If you've been reading this blog you already know that I often like to deal in small things--small, that is, unless you are a performing musician. Then you are ready to fight to the death over them. They're only small for everyone else.
I recently re-posted my blog about the Widor Toccata from last year, which involved a discussion of the appropriate tempo--from the composer's own point of view, and then also from that of the organists who frequently make a blurry mess of it trying to impress girls (or boys) or hoping to make it to their next gig, which started five minutes ago, on time. If you haven't heard my impression of the Widor Toccata as played in Prague for tourists a couple of summers ago, here it is (just the opening).
There is some risk associated with eschewing the hyperspace hurry of notes and instead taking a more relaxed tempo as the composer himself may have wanted. It is the same risk cereal manufacturers take when they only put five times the recommended daily amount of sugar in a single bite-size portion of their product, or when restaurants do the same dastardly thing with salt, making it necessary to nearly eat half the meal if you want a week-and-a-half's worth of the tasty rocks in one sitting. We love the stuff! down with the food police! booo!
Similarly, an artist who takes a less blazing tempo than the next guy is probably going to seem less impressive. The guy on the street is thinking: sounds like he can't play the piano as well.
Still, I cleave to my principles--sometimes. And when it comes to a Mr. Scott Joplin, another "cranky" old fellow how actually scolded his public that "It is never right to play ragtime fast!" on many of his published works, I try to give him what he wanted. I myself have been scolded by some smug listeners for playing Joplin too fast. But as I mentioned in passing in a page on my website from years ago, how fast is actually too fast might not be as simple as you'd think.
While Joplinesque speed-bumps adorn most of his rags, actual metronome markings are rare. Most of the time we are instructed to take them "march tempo" which is a little harder to gauge unless you live in a culture where marches are heard frequently and most people agree on how fast most of them should go most of the time. But the other day I sat down to play (and record) "Pineapple rag" and stumbled upon what, so far as I can tell, is one of only two metronome markings in his published solo rags. Since this is a reprint from the first edition, there's a pretty good chance Joplin put it there himself. Maybe.
It is 100 to the quarter note. These days I have a nice little metronome app on my smartphone so I punched it up to see how fast it was. "Oh, you've got to be kidding" is the sanitized version of what I said when I realized my assumptions about Joplin's notions of speed were a little off.
100 to the quarter is pretty darned fast.
To give an idea, the recording you are about to hear, the one I made that afternoon, is a little bit slower, actually. I checked it later and found it is around 94 beats per minute.
There is a letter in a museum someplace in which the governor of some state complains about early locomotives going at the "break-neck speed of 15 miles an hour!" I saw it a few decades ago when on a trip with my family as a child. Many things of that era (late 19th-early 20th centuries) were much slower than they are now--news, transportation, the half-life of the attention span--but not everything. Human beings could move their fingers on keys pretty fast. So fast, apparently, that even the guy with the reputation for wanting people to slow down a little wasn't as stately as you might think.
Of course, I am basing this on two metronome markings which might possibly have been done over Joplin's objections, though some research suggests 100 bpm is actually consistent with the ubiquitous "march tempo."
Still, I can conscientiously say I have done a little homework, and that it actually matters to me what the composer might have thought about his own music. Sometimes, of course, I like to try different tempi to see if it brings out different aspects of the music, or makes me discover over things in it. My previous recording, made 10 years ago on a smaller piano with a single microphone (which is why I'm not getting it back out to play for you) is about 34 seconds slower.
If you were keeping track.
listen to Scott Joplin's "Pineapple Rag"
Friday, April 25, 2014
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
What makes a good accompanist?
What does it take to be a good accompanist? I'll start with with an accompanist is not: a timid soloist. Unfortunately, sometimes in school it looked like pianists who weren't assured enough to be soloists (meaning they got too nervous about being listened to by themselves) were made accompanists, the way violinists who couldn't quite make it sometimes were given violas. Neither situation works very well.
In fact, I recall much complaining about how some of the pianists in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition weren't very good at the chamber music round because they weren't much for playing in an ensemble. In this case, we are looking at the reverse of the idea in the paragraph above: that it is soloists who are in fact inferior accompanists!
Neither of which ought really to be true. What makes a person a good accompanist is really the very same thing that makes a person a good soloist, or just a good musician, period. In a word, it is this: listening.
A soloist listens to him or herself--for balance between the voices, for the acoustics of the hall, and the clarity of the pedaling, and is constantly adjusting to that external feedback. An accompanist is doing the same thing, only now the task includes notes that they are not playing as well as notes they are.
In the case of an accompanist, particularly if you are working with a conductor, this means surrendering your own inner metronome, while at the same time having a good sense of rhythm so that your playing is clear and rhythmically precise--but the moment the conductor makes an adjustment to the tempo, you have to make that adjustment yourself. In other words, the 2nd beat of the measure only comes when the conductor decides it does, not when you think it ought to. This is probably the thing that causes most people to be poor accompanists, because it means constant attention to a force outside of yourself. I'll give two examples of what I mean, both from the Cleveland orchestra.
When I was in college, back before the turn of the century (I'm now an ancient 42), I used to get to hear the Cleveland Orchestra for free every weekend because at the Cleveland Institute of Music if you were one of the first 40 students to sign up you got free tickets. I learned a lot watching one of the great orchestras of the world and its excellent music director, Christoph von Dohnanyl.
One night an insufficiently prepared soloist did something very rare on the stage of that august hall. He skipped two beats in the middle of a solo section. The conductor reacted instantly. Having been trained in opera, he gave a very fast four beat pattern, smaller than the usual beat pattern, in the manner that a conductor might do if a soloist were singing a recitative portion of an opera to tell the orchestra that the downbeat of the next measure could come at any time without counting out the regular four beats in sequence. Without any ceremony he therefore rushed through the next measure's beat pattern in time to give the downbeat to the following measure right in time with the soloist. This meant that within one measure of the pianist's skipping those two beats, the orchestra was right back with the soloist. The entire orchestra, watching their conductor like 70 well-trained hawks, nailed the sudden change, and I doubt whether anyone in the hall who didn't just happen to be playing the very same concerto with another orchestra later that month (such as myself) and thus know the piece really really well, would have heard anything wrong whatsoever. Amazing!
The next example is even rarer: when the maestro himself made the only mistake I ever remember seeing him make in a rarely performed 20th century American symphony, the entire orchestra had a momentary (but oh so short) collapse--he failed to give a clear second beat in a single measure and the whole orchestra was depending on it. Now if they hadn't been that tuned in to their music director, and had all been operating on their internal metronomes and not paying him that much attention, that wouldn't have happened. Ironic that it was their greatness that caused their downfall! But, like I said, this miasma lasted for only a fraction of a second. So many other golden moments occurred because their own sense of rhythmic precision, as finely tuned as it was in the case of each individual player, was completely given over to the maestro. Where he put that second beat--slightly later or slightly earlier as he sculpted each phrase--that was were the entire orchestra put it, to a player.
I have plenty of my own stories about skipping beats are adding beats to accommodate soloists or choirs or conductors, most or which are not glamorous--but they are good training! The most training I ever got in a single evening involves a young woman who was not prepared for a school recital and kept skipping ahead or behind as her memory failed her: now a line ahead, now a page back--causing her nervous accompanist to have to find where she was in the music as quickly as possible. Now that's accompanist boot camp! (She failed the recital, of course.)
There are many situation that require being in sync with an external force. You can't be a good outfielder unless you put your glove is where the ball is, not where you'd like it to be. Until then you have to constantly track where it is headed. It is not dissimilar with the conductor's downbeat. You can find it if you are tracking the preparatory beats and making adjustments are needed. That requires a good deal of refined focus. It is being able to meet lots of little deadlines--only, they are not marked on the calendar, and they are continually subject to change.
In fact, I recall much complaining about how some of the pianists in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition weren't very good at the chamber music round because they weren't much for playing in an ensemble. In this case, we are looking at the reverse of the idea in the paragraph above: that it is soloists who are in fact inferior accompanists!
Neither of which ought really to be true. What makes a person a good accompanist is really the very same thing that makes a person a good soloist, or just a good musician, period. In a word, it is this: listening.
A soloist listens to him or herself--for balance between the voices, for the acoustics of the hall, and the clarity of the pedaling, and is constantly adjusting to that external feedback. An accompanist is doing the same thing, only now the task includes notes that they are not playing as well as notes they are.
In the case of an accompanist, particularly if you are working with a conductor, this means surrendering your own inner metronome, while at the same time having a good sense of rhythm so that your playing is clear and rhythmically precise--but the moment the conductor makes an adjustment to the tempo, you have to make that adjustment yourself. In other words, the 2nd beat of the measure only comes when the conductor decides it does, not when you think it ought to. This is probably the thing that causes most people to be poor accompanists, because it means constant attention to a force outside of yourself. I'll give two examples of what I mean, both from the Cleveland orchestra.
When I was in college, back before the turn of the century (I'm now an ancient 42), I used to get to hear the Cleveland Orchestra for free every weekend because at the Cleveland Institute of Music if you were one of the first 40 students to sign up you got free tickets. I learned a lot watching one of the great orchestras of the world and its excellent music director, Christoph von Dohnanyl.
One night an insufficiently prepared soloist did something very rare on the stage of that august hall. He skipped two beats in the middle of a solo section. The conductor reacted instantly. Having been trained in opera, he gave a very fast four beat pattern, smaller than the usual beat pattern, in the manner that a conductor might do if a soloist were singing a recitative portion of an opera to tell the orchestra that the downbeat of the next measure could come at any time without counting out the regular four beats in sequence. Without any ceremony he therefore rushed through the next measure's beat pattern in time to give the downbeat to the following measure right in time with the soloist. This meant that within one measure of the pianist's skipping those two beats, the orchestra was right back with the soloist. The entire orchestra, watching their conductor like 70 well-trained hawks, nailed the sudden change, and I doubt whether anyone in the hall who didn't just happen to be playing the very same concerto with another orchestra later that month (such as myself) and thus know the piece really really well, would have heard anything wrong whatsoever. Amazing!
The next example is even rarer: when the maestro himself made the only mistake I ever remember seeing him make in a rarely performed 20th century American symphony, the entire orchestra had a momentary (but oh so short) collapse--he failed to give a clear second beat in a single measure and the whole orchestra was depending on it. Now if they hadn't been that tuned in to their music director, and had all been operating on their internal metronomes and not paying him that much attention, that wouldn't have happened. Ironic that it was their greatness that caused their downfall! But, like I said, this miasma lasted for only a fraction of a second. So many other golden moments occurred because their own sense of rhythmic precision, as finely tuned as it was in the case of each individual player, was completely given over to the maestro. Where he put that second beat--slightly later or slightly earlier as he sculpted each phrase--that was were the entire orchestra put it, to a player.
I have plenty of my own stories about skipping beats are adding beats to accommodate soloists or choirs or conductors, most or which are not glamorous--but they are good training! The most training I ever got in a single evening involves a young woman who was not prepared for a school recital and kept skipping ahead or behind as her memory failed her: now a line ahead, now a page back--causing her nervous accompanist to have to find where she was in the music as quickly as possible. Now that's accompanist boot camp! (She failed the recital, of course.)
There are many situation that require being in sync with an external force. You can't be a good outfielder unless you put your glove is where the ball is, not where you'd like it to be. Until then you have to constantly track where it is headed. It is not dissimilar with the conductor's downbeat. You can find it if you are tracking the preparatory beats and making adjustments are needed. That requires a good deal of refined focus. It is being able to meet lots of little deadlines--only, they are not marked on the calendar, and they are continually subject to change.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Surprise!
Some time ago I observed that people tend to value the spontaneous because they believe that to be more sincere. As long as something appears to be not to have been particularly premeditated, it has more value for a large number of us than something that seems to be well artistically manicured. In which case, there are a number of recordings on Pianonoise right now that ought to get kudos for not having the pale cast of premeditated thought sicklied over them.
That's because I often just do not have any doggone time.
The present recording, presented for your listening pleasure, is something that I just set eyes on this morning [which technically was last Thursday when I wrote this!]. I sight read it once, then turned on the microphone and played it twice. Then I discovered that yours truly had brilliantly failed to connect one of the microphone cables to the microphone itself, which, as genius as that sort of nonconformity might appear, nevertheless does not give us very good stereo. The microphone does not appreciate genius, in other words. So I plugged in the cable and did two more takes the regular way.
By this point I was on play-throughs numbers four and five, which I suppose made me an expert, but I still hadn't known the piece for more than twenty minutes by the time I was finished. In circumstances like that, one's reaction to a piece of music is just that--a gut reaction. The interpretation has to be, well, nearly spontaneous.
Hoping that you have some sort of way to keep chronological time with this recording, I'm going to point out something that happens at the 27 second mark: a slight hesitation on my part, and a flagging of the tempo for the next few measures. This is because I found it a little odd that Mr. Telemann was taking this little harmonic excursion. It seemed as though the music were leading us in one direction and then, without really preparing us for it, he decided to look at some harmonic flowers by the side of the road. So I pointed this out by taking my time there also.
I could be wrong; also I could change my mind about it later. But I didn't have any time to reconsider, so, if you are into honest reactions to things you haven't had time to think about, here you go. And at the moment, I still think it was the right thing to do. The question, I suppose, is does this interpretive decision get the point across adequately. And was this Mr. Telemann's point to begin with. I can't ask him since he's been dead for 250 years.
Because of my sense of how harmonic language is constructed and what constitutes the normal and the abnormal, it seemed to me there was a little surprise on the page waiting for me when I got there. And for all of the words I'm throwing at it, the result is really more emotional than logical. It is, in a word: surprise! You weren't expected that, were you?
Which is one of things that makes life fun.
[listen]
That's because I often just do not have any doggone time.
The present recording, presented for your listening pleasure, is something that I just set eyes on this morning [which technically was last Thursday when I wrote this!]. I sight read it once, then turned on the microphone and played it twice. Then I discovered that yours truly had brilliantly failed to connect one of the microphone cables to the microphone itself, which, as genius as that sort of nonconformity might appear, nevertheless does not give us very good stereo. The microphone does not appreciate genius, in other words. So I plugged in the cable and did two more takes the regular way.
By this point I was on play-throughs numbers four and five, which I suppose made me an expert, but I still hadn't known the piece for more than twenty minutes by the time I was finished. In circumstances like that, one's reaction to a piece of music is just that--a gut reaction. The interpretation has to be, well, nearly spontaneous.
Hoping that you have some sort of way to keep chronological time with this recording, I'm going to point out something that happens at the 27 second mark: a slight hesitation on my part, and a flagging of the tempo for the next few measures. This is because I found it a little odd that Mr. Telemann was taking this little harmonic excursion. It seemed as though the music were leading us in one direction and then, without really preparing us for it, he decided to look at some harmonic flowers by the side of the road. So I pointed this out by taking my time there also.
I could be wrong; also I could change my mind about it later. But I didn't have any time to reconsider, so, if you are into honest reactions to things you haven't had time to think about, here you go. And at the moment, I still think it was the right thing to do. The question, I suppose, is does this interpretive decision get the point across adequately. And was this Mr. Telemann's point to begin with. I can't ask him since he's been dead for 250 years.
Because of my sense of how harmonic language is constructed and what constitutes the normal and the abnormal, it seemed to me there was a little surprise on the page waiting for me when I got there. And for all of the words I'm throwing at it, the result is really more emotional than logical. It is, in a word: surprise! You weren't expected that, were you?
Which is one of things that makes life fun.
[listen]
Friday, March 7, 2014
Transition
This week is another odd juncture in the church year: this Sunday, we'll be picking up in the narrative of Christ's earthly ministry where we left off on the second Sunday of January, when we celebrated the "Baptism of the Lord." in Mark's gospel, Jesus comes up out of the water and a voice thunders "this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." And suddenly, says Mark, with no further ado whatever, Jesus was driven into the wilderness and spent 40 days and nights there being tempted by Satan. This makes the baptism and the temptation a two-parter that happen one right after the other. But liturgically, we take our time about it, spending however many weeks it takes for the lunar calendar to align properly before we begin Lent. Then the week preceding, for those of you keeping liturgical score, we skip to the Transfiguration, an incident the synoptic gospel writers put in the middle of Jesus's ministry, before we double back to pick up the temptation in the wilderness. What a ride!
In our local church, however, we've spent the last seven weeks discussing hymns, the different persons and groups responsible for writing them, and what they tell us about our faith. In other words, we've been off the liturgical cycle altogether. And in Lent, both of our pastors are taking the seven last words of Christ and preaching sermon series' on that.
Musically, the last seven weeks for me have been spent at the piano, playing hymn based compositions by my French cousin M. Marteau. The last of these was a raucous send-up of about eight camp meeting revival style hymns from 19th century America, whose melodies the aphasic composer confessed not being able to keep straight.
listen
I had some fun with this over the weekend. On Saturday, one fellow came up to the piano during the climax to peer over my shoulder. Hoping to catch the title to see which hymn I was playing (the Saturday evening worship folks don't benefit from explanatory program notes). On Sunday a few folks took the thing perfectly seriously; some laughed or smiled, and others noted (and counted) the hymns as they tumbled out. One lady came up with nine but said she may have counted one twice. I'm not even sure myself. Often a hymn is present for only one measure before it becomes something else, and a couple of times there are three going at once. He may not have gotten the joke, but the liturgist found the music "inspiring" which is just fine with me.
This week, as I get my sackcloth out of the closet, I'm going in an entirely different direction. We just had seven weeks of 21st century piano music, now it is time for some 19th century german organ music. Felix Mendelssohn wrote six sonatas that are at the core of the organ literature, and every serious organist plays. Being a little late to the game (trained as a pianist in school) I've only played one of these a few years back (and probably not well). So I've decided to learn three of the six this spring, and I've found an interesting way to program them.
For lent I've chosen the three that are in minor keys. Each of them, however, concludes with one or more movements in the parallel major key, and I'm going to save those movements until after Easter. So with the first sonata, the f minor, only the first movement is in minor. The second sonata has only one as well. The d minor sixth sonata has one large minor key movement and one other short one. Only the brief concluding movement is in d major, and I'll play that at the end of the year, in June.
It's going to be quite a change from what I've been "preaching." And it will probably be a bit less popular than what I've been serving up. But that's good, too. There's a time for reflection, and this season is one of those times.
In our local church, however, we've spent the last seven weeks discussing hymns, the different persons and groups responsible for writing them, and what they tell us about our faith. In other words, we've been off the liturgical cycle altogether. And in Lent, both of our pastors are taking the seven last words of Christ and preaching sermon series' on that.
Musically, the last seven weeks for me have been spent at the piano, playing hymn based compositions by my French cousin M. Marteau. The last of these was a raucous send-up of about eight camp meeting revival style hymns from 19th century America, whose melodies the aphasic composer confessed not being able to keep straight.
listen
I had some fun with this over the weekend. On Saturday, one fellow came up to the piano during the climax to peer over my shoulder. Hoping to catch the title to see which hymn I was playing (the Saturday evening worship folks don't benefit from explanatory program notes). On Sunday a few folks took the thing perfectly seriously; some laughed or smiled, and others noted (and counted) the hymns as they tumbled out. One lady came up with nine but said she may have counted one twice. I'm not even sure myself. Often a hymn is present for only one measure before it becomes something else, and a couple of times there are three going at once. He may not have gotten the joke, but the liturgist found the music "inspiring" which is just fine with me.
This week, as I get my sackcloth out of the closet, I'm going in an entirely different direction. We just had seven weeks of 21st century piano music, now it is time for some 19th century german organ music. Felix Mendelssohn wrote six sonatas that are at the core of the organ literature, and every serious organist plays. Being a little late to the game (trained as a pianist in school) I've only played one of these a few years back (and probably not well). So I've decided to learn three of the six this spring, and I've found an interesting way to program them.
For lent I've chosen the three that are in minor keys. Each of them, however, concludes with one or more movements in the parallel major key, and I'm going to save those movements until after Easter. So with the first sonata, the f minor, only the first movement is in minor. The second sonata has only one as well. The d minor sixth sonata has one large minor key movement and one other short one. Only the brief concluding movement is in d major, and I'll play that at the end of the year, in June.
It's going to be quite a change from what I've been "preaching." And it will probably be a bit less popular than what I've been serving up. But that's good, too. There's a time for reflection, and this season is one of those times.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Marathon
I've always thought of artistic endeavors as more of a marathon than a sprint, which might be one reason you won't see any piano playing at the Olympics. It isn't that people haven't figured out how to make piano playing a competitive sport; they've just never been able to draw the ratings necessary for it. But imagine if they did put it on television.
For one thing, you would have to have a pair of announcers telling us all everything the pianist did that wasn't exactly up to par. You can't trust people to hear wrong notes themselves--I've made a career out of making mistakes that people are either too polite to point out or are too subtle for anyone without intimate knowledge of the score to hear in the first place. And when improvising, one can always take a missed note and make it sound intentional. It all depends on what you do in the moments immediately following.
And yet, in ice skating, it is completely obvious to anyone when someone falls on his or her can in the middle of a routine and yet you still have intermediaries crying out to let us know that it was a bad thing. Also, when a what was advertised as a triple axle turns out to be merely a double ("Bob, he's only playing that scale passage with one hand! That's an automatic deduction right there!") or when the landing was a bit wobbly ("that F# sounded more like mezzo forte than mezzo piano. We'll have to see what the judges think about that!"). There is no way NBC would let somebody get all the way through the Goldberg Variations without incessant commentary. People expect it.
(Actually, ABC tried presenting an entire football game on a Monday night in the 70s without announcers and they decided afterward people wanted them.)
But it's the pace of the arts that is the biggest obstacle, or perhaps the average attention span. This has apparently been compounded recently by the ubiquitous 90 second clips that festoon the online experience--it is rather difficult these days to actually watch a more lengthy excerpt. But, hey, the people have spoken (maybe).
But even on broadcast television you have to get through a sea of advertising. That's ok. For the longer events, say the marathon, they line up, the gun goes off, you see them run for thirty seconds, they go to commercial. They cover 3 other events. They go to commercial four times. They come back...people are still running! how exciting.
If the event is shorter, like a 3 minute skating program, they just stick commercials in between each of the competitors. I am old (and cranky) enough to remember when they would actually let you watch three or four people compete and THEN cut away to commercials. But, like all economic enterprises, people wanted to see if they could make just a little bit more money putting a few more ads in there which caused prices to come down which means they have to put more ads in there, and so forth.
I could imagine the day when piano made it to the Olympics (summer or winter, I wonder? I guess if it was a winter event you'd have to place it on ice.) On comes the Russian. He begins to play Chopin's "Minute" Waltz. Five measures of it. fade to a commercial for a car. We come back. Now he's playing part of the second section. We get another eight bars. Time for another commercial. Return for the big finish. And always the announcer telling us what we could have already figured out for ourselves, mostly. Heck, once in a while they say something I hadn't thought of, not being a retired competitor, and I learn something. Then he grins at the judges, takes a big bow, and walks off. We wait for the scores. Tears, or triumph. He moves into second place, for now. He gets flowers, and a hug from his coach. And his mommy. He waves at the camera. Such a cutie.
He is, of course, all of five years old.
For one thing, you would have to have a pair of announcers telling us all everything the pianist did that wasn't exactly up to par. You can't trust people to hear wrong notes themselves--I've made a career out of making mistakes that people are either too polite to point out or are too subtle for anyone without intimate knowledge of the score to hear in the first place. And when improvising, one can always take a missed note and make it sound intentional. It all depends on what you do in the moments immediately following.
And yet, in ice skating, it is completely obvious to anyone when someone falls on his or her can in the middle of a routine and yet you still have intermediaries crying out to let us know that it was a bad thing. Also, when a what was advertised as a triple axle turns out to be merely a double ("Bob, he's only playing that scale passage with one hand! That's an automatic deduction right there!") or when the landing was a bit wobbly ("that F# sounded more like mezzo forte than mezzo piano. We'll have to see what the judges think about that!"). There is no way NBC would let somebody get all the way through the Goldberg Variations without incessant commentary. People expect it.
(Actually, ABC tried presenting an entire football game on a Monday night in the 70s without announcers and they decided afterward people wanted them.)
But it's the pace of the arts that is the biggest obstacle, or perhaps the average attention span. This has apparently been compounded recently by the ubiquitous 90 second clips that festoon the online experience--it is rather difficult these days to actually watch a more lengthy excerpt. But, hey, the people have spoken (maybe).
But even on broadcast television you have to get through a sea of advertising. That's ok. For the longer events, say the marathon, they line up, the gun goes off, you see them run for thirty seconds, they go to commercial. They cover 3 other events. They go to commercial four times. They come back...people are still running! how exciting.
If the event is shorter, like a 3 minute skating program, they just stick commercials in between each of the competitors. I am old (and cranky) enough to remember when they would actually let you watch three or four people compete and THEN cut away to commercials. But, like all economic enterprises, people wanted to see if they could make just a little bit more money putting a few more ads in there which caused prices to come down which means they have to put more ads in there, and so forth.
I could imagine the day when piano made it to the Olympics (summer or winter, I wonder? I guess if it was a winter event you'd have to place it on ice.) On comes the Russian. He begins to play Chopin's "Minute" Waltz. Five measures of it. fade to a commercial for a car. We come back. Now he's playing part of the second section. We get another eight bars. Time for another commercial. Return for the big finish. And always the announcer telling us what we could have already figured out for ourselves, mostly. Heck, once in a while they say something I hadn't thought of, not being a retired competitor, and I learn something. Then he grins at the judges, takes a big bow, and walks off. We wait for the scores. Tears, or triumph. He moves into second place, for now. He gets flowers, and a hug from his coach. And his mommy. He waves at the camera. Such a cutie.
He is, of course, all of five years old.
Friday, February 7, 2014
The thing with the rodent predicting the weather and how it has to do with baby Jesus
My wife got tired of my constantly interrupting her with new revelations about what I was learning over the interwebs on Sunday so I figured I'd bother you with them instead.
We have a thing here in America called Groundhog Day. I imagine I should explain that because you never know where in the world someone might be reading your blog and while it is common knowledge in this country it might be completely off the radar somewhere else. Maybe the Swiss, for example, have better things to do.
But here in North America a custom has developed, dating back to 1887, wherein a particular form of rodentia by the name of Puxatawny Phil, who happens to reside in Puxatawny, Pennsylvania, USA, is released from his gilded cage once a year on February 2nd at 7:27 or so in the morning, and, if he sees his shadow we are in for six more weeks of winter, and if he does not, we will have an early spring.
I realize the idea of a groundhog predicting the weather must seem so self evident that even folks in Saudi Arabia are thinking I'm being very patronizing for feeling the need to explain that, but thus it is.
Also, I'm afraid sarcasm may not be as universal as I'd like it to be, either, so I am now compounding my error.
Anyhow, folks in the USA are quite taken with the idea. In addition to Mr. Phil, there is also quite a bit of other geographical groundhoggery with colorful names, though the people of Pennsylvania believe them to be cheap knock-offs and swear by Phil and Phil alone.
I was in church rehearsing with the band when I first got the news of Phil's shadow-seeing on my phone and like many Americans I have spent the week since being sore at Phil for bearing such tidings and not forecasting an early spring. We could really use one around here, particularly with the unusually severe winter we are experiencing in central Illinois. If Phil had gone the other way, we would not have gotten those 6 inches of snow this week, and this morning's low would not have been minus 4 for something like the 18th day this winter.
I realize that makes about as much sense as being angry at the Seattle Seahawks for beating the Denver Broncos in the Superbowl recently. For one thing, that is exactly what they are supposed to try to do, and for another, the highly talented group of football players who play on a team located in your city may win or lose, but what does that really have to do with you and your accomplishments, or your worth as a human being? They aren't related to you, and you aren't coaching the team.
But football fandom is popular anyhow, and fans do take losses personally, and besides, with something like Phil you get an outlet for your general frustration with winter for a few days and people won't think you are too crazy for cursing a groundhog so long as he a) ate your flowers or b) is a nationally recognized custom and symbol of whatever insanity is considered just a lot of harmless fun by enough of the population.
But just so I could experience a little more of that fun, and because I was sure it had to be on Wikipedia, I thought I'd check a list of Phil's predictions since the dawn of time (1887) and see how often he had been right and so forth. So I went online and did some digging (sorry).*
There I learned that some of his predictions were never written down and had been lost for all time (!) but that he also managed to be correct only about 40% of the time. Which was strange, because he usually predicts more winter, which is what I assumed would be the safe thing to predict in Pennsylvania in early February. Apparently people there experience early spring more often than I would have thought. It made me wonder what constitutes an "early spring"--does it have to last for more than a day of anomalous warm weather? Does it count if it occurs 5 and a half weeks into the 6 weeks period of extra winter? Did whoever compile that list have it in for Phil?
While I was doing my research I stumbled across a thing called "Candlemas." It always occurs on the 2nd of February, which is 40 days after Christmas. If I were Catholic I would probably know what it was, but as a less liturgically sensitive Protestant, I hadn't heard of it. It marks the presentation of the baby Jesus in the temple, as was the custom with infants (is this where he was circumcised?) and the prophecies of Simeon and Anna as related in Luke 2. Evidently, there sprang up a proverb, centuries later, that the weather of Candlemas was a predictor of the length of winter. For instance, this Scottish version: "If Candlemas is bright and clear, there'll be two winters in the year." Candlemas got its name because the priests would bless candles and pass them out to the people. This must have made things confusing since the artificial light source would have led to a certain amount of extraneous shadow seeing.
There were also a number of stories related to the reawakening of animals out of their hibernatory habitats, and these also play a part in the eventual coming of Phil the Magnificent.
Folks in Pennsylvania have naturally updated the custom with a lot of modern pageantry for the 21st century mind, and also to keep the groundhog punctual and reliable. You couldn't have him running off and just being a groundhog, or deciding he prefers February 3rd some year when you've got The Media waiting. So what they do is keep him in a cage, and every year the president of the "inner circle" gets him out at the appointed time, holds him aloft, and listens to Phil jibber in "groundhogeese" which only the current president of the "inner circle" can understand. Said president then translates it to the crowd. I am not sure if this is before or after they slip him a drink that lengthens his life for another 7 years so he can go on being the same groundhog he was since 1887, shaming the farmer's almanac with his beasty intuition.
Anyway, then they sing a few hymns and go home. Wait, that might be Candlemas.
So there you have it--a concise explanation of the relationship between baby Jesus and Groundhog Day. At the time of this writing, I am still not sure how either of them is related to Kevin Bacon.
-----
*no I'm not.
We have a thing here in America called Groundhog Day. I imagine I should explain that because you never know where in the world someone might be reading your blog and while it is common knowledge in this country it might be completely off the radar somewhere else. Maybe the Swiss, for example, have better things to do.
But here in North America a custom has developed, dating back to 1887, wherein a particular form of rodentia by the name of Puxatawny Phil, who happens to reside in Puxatawny, Pennsylvania, USA, is released from his gilded cage once a year on February 2nd at 7:27 or so in the morning, and, if he sees his shadow we are in for six more weeks of winter, and if he does not, we will have an early spring.
I realize the idea of a groundhog predicting the weather must seem so self evident that even folks in Saudi Arabia are thinking I'm being very patronizing for feeling the need to explain that, but thus it is.
Also, I'm afraid sarcasm may not be as universal as I'd like it to be, either, so I am now compounding my error.
Anyhow, folks in the USA are quite taken with the idea. In addition to Mr. Phil, there is also quite a bit of other geographical groundhoggery with colorful names, though the people of Pennsylvania believe them to be cheap knock-offs and swear by Phil and Phil alone.
I was in church rehearsing with the band when I first got the news of Phil's shadow-seeing on my phone and like many Americans I have spent the week since being sore at Phil for bearing such tidings and not forecasting an early spring. We could really use one around here, particularly with the unusually severe winter we are experiencing in central Illinois. If Phil had gone the other way, we would not have gotten those 6 inches of snow this week, and this morning's low would not have been minus 4 for something like the 18th day this winter.
I realize that makes about as much sense as being angry at the Seattle Seahawks for beating the Denver Broncos in the Superbowl recently. For one thing, that is exactly what they are supposed to try to do, and for another, the highly talented group of football players who play on a team located in your city may win or lose, but what does that really have to do with you and your accomplishments, or your worth as a human being? They aren't related to you, and you aren't coaching the team.
But football fandom is popular anyhow, and fans do take losses personally, and besides, with something like Phil you get an outlet for your general frustration with winter for a few days and people won't think you are too crazy for cursing a groundhog so long as he a) ate your flowers or b) is a nationally recognized custom and symbol of whatever insanity is considered just a lot of harmless fun by enough of the population.
But just so I could experience a little more of that fun, and because I was sure it had to be on Wikipedia, I thought I'd check a list of Phil's predictions since the dawn of time (1887) and see how often he had been right and so forth. So I went online and did some digging (sorry).*
There I learned that some of his predictions were never written down and had been lost for all time (!) but that he also managed to be correct only about 40% of the time. Which was strange, because he usually predicts more winter, which is what I assumed would be the safe thing to predict in Pennsylvania in early February. Apparently people there experience early spring more often than I would have thought. It made me wonder what constitutes an "early spring"--does it have to last for more than a day of anomalous warm weather? Does it count if it occurs 5 and a half weeks into the 6 weeks period of extra winter? Did whoever compile that list have it in for Phil?
While I was doing my research I stumbled across a thing called "Candlemas." It always occurs on the 2nd of February, which is 40 days after Christmas. If I were Catholic I would probably know what it was, but as a less liturgically sensitive Protestant, I hadn't heard of it. It marks the presentation of the baby Jesus in the temple, as was the custom with infants (is this where he was circumcised?) and the prophecies of Simeon and Anna as related in Luke 2. Evidently, there sprang up a proverb, centuries later, that the weather of Candlemas was a predictor of the length of winter. For instance, this Scottish version: "If Candlemas is bright and clear, there'll be two winters in the year." Candlemas got its name because the priests would bless candles and pass them out to the people. This must have made things confusing since the artificial light source would have led to a certain amount of extraneous shadow seeing.
There were also a number of stories related to the reawakening of animals out of their hibernatory habitats, and these also play a part in the eventual coming of Phil the Magnificent.
Folks in Pennsylvania have naturally updated the custom with a lot of modern pageantry for the 21st century mind, and also to keep the groundhog punctual and reliable. You couldn't have him running off and just being a groundhog, or deciding he prefers February 3rd some year when you've got The Media waiting. So what they do is keep him in a cage, and every year the president of the "inner circle" gets him out at the appointed time, holds him aloft, and listens to Phil jibber in "groundhogeese" which only the current president of the "inner circle" can understand. Said president then translates it to the crowd. I am not sure if this is before or after they slip him a drink that lengthens his life for another 7 years so he can go on being the same groundhog he was since 1887, shaming the farmer's almanac with his beasty intuition.
Anyway, then they sing a few hymns and go home. Wait, that might be Candlemas.
So there you have it--a concise explanation of the relationship between baby Jesus and Groundhog Day. At the time of this writing, I am still not sure how either of them is related to Kevin Bacon.
-----
*no I'm not.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
A little Musical Motivation
Here's a video a friend shared with me this week. Apparently the arts are good for something....
watch it here
watch it here
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