Great minds think alike

Ha! Another person who eschews the whole punctuation-inside-of-quotes thing.

(An aside that should probably be a comment on her page, but since this requires registering, divulging my real name, etc. etc., . . .) As for consist vs. consists, since footwear is uncountable, I think that if the manufacturer means "footwear" in the plural sense--which one can argue that he does, b/c he is comparing footwear to an orchestra--it's ok to use consist. However, if the manufacturer is talking about one set of shoes having these harmonious elements that are like an orchestra, then it should be consists. Now that I reread it, I think the analogy is more powerful (but still odd) if it applies to a single piece of footwear rather than their entire line of footwear.

Decision made easy. . . and a side rant about subscriptions to Opera San Jose, etc.

Earlier this week, I was trying to decide between two possible music events--a concert with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and a certain very talented (aside: can someone tell me the adjective form of "prodigy"? Prodigious seems to mean something else) piano soloist whose name I won't mention, b/c every time I mention her name on this blog, I get like 30 hits and since I'm just mentioning her name and not really writing anything substantive about her, I kindof feel bad for these google-trollers who were probably expecting to find either a fascinating story about her or some sort of juicy gossip.

So anyway, a concert with she-who-shall-not-be-mentioned and Neville Marriner or a string quartet recital with the TinAlley SQ? Well, I've been trying to get tickets for the latter. I've left emails and phone messages for the past few days, to no avail. Then today, someone finally called me back.

Evidently, I spoke too fast for her to understand my phone #, which is odd, b/c I thought I was speaking very v...e...r....y slowly. (I, who wish that 80 percent of Californians and 99 percent of Midwesterners came equipped with fast-forward buttons, speak too fast? I who sometimes annoy my friend because I tell her, "can you speak faster? My mind is starting to wander," speak too fast? I who always end up wanting to strangle my landlord after talking on the phone with her for more than 2 minutes b/c she speaks a tad too slowly and repeats herself 10 times?? Would I ever speak too fast? Ok, I'll try harder next time.)

Well, after asking me a bunch of questions (are you a musician? Do you go to ______ school? Oh, you work at _________?), for some reason, this stranger who was selling tickets decided to give me a free ticket. I mean, this woman doesn't know me at all.

We went back and forth for 5 or 6 minutes. I don't often pay full-price for tickets, and usually don't go if tickets are over a certain threshold, so when I can actually afford it, and they program something I want to go hear, then I want to pay and support the musicians. I mean, they're coming all the way from Australia, and touring like mad. Not that my $30 or $40 is going to make much of a difference, but they've got to pay for hotels, airfare, maybe extra baggage/handling for their cello, etc., right? So I kept trying to insist on buying a ticket. But she was really sweet and for whatever reason, she wanted to give me a free ticket. ("Well, I told the other board members that they can bring their friends, so you can come as my friend." "But I barely know you. . ." etc.)

Well, that's that and my dilemma is solved. Late Bartok and Haydn with TinAlley it is.

*****

I'm grateful for the generosity of strangers like this who barely know me, but for whatever reason ("Oh, you work at the place that my daughter goes to school. I'll give you a free ticket.") I enter their lives at the right time and become the beneficiary of such random acts of kindness. I'll still give a donation so I'm supporting something, whatever that may be. But really, I love it when I find something that is affordable and I like your programming choices, so I want to support such confluence of events in some way and say "please keep doing this" by buying a ticket, especially if you are a struggling local outfit. (And who isn't these days?) It makes me feel like I'm voting and participating as an active concert-going citizen.

I know I'm not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, etc., but I'm still wondering if I should've just bought a ticket. I'm not trying to be ungrateful, but I wonder if she thought I might be a prospective season ticket subscriber. Because if she does think this, (and based on several key words mentioned during our conversation, I have reason to suspect this.) I'm afraid that I'm going to disappoint her.

Sure, I'll go to future concerts and events if the timing works and I'm interested in the program.

But I don't do subscriptions.

I've only done one subscription, and that was to San Jose Opera, long before they got too expensive for me to afford. I would probably still go see them if their cheapest "nosebleed" seat tickets didn't cost $66(!!) or if they had discounted rush tickets or standing room tickets. But they don't, alas, and when I can get rush orchestra seats to the SF Symphony for $25 or $10 standing-room tickets, the $66 balcony seats for SJ Opera just don't make any sense.

But where was I?

Oh yes, subscriptions. Actually, I think it wasn't a subscription, but a guild membership with a 1/2 subscription at a substantial discount and with flexible dates, but still a hefty bit of $ to pay upfront for someone who was then making barely $35K/year. I actually enjoyed the subscription and liked the idea of having a performance to look forward to every few months, but this woman called me whenever the opera performed works that weren't part of my half-subscription. The first two times, I thought, being harassed like this isn't my cup of tea, but gave her the benefit of doubt, in case she was trying to be nice. Then it started getting annoying. I really really hate that kind of harassment. I hate getting unsolicited calls and emails like that.

She made me feel guilty for not buying the other tickets. One time, she didn't ever outright say this, but I got the sense that she was telling me that the half-subscription w/ guild membership was at such a discount that I should really buy some of the other shows. She also wanted me to join the guild group for a pre-opera dinner outing. She didn't seem to understand that if I'm paying $30 for an opera, I can't afford to go to a fancy dinner on top of that, even if the dinner was a "special deal for only $25". Even now, though I make much more than $30K a year, I will still eat at home or on the cheap if going to a concert. Once or twice a year, I might go to a concert and do a fancy (=over $25) dinner if there's a group of us.

Dammit people. If any of you programming types are trolling this blog and wondering why young people don't subscribe to opera, or this-and-that, this is it. The one time we deviate from our usual mode and try the subscription thing, we get goaded into tacking on more shows and dinners we can't afford.

This kind of harassment makes me really mad. First, when you're 27 (note: this was several years ago. I am now 60 in base 5.6. ) and barely making $30K a year and paying $700 in rent and putting in another few hundred dollars in retirement and trying to squirrel away $ in the hopes of saving the $100K down payment needed to buy just a 1 bedroom 600 square feet condo, and it costs you $1,000 per trip to visit your parents and family once a year, because they live in a foreign country, (plus not to mention most people have student loans and possible car loans they might be paying off), and going to concerts is just one of 5 things you want to do, it doesn't leave you a whole lot of disposable income for stuff like more opera tickets besides the ones I already bought. So instead of buying more tickets, I often brought friends. She had no idea how many friends I brought to the opera. I invited at least 7 people that season, b/c I could extend this steal-deal pricing to 2 or 3 other companion tickets. I admit it was a fun year of opera-going, but that is the last subscription of any kind I plan to do.

Partly it is the money and interest issue--I do not ever know 8 months in advance that there are 6 concerts that I want to go pay $50 to go see. Plus, subscriptions are inflexible. I can't, for example, pick mostly balcony seats and then pick better seats for the one or two shows I have a strong interest in. One of the reasons the SJ Opera subscription was so enticing was because I could pick and choose seats and dates and change them for each performance. I didn't have to commit to all Saturdays, all orchestra seats, etc.

But it is mostly a timing issue. I simply don't want to commit my schedule that far in advance, when I don't know what else is going on. In the case of anything in SF (SF Symphony, SF Opera, SF Ballet, etc.), I don't want to drive up more than once in a weekend and I rarely drive up more than once or twice a month. If I am going to see friends in the city on a Friday, I will not drive up again on a Saturday to go see a concert. Unless it's Gustavo Dudamel or something I really really want to go see. Also, during certain times of the year, I'm completely out of commission, because I'm too tired from dance classes, rehearsals, dress rehearsals, sectionals, etc. But again, I don't know this at the time that most subscription commitments are due.

Thus for a commitment-phobic p (scroll down for description of p temperament) like me, subscriptions simply don't work.

So to return to the ethicality of accepting a free ticket when I'm most probably not going to do a subscription. . . is this ok?

The premature death of classical music

Here's to all those people prognosing the death of classical music:

"There are exactly 237 known reasons why people have sex. There are at least as many reasons why they listen to classical music, of which to sit in solemn silence on a dull dark dock is only one. There will always be social reasons as well as purely aesthetic ones, and thank God for that. There will always be people who make money from it--and why not?--as well as those who starve for the love of it. Classical music is not dying; it is changing."
--Richard Taruskin

I like the image of classical music as evolving and in flux, rather than dying.

I heart Rube Goldberg

Thanks to Rwal for sending me this wonderful site. (Turn the sound on enough to get the effects, but for the end, you won't want it too high.) I can't stop marveling over the the brilliant Rube Goldberg-esque design.

Sage advice about cutting yourself

No, no, this isn't advice about cutting wrists.

If you are a klutz like I am and have a tendency to cut yourself in the kitchen, then I have two points of sage advice to offer.

First, do yourself a favor, and if you are going to cut yourself anyway (I mean, it's better to prevent these cuts if you are the sort of person who can do that. But if you're like me and have a penchant for accidentally piercing/puncturing your skin with a microplane grater or knife, some cut locations are more convenient than others.), try to avoid cutting or grating the index finger of your dominant hand--particularly the side that is closest to the thumb. The index finger is usually the finger that you rest on a knife, so if you cut something acidic, the juice will seep right in. It is also the finger you'd most likely use to peel an acidic citrus fruit, so again, the juices will seep. If your dominant hand is the right hand and you happen to be of a bow hair-loosening ilk, then it is also the finger that you use to turn the (whatever that thing is called--a nut?) to tighten or loosen the bow hairs, as I found out tonight, when I took out my violin and tried to tune it.

Second, if you have the misfortune of having such a cut that is strategically located somewhere that it will easily come in contact with things you might chop, you probably want to delay making that dish that calls for a chopped up chili pepper until your wound heals. Or you can omit the chili pepper and just make a mild-tasting dish. Just trust me on this. Really.

And while I'm in the business of distributing sage advice, if you have an onion and a chili pepper to cut, always always cut the onion first. You want to get the crying and tear-wiping out of the way, before you tackle a chili pepper.

My never-ending dilemmas

Another dilemma, though perhaps the kind that shows how spoiled we are in this area:

Go listen to an amazing pianist and great ensemble
or
Listen to some of the best string quartet repertoire written?

Make a decision based on the ensemble/soloist
or
repertoire?

Yuja Wang and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
or
Bartok 4, Haydn Op. 76 and Mendelssohn Op. 13?

I've gushed about Yuja Wang in the past. She's coming again to the Bay Area, to perform Mozart and Mendelssohn w/ the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Stuff I like.

Normally it would be a no-brainer to get these tickets.

But then there is this performance of Bartok #4, Haydn Op. 76 #5 and Mendelssohn Op. 13 performed by a youngish string quartet from Australia that just won the ninth Banff International String Quartet Competition. The TinAlley String Quartet is playing in a venue with amazing string quartet acoustics (or so my friend says. I've actually never been to the Petit Trianon, but have been meaning to, because I've heard wonderful things about the acoustics.). I am not familiar with the group, but they look young and hip-ish on their website. Not that this should be a decision factor, (though I wish they had some recordings and more information on their website) but I like the idea of supporting a young, aspiring group. (I hope that doesn't sound patronizing, but they really are young--according to this website, their average age was 24 in 2006, which makes them 26 years old! Though when such young, aspiring groups perform, do they get any or part of the proceeds?)

Right now, as much as I would grab any opportunity to hear Yuja Wang perform live, I'm leaning towards going to hear the young, hip Aussie string quartet perform Bartok, Haydn, and Mendelssohn.

Whereas I would probably get nosebleed seats for $50 at the SF Symphony Hall (Yuja Wang concert), at the Petit Trianon, I could probably get close by seats for $40ish. The space is much more intimate.

Ah, decisions, decisions, decisions. But I want opinions, opionions, opinions (even if I ultimately might not listen to them. . .).

My spell-check boycott

I'm boycotting auto spell-check.

It's not that I don't need spell-check. In fact, I'm turning it off, b/c I've become so dependent on it that I've become a sort of spelling idiot and that thought is freaking me out more than the embarrassing possibility of making a really idiotic spelling mistake when I email one of my friends.

I'm sick of outsourcing my brain like that.

Spell-check is the root of all things evil and stupid.

Perhaps I'm exaggerating slightly, but only slightly. It probably isn't the cause of the current war we are in, but I do believe it has led to a dumbing down of American culture, as well as a deterioration of my own spelling skills.

I mean, have we become so illiterate that we now have to have the auto spell-check activated on even our evite responses and Facebook board posts?

Way back when, I used to be a proficient speller. And that was without the help of auto spell-check.

I once caught my college Expos 101 teacher making a really dumb spelling mistake, which wouldn't have been so egregious if she weren't making fun of someone else's spelling. In fact, I remember this so vividly, even though it was (gasp!) almost 15 years ago. She said something like, "well, everyone knows that there aren't two s's in 'necessary'." My entire class (it was an honors class, so we all knew how to spell pretty well.)--we all looked at each other and shook our heads.

Ever since the advent of ubiquitous automatic spell-check, I've felt my spelling powers slowly declining. "Necessary" is a great example of my dumbed-down spelling. I am 90 percent sure that I'm spelling it correctly 94.5 percent of the time. But one time, I couldn't remember if the s or c was doubled. Granted, that was once out of 80 times that I've used that word, but back in high school and college, I was 100 percent certain, 100 percent of the time of how to spell this word, without the aid of a dotted red line to tell me that the correct spelling is with 2 s's rather than with 2 c's.

Back in the days before the ubiquitous dotted red line (i.e. all throughout high school, college, and grad school) I used to consult a thing called a dictionary--the book form with actual pages that need flipping, rather than the online versions--if I was the slightest bit uncertain of the spelling of a word. I am so lazy that after looking up a word once or twice, the incentive to not have to spend an extra two minutes to look up the word again was enough of an impetus to learn the spelling of whatever the troublesome word was.

However, now that the ubiquitous auto spell-check feature helpfully underlines misspellings, I can change the letter combinations around until the red line disappeareth, without troubling myself to get off my comfortable perch and pull the dictionary off my shelf to look anything up.

(In fact, I am now wondering if I have opened my 9th edition Merriam-Webster New Collegiate Dictionary once in the past three months, and I am embarrassed to say that I don't think I have. Oh great tome-- how I have neglected thee!)

This convenience isn't necessarily a bad thing. I agree that looking up words on an online dictionary is so much easier than getting up, going to my bookshelf, grabbing my dictionary and looking up a word the old-fashioned way. On the one hand, this motivates me to look up words more frequently.

The problem is that the convenience that auto spell-check offers also gives me no incentive to learn my top-10 trouble words.

On the rarer and rarer occasions that I have to hand write a memo and I don't have the auto-red-line feature to obsessively track my spelling, there are several words that I get quite insecure over.

Necessary was never one of these words, but last winter, while writing Christmas cards, I did actually have to think twice about whether it was necessary or neccesary. The second one looked obviously wrong, but the fact that I had even a slight doubt over a word that I was once so confident about made me uneasy. (I'm a control freak like that.)

Here are some of my top-10 trouble words. They trip me up half of the time:
• occasionally--another word in which I cannot remember for the life in me whether it's the c or s that is doubled. I think I have since resolved this by remembering that it is the inverse of necessary. (And this is another reason I need to be ROCK SOLID on the spelling of "necessary": I use it as a mnemonic to base other spellings on!)
• embarrass--I forget to double the "r" 50 percent of the time. I want to spell it like harass.
• mnemonic--another one that kills me. I always want to insert a "u" in there, because it looks so much like pneumonia.
• rhythm--usually a word I get right, but I want to insert a phantom "u" b/c it looks like it has too little vowels.
• no one--I've always wanted to turn this onto one word. Somebody, everybody, nobody. Someone, everyone, so why not noone?

There are a couple of other words that always give me trouble, but I can't think of them right now.

Also, relying on spell-check has made me a lousy editor of my own work because I focus more on the spelling errors. (Yes, there is also grammar check, but it is so useless that I have mentally shut it off. In fact, it doesn't even register in my brain anymore.)

The following potentially embarrassing errors would go by completely unnoticed if one were to rely solely on spell-check for their error-checking:

1. I gave a pubic performance of Beethoven.

A few years ago, sage broccoli and I went to a talk and I think we saw "pubic spending" or somesuch thing on a slide and we couldn't suppress our giggles. For the rest of the talk. We were really embarrassed for the speaker. I don't know what was the problem with the rest of the audience--whether they simply didn't notice or whether they had better self control than the two of us did, but we were the only ones with this uncontrollable giggling problem.

It's one thing to mistake "rent" for "rend" but gosh, if I ever give a public presentation and present a slide on "pubic spending", I will absolutely die, unless I'm giving this presentation to the Bush administration. Then it would be kind of funny.

2. We got a standing ovulation.

Ok, this is not necessarily a spelling error. Someone--a cute seventh-grader--did actually once say this. The mother of erstwhile-seventh-grader, now-25-year-old, never lets her live it down. It is actually quite funny, but again, I don't want to write a review and inadvertently write about standing ovulations.

3. The bored of education deliberated on xyz.

I admit that when I was the president of the student congress back in high school and was charged with the task of rewriting the student constitution, I did deliberately misspell every instance of "board of education" and spelled it "bored of education"--well, because that was a more befitting description of them--but my advisor made me change every instance of it before we sent a draft to the board of ed for approval.

For my irreverent advisor, it was fine to misspell "board" thus and forget to change it, but not everyone in the real world has his sense of humor. I don't think it would fly at my current job, for example. I have on several occasions almost forgotten to change a similarly worded entity (nowadays "bored of trustees") when switching from my "unofficial facetious draft" to the "official draft for VIPs".

When I say "boycott" though, I'm not entirely turning off spell-check. If only my spelling were so reliable! I still plan to spell-check at the end, but at least this way, it forces me to proofread first.

Thus, dear reader (all 4 of you? Though yesterday, according to my handy dandy site checker, there were 12 of you. . ..), I apologize in advance for all dumb spelling (and other) errors I make and have made whether in email or on this page or in any other context.

Trust me. I who kvetch about people who can't distinguish between its and it's or properly use comprise--find it infinitely embarrassing to make such mistakes.

But there are times that embarrassment is a good thing; for one, it keeps me on my toes. I am more likely to learn from a single embarrassing moment than from repeated dictionary runs.

(I just spell-checked this post, after checking myself first, and there were three errors I did not catch. Granted it's 1:50 a.m. and I am tired as hell, but there is no excuse for "cannnot" or "writting".)

Cornish hens vs. corned beef

Since I mostly don't eat things that walk, different parts and types of meat are not part of my vocabulary. Also, I grew up in a non-English-speaking household, so we didn't have things like Cornish hens whilst growing up, and even if we did, we would have called it something else.

So when people mention tripe and I don't automatically know that that is something I don't eat, it's because I didn't have it growing up.

In fact, to this day, there are a lot of flowers, plants and fish that I know in Japanese, but not necessarily in English.

Anyway, this past weekend was St. Patty's Day. I knew the Irish did something with corn and some meat type, but I didn't know which one. My first guess was Cornish hens. I asked a coworker last week if she was making Cornish hens for St. Patty's Day. First she looked confused, then burst out laughing.

"Heeeee heeeeeee. Do you mean corned beef? That's what the Irish make for St. Patty's Day. "
"Oh yeah--that. Are you making that?"

Well, I got the "corn" bit right. . .Corned beef, Cornish hens--to me it's all the same.

Besides which, I wonder if my coworker can explain the difference between chard, collard greens and kale.

Tales of the idiot who evaded service himself during the Vietnam war, but calls serving in the military a "terrific experience"

Full disclosure: I read this in Maureen Dowd's column in the NYT. However, I don't always trust Maureen to interpret my news for me, so I did my own fact-checking.

I was incredulous. Surely, the service-evading president of ours didn't just tell these people serving the front line that he was "envious"? Surely Maureen is exaggerating as she is sometimes wont to do? Surely this country isn't run by someone who is this idiotic?

Well, alas, it is.

Here is Reuters article.

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks. . ."
(Bush talking to soldiers in Afghanistan)

If it is so freaking "exciting and romantic", then why did he dodge the draft when he had his chance for romantic excitement?

I'm completely against war, but these soldiers who put their life on the line and are "inconvenienced" so that we can eat, sleep, listen to music and grumble about taxes (post forthcoming) and gas prices--in peace--and carry on as though there is no war going on really deserve more than this obviously insincere patronizing statement.

Really, this infuriates me.

Ouch. . .

This isn't a complaint, since I have absolutely nothing to complain about, but it cost $60 to fill my gas tank today.

I know that in most countries, where the government doesn't subsidize our big fuel guzzling habits, it could easily cost $100 and I still think gas prices in the U.S. should be double what they currently are, but ouch. $60 still hurts.

When I was in college, it cost a mere $15 to fill the tank. For premium gas. Granted, I lived in a state where gas prices cost 30 cents less than prices here, (50 cents if you take into account that I used to fill my tank with premium gas when I was in college) and that was more than 10 years ago, when gas cost--let's see--$2.20 less per gallon, and I was driving a smaller car with a smaller gas tank (12 gallons vs. 16 gallons), but could all of these factors possibly add up to costing me quadruple what it once cost?

Coughing statistics at the SF Symphony

Apologies to my friend who hates when people listen to music as background music, but after a lovely meal on a Friday evening, I had a pile of dishes in the sink that needed attending to, and I wanted something pleasant to accompany my chore.

Thus I put on my Michelangeli Brahms CD. (And truth be told, it's more like the dish-washing is the "background" activity.)

These are live recordings of concerts he gave in 1973. There are 10 such CDs in this collection-- all are live concert recordings. Each CD ranges from 49 minutes to a little over 70. The beautiful playing goes without saying, but the other thing I've noticed in these recordings is that there is very little coughing. Maybe 3 or 4 times in the entire roughly-one-hour span, and one person at a time.

By contrast, at last Thursday night's SF Symphony concert, at one point, when I got distracted by the coughs, I noticed one cough every 7 or so downbeats.

Now I shouldn't be throwing stones in this case, because I had to cough a few times, too. But I gagged myself with a handkerchief and coughed 3 times during the entire Eroica--once during a very loud section and the other two times between movements.

I think it's unrealistic to expect an entirely cough-free concert, and often being the one who needs to cough (though I control it as much as I can help it), I'm usually pretty tolerant of a few coughs here and there, but the Thursday concert was the most coughing I've ever experienced--where people didn't even bother holding it in.

It also seemed like they put about 56 of the coughers in my section, with 5 of the loudest, most frequent coughers within a 5-seat radius.

Then there were the lovely group of 3 uber-dressed up mature ladies who kept opening their itty bitty purses, glasses cases to switch back and forth between their reading glasses and their opera glasses to look at the program and then at the orchestra, and swapping opera glasses among each other for a looksee and rustling something every few minutes.

But back to the coughing. . ..

Has there been an evolution (or de-evolution) in the coughing etiquette between the concert days of Michelangeli and now? Or perhaps this was just a bad evening as far as coughing and rustling older ladies are concerned?

Since today is pi day, a celebration of all things 3.141592635389793238 and by association, all frivolous statistics, please allow me to indulge and present you with some coughing statistics from last week's concert.

1853: the total number of measures in Beethoven's Eroica (According to the Breitkopf and Hartels version of the score.)

7: the rough number of downbeats that MTT gave between each cough (during the 2 minutes that I was distracted enough to actually count.)

So so far, we have 1 cough every 7 measures. 1853 divided by 7 is a total of 264.7 coughs, but there is no such thing as 7/10 of a cough, so we round up.
265: assuming the coughing-every-7-minutes went on all night (no, I didn't keep track. After those 1 or 2 minutes, I tuned out the coughing and focused back on the music.), that is the total number of coughs that transpired during the Eroica performance.

2743: total number of seats at Davies Symphony Hall.

265 coughs divided among 2743 potential active coughers (the concert was sold out and I did not see one empty seat in the balcony section.) amounts to roughly 1 in 10 people coughing.

5: 265 total coughs spread out over 50 minutes is 5.3 coughs per minute. Since coughs are discrete items, I've rounded down to 5.

That is (if anyone cares enough to read this far) one cough every 11.3 seconds (seconds are indiscrete, so it's ok to leave it as a decimal).

Happy pi day to all.

Two types of people

There are two types of people. Well, ok, there are more than two types of people, but for the purposes of this posting, there are two types of people with regard to language and grammar—A. people whose opinions I can trust without having to consult a reference book (style guide, grammar guide, dictionary, etc.), and B. the rest of you. I’m working on placing myself in category A, though I deserve to be in category B most of the times.

People who write in run-on sentences fall into category B, unless you are from a country that uses British English.

People who can’t properly use “comprise” fall into category B.

People who misuse “peruse” fall into category B.
Journalism teachers who try to tell me that “ok” is incorrect and that the proper spelling is either “o.k.” or “okay” (wrong and wrong) fall into category B------.

Aforementioned journalism teachers who try to tell me that senator is always capitalized (wrong again; according to both A.P. and Chicago, you do not capitalize, unless you use it as a title of address, directly preceding the senator’s name. Otherwise, it is a common noun.) fall into category B----------- as well.

People who write me emails and don’t capitalize the beginning of their sentences, whether it’s because they think this is cool or out of laziness or maybe because they are actually illiterate?—might fall into category B, depending on the time of month and how forgiving I feel.

• If you are sagacious broccoli, then I’ll notice the transgression, but you still fall into category A. If you are sagacious broccoli’s friends, then you’re probably automatically category A.)

• If you are some guy that I might’ve once had a crush on, but am now over b/c my fickle mind is in a fault-picking mood (i.e. “this is why we wouldn’t have worked out anyway”), then apologies for the inconsistency, but you’ll probably fall into category B.

Aforementioned journalism teachers who try to tell me that “till” is not a legitimate word and that the proper word is “til” (it’s not; check OED, Garner's and Chicago.) fall into category B.

People whose work I have to edit, because they can’t distinguish between “pass concerts” and “past concerts” also fall into category B.

So if you are one of these category B people, and I tell you that this sentence needs to be fixed because “entitled” is wrong in this context: “Our latest CD, entitled Idiotic Relaxing Music, is now available online.”

then please don’t write back and tell me that you “don’t quite agree with the word change of ‘entitled’ vs ‘titled’.”

Because, quite frankly, if I have to tell you that “pass concerts” should be past concerts, then I really don’t care whether you agree with me or not.

I don’t mean to be obnoxious, but please just make the change instead of wasting my time, because it now reads “. . . Our latest CD - Idiotic Relaxing Music” and this is just wrong, wrong, wrong, damnit. It’s one thing to use hyphens as substitutes for m-dashes on a blog or personal email or other private site, but on an official website, a hyphen should never be used as a substitute for an m-dash. Use two hyphens if you must.

Besides, Strunk and White, Chicago, AP and my Garner’s Language Usage Book all favor titled over entitled in this context.

If you had listened to me in the first place, then I wouldn’t have wasted 30 minutes blogging about this or have spent another 15 minutes firing off emails complaining about this or explaining that your “solution” is still wrong.

I have more productive ways to waste my time.

Beethoven's Eroica--Pretty and Pleasant?

When I first saw the SF Symphony’s description of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony as “pretty/pleasant” a là their new concierge service, I thought, “wth!?!??!”

But after listening to their performance of it last night, I think I now understand. This is exactly how they played it: the Eroica, as played by the SF Symphony last night, was beautiful, impassioned—and pleasant.

I wonder if I let Leonard Bernstein and Alex Ross influence my expectations for the live version too much. . ..

Last night, I went to go hear the SF Symphony with Peanut Butter. I was particularly excited about going to hear Gil Shaham live, but we were also both really looking forward to a live performance of the Eroica.

Eroica is one of these symphonies I never tire listening to; for the past few months, I have been courting this symphony, attempting to better understand it.

It is unbelievable that I had never heard it live before last night.

* * * *

Sometime late last fall, perhaps as part of my quest to better understand Mahler, I decided that I first needed to better understand Beethoven’s symphonies. Why Beethoven, I don’t remember, except that our director made a connection between the two composers. Plus Beethoven’s symphonies were more familiar. It’s been on one of my big “lifetime” to-do lists, along with understanding Mahler before I’m 70.

It was also around this time that one of my olderish-professor type friends told me about a Beethoven course he took in college in which the professor broke down each of Beethoven’s symphonies into parts and analyzed the structure. I was envious. My college offered no such course, so I was left to my own devices to absorb the greatness that is Beethoven.

Thus, for various reasons, I decided to try to better “understand” Beethoven’s symphonies. It seemed natural to start with the Eroica, since it is a landmark symphony that is often referred to as the symphony that marked the beginning of the Romantic Era.

* * * *

The Eroica is a mind-boggling symphony. It’s one of these symphonies that humbles me every time I listen to it. Here is someone who wrote a symphony so masterful and complex that I can but barely understand it with my tiny brain. I can but barely follow a score and keep track of everything. (Ok I can’t.) Any contribution I might ever make in my lifetime just pales—pales­—compared to just one output (of which he had many) from this composer. That anyone could write something like this is already mind-boggling. But then to think that he wrote this when he was deaf!

* * * *

Unfortunately, being awestruck with its greatness doesn’t help me understand this symphony. I can listen to it, appreciate its greatness and tell you how it’s different from Haydn/Mozart’s symphonies, as well as tell you about the intense E-flat major chords—even tell you a little about how the melody progresses—but then my musical limitations take over. I couldn’t tell you, for example, the specifics of what makes this such a landmark symphony.

So I started borrowing different recordings and comparing them to the one I have. I looked for stuff online that might help me parse this symphony and explain the details of its structure.

Then sometime in January, these SF Symphony tickets went on sale as part of a special promo. Gil Shaham and the Beethoven Eroica live for $25???? Omg. I grabbed those tickets.

Another serendipitous occurrence: discovering Alex Ross’s first blog posting, where he talks about the Eroica at length. Shortly after I purchased those tickets, I checked Alex Ross’s blog and came across this posting, in which he links back to his first post, which I had never read before. Of course, it was conveniently meant to be discovered while I was in the middle of “studying” the Eroica.

Alex Ross’s early blog posting was a wonderful find. He infuses so much personal significance into the Eroica. He extols the virtues of the Bernstein lectures and talks about how these lectures inspired him to buy a score of this symphony.

I too, bought and listened to the Bernstein lecture on how this symphony was constructed. I borrowed the score from the library and listened, while trying to follow along. Sometimes, I just listened to see if I now listened with a different ear. I listened to different versions and compared it to my Szell (Cleveland Symphony) version.

Through all of these various ways—discovering Alex Ross’s first post; listening to the Bernstein lecture; reading various things online; and analyzing the score—I learned lots and looked forward to hearing the live version.

I also listened to it a lot. Whenever I put it on, I cranked up the volume so the opening E-flat major chords would sound like hammer blows that made me leap out of my seat. I mentally paused after the transgressive C-sharp that follows, and then perhaps because of Bernstein, I imagined struggles, conflicts, holocausts, and all those things in the next few measures.

Bernstein’s recording is quite fiery; Szell conducts his at an electrifying tempo.

But of course, none of this could possibly be as thrilling as listening to it live. Thus PB and I went to the SF Symphony performance, ready to be knocked out of our seats and be riveted by the live version. I fully expected to be so enthralled that even before the program started, I anticipated giving them a standing ovation.

* * * *

During the first half, Gil Shaham played a Schuman concerto. No, not Robert Schumann, to my surprise, but another Schuman, who according to the program notes, didn’t even discover classical music until 20. The piece was a pleasant surprise (since I was expecting Robert Schumann). I was entranced by Shaham’s lyrical playing and enjoyed most of this jazzy concerto. Shaham has a very sensitive playing style that I like very much. (3/12: Thanks to the person who pointed out my egregious error. Robert Schumann now has 2 n's in his last name. People who can't spell Schumann should also belong to category B. (See next post for the reference.))

So now we get to the moment we were waiting for. I was so fraught with anticipation that I held my breath as I waited for MTT to give the first downbeat so the E-flat major chords can pummel me out of my seat.

The chords came and went—as did the transgressive C-sharp—so quickly, that by the time it registered that I wasn’t blasted out of my seat or stabbed by intrusive chords, the music had progressed to the part where the players were handing off the theme back and forth to each other, politely, rather than with a sense of urgency.

The playing was beautiful, but I was looking for the stab and wrench that Bernstein talks about. Where was the holocaust, famine, and struggle? The turmoil and the tug-o-war between parts that Bernstein talks about? Or the intrusive otherness?

These were all missing. The ensemble-playing was excellent, but excellence wasn’t what I sought in the music last night.

Once I got over my shock over the unshocking-ness of the opening E-flat major chords and the C-sharp, I did enjoy the rest of the program.

I liked the heart-on-the-sleeve nature of the Marcia Funebre, but the real surprise was the third movement, which I normally find least exciting. In the Szell recording, this is just ho-hum. I don’t like the horn and oboe-playing at all, which kills the movement for me. The Bernstein version is a bit better, with more contrasts, but again, still not my favorite movement. By contrast, SF Symphony’s version was electrifying and full of the tension needed to make this movement ring. In particular, I loved the really quiet repeated low notes that the viola passes on to the string bases and the cellos in this movement. The cellos and the bases played this with such bounce and at such a low volume, that you could barely hear them. (In fact, it was so low, I couldn’t tell whether the bases or cellos or both were playing the B-flat.) Ohhhh, it was lovely. It was like witnessing a very private heated conversation between the violas and bases/cellos. If they had just played this section over and over again the entire evening, I would’ve enjoyed it. It provided a wonderful contrast to the loud melody, which really made this movement work. The oboe and flute ensemble was very tight, too.

Is it silly to say that these repeated B-flats were probably my favorite part of this performance?

I am glad I finally got to hear this performance live, but the SF Symphony version wasn’t riveting or transgressive enough for me.

However, clearly I’m wrong, since Joshua Kosman of the SF Chronicle (a reliable music critic and therefore someone who actually knows what he is talking about) said that this performance was “among the most exciting renditions of this music I've heard."

Well, this is why I could never be a reviewer.

Musical Mashed Potatoes

I’m working on a piece that currently sounds like musical mashed potatoes, if mashed potatoes could actually be represented musically.

We are supposed to memorize a piece that sounds deceivingly easy if you just sang the entire piece as is, but the version we are singing has 3 of us max on a part, singing only 1 pitch (in my case a B-flat), so that every time a B-flat comes up, I’m supposed to sing the text, which is proving to be a bit more challenging than I expected. (The rest of the time, I’m supposed to hum on my note, but all the while standing next to TWO people who are each singing a half a step above and below me, which means that I also don’t want to breathe, because that means a stoppage in sound, and the increased likelihood of getting thrown off by the mesh of pitches on either side of you.)

It’s hard to think that far ahead and be like, "oh, my b-flat is coming up." and manage to come in exactly on time and with the proper amount of stress, b/c the few times I do remember to come in on time, I'm so eager to show off that "Oh oh oh, I actually remembered that I'm supposed to come in on the word 'tops' of 'rooftops'!" that I end up stressing the word we come in on, which is invariably an unimportant and unstressed word like "a" or worse yet, a non-stressed syllable, like the “on” in upon. It's appropriately called "Falling Rain" and once we get the musical acrobatics figured out, it should sound like cascading raindrops.

But at the moment. . . please pass me the gravy.

Three things that made me smile today

1. Returning home from work and being greeted by these beauties: 2.
Actually smile is an understatement. I was laughing so hard, I was in tears. Thanks to Yv, a new-found blog-amie for posting it on her site and providing me with such comic relief.

3. I'm in! Woohoo! I'll be participating in this SF mini-game.

My compulsive Bach-buying disorder

Damnit. Damnit. I found another version of Bach’s Chaconne played so beautifully that I need to get it.

Here I thought that I already know my favorite version of Bach’s Partitas and Sonatas and was set with my Menuhin version. Over the past few years, I’ve listened to several recordings and own a few, but I keep coming back to Yehudi Menuhin’s 1934 version recorded when he was but a teen. Yes, it has more intonation issues than his later recording and other versions played by Perlman and many others, and Kremer and Hahn play it beautifully and with more technical verve, but flaws and all, the Menuhin recording was my first “Chaconne love”, and I still find it powerful enough to move me to tears. Even the Szeryng version, which is quite good, doesn’t move me quite as much as Menuhin’s.

Unlike modern recordings, you can tell that this recording wasn’t recorded in a studio with fancy acoustics or high tech recording equipment, so the violin doesn’t ring as much as later recordings by Perlman, Hahn, et. al. nor does his violin have that vibrant zing to its tone. But the unmediated sound sounds so honest and refreshing; the tone is warmer and much more intimate.

Thus, despite the razzle dazzle of newer, more polished versions—some of which I own, I’ve been faithful to this one for the past ten years or so and have not been tempted to buy any more beyond the ones I already own.

Until today, that is.

Today, I heard a version played by Grumiaux (on my favorite nonclassical radio station, no less.) that sounded so beautiful that I actually stopped what I was doing for 15 minutes to finish listening to it and give it my undivided attention. It’s very different from Menuhin's, but alluring and sensual in its own way.

A few years ago, I swore off buying any more Bach unaccompanied violin stuff until I had a less lopsided collection (it’s currently very “B”-heavy), but darn it. I think I might need to break my Bach-fast and get a recording of the Grumiaux.

Because you know, it's not like the 3? 4? I already own are enough.

Phone sex and other things I don't get that defy logic

Sorry to tease you with such a tantalizing title and potentially disappoint, but actually, the contents of this post will not be racy because it's about logic.

There are lots of things I don't get, but here are the three that are currently on my mind.

1. Piano quintet-- when I first heard the phrase "piano quintet", many many years ago, I imagined 5 pianos clanging along. After all, a string quartet means 4 strings playing as an ensemble. So by parallel logic, shouldn't a piano quintet mean 5 pianos playing as an ensemble? Ditto guitar quintet?

And why is a trumpet quintet composed of 5 trumpets, but an oboe quintet composed of an oboe plus 4 other non-oboe instruments?

Ok, granted, I've never seen 5 oboes perform together. But I've seen an oboe duet. Maybe a trio, too? And ditto guitar. A guitar trio is an ensemble with three guitars, and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet is composed of 4 guitar players (I think), but Boccherini's guitar quintet is for guitar plus 4 other instruments.

Is there some sort of unspoken elusive rule among musicians that they automatically know if it's x instrument, then an x quintet means x+4 other instruments, but if it's y instrument, then it means 5 of y instrument?

Or in the case of the guitar, at what number threshold, we switch from x-______tet meaning ____ of instrument x, rather than x plus other instruments?

Is there a manual that explains all of this?

2. Phone sex--ok, it's not that I didn't know what this is, but again, based on purely logical reasoning, I wasn't 100 percent sure what this meant. But Titus set me straight.

So it was what I suspected it was, but according my pedantic adherence of logic, phone sex really ought to be called phone masturbation, b/c that's what it really is. According to Titus, it's called phone sex rather than phone masturbation, because the former sounds more "exciting".

Exciting, but not logical. But then, when is sex ever logical?

3. The American convention of putting periods and commas inside quotations--this is a hobby horse of sorts for me, and regular visitors know of my befuddlement with this grammar rule, so I won't belabor the point here, except to express (again) that it's totally illogical and I refuse to abide by such rules that make no sense. (After all, what is a personal blog, if I can't express my own artistic or grammatical style, so long as I'm consistent?)

Perhaps I'm rigid like that, but all I'm asking for is consistency.
If
Did you read "encore"?
is legit, then
I read "encore".
rather than
I read "encore."
ought to be legit.

(Omg. Did I just compare piano quintets to phone sex to grammar rules??)