Beginning work on Davitt's manuscript "Recueil d'airs Choisis" has been intimidating, but is it not a good sign when you discover two concordances within five minutes of beginning your search for concordances?
Studying the MS tired me out today however. I was so desperate for a break that I even deigned to walk into American Apparel (the thought of walking in had never occurred to me) and Wet Seal. I should really go window shopping at University Press Books or the Musical Offering, but that involves reading and thinking (about academics)... I need to find more hobbies that involve neither.
At 10 pm...
Bam. Thirteen concordances/sources or leads. Mostly cross-eyed, and very behind on the rest of my work. The pros and cons of OCD...
12 November 2008
29 September 2008
27 September 2008
rochacha
Easy as it is to dismiss my former hometown, there are definitely things I miss about it. Not about living there, but the delightful parts of living there. Most of these aspects of Rochester have their corollaries here, but to my surprise that doesn't make them replaceable. Most of all, of course, I miss the organ culture. That can hardly be replaced anywhere.
24 September 2008
walking the tightrope
In the closing scne of the film Still Life, the protagonist and he alone notices a tightrope walker crossing from one ramshackle building to another in a town being "deconstructed" for the filling of the Three Gorges in China. I am starting to realize that I can understand my own path into music as a tightrope walk.
While at Eastman, I struggled to retain a sense of purpose and meaning as I made music without having the opportunity to contemplate what music meant or its place in society. Without reference to a context, music-making began to seem purposeless. As a musicology student, I now struggle with the meaning of music and its place in society on a daily basis. And yet I have not been satisfied over the past weeks because this struggle has left little time for performance. No longer an onerous chore, sitting down to learn new repertoire has become as mind-clearing and salutary as a long bike ride.
So musicology loses its meaning without performance and vice versa. And yet it's a tremendous challenge to excel at both. I'm giving myself ample time to learn the walk, but I have to find a balance before I stumble.
While at Eastman, I struggled to retain a sense of purpose and meaning as I made music without having the opportunity to contemplate what music meant or its place in society. Without reference to a context, music-making began to seem purposeless. As a musicology student, I now struggle with the meaning of music and its place in society on a daily basis. And yet I have not been satisfied over the past weeks because this struggle has left little time for performance. No longer an onerous chore, sitting down to learn new repertoire has become as mind-clearing and salutary as a long bike ride.
So musicology loses its meaning without performance and vice versa. And yet it's a tremendous challenge to excel at both. I'm giving myself ample time to learn the walk, but I have to find a balance before I stumble.
16 September 2008
random maliciousness
The 30-lb package of carillon monographs and sheet music and CDs and the almost-complete Klok en Klepel that I so lovingly assembled over the course of several days at the WCF Congress, squandering many Euros on knowing that I would never find these items in the US, and struggling with twice across many blocks in hot weather barely able to carry the weight, arrived.
And at least half of it was gone.
On top of the sorry-looking pile was a paperback book about the Old Testament that I had not purchased.
Perhaps I should not have let the package remain at the Daly City post office for over a week, but it was hardly possible to make it there earlier. Are my carillon books and magazines and CDs still there? Or at some central USPS processing office? Who in the world would find Dutch literature on the history of the carillon so morally repugnant that they would send me a morally repugnant message of their own -- in the form of an interpretation of the Old Testament from Southern Evangelical Seminary?
I waited years to find these items and fully intended to use them for my dissertation writing. Now I will have to wait years (certainly after I've started my writing) to buy them again. Unbelievable.
Some zealous Christian (an American one, I might add, looking at the imprint of this "gift" of a book) may fail to understand his/her disappointing reward in the afterlife for efforts such as these. Should I feel sorry for myself or for the perpetrator of this misdeed? Where do I find the energy to practice carillon this evening after this hoax of a betrayal by a total stranger? All that music I was going to learn, all that knowledge I was hoping to synthesize... gone. Senselessly.
One can hardly imagine a more absurd fate for carillon books.
And at least half of it was gone.
On top of the sorry-looking pile was a paperback book about the Old Testament that I had not purchased.
Perhaps I should not have let the package remain at the Daly City post office for over a week, but it was hardly possible to make it there earlier. Are my carillon books and magazines and CDs still there? Or at some central USPS processing office? Who in the world would find Dutch literature on the history of the carillon so morally repugnant that they would send me a morally repugnant message of their own -- in the form of an interpretation of the Old Testament from Southern Evangelical Seminary?
I waited years to find these items and fully intended to use them for my dissertation writing. Now I will have to wait years (certainly after I've started my writing) to buy them again. Unbelievable.
Some zealous Christian (an American one, I might add, looking at the imprint of this "gift" of a book) may fail to understand his/her disappointing reward in the afterlife for efforts such as these. Should I feel sorry for myself or for the perpetrator of this misdeed? Where do I find the energy to practice carillon this evening after this hoax of a betrayal by a total stranger? All that music I was going to learn, all that knowledge I was hoping to synthesize... gone. Senselessly.
One can hardly imagine a more absurd fate for carillon books.
04 September 2008
Biking to the Berkeley Bowl at noon, I was struck by what a Californian day it was and how Californian my surroundings were, as both are aspects of life here I no longer take for granted. The dry heat, the open sky, the rolling golden hills framing it all -- I found myself experiencing the state as one thinks of it beyond the borders of that peculiar entity of San Francisco. Sitting in the garden each day eating lunch in the warm sun is perhaps the very best part of it.
23 August 2008
Belgian modesty
From the Gazette van Detroit:
The CEOs of three large breweries meet at a convention and decide to go for a drink together.
When the waiter arrives to take their order, the Heineken boss naturally orders a Heineken beer, the Budweiser boss orders a Bud, and the boss of Stella Artois orders... a Coca Cola.
To the astonished looks of his colleagues the man says, "Well, seeing as neither of you is having beer, I had no other choice but to keep you company."
The CEOs of three large breweries meet at a convention and decide to go for a drink together.
When the waiter arrives to take their order, the Heineken boss naturally orders a Heineken beer, the Budweiser boss orders a Bud, and the boss of Stella Artois orders... a Coca Cola.
To the astonished looks of his colleagues the man says, "Well, seeing as neither of you is having beer, I had no other choice but to keep you company."
19 August 2008
16 July 2008
WCF 4
I woke up relatively easily this morning at 7:15 and hurried to the Academiegebouw. Apparently seventy people had crowded into the little tower yesterday while second thoughts about losing sleep over major third bells kept me in bed, but today only Ted the Aussie and a Dutch lady showed up. Auke de Boer demonstrated the carillon, emphasizing that one must use a light touch to play the little instrument, but I must admit the faint sound of the bells was dreadful inside the playing cabin. Then it was my turn. Without realizing what an suitable repertoire choice I was making, I took out Peter Vermeersch’s Bellbook nr. 2. Auke seemed immensely pleased—its requisite fleet, light touch and modern sound aesthetic made it perfect, in his opinion, for the instrument. I took to the ladders (not meant for any human however, only monkeys) and climbed into to the belfry, where to my surprise the bells sounded perfectly pleasant. Distance seems to make them ugly.
Afterwards Auke and I spoke at some length and discovered that our lives met at many intersections. Just three years ago, he had played a summer concert in Rochester, and still prizes his old LP of the Eastman Brass as one of the best brass recordings he owns. He plays the organ and a brass instrument as well, and has a repertoire of about twenty pieces for horn and organ that he used to play with one of the hornists of the Concertgebouw. Even more strangely, he knows Rudy Zuiderveld of Middelburg infamy. John Brombaugh based a few of his stops for Rudy’s organ on an organ that Auke either plays or is close to.
Apparently Auke has recorded his carillon with brass ensemble – this will be very interesting evidence for my business proposal, which is still valuable to me even if it didn’t merit acknowledgement of receipt. I will need to order the CD from abroad from the RuG Winkel.
My stay in Groningen is confirming my lessons in Middelburg. Go to the Netherlands (or New Zealand, I suppose), and you’ll make all manner of new friends within in the week. Live in Flanders for a year and you’ll be lucky to feel comfortable keeping in touch with anybody. I hope to keep in touch with Auke and other Dutch folks I've met and to see them again in the States. Perhaps Berkeley will host more guest carillonneurs, as was done for Winsemius in 2004. I know it would take a huge budget as there’s no Cali concert circuit, but even one guest would surely be worth the expenditure.
We proceeded to the Bellfoundry Museum in Heiligerlee, where the new Scandinavian traveling carillon was stationed for the evaluation of the membership. Despite the surprising fear of heights and terror of my public debut for 2008 on a non-American keyboard that the contraption inspired, I felt out the World Standard Keyboard with Geert’s Evening Meditation and found it a very odd fit. My performance was less than ideal, yet amusingly enough, Eddy asked the name and composer of the piece afterwards, and Frans Haagen invited me to give a recital in Almelo next Saturday.
Afterwards I shared a good laugh with Hylke and Vegar popping out of the bell moulds in the museum garden (I could fit myself in entirely) and chatting about Vegar’s new iPhone--I hadn't realized the iPhone had until now been unavailable in Europe. In the museum shop I discovered a van Bergen booklet about its exhibition at the World’s Fair in Chicago, truly a gem of a discovery for my most recent research.
We were entertained next with an organ and vocal concert in Appingedam by Adolph Rots and his wife, followed by Geoff Armitage reciting all sorts of facts Koen Cosaert and André Lehr had already emblazoned on my mind. I went in search of a salon in the quaint city centre, realizing too late that one stood virtually across from the church. I managed to get my hair washed and conditioned, but cut the blowdrying short only to discover that the Walloon artist had played a 50-minute concert for his 30-minute timeslot and that Jan was just beginning. It was better that I heard him—my hair still looked far better after the shampooing and drying in the sun, and didn’t even poof up. Mysterious good luck or defiance of nature?
My bus buddies over the course of the day were numerous—Bauke, Erica, Janno, Hylke, Koen van Assche. Yet somehow Phyllis managed to reserve me for her table with her granddaughter, whom she hopes will consider Yale, as well as UF student Ben, and Arendt and his wife, who was extremely urgent about nobody cutting Ben and me in line for dessert. I roved amongst the other tables as my charge seemed indifferent about Yale and responded “I don’t know” to most of my leading questions (and even my non-questions); I don't know which of us was more frustrated, really. And who cares--for a buffet feast was laid before us, with piles of herring, fish grilled before your eyes, salad, cheese, fruit, and desserts of all kinds, most of which I took care to sample. For my social rounds I went first to the British table (to which Trevor commented “So this is the rabble table!” as he passed, to my heated objections) where the (Loughborough?) carillonneur reminded me of our Elgar correspondence. I then made my way to the American table, where our GCNA president recounted my Langlais story to Janet, Todd and I snuggled up for our scandalous “traditional photo,” and Carol, the unexpected recipient of a 5 EUR cordial, waved “Goodbye butterfly!” as I left to be re-interviewed for the Congress DVD, perhaps hoping to nurture a life-of-the-party successor.
The real highlight, however, was introducing Sinnika and Min Jin to each other—the two lone (women!) carillonneurs of their respective countries. How good it feels to introduce two people, see them connect intensely, and suddenly realize you no longer exist for them—something I imagine Margo would do.
I was late for my chat with Andrew, but fortunately he was also late due to the bus. As my laptop wouldn't connect to the wireless network, Hylke installed Skype for me on his laptop, which we discovered had a built-in mic. After Andrew hung up (perhaps disquieted at the voice commenting and laughing in the background), Hylke showed me his websites for his choir and Rosemarie, as well as photos of his brother’s mansion in Aberdeen. I left at a quarter to one... a lovely way to end my last congress day.
Afterwards Auke and I spoke at some length and discovered that our lives met at many intersections. Just three years ago, he had played a summer concert in Rochester, and still prizes his old LP of the Eastman Brass as one of the best brass recordings he owns. He plays the organ and a brass instrument as well, and has a repertoire of about twenty pieces for horn and organ that he used to play with one of the hornists of the Concertgebouw. Even more strangely, he knows Rudy Zuiderveld of Middelburg infamy. John Brombaugh based a few of his stops for Rudy’s organ on an organ that Auke either plays or is close to.
Apparently Auke has recorded his carillon with brass ensemble – this will be very interesting evidence for my business proposal, which is still valuable to me even if it didn’t merit acknowledgement of receipt. I will need to order the CD from abroad from the RuG Winkel.
My stay in Groningen is confirming my lessons in Middelburg. Go to the Netherlands (or New Zealand, I suppose), and you’ll make all manner of new friends within in the week. Live in Flanders for a year and you’ll be lucky to feel comfortable keeping in touch with anybody. I hope to keep in touch with Auke and other Dutch folks I've met and to see them again in the States. Perhaps Berkeley will host more guest carillonneurs, as was done for Winsemius in 2004. I know it would take a huge budget as there’s no Cali concert circuit, but even one guest would surely be worth the expenditure.
We proceeded to the Bellfoundry Museum in Heiligerlee, where the new Scandinavian traveling carillon was stationed for the evaluation of the membership. Despite the surprising fear of heights and terror of my public debut for 2008 on a non-American keyboard that the contraption inspired, I felt out the World Standard Keyboard with Geert’s Evening Meditation and found it a very odd fit. My performance was less than ideal, yet amusingly enough, Eddy asked the name and composer of the piece afterwards, and Frans Haagen invited me to give a recital in Almelo next Saturday.
Afterwards I shared a good laugh with Hylke and Vegar popping out of the bell moulds in the museum garden (I could fit myself in entirely) and chatting about Vegar’s new iPhone--I hadn't realized the iPhone had until now been unavailable in Europe. In the museum shop I discovered a van Bergen booklet about its exhibition at the World’s Fair in Chicago, truly a gem of a discovery for my most recent research.
We were entertained next with an organ and vocal concert in Appingedam by Adolph Rots and his wife, followed by Geoff Armitage reciting all sorts of facts Koen Cosaert and André Lehr had already emblazoned on my mind. I went in search of a salon in the quaint city centre, realizing too late that one stood virtually across from the church. I managed to get my hair washed and conditioned, but cut the blowdrying short only to discover that the Walloon artist had played a 50-minute concert for his 30-minute timeslot and that Jan was just beginning. It was better that I heard him—my hair still looked far better after the shampooing and drying in the sun, and didn’t even poof up. Mysterious good luck or defiance of nature?
My bus buddies over the course of the day were numerous—Bauke, Erica, Janno, Hylke, Koen van Assche. Yet somehow Phyllis managed to reserve me for her table with her granddaughter, whom she hopes will consider Yale, as well as UF student Ben, and Arendt and his wife, who was extremely urgent about nobody cutting Ben and me in line for dessert. I roved amongst the other tables as my charge seemed indifferent about Yale and responded “I don’t know” to most of my leading questions (and even my non-questions); I don't know which of us was more frustrated, really. And who cares--for a buffet feast was laid before us, with piles of herring, fish grilled before your eyes, salad, cheese, fruit, and desserts of all kinds, most of which I took care to sample. For my social rounds I went first to the British table (to which Trevor commented “So this is the rabble table!” as he passed, to my heated objections) where the (Loughborough?) carillonneur reminded me of our Elgar correspondence. I then made my way to the American table, where our GCNA president recounted my Langlais story to Janet, Todd and I snuggled up for our scandalous “traditional photo,” and Carol, the unexpected recipient of a 5 EUR cordial, waved “Goodbye butterfly!” as I left to be re-interviewed for the Congress DVD, perhaps hoping to nurture a life-of-the-party successor.
The real highlight, however, was introducing Sinnika and Min Jin to each other—the two lone (women!) carillonneurs of their respective countries. How good it feels to introduce two people, see them connect intensely, and suddenly realize you no longer exist for them—something I imagine Margo would do.
I was late for my chat with Andrew, but fortunately he was also late due to the bus. As my laptop wouldn't connect to the wireless network, Hylke installed Skype for me on his laptop, which we discovered had a built-in mic. After Andrew hung up (perhaps disquieted at the voice commenting and laughing in the background), Hylke showed me his websites for his choir and Rosemarie, as well as photos of his brother’s mansion in Aberdeen. I left at a quarter to one... a lovely way to end my last congress day.
12 July 2008
pre-Groningen
The shower is going and I don’t know how to turn it off. Curious about how to start it, I had pressed the little red button on the 70’s-era coin machine without inserting any coins and nevertheless water started splashing, first dismayingly cold, then warming up and going... and flowing... and going. As I had no designs on a shower, I started blogging to wait it out, hopefully before someone else arrived. To my chagrin, two German girls strolled in shortly before it stopped.
I’d been amused when the Hungarian girls compared the Stayokay Zeeburg to a hotel, but this hostel shows that they were right. Besides the modestly attractive lobby, the Simplon Jongeren is spartan. Even the ‘Clouds’ painting by Margreet Ubels sprawling across the gridded ceiling doesn’t soften the barrenness. In contrast to what the shorter Hungarian girl noted was a “good view” (of a young man undressing in another window) from our Stayokay room, this hostel has a view of a wannabe construction site and an unphotogenic industrial roof.
I should have been grateful for my Japanese and Korean roommates. Quiet as they were, they were unquestionably preferable to the obnoxious Dutch girls who just walked in chatting at the top of their lungs. Their nasal accent is even more grating. They casually butt into the German girls’ low-voiced but animated conversation, but stay away from me.
When it comes to hostels, you get what you pay for – roommates included. Those Japanese girls though, they were a riot. They had both brought heavy pieces of luggage filled with hairdryers and heaven knows what; they spent egregious amounts of time patting their smiling faces with makeup; unfortunately they took showers barefoot and probably won’t last for long without athlete’s foot. Although they came from the same time zone as the Korean girl, they went to bed early while she went to bed late. One of them locked herself out while putting the bedclothes outside. Never a dull moment with them around.
The Hungarian girls, friends since kindergarten in Budapest, were the friendliest folk I’d ever met in a hostel. I need to visit Budapest. And I should have invited them to visit me in the Bay Area, as one of them loves SF and is starting at UT Austin. My mind is clearly still on vacation.
As a college town, Groningen is lively for its size. Gezellig restaurants and bars buzz along the streets leading from the hostel to the Grote Markt, and my American sensibilities noted two cozy cafes serving frozen coffee and good tea. There is a sizable shopping district, much of it standard chain stores which are relieved by interesting businesses such as a surprisingly run-down Bijenkorf, upscale Dutch boutiques (ick), and specialized bicycle shops. Passing the open-air markets, including a mouth-watering fish market, I reached the Aa-kerk—The famed Aa-kerk with its Schnitger-orgel!—and made a mental note to return for a musical pilgrimage. To my surprise, the church was open late—for an exhibition of contemporary art, all of which was available on loan! A female DJ was spinning; perhaps this was an exhibition opening as people were lingering at tables drinking and crunching on bar snacks. What a strange sensation to walk into my holy Aa-kerk to be met by large-scale photographic portraiture of black gangsters from Amsterdam (clad in American ghetto), this female DJ, and the organ nowhere in sight. Perhaps Groningen is my type of city, to a degree. Perhaps it is only my accommodations that feel bleak.
The clash of old and new, secular and sacred entertains me here. Beyond the Aa-kerk stands the grand Korenbeurs, a historic monolith flanked by two impressive statues. It now houses one of the omnipresent Albert Heijn supermarkets.
There is a little Chinatown a block away from the hostel. It can’t comprise more than ten or so businesses, but it is there nevertheless, with even a Chinese salon. I had dinner in a very nice combination Chinese-Thai restaurant with white table cloths and tall red candles. The cross-influences amuse the knowledgeable eye to no end – Thai art suspended beside upscale Chinese kitsch, and my Buddha vegetable dish served on a warmed “rice table” tray heated by candles. I was one of only two parties there for dinner on that Saturday night. I hope the restaurant does brisker business on other nights; I can’t imagine how it could survive otherwise. The food was fine, and the check came with the largest mint I had ever seen; certainly larger than a quarter. I folded my chopstick wrapper into a caterpillar and set him there feeding on it before I left. A terribly good value for 8 EUR. This is the Netherlands after all.
It’s a small world, running into Boudewijn on my second day in Amsterdam and John Courter on my third. But in Groningen I feel alone. I hope tomorrow that feeling will be dispelled. I also have an interesting breakfast to look forward to. Returning to the organic foods store, I pored over the cereal shelf and bought the highest-fiber package I could find, only to discover at the hostel that it was a rough, powdery substance that would form a paste in milk. Yum. A subsequent trip to Albert Heijn scored a more reassuring box of All-Bran.
I need to stop going to the Netherlands. Especially with $3,000 from Berkeley for the next two years, I should be able to get myself to Scandinavia for a concert tour. Of course I had a delightful time in Amsterdam and am charmed to a certain degree by Groningenas well, but I know the type. I need new horizons. Germany needs to be in those plans too somewhere. My other head will surely show me a good time in München.
My days here are long because the sun goes down late at this northern latitude. At 9:07 pm, golden sun suddenly floods the room and we all turn our heads to see what has changed. The shower is silent.
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