Thursday, September 29th, 2011
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P 7:31
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Monday, September 19th, 2011
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A 12:38
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Disturbing thought for the day: my first group of high school kids at Harper? Are older than the youngest of the first-years in my program.
I do see the benefit of starting one's Ph.D at 22, because when I was 22 sleep was considerably more optional. I would be a-ok workwise if I could still survive on five hours a night. Probably this is more of a problem because my time management is still based on the idea that I can stay up working until four am with zero consequences the next day.
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Saturday, September 17th, 2011
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P 10:41
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Also, this is the video we watched in French class on Friday.
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P 8:09
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I got so much done today! I bought groceries. I made chicken soup for the week and baked banana bread. I cleaned up the debris from my bookshelf explosion and put together a little three-shelf thing for reference books. (Gluing together furniture with a cat around? TRICKY.) I did dishes and took out trash and cleaned out the fridge. I wrote eight zillion emails I owed people.
Um, yeah, and I got absolutely no work done of any kind. But now I have banana bread! That will totally make the Gurney reading easier. Right?
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Sunday, September 11th, 2011
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A 9:57
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Thirty-day classical music challenge, day twenty-nine: the piece of music you named your pet after.
Milton Babbitt, The Old Order Changeth
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Saturday, September 10th, 2011
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P 4:43
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Milton is sitting on my shoulder like a parrot.
Seriously.
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P 2:38
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Thirty-day classical music challenge, day twenty-eight: a piece that absolutely could not work on any other instrument.
I'm not sure what it's called; it's the first two minutes of this, from John Adams's El Nino. (I think it's on the same track as "Shake the Heavens" on the CD.) The bit starting around 1:15 is just so perfect; any other arrangement of voices would be a huge step backwards. (String quintet might be interesting, though.)
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A 1:28 - oh, right.
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Thirty-day classical music challenge, day twenty-seven: a piece you expected to hate but loved.
This doesn't exactly answer the question, but I enjoyed Corigliano's Mr. Tambourine Man much more than I'd expected. My worry was that I wouldn't be able to listen to it without hearing the original in my head, but now when I think of "Forever Young," Corigliano's comes to mind first, not Dylan's.
(I can't find anything from the first movement on YouTube! There are multiple copies of every other movement... bah.)
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Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
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P 1:23
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Milton has started meowing!
That's because he was biting my feet when I was trying to sleep last night, so I shut him out of my room, and then he stood at the door all "nooooo :( i iz a bad kitteh! i iz sorry! :("
Ok. Back to Schopenhauer.
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Monday, September 5th, 2011
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P 11:51
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Thirty-day classical music challenge, day twenty-six: a piece you won't admit to owning.
I used to use Brahms symphony no. 4, mvt. III as an alarm clock during Institute and that is the only reason I own it. While finding this link, I made it to 0:02 before I absolutely had to turn it off. Nnnnnope. Gah.
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Sunday, September 4th, 2011
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P 10:17
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Thirty-day classical music challenge, day twenty-five: a piece you've studied so much that it no longer has an emotional effect on you.
This has never happened. Studying pieces has only ever made them better. I guess that's why I'm still in theory?
For a while it was hard to listen to the first movement of Beethoven, op. 59 no. 1, but that had more to do with not wanting to remember the awful awful feverish all-nighter during which I wrote that paper.
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Saturday, September 3rd, 2011
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P 10:40
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Thirty-day classical music challenge, day twenty-four: a piece you associate with school.
Bach, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied
(Yeah, I just had to stop everything else I was doing sing through the whole thing with the recording.)
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Friday, September 2nd, 2011
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P 8:36
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Thirty-day classical music challenge, day twenty-three: a piece you despise.
Mozart, the K. 595 piano concerto. I have no good reason to offer for why this one annoys me so much more than the other piano concertos, but it does.
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Thursday, September 1st, 2011
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P 6:17
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Thirty-day classical music challenge, day twenty-two: a piece you remember from your childhood.
That would be nothing. I remember going to hear La Boheme on a field trip in junior high, but I don't remember anything about the music from then. Other than that, my exposure to classical music was just commercials until I got to Kenyon.
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Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
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P 2:54
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Thirty-day classical music challenge, day twenty-one: a piece that represents a sad time in your life.
Rzewski, Coming Together -- in particular the eighth blackbird arrangement. Dangerous thing to listen to on the way to work. Some mornings I'd find myself reciting it aloud as I straightened up my classroom.
-----
Milton came home about half an hour ago! He seems much less shy than he was at the shelter. He's alternately exploring and hiding. I'm not actually sure where he is right now -- somewhere in my bedroom, I think, but my apartment offers many hiding spaces.
The vet's papers put him at 16wks and 3 lbs.
T&A this morning was mostly a review of Greek theory. French was not evil. Off to Philosophy of Music now!
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Tuesday, August 30th, 2011
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P 11:43
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Monday, August 29th, 2011
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P 7:40
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Thirty-day classical music challenge, day nineteen: a piece that reminds you of a particular place.
Philip Glass's first violin concerto, especially the second movement. I listened to this every day on my way to work for about a month this winter. I would get out of mass and get on the Red Line downtown, and when we came out of the tunnel before the Chinatown stop it would still be dark.
After about a month, everything else I listened to seemed too fast -- even recordings I knew really well and had never had a problem with before. It took a couple of days for my brain to get itself right again.
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Sunday, August 28th, 2011
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P 1:25
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Thirty-day classical music challenge, day eighteen: the piece of music that is so well-constructed you could play it on two dustbins and a chainsaw and it would still work.
Is that really a measure of well-constructedness? What comes to mind is Clapping Music -- what comes to mind next is John Cage, For Paul Taylor and Anita Dencks -- but that doesn't speak to any kind of fundamental elegance in either case.
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A 10:53
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10:53 and all is well! Still got power. No water in the street and almost no branches -- just leaves. News says that there's still more to come, but the radar maps look like there's not much more coming.
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A 2:39
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Pleasantly non-epic thus far. From the radar map, it looks like whatever's going to happen will happen soon. Winds don't seem too bad (although come winter this apartment is going to be drafty as ever, ugh -- it's like the window isn't even closed).
Going to unplug the computer now and get some rest. Hope all is well!
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