I think it’d be a good idea if I wrote an entry at least once a week, just to keep myself updated with thinking about what’s been happening and what I’ve been up to.
This quarter is gonna do its best to kill me, as usual, but I think I’ve found a way to outsmart it by taking on less stuff. 2 out of the 3 classes I’m taking are interesting, those being Music History 126B and Orchestration II. My music history professor is this awesomely animated man who seriously knows what he’s talking about and isn’t full of BS. He’s the kind of lecturer from whom hilarious and informative quotes constantly flow. For instance, here are a few of the gems that he has given our class so far:
On the historical context of music: “We don’t just find feral symphonies wandering around in Griffith Park.”
On Satie’s Gymnopédie No.1: “It’s in stasis, like this sort of Franco-Greek Tai-Chi.”
On the purity of music as described by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche: “What he’s basically saying here is that if you can completely experience pure music, you won’t be able to handle it and will orgasm yourself to death. Not a bad way to go…”
His three-sentence summary of Tristan and Isolde: “I hate you. I love you. I’m dying.”
More to come as it is given to our class.
Orchestration is informative and useful, nothing new here. However, I’m taking an ethnomusicology class called “The Aesthetics of Music,” which is basically the easiest thing I’ve had in quite some time. The professor spent the first two lectures explaining to non-music majors what tonality was. There’s only a midterm and a final, no attendance grade, and both tests are multiple choice. Should be a breeze.
Music stuff is gonna be busy. I’m playing in the opera, which is Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro this year. It’s 4 hours of Mozart cello parts – I’m not terribly thrilled. I’ve been practicing a lot more and my lessons have gone well so far, which is a very good thing. I’m trying to play cello as much as I can this quarter – well, for the rest of my life, when I get right down to it.
