I am enjoying visiting Mark and Leigh.
But three days is probably not enough to get my groove back so after consulting with Eileen, I’ve asked them if we can come back next Thursday through Saturday. They readily agreed, so that’s the plan, if I can arrange it. I have already emailed my piano trio people in an attempt to move our Thursday rehearsal to Tuesday. Dawn is scheduled to play at Eucharist two Sundays in a row beginning with a week from tomorrow, but I think if we can rehearse Tuesday that would be enough.
I’ve also emailed the organist at St. Paul’s to ask if I could practice there again. I have a rather involved postlude a week from this Sunday and it would be good if I could continue to practice while visiting here in Gregory.
One of the fun things about visiting is that Leigh allows me to rifle her piano music library. She has a lovely little Steinway baby grand and I have been practicing and playing on it. While doing this I came across a Bach piece that I have seen before but never quite figured out how it fits into his opus, the Fantasy in F minor.
It’s a great piece. But when I have run across in it in piano anthologies (as I did here this week) I notice that it is a very unusual Bach keyboard piece. It has many hand crossing reminiscent of D. Scarlatti (another favorite of mine). Blair Johnston has observed that this piece is on “the very brink of leaving the Baroque behind texturally speaking.” I would even go further than that and say not only the texture but the musical ideas do not remind me of much of Bach. Nevertheless I like the piece and have put a copy on my tablet.
This piece exists in an manuscript version that is authenticated as being in the hand of Bach.
Gun Violence Archive
This web site attempts to count incidents of gun violence in the USA.
Scientists Recover First Genome of Ancient Human From Africa – The New York Times
Fun facts about the movement of genes.
Researchers Say They’ve Recreated Part of a Rat Brain Digitally – The New York Times
This is a breaking story since the original research published this week is a very long piece. But isn’t it cool?