NYTimes.com

Maybe I’m thinking about this wrong, but why can’t these people do their call to prayer from the tower?

French Rein In Speech Backing Acts of Terror – NYTimes.com

Interesting differences between French laws and USA laws.

Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says – NYTimes.com

I learned quite a bit from this article.

online free art books at Guggenheim

Many thanks to daughter Elizabeth for pointing me to these books.

Now that I have one less day a week of ballet, I seem to be filling up my extra time quite well, thank you.

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours beginning the re-cataloging of the church’s choral library. This will be my third attempt at this.

When I first tried this some years ago I made a spread sheet of everything in the library or at least the adult choir sections. Unfortunately, since I don’t use spread sheets a lot I found myself accidentally fatally screwing it up when I used it as a catalog.

I then dumped all the information into google docs (second try).

Yesterday I began to go through those docs and update them to reflect exactly what is in the files. I got through four drawers (one file cabinet). My goal is to do the entire collection before adding some random shit laying around like dozens of files of kids anthems.

Before doing this I spent an hour or so editing an old file of the first movement of the marimba part of my “Pentecost Suite.” I am very hopeful that the scores I have given Rhonda are accurate. I find that the first time I use a score of mine inaccuracies do occur. The danger with this piece is that file I was editing did not seem to be the final version I submitted to Peter Kurdziel who commissioned this piece.

I had a hard copy of it and was trying to make new Finale files from it. When Rhonda and her marimba guy work on this, I will probably find out if I have managed to create accurate versions for them. I am hopeful that I have with maybe some very minor mistakes.

I also spent time with my cellist, Dawn, and my violinist, Amy yesterday.

I have been meeting with each of them separately in addition to our piano trio rehearsal. Dawn comes at 12:45 and we rehearse cello music.

Amy arrives about 45 minutes later and we rehearse trio music. Then Dawn returns to her job and Amy and I rehearse violin music.

During this time, Dawn mentioned to me listening to a broadcast on Blue Lake Fine Arts Radio of Performance Today, a show she has mentioned before. it struck me that I should connect with this radio station and this radio show. I am feeling very isolated in my love of some kinds of music. Just this week at choir rehearsal one of the choristers confessed that the reason he thought he might sing with College community chorus performance of Mozart’s Coronation Mass coming up was the he never liked Mozart.

Yikes. I mentioned that the overtures to the operas are sometimes very accessible and charming. He said he hated “The Magic Flute.” “What are all those notes for?”, he wondered. I pointed out to him that one could really ask that question of any music. This morning I found a decent youtube of Mozart’s Symphony 40 and put it up on Facebooger and tagged the dude.

Yesterday I played a movement of Brahms’s cello sonata with Dawn, a movement of the a Mozart piano sonata with the trio, and then a gorgeous movement of a Mozart violin sonata with Amy. Entering this word with these musicians is like standing next to an ocean during a storm: exhilarating, enervating, and even a bit scary.

I always feel very lucky after the rehearsal to be able to play this music with these people.

So anyway this morning laying in bed I listened to this program from Performance Today.

I found it interesting. I especially liked it the way  Fred Child, the host of Performance Today, responded to Jack Marquardt, the clarinetist who had arranged a string quartet (# 12) by Dvorak for WindSync, his wind quintet and the featured group in the show.

Marquardt pointed out that the dark lower tones of the clarinet, french horn and bassoon gave a bit more lower texture to the wind quintet than the viola and cello do to the string quartet.

Fred Child the host then introduced the piece they were playing in the studio saying “it’s all about that bass.”

I was hooked.

Ancient Trees: Woman Spends 14 Years Photographing World’s Oldest Trees 

A friend put this link up on Facebooger. Amazing pics of trees.

Performance Today

Still having computer issues but even though it stopped three times I enjoyed listening to this program of Performance Today mentioned above.

Blue Lake Public Radio stream

I liked the way the carried the NPR news show. It seemed like instead of doing local voice overs they let music play in between reports. And of course right now (8:35 AM) they are playing music. Bookmarked.

I am working from the large laptop this morning. My smaller laptop which I prefer has started humming louder and louder. I fear its imminent demise. This will be inconvenient for a number of reasons. I have software installed on it that I rely on (Finale, RiteSong). It also moves quicker than the larger laptop even though both are using the idiotic Windows 8. A lot quicker.

I find myself despising Windows 8 and wondering if it takes so long to do things because it is trying to accommodate touch screen, mouse use, touch pad and keyboard input.

My older laptop has Windows 8, but no touch screen and it moves appreciably quicker.

At any rate I thought I would use this laptop because it may soon be the only one I have.

I was thinking yesterday about how I pour my heart and mind into my improvisations for ballet. I know they aren’t particularly profound. I stick with pretty predictable chord progressions over which I improvise melodies and riffs. I also use a lot of rhythms that I think the dancers will recognize from pop and rock music.

Despite this I find that three a half hours of improvising in this intense way is both exhausting and satisfying.

I am drawn more and more into Bach’s Klavierübung III. This is a book of organ music that Bach wrote mostly based on Lutheran chorales that form an interesting unity. Last year I played through all of them. This year I scheduled two of them for last Sunday based on the chorale, “Christ unser Herr sum Jordan kam.”

Then this week after listening to the video below I was inspired to dig deeper into this piece I have played since grad school.

Also I have had my eye on revitalizing the equally challenging settings of “Jesus Christus, unswer Heiland, der von uns den Zorn Gottes wandt,” BWVs 688 and 689.

I am finding this music to be  very attractive to me.  I not only practice it on the organ and piano I listen to different recordings on Spotify for the sheer pleasure of it.

I was looking at adding some anthems to the list we are going to learn this winter and spring. On the third Sunday in Lent (March 8 this year) the Old Testament reading is the Ten Commandments.

There are two settings of the Lutheran chorale based on the Ten Commands in Bach’s  Klavierübung III.

First I looked at having the choir sing a Bach Chorale arrangement of it, but decided that it might not be one of the more interesting settings. I noticed that the Lutheran Book of Worship doesn’t seem to have this important Lutheran melody and text in it. Maybe because it’s a dog, eh?

At any rate, the Klavierübung organ settings are very attractive to me and I began working on them yesterday.

Man, this laptop loads so slowly I don’t know if it will ever serve as my main laptop. I have consider buying a cheaper used one with Windows 7 or earlier on it.

I have also fantasized about purchasing a Mac.

But of course that would be an extravagant purchase with our present income.

Carl N. Degler, Scholarly Champion of the Oppressed in America, Dies at 93 – NYT

This guy sounds like an author I might enjoy reading.

State in India Plans to Help Gay Youth ‘Get Over Same-Sex Feelings’ – NYTimes.c

I think it’s illegal to be gay in India. Madness.

Newspaper in Israel Scrubs Women From a Photo of Paris Unity Rally – NYTimes.com

It is amazing that someone from the paper is quoted as saying that those of us from the outside cannot understand the importance of removing women from photos and that they are not trying to change history or anything. Honest.

A very cold dark morning in Michigan and I’m running late. I discovered yesterday that I had reconstructed most of my “Pentecost Suite for Marimba and Organ.” My files show that I had requested that Peter Kurdziel send me a copy of the piece since I couldn’t find my own copy. He did so. Working from that copy and maybe some older files I prepared a performance copy for Rhonda. It looks like I put most of the piece back into Finale files with the exception of the marimba part for the last movement. I carefully prepared the marimba part for the first two movements yesterday and sent them to Rhonda. I’m planning to finish preparing the last movement tomorrow since today I’m pretty busy.

Loretta Lynch Said to See Her Role as That of Traditional Prosecutor – NYTimes.co

If you are paying any attention to the reporting about our government you might have noticed that Loretta Lynch is President Obama’s candidate to replace Eric Holder as the Attorney General. I think she looks phenomenal. Some good stuff in this article.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

Many thanks to my wife Eileen for pointing out this article to me. She said it reminded her of me. I am flattered.

My friend, Rhonda Edgington, dropped by yesterday with some music for me. She has been using an old copy of my piece, “Pentecost Suite for Marimba and Organ” to cut and paste a working marimba part for it.  Composed in 2004 as the result of a commission from Peter Kurdziel it may be one of my last more involved compositions.For some reason I haven’t been able to find the Finale file for this piece. I guess since 2004 I have had to switch computers and update software enough that my original working computer files were lost. Rhonda has been systematically working from a score I obtained from Peter a while back.

In the last decade I have felt pretty isolated in my approach to music. Rhonda’s interest in this piece (and her general collegial approach to our friendship) has from the first struck me as something I have missed and am very grateful for and value.

I feel a little guilty that she has gone to such lengths to prepare a performing copy of this piece and am seriously considering revisiting it with my current software and equipment to prepare a clean score. It is a three movement piece and would take quite a bit of time but there’s no time like the present to restart this little project (I began work on it when Rhonda originally expressed interest in it).

I finished Stoner by John Williams. For me it wasn’t a very satisfactory read largely due to Williams’ treatment of the main character’s wife, Edith. She is the villain of the book and I find his pairing of Stoner for whom he is engaging our sympathy for a life of struggles with the cold, fucked up wife a bit dated and sexist. I gave it two stars on GoodReads which translates as “it was okay.”

F.B.I. Is Broadening Surveillance Role, Report Shows – NYTimes.com

Obama to Call for Laws Covering Data Hacking and Student Privacy – NYTimes

These two articles were back to back on my New York Times page. That can’t be an accident. In the first one, the NYT is suing the government. In the second one they quote the President:

“If we’re going to be connected, then we need to be protected. As Americans, we shouldn’t have to forfeit our basic privacy when we go online to do our business,” Mr. Obama said Monday. “Each of us as individuals have a sphere of privacy around us that should not be breached, whether by our government, but also by commercial interests.”

The first article is about the privacy of foreigners which I suppose makes a difference to many (but not to me).

Religious Bias Issues Debated After Atlanta Mayor’s Dismissal of Fire Chief – NYT

I’ve been watching this story where a Fire Chief of 30 years experience was fired because he handed out a book he wrote which villifies gay people. I think it was probably poorly handled. Firing him seemed over the top to me unless there’s more the story than is being reported. Why not censure him in some less drastic way that helps retain freedom of expression on his part and retains the rights of those who work under him?

The Color of Food Leadership | Mark Winne

Thank you to my son, David, for linking this on Facebooger.

Andraé Crouch, 72, Who Infused Gospel With Soul, Dies – NYTimes.com

I was talking with one of our new curates last night. He confessed that he has gone from actively disliking church music to being indifferent to it. He said he doesn’t have any CDs of organ music that he listens to. I am always interested in what music works for people. I mentioned to him the following line in Crouch’s obit:

“It’s a pity that a lot of great messages have been wasted because they have been paired with bad music. That’s what’s wrong with a lot of traditional church music. That’s why most of it bores me.”

Andraé Crouch

I went a bit early to church so I could play slowly through my prelude, “Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam” BWV 684. I hear this piece like a cantata movement. On my meager organ I registered the running left hand on the organ’s sole reed. I thought of it as a bassoon on a continuo part.

I registered the right hand duet with the fakey flute stops at 8 and 4 on the Great. There is one four foot stop in the pedal and that was what I used for the melody. It made me think of a quiet french horn playing away on the slow cantus firmus.

The technical challenge for me on this piece was maintaining the accuracy of notes throughout. Little mistakes crept in very easily with any wavering of concentration. My solution was to practice more slowly and carefully.

For the most part this worked. I did have one bad moment near the beginning but it wasn’t a part that I had trouble with during any of my rehearsal (of course).

I like playing this piece on the feast of the Baptism of Christ. I think Bach had running water in mind with his running bass part. I toyed with putting an article in the bulletin but finally didn’t.

It was tricky to be thinking about rehearsal technique yesterday morning and then go into the performance. I find it helps me to think of the imagined instruments as I play. This can calm my inner dialog to some extent.

It’s ironic that I put so much work into this little piece on my lousy organ. But it’s satisfying. I had two compliments during communion, but they were both on my piano playing rendition of our baptism hymn, “Wade in the Water.”

The prelude piece was from Bach’s Klavierübung III. In this work, Bach pairs a big piece with a smaller piece  on the same chorale. I played the other piece on this choral as the postlude.

Later Eileen and I watched the disturbing but brilliant movie, “The Act of Killing.”

We watched a DVD from the library but I just checked and this movie is on Netflix as well.

Josh Oppenheimer the director of “The Fog of War” goes to Indonesia and convinces the people who were responsible for the deaths of many of their countrymen in 1965 to make a movie about it.

The subsequent movie Oppenheimer made documents this process so that we see the killers above making decisions about how to stage a movie about their historical involvement in atrocities.

The result is an enervating confrontation between the reality that we are watching people who did unthinkable things in real life explain to us and themselves these acts and their own understandings of cinematic fantasies that they cite as inspiration (Marlan Brando, Al Pacino). The term, surreal, doesn’t come close to covering this.

It’s an amazing film which will be stuck in my gut for ages.

Getting Grief Right – NYTimes.com

The writer of this article gets it right I think. I have had to watch parents bury children. It is a wrenching experience. I still bump into them years later and admire their ability to function afterwards.

The Backlash Against African Women – NYTimes.com

Wide spread difficulties, danger and accomplishment. Did you know that Rwanda has the largest number of women in their parliament (64%) of any county in the world? 20% for the USA.