No Pun At All!

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

2010-10-15T11:07:00.001Z

There is a room in a house. In the room there is a box. In the box it is dark, but there is a muted fluttering. Darkness has texture, and shades of black, and the fluttering thing is brighter than black. We can try to guess what it is, but I have seen it before, so I will tell you: it is a living butterfly.

Collectors keep butterflies in boxes but this isn't one of those. A collection is something to be shown and seen, from time to time, but these bright papery wings never feel the air outside their box.

Butterflies are meant to be free. They grow and change and they take wing. Some will more powerful than we are sets it in motion. And they will always go towards the light no matter what.

They say one flap of a butterfly's wings can cause a storm thousands of miles away and change the course of weather for ever. But nobody has studied it. How do they know it is storms they are starting?

Maybe they've had enough of storms.

People change too. They grow and change and are guided by some will greater than we know. But they can choose what happens next. They have their own will too. But maybe they don't know that.

Everything happens because of choice. My choice, your choice. All the good things and all the bad things. So make your next choice a good one. Don't keep yourself in a box, don't let anything keep you away from the light. It's your own freedom and you always had it. Now take it.

If the fluttering wings of butterflies don't cause storms, what can they cause? If two butterflies meet and show their wings, what then? And if we all choose to go and take wing in the sun?

The air outside is soft and smells good. It's not dry and papery like in the box. Everything breathes and sighs and the colours seem to sing together at last. Peacocks and oysters and rainbows all shine, but there is one thing that will shine more than all the rest. It's never been seen before, not completely. But we're nearly ready now. It's you.

Show us your true colours.

It's your time.

It's bright out here, and I'm waiting!

temporary update

2010-04-27T20:28:00.002Z

For technical reasons to do with hosting and stuff, this blog is TEMPORARILY located at http://philiphowardcomposerandpianist.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds or you may click here.

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BUT

It will be back in a proper place as soon as possible.

Note for technical people: this blog is published using the services of Blogger, and was published to this website using FTP. But since Blogger have stopped using FTP it means I have to change the address of the page OR change the way I publish the page. The second one is more likely.

I do appreciate their free services that help me to make this site, but I don't think changing the page address is a good idea at all! So I will take steps.

More on Raw

2010-04-24T22:49:00.003Z

Now, as I was saying, there is a lot of talk about raw chocolate in the raw food world. And I was speculating as to the reason for that. Which is, I have decided, that (a) people aren't that keen on going raw and seek to replace the missing non-healthy food that they claim to have removed from their diet, and (b) that it can be hard to get enough calories on the raw plan so if you can get an extra 500 from somewhere then it makes it easier. Plus if extra calories are coming from a fat-rich source then it gives a full feeling to the eater.

So that's what i think about it, and what's led me to think that is that after my test of raw chocolate, I don't really want to have any more. There is a lot of fat in it (even if some is fat of coconut origin, which, I have heard, is not the same as normal fat, i.e. not bad fat) and I don't feel as good after eating it as I do from nice things like fruit and so on. Also - it is a bit psychoactive. Yes, it has something in it that scientists call theobromine, a word that translates to "food of the gods" ["Theobromine, also known as xantheose, is a bitter alkaloid of the cacao plant, found in chocolate, as well as in a number of other foods, including the leaves of the tea plant, and the kola or cola nut. It is in the methylxanthine class of chemical compounds, which also includes the similar compounds theophylline and caffeine"].

Chocolate was used for ceremonial purposes in its early history in Central and South America, during which time it appeared as a bitter drink that sometimes had chilli added. Nearly all religious ceremony is about connecting the living with the non-living in some way, and sometimes that is achieved through dangerous means. But is chocolate dangerous? Well if you have ever been savaged by a dangerous easter bunny then you will know the answer is yes. Plus, we can look up something known as theobromine poisoning, which tells us that, yes, you can die from eating chocolate, if you eat enough of it. The same as coffee, which is poisonous if you ingest enough of it. But strangely popular given that, no?

Anyway, what made me think it wasn't so useful was it gives you strange dreams, so don't have it close to sleeping, unless you are researching the history of Mayan religion.

I think "raw food desserts" are just a way of escaping from something intended to be a healthy diet. Remember when members of most of the world's major religions tried to escape the rules of their own religions? Yes, they said rabbits jump so they are technically birds so they can be eaten at certain times. Well, there are plenty of cases like that.

It just shows you that people like to claim one thing even when their heart is not in it. But they could say "I follow an all-raw diet but I think I will probably eat chocolate and a big pizza every three hours or so", there's nothing wrong with that, especially if it's true. But that's not the way they want to play it.

Meanwhile the weather remains cold here - except for patches of blazing sun which transform all English shops into fiery furnaces and sweat-drenched heat traps as soon as the temperature rises above 15°C. There is still a big problem with flights, which are not allowed to fly (transforming them from flights into...something that does not fly - rabbits maybe? Depending on your religion) because of an Icelandic volcano which has erupted and caused ash to start regular flights instead. And the big problem with that is that we can't get our interesting fruit from Thailand and around there.

Never mind durian, there were no coconuts or anything in Chinatown today! And watermeon in the local shop has suddenly quadrupled in price as the sun has come out. It woudl still be 100% enjoyable, but I am just 75% less likely to buy it...and in fact I DIDN'T.

Raw Fun!

2010-04-21T16:12:00.003Z

Where to find young coconuts in London? Also known as green coconuts?

You go to the New Loon Moon Supermarket in Gerrard Street, Chinatown! Today they cost £1.50 each. Much better than ordering through the internet for £4 each.

In fact they may well also have them on the other side of the street, at Loon Fung. Today was my first visit to Loon Moon actually.

Now the reason I have had trouble finding these young coconuts is - although they are also called "green", they are not green! In fact they are the colour of many other more normal things such as a piece of wood, soap, or daikon, so I wouldn't be surprised to find I have been seeing them for years and not knowing what they are.

I found this about Loon Moon:

You can find trays of rambutan, mangosteens, mangoes and langsat. It's also an opportunity for you to come up close with a whole jackfruit and the infamous durian. It's the green spiky football sized fruit that is the notorious taste test as to whether you've truly embraced south east Asian food! You can buy the edible part in trays inside the supermarket - the soft flesh surrounding the inedible seeds smells strong and aromatic and tastes like custard but much sweeter and stronger. A tip for shoppers is that you can find trays of durian in the chilled cabinets at the back of the shop as well as by the tills.

This is what we want!!

If I had known that, I would have looked more closely as well!

Unfortunately due to recent flight restrictions no food from Thailand could arrive so there was a lot missing. Next time! (shall I go again now?)

In other news, I eventually found a bar of raw chocolate. It is made by the Conscious Chocolate Company and is good, and expensive. If you buy more than 30 bars you get a discount...

It's raw which apparently means it's good for you, unlike the cooked kind. As it is very rich it seems that it goes a long way which probably makes up for the price.

I definitely recommend it, though will not be having it every day I think.

I don't know why raw food exponents are always (mainly?) going on about chocolate. Maybe they are still thinking in the way of the cooked diet. Or maybe it really is extra good for you?

Anyway, with a reasonably-priced watermelon as well, we have several of the ingredients for some raw fun!

It's not "raw" though, it's just not cooked. It's like saying "organic" - it's not anything strange, it's just food grown in a natural way (different from the other food). Organic means growing, you see.

Well that's all for today. We still have durian to look forward to!

Bed Harp

2010-02-13T12:37:00.000Z

Apparently the song is called "Waiting for the Sunrise"!

An Increase

2010-02-03T10:02:00.002Z

My left hand is suddenly bigger than my right! It now stretches an 11th (C to F)...this wasn't true the last time I checked! It's true, though, that I've been working mainly on left hand for the last six or seven months. I must think about what I have done exactly.

Hitting the Target

2010-01-18T01:00:00.003Z

This is an interesting film in which Tim Ferriss attempts to learn the Japanese hands-free, horse-riding, turnip-headed-arrow-firing discipline called Yabusame (流鏑馬). The only catch is that he wants to do it in five days.

The reason I have posted it is that I have found there are a lot of similarities between disciplines like this and the way I think about piano playing. Particularly comparing it to the archers' art of kyūdō (弓道 to you), although I do not know much about it I always thought that in both cases someone is trying to hit a target. So much is happening when you are aiming to hit the target that the only thing that matters is what you do to hit it. It doesn't matter what is happening around you, all you have to do is what you have always practised to do. It is simple - but it is not simple if you make it complicated.

Every time the audience is rustling or you know you are going to make a mistake, you are in the same position. You have practised, now do. Each attempt is the same. Same target, same arrow, no matter what the circumstances. Everything is calm inside and you already know the result.

Don't you think it's the same for any target you're aiming to reach?

I think that's why they say it's not important about hitting the target itself. It's inside, the battle. If you have not conquered the negative part that used to be within you, you have already missed. Then when there is no negative left, when there is only you (or us), you are free.

Aim strong my warriors!!

A Few Piano Practice Tips

2010-01-16T21:33:00.001Z

Having been asked for some tips, I thought it would be worth publicising them a bit. I have more!

1. There is only one most difficult part in a piece. In that one part, not everything is difficult. Not every note, not every chord. So you find the bit that is the most difficult, then understand why it is hard, and fix it. You have to understand what is hard before you can solve the problem. Then don't stop until you have fixed it = until you can play it ten times in a row with no mistakes!

2. Do you believe you can do it? ~Oh I will try my best but I am not really talented~~ OR say *I can do it*. Tough advice is: If you can't do it, don't do it! AND If you don't believe you can, then you probably won't (except by accident). BUT if you believe you can then it is possible and if you believe it perfectly then it becomes reality.

3. I think Heinrich Neuhaus wrote in his book that Richter was playing in a lesson and one difficult bit sounded really good, and the reason was he'd practised that bit for three hours! So that's what I meant, that people only can't play things because they stop learning it before it is good enough. It's not that they can't do it, but they just stop before they have finished!

(Which one is more scary, that you aren't good enough to succeed, or that you really could succeed but it's your choice??!)

OK!!!!!

Also practice tips are: if it is fast, learn it a bit faster. If you can do something more difficult, then you can do the thing at its normal difficulty level. And ten times in a row without mistakes - that's a good test!

Also if you repeat the notes - not dah, dah, but dadah, dadah, or dadadadah, dadadadah (I hope you can understand that!) then it gets better and you get more relaxed and the tone is better. Do it for every note in a chord and every voice in the counterpoint then it will all be better!

WELL. Those were some tips anyway!

Genius (Part II)

2010-01-14T22:14:00.003Z

Genius is when someone does something amazing that you could never ever do in your life. Because their genius is theirs, and yours is yours. Each can only be like itself. When we put them all together we will have found all the missing pieces of the jigsaw again. But your piece can only ever be completed by you - that is why you are you. That is why we need you. That is why you have your own genius to guide you.

It's fruitless to try to reproduce someone else's achievement. It was theirs - any copy would be imperfect. It's pointless to covet someone else's ability - just an excuse for delaying our own development.

But it is fruitful to emulate genius. When you do not know where to look or where to begin, you could always begin by examining the path of someone who arrived to a useful place. Don't you think? I like to read stories from great people. I heard what Paderewski said. I heard what Michael Jackson said. I heard what Marcus Garvey said. All imperfect examples and none of them the same as me, but somehow knowing about them helps me to arrive. Don't you think it's good to know there is somewhere to arrive to?

Let's forget about TV talents and news stories. Real ability is not newsworthy. "I Fought Cancer Battle to Play Harmonica". "Dog With 3 Legs Plays Football for Blackburn Rovers". That's the news. "Man of 60 Realises Goal of Life Without Noticeable Fuss"? You're not going to hear about that one, folks.

Genius can be a painful condition that tears at the raiment of life because the two are always in contradiction. It can be painful and confusing for precocious genius that seems not to know the ways of the world but knows the paths of the stars. But it is never painful itself. It's nice. And if it has been hard getting there, or if it is difficult now you are there, you're not likely to talk about it. Who would know what you mean anyway.

So that kind of story's not getting in the news either.

But we are not concerned with the news. We are concerned with the truth. If all we have done is what we truly were able to, what we truly saw and heard, what we truly believed in and what we always truly were, then: we will have done a good thing. And that thing was not yet genius, but it might become like it...

We will see some further steps you need to take next time.

A frog grew up. A silkworm took to the skies. A rose grew where only darkness once was. Good night my budding geniuses! Sleep well, don't forget your fertiliser!

Unhelpful Christmas Suggestions

2009-12-17T23:17:00.003Z

Not sure what to get for Christmas? Here are some unhelpful suggestions:

You could get:

a Pocket knife

or

a camera lens.

How about some

Christmas snacks?

Maybe a quiet

place to work on your DIY projects?

Or just settle for

something to drink.

Values, Goals, and Direction

2009-12-13T16:37:00.006Z

Think of it like this.

There is a sea. By the sea, there is a beach. By the beach, there is flat land. Next to that, the land starts to rise. Next to that, the land becomes hilly. Then the hills grow higher, until finally there are mountains and sky.

The sea is the starting point. There are fish in there, but they can only see their own world. A flying fish or a dolphin can jump out and briefly see outside its world, but it must return there. They don't belong outside it. Then, on the shore, you find animals that live on land, but spend some of their life in the sea. They can compare and contrast as they like. Then you have the real land animals (and people), who must live on the land, but who can always pop into the sea for a bit any time they need to.

Finally we are on the land. It is flat and regular. You can do what you want, as long as nothing interferes with your plan. If something does come to interrupt you, it will be unexpected because you can't see very far from the flat land. But on the other hand, while you can't protect yourself against big surprises, life on the whole is predictable down there.

Let's look up into the hills next. It is harder to walk there, but you get good exercise. You can see further afield too. If you are looking for something, it is easier to find it this way. Also surprises are known some time in advance of their arrival. Where the hills are high, there are more challenges, but more benefits too. Finally, there are mountains, the most difficult to climb but accessible to anyone who keeps improving from their first steps by the seashore. From the mountain you can see the sky and all the land all around. Weather is coming, maybe even some days away, but you know in advance. And at night you can see the stars.

The horizon is the limit of visibility from where you are now. Apart from special effects, caused by rising hot air and other unusual phenomena, that sometimes allow you to see beyond the horizon a little way, you cannot see further than this limit.

But if you cannot see further than that, how do you know there is anything beyond it? You don't, unless you once moved and now remember something you saw when you were elsewhere. Or a traveller comes by and tells you about something beyond your horizon. You might or might not believe it. It might not even be true, possibly. Nevertheless, there are ways of getting the information that there might be more out there. And of course on a clear day you can see the hills and maybe even the mountains. But would you ever think of going there?

Everything is here, inside your horizon. Everything you wished for and everything you need, either to stay here safely, or to expand the horizon. Yes, there is always something more to learn - something you didn't know ever before in your life! - or destinations to dream about, enjoy hearing about, or start planning to travel to.

Nowadays, travel is a luxury word. But it means to move more or less far away, so there might be any reason for that, not just for a holiday. Indeed, for some people at some times travel might have only happened for very important reasons - or even never at all. And then again, I can imagine a very free world where travel is always possible to anywhere, for any positive reason.

Of course, we are not just talking about physical travel. We are not only talking about a physical horizon. To travel beyond the horizon also means to learn something beyond what you know now. To move in a direction means to become something new.

But why change, why move, why alter the horizon, why learn anything new? Because you always are. Every day something new is coming past your window, in front of your eyes, like a wind bringing news of far away. Is anyone in exactly the same position they were at the beginning of their life? I think most people have had some change. There may be many reasons for that change, but no matter what they were, what caused the change was that you decided to change. You may say you had no choice, or that it was someone else's idea, but you went there, you did it.

Change is always here though people may pretend they don't see it. Choice happens every day though people may pretend they didn't choose.

Every direction leads somewhere, every belief creates a world you choose. Everyone has their own horizon.

Some beliefs restrict (maintain the horizon, or narrow it), some set you free (let you expand the horizon as much or as little as you like). Interestingly, you can change your beliefs if you want to. You are free to stay the same or whatever you want. There are no rules about it. The only reason to change something is if you aren't completely happy with it. Then accept that somehow you chose to be in that situation - even if you say you did not - then choose to be in another situation. That's all.

So what defines your horizon today? What values do you hold that make your world the way it is? Think of some examples. "Always try your best". "Be grateful for what you've got". "The sky's the limit!". "Do your duty". "Think of others before yourself". "You'll never amount to anything". "You can be anything you want". All different beliefs. Maybe they mean nothing to you, maybe something. Somewhere in the world, you will find a person who holds one of these. If you do not hold it yourself, then you can see how that person has decided what his life will be like, directed by various things that happened to them that lead them to make that decision. But to that person, it is real and any other possibility might be ridiculous. Or it might not, possibly.

There is an interesting tool for identifying the values that motivate you. You can try it out, it could be interesting. Here are some tips for using it. Try very hard to keep the number of your selected values below 20 - it will save a lot of trouble later in the test. Pick words that really "speak to you", things you think are important or that jump off the page (screen) at you. It says pick the values that resonate most strongly with you, which isn't a kind of English that I understand very well, but I think that's what it means. Anyway you can try it out.

Your values determine what happens to you now. They set the limit of your horizon. They are your beliefs that create the world you live in, including all the things you like and all the things you don't like. Some people have unhappy lives, and they might want to change to a better one - this is aimed at them. Some people have happy lives and don't need to change much - they are still free to change anything they want, or if they meet someone who needs help then this knowledge might be useful. This is aimed at them too. Or even there are people who are going along just fine, thank you, who don't need to change anything. Well, they don't have to. It's not required! This is purely intended to make things easier for everybody. Yes, all of us!

Look at your values list. Does it suit you? Are you happy with it? Can you see how it got you where you are? What would you like to improve next? I think you have improved already, haven't you? Do you remember when that thing happened that you didn't like? You survived it, didn't you. Isn't that because you learned something? Well, you are welcome to keep going, because...there might be something nice you can do - just around the next corner!

Meanwhile, be nice to people and accept they may be different to you - depending on their own values.

Horizon, what do you want to show me today?

Schumann Piano Quartet - Glenn Gould

2009-12-03T00:19:00.003Z

Today there is a non-existent post to read about.

I wanted to show you the third movement of Schumann's Piano Quartet Op. 47, played by Glenn Gould with Robert Mann (Violin), Raphael Hillyer (Viola), and Claus Adam (Cello). Unfortunately it is not available! So you must look for it - it's on Spotify if you have that or something similar.

There are inferior versions available on YouTube but we should only listen to good things from now on.

I hope you can find it!

If so, here are the words for it:

***

Like something that's gone but that really happened.

Like Schumann's genius that was eclipsed by his disease, but which could never completely be lost.

Like lots of things you can imagine, that seem to be no longer here, but that are always here, any time you look, and all the time even when you aren't looking.

All the good things you ever did are following you around.

Let's do more soon.

Oh, why not now?

***

A bit strange if you can't hear it, but it's worth finding!

Genius (Part I)

2009-11-30T00:32:00.001Z

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

(Schopenhauer)

Look in from out

2009-11-05T21:16:00.002Z

I wonder, if I were studying English, what things would I like about it?

I'm liking Japanese things at the moment because I am learning about it all through the language. I'm sure that whatever language I study, I will like. Or anyway, certainly I wouldn't pick a language I don't like. Unless of course, I didn't like it so much that I wanted to learn to like it. Did you think of doing that?

English things are things I know a lot about. I've been seeing them for many years. OK, not so many, but some years! I wonder how I would know them if I were looking in from outside?

First I could have a vague idea of England. I might know about "the English gentleman" and red buses. I might know about the Lake District. I might think all Scottish people wear kilts. Maybe English people too?

I think it will help me to appreciate all these things that are always around but never noticed.

What would you see if you met yourself? What would you notice if you came to your house for the first time?

What would you like about yourself if you were someone who admires you from a distance?

It's hard to know, isn't it. It's useful though, in case we have made any mistakes. The mirror tells you if you have a dirty mark on your face, a tape recorder tells you if you have played a mistake in your music, and maybe there is also some way of discovering things about yourself...

Maybe you don't want to know about it?

I think it depends if there's something you want to improve or not. If not, then just do your best. If you want to change anything, then learn to see from the outside.

I'm not perfect you see! Not yet...that's why I have to learn things.

You know, everybody is doing fine. They don't have to change at all! The only reason is if they wish for some little thing to be different. Then soon, it is better.

That's all!

I insist on...

2009-10-12T00:03:00.003Z

You say in your letter of 28th June that the fees are not so high as they have been before the war. I think that this does not concern foreigner artists and I insist on getting the highest fees.

With Kindest Regards,

Yours Truly,

Sergei Rachmaninoff

(Letter to agent, 1918)

Always Keep Going

2009-10-10T13:39:00.002Z

Always Keep Going! It's my translation of "Never Give Up". Never Give Up includes the phrase "Give Up" so I don't want to sow that seed in your mind, you see.

If you want to achieve a target, Do It Every Day. Just do something towards the target every day. You can do something more often than that if you want, even then it still counts as Something Every Day.

Never mind how on earth you will get to where you want - it may be impossibly far away - but you are not aiming to be there tomorrow. If you can do it in one day then you don't need any help from me!

Today your job is to get to tomorrow, and to improve by one day's worth of improvement.

Do it every day, fix what is here now, and you will arrive one day.

If it takes 300 days then next year you will look and realise you arrived. If 900 days then in three years you will suddenly be there. Nobody remembers the time it took - you may recall it if it made an impression on you - because we don't live in the past. Similarly we don't live in the future. Actually not really in the present either, because where or when is that? The present is...now no it's gone! Never mind about time and what it is. Life must be a process of living. You are alive now, in the now, and that's the time to act. Do it now. If you know something useful will happen in three hours then you can save it until then. That's called planning. But for general work, the time is now. Why wait?

There are many important points about this, but the main one is Always Keep Going. If you miss a day, then the victory will be another day away. But if you never missed a day then you will have arrived in the minimum time. That means the fastest possible in the whole world.

It is so simple. But the results are amazing!

Be patient. If you can be, then one day you will be one of only a few left in the race. The others who didn't give up.

See you there I hope!

News-free Trial

2009-10-09T16:28:00.003Z

I've just completed a two week news-free trial period. That means I didn't read or otherwise learn about any news stories during that time.

The only things I missed that I consider worth knowing about were an earthquake and a typhoon. The rest was not important, as far as I can see (I may have missed someting vital though!) and would mostly have been depressing anyway. After all, nobody's going to report about positive things - they aren't considered serious enough.

What is the point of the news anyway? To keep you informed of the news? Or to keep you worried about things you can't change?

The news that applies to you is the news worth knowing - if this does include any international events then fine, you should know about them.

The news that applies to you is the news that you can change. Maybe you can't stop a war but you can stop all the people you meet from having a war. It might not change the whole world but it changes the part of the world that you touch.

If some people tried this then something might improve. It only needs some, not all - that's the good thing about it. If all are willing to help then that's the way to go, but as each person touches a lot of lives, there is an area of influence that can be quite effective (depending on the interference to the signal).

So that's what I recommend. Do what you can. If you want to do more, learn how. Keep your eye on real events. Live now.

It's worth knowing about international events, but we can only read stories about them, and that is not always the same as knowing about the thing itself. News sources are not there to tell us news, they are there to take our money and keep us entertained so they can continue to take our money. Is that the sort of information you can trust?

There is a limited commitment in certain parts of the media to distributing the truth - that's the only part worth following in my opinion. But I found over the last two weeks that there's no real need to check the news 30 times per day. It feels important or useful but it's not really contributing anything to your effectiveness. If you are one of these people then I would say just check occasionally and concentrate on making news yourself. Good news, by the way!

Think about what would be an important story to you. Bank robbed in Ontario? Mars shows traces of water? Elusive gecko variety photographed? Your daughter gets another tooth? The tax people have made a mistake and you are getting some money back?

Just think about it.

If you care about what's happening to other people and the world, you have to make this information contribute to your effectiveness. It has to be information, not just a noise of facts.

Be safe, peoples!!

Future Perfect

2009-10-08T22:37:00.001Z

I'm planning what to do with this website next. As you can see, there is a variety of material here now, some of it old and in need of work, all of it in need of unification and a good trim.

Everything is going according to plan; I have had a lot to work on but it is succeeding. I haven't mentioned anything about it before, because who wants to know about what might happen? Few people would be interested and even fewer would believe it. It seemed to me to be better just to get on with it and tell you later. This may explain a certain lack of information that the more discerning of you may have noticed around the place.

Today I went out for my walk but was tricked by the sun which now disappears much earlier than formerly (and only very recently), so it was a lot darker a lot sooner! I didn't get lost but I certainly had to walk further than I was expecting...

So the sun is getting further away...some may doubt that it shall return, most accept it as obvious. What would our ancestors have thought? And our descendants?

Anyway, the point about this time of year is that the light does appear to disappear, and during that time there is no particular guarantee that it will be back. It gets cold and dark and all the goodness of the earth hides itself away in dark places. But if everything goes according to plan, guided by the Cosmic Gardeners' responsible hands, the light will soon return and shine on new things peeping out of the earth.

It's the same with many things in life. My work is just one case of that.

Everything is always beginning and being made again, but from time to time we can step back and notice that - something really did happen! The year turns interminably but at each resting point we have the chance to take stock of what we have achieved - what harvest we have brought in. If you don't like the harvest, it's time to plan for the next one. What will you change?

We can't escape change, but one thing we can do is direct it. And that is exactly what I am attempting to do. I hope you will be interested to see the results!

Love from Philip

Kanji Amazingness

2009-10-03T20:21:00.005Z

As you may know, I am mainly learning Japanese at the moment. I have other irons in the fire too but I'm principally concentrating on this one for now.

OK so why am I doing that? Well every language has its strong points and in the case of Japanese there are plenty of art forms that I'd like to know better, which will be helped by knowing the language. Also plus I know so many Japanese people by now that it's embarrassing that they have to speak in English just for me. Well, I like Hiroshige and I like Bashō so I will be able to appreciate them better with more Japanese skills (one because obviously he wrote in Japanese, and the other because although they are images, I'm sure there are things to read about them that don't exist in English). Who knows, after I know more about them, I might not like them any more! Perhaps I have an English idea about them now...

So I am doing Japanese and as with everything, I am taking the most difficult thing first. In this case, it is the writing system. For some reason, everybody thinks it's really difficult - and it is, if you learn it in a difficult way. But obviously it is supposed to make sense, so there must be a sensible way of learning it. In fact there is. For the Chinese characters they use (called Kanji, or "Chinese characters", which is a good choice of name), they either come simply or are more complex and contain several elements. In all cases, you can give a name to the different parts and make up a story about them that makes you remember them instantly. For example, "sushi" has "fish" on the left, and "delicious" on the right.

鮨

I wonder if you can see that. If not, here is another one. "Fish" and "delicious" are of course English, and nobody Japanese calls them that - we have just chosen one meaning to remember them by. (Each one is made up of other smaller parts too which we have to remember first, e.g. "delicious" has got "spoon" on the top and "day" on the bottom - it's **so delicious you can eat it with your spoon all day**).

That character is a good example because I have only seen it once - I have never written it down or practised it but I still remember it because sushi is delicious fish. It's not because I have a photographic memory, it's just because I have a memory, the same as everybody else in the whole world.

The normal method of learning Kanji is essentially to copy them out again and again until you remember them. In fact Japanese children take 12 years to learn all the characters they officially need for reading a newspaper these days. However in this way of learning, you only have to write it once - or even never!

Now each character has several ways of being pronounced, but if you learn all this information at one time then it is harder to remember because you are of course struggling to remember the character and the pronunciations. If the character is already familiar then you've got a "hook" to hang your pronunciations on. So that's why this method - the method used in James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" - concentrates purely on the one-word meaning of each character first of all. There may well be other meanings, but just one is required to get it in your brain for ever.

Anyway, I have been getting on with this and it really works. It's like magic. And this week I read my first sentence for which I knew all the characters. I can't pronounce it or understand it of course, but I think it's an important step! You can work out what things probably mean. E.g. "telephone" has two characters, electricity and talk. So that makes sense even if you don't know it is pronounced "denwa".

So this is a method which is slow at first - I can hardly say anything at all, yet I'm supposed to be "learning Japanese" - but really quite soon it should start going a lot faster. I'm astounded so far!

It's the same with learning anything properly. Everything is ruined in the beginning and you can't do any of it at all, but one day (if you do it every day) - you have mastery!

But without starting at the beginning, it is all a bit of a muddle - though it works, after a fashion, more or less.

You don't have to learn things in this long way at all, but it's so good to be in control of what you want to do. There's nothing quite like it!

OK bye for now!

Truth or Lies

2009-09-22T12:44:00.003Z

I'm absolutely amazed that there are lies in this world!

Yes, it amazes me.

I just would never think of tricking somebody. It never enters my head! Obviously I am too simple.

How do you see it? I think that actually most people are pretty truthful. However it is quite shocking that fakery goes on. I think the reason for that is that the person thinks it is easier than doing something for real. OK, at stage one, they are correct in that belief - yes, they don't have to really do anything, just pretend, then take the money. OK so far. But how about at stage two? A whole lifetime of lying and tricking, when they could have been using their real skills instead? Surely it's harder work to sustain that.

OK maybe I am not very clever because stage one certainly sounds like a good deal...haha

The few (well, more than a few) people who spend their lives defrauding and faking for material gain must be in serious trouble spiritually. They are so lazy that they can't be bothered to lift one of their own fingers to do anything, but instead must give the impression of using fingers they do not really have, in order to administer help that doesn't really help. Now you can certainly say they are using skills in order to do that, but is tricking a skill we should really use?

It's all down to how you feel inside. It's possible to know if you are doing the right thing or not. "Science" and "Logic" may tell us that there is no one right way to behave, they may say it is all down to social codes or the mood of the age, they may finally posit that the need for happiness is important to us, but maybe it is not up to this Science to tell us how to behave. Science means "knowing", but I am asking you to do some "feeling".

All you can do is continue your life but with the application of some discernment. You can check to see how everything feels. Or did you think it does not matter how you feel? You just have to put up with things? Do what people tell you? Well, sometimes it's wise to do so. But when you generally ignore your own feeling, you are not an independent entity. You are a cog. In another wheel.

So listen to see if you feel good or bad. That's all it is. There are many levels of good and bad, including sometimes when one feels like the other. If you are not used to knowing how you feel, it is harder to know which is which. But if you start to think, you may perhaps continue!

The point of it is to discover where you can be applying yourself better. When you have a talent and you can use it, it feels good. If it is frustrated, it feels bad. The good feeling comes from your own genius being allowed to breathe in and out.

This feeling is the best feeling - you have contacted your real self. I think it is worth cultivating this feeling.

It is not possible to feel completely bad, to completely ignore your true self. You can think you are, but even that thought is coming from a true place - it is self-aware, not mindless. But I think it is possible to be more true.

This is what I mean about fakers - do you think they are feeling good or bad? Maybe they felt bad a long time ago and need to amass material wealth to protect themselves. It may all be rationally explicable, however much harm it is doing. Nevertheless it could be better for them, and for us of course.

I think that using your real skills is preferable to non-use of them. It must be. The problems are - not knowing you have them, not trusting that they are real, having been taught not to use them (makes life easier for people who want to dominate you), being scared. The alternatives are - being safe in a very limited way that isn't really safe, having an easy life that isn't really easy because you feel stress all the time, having a stable life with no massive excitements in it. None of these alternatives is particularly enticing.

Talents and skills may be all kinds of things. The definition of a talent is: something that gives a benefit to somebody. Yes, they are to be used, to help other people. Even more stupid! Shouldn't we just help ourselves? Well you can, but it's more lonely. And you may find that the nicer you are to the world, the nicer it is to you. See what happens the next time you kick somebody!

There's really loads of things you can do. And you don't have to do anything major, anything you do is part of learning about your skills. I'm sure you are using them right now, all today, all this week. But I just wanted to say - yes you do have a talent. You are using it all the time no matter how fulfilled you are feeling. And you may continue using it until it flowers.

You know there are key moments in the life of a flower when the scent is at its height and best for harvesting by perfume makers. Could people be like that? Maybe there is something you are working towards. And every minute is adding to the experience that will make that fabulous scent when you are ready. There are no skunks or rubbish tip smells. They only come when you try to stop the flowers blooming. No, it is all roses and violets for you from now on.

Keep working hard! Everyone will benefit, and you too.

When there's a twinge...

2009-09-03T17:34:00.002Z

Finger and hand muscles are basically very small so you have to be very careful with them. Using them is not the same as using your legs, for example. Or you could think that it is the same, but on a different scale. Running a mile might be enough for one day, but for your fingers running a mile might be a lot less than a mile simce they are rather small compared to leg muscles.

Today I felt a small pain in my right hand so I know I have to stop until it is not there any more. But it is frustrating because I want to play 20 hours! And it feels like if you stop practising then you will not improve. BUT. If you continue injuring yourself then you will get worse, not improve. That's why I'm always angry with people who say they are injured but they still have to practise. Then we know why they are injured. You have to look after yourself better than that.

Well this is an extremely temporary problem, fortunately, because I do stop when I receive the signal to stop. It's called pain and it says Hey, you are doing something wrong here, please rest now. But many of us feel the pain but do not listen to it.

Where are you feeling a pain, and what is it telling you?

Occasionally you have to keep going through pain, and sometimes it is not a true pain, just something new. But mostly we need to listen to this voice.

Your Important Advice

2009-08-29T22:30:00.002Z

Look - you can say this too:

"I can do anything, and whatever I can't do, I can learn".

Don't you think it is true?

Presence

2009-08-13T08:32:00.002Z

The past is gone, the future is yet to come, and all around us is the present. So they say. But who can say that they see what is here and now and live truly in this moment?

We don't have any other moment to live in...only this moment. Not that moment then; it's gone. This one...now!

As soon as I said it it had gone. So in a way you have to be living very slightly in the future: just enough that the moment doesn't slip past without you.

But what are you seeing?

Always something else - I wish things were different, if only this were bigger/smaller/thinner/fatter/yellower/faster/slower/hotter/colder, maybe this time next year I'll be..., at school they said I was the best/worst/good/bad/would go far/would never amount to much, I wonder what...

You have the capacity to think of far off things, places, and people. And also the ability to see the present. Can you see it?

Are you looking for something different? This is what you've got now. It's yours, for you, by you, for you to live in. You can change it if you don't like it, but don't miss it because that's your life at this moment.

You could spend your whole life wishing to be just a few centimetres less tall, but at the end of it...what did you live?

It's HERE and NOW. The present. Like a Christmas present. It's the present, a present, for you, to make something with.

All About Health

2009-08-11T19:16:00.005Z

I was giving my unwanted advice to a young mother (congratulations! - on the birth, not the advice!)

Then I decided that I would impose my views on the whole world!

They seem useful to me. They will conflict with some things you have been taught. They conflicted with what I believed, but I tried my hardest to understand things and this is the result so far.

Names have not been used - to protect the innocent!

***

Hello!

OK these are good books:

Colin Griffith:

Practical Handbook of Homoeopathy

(good for sort of home emergencies and typical diseases and situations)

Companion to Homoeopathy

(a massive book that explains Homoeopathy. It's really worth reading)

Thomas Quackenbush

Relearning to See

(massive book about eyesight)

I think they are so useful that even if you never read them it's worth having them!

All the information took me about 5 years to get to the point of believing it - I was very used to what i had been told by my society. As it turns out, what they told me wasn't always quite right!

"Everything Explained"

Philip helpfully explains everything - here only available!

1. Homoeopathy teaches that... Symptoms are the language your body speaks to tell us what is wrong with it and how to restore its vitality. Strong symptoms that last a short time are a sign of strong vitality, weak symptoms that drag on are the sign of compromised health. Health problems are partly caused by dissonance between our actual life and our ideal life, i.e. to do with how happy we are and how this affects our resistance. However they are also caused by hereditary factors such as the impact of major disease at some time in the family's distant past. It's possible to sort most things out using this information.

2. It appears that... Blurry vision comes on as the result of some type of stress but because it happens so much eye doctors think it is somehow normal. However they are unlikely to be able to show evidence of any deterioration in e.g. the lens of the eye, and are unable to explain how eyesight can improve. There is a belief that it is caused by chronic tension in the muscles of the eye - that's all. Good vision habits such as only focusing on one tiny area at once (the eye can only focus like that, look up "fovea"), moving the head and body freely as you wish (with a tiny area to focus on you have to move your eyes to see many things clearly), not staring (which is trying to see out of the sides of the eyes and generally not moving the head), breathing naturally. It takes a while to learn but not really long. Children copy the viewing habits of the parents (of course, as they copy everything so they can learn what to do!) so it's worth everybody learning healthy vision. And the very important thing: practise with the eye chart at home - it's not cheating, it's good to get used to it because when they come to the school and test them it's not exactly a fun situation and stress can result and OH WHAT'S THIS - they are children and can't read very well yet so how do they expect them to be able to tell what the letters are??? Oh dear this tiny child can't read it perfectly, he has bad eyesight.

Why do we see those tiny children with thick, thick glasses, tied on to their heads so they won't get damaged while the child is trying to have fun (while it still can)? Anything to do with the above?

As William Bates said (the sort of progenitor of this thinking - called the 'Bates Method' quite often), the sight of such little children is "enough to make the angels weep".

Hey, yeah, what about ADHD? Can it be that they are all ADHD or are some of them just naturally active and us sickos think there is something wrong with them because they can't watch six back-to-back episodes of The Dragons' Den without trying to move occasionally? Never mind, give them some drugs, that will stop their activity. OH IT WORKS, we must have been right!

You know the Special Olympics? The publicity says they were created in commemoration of the sister of JFK, Rosemary Kennedy, "who had an intellectual disability" but the extremely sad truth, not featured in the marketing, is that her disability was caused by a lobotomy performed at the age of 23, designed to correct her increasingly willful and independent behaviour. Thanks Dad.

We all know that mercury treatment of patients hundreds of years ago caused their early demise. But it was medicine then. Liszt was on his deathbed and the attending physician decided to inject camphor directly into his heart, which certainly ensured it was indeed his deathbed.

I can go on like this probably for ever.

As Samuel Hahnemann said, many vicious therapies were developed in the hope of terminating the offending symptoms, and they as surely succeeded in that as they also succeeded in terminating all signs of life.

Well...there are a lot of things going on in the health world, not all of them good. If medicine was wrong in the past, who is to say it is completely right now? But if it's written down, we believe it.

My advice is believe yourself. You know if you're well or if your child is well. Are we moving toward vitality and happiness, or away from it? Then you know the direction our health is moving in too.

Terminal illness won't set in for many years, if it ever does, but let's avoid it eh? And let's try to get a few more years of fun in. Does it sound like a good idea? OK all you have to do now is believe it...

Small Explanation

2009-07-27T18:05:00.002Z

Oh dear, usually people don't write because there's nothing to say, but I have been absent from here becauses there's TOO MUCH to say! I don't know where to start!

Heat Wave Claims

2009-06-30T21:00:00.002Z

Supposedly London is in the grip of some kind of super-extreme heatwave! That normally means temperatures have skyrocketed up to the mid twenties - for English people that is far above normal. In this case the thermometers must have all exploded because we have reached the two-digit part of the scale beginning with "3" - that's 30°C!

According to news sources and people in general, it is too hot!

But according to me, it is a little on the cool side!

Yes, I only begin to enjoy myself at 30°. It's a fact. And as we are only just touching that, I would like a little bit more.

Of course I realise that it is too hot for some people and that some of those may find it difficult to get through - or even survive (in some cases). The people here are not used to it and do not know about hydration anyway. They think a cup of tea with milk in it is hydrating! Well, I don't even know what it's like to drink a cup of tea, because I have never had one. Never ever!

Now you are starting to ask if I am really English. I don't wear a bowler hat, either! I have played cricket though. A bit. It's good as long as everyone keeps quiet, not like this modern style which is a bit like baseball. The more colourful clothes and lively music are supposed to make it more popular, and I'm sure they have, however I appear to think it is still 1952 0r 1882 or something. Yes, the lemonade has been poured and the sun's on the croquet lawn. One of the servants has been made destitute as a consequence of not bowing low enough, England are 445 for 3 against the West Indies and we have just added another six countries to our portfolio of interests, or Commonwealth as we call it. That troublemaker Gandhi is nowhere to be seen and no Kaisers or Führers have yet dared to disturb Britannia's calm seas (and iron grip over them).

As you will no doubt realise, I'm not entirely in favour of our colonial habits (many of which we have lost now) though it seems I do like the idea of that England in some choice aspects. Tough luck for me that if I were alive then, I'd probably be down a mine somewhere rather than shimmying across the lawn!

Anyway, it is England in some way or another, and it is hot, and I am beginning to thrive, as I always will at this temp!

Hurrah! Jolly good show, eh what?

The Magic of Words

2009-06-16T20:44:00.005Z

Words have a magic all of their own.

They can tell the truth. But you must test for yourself if it is true, because words can also twist your mind to embrace a lie.

Without words, many things would be different. Would a rose smell as sweet if it had no name? Or even sweeter perhaps?

Today I want to mention the magic of the written word. That is something important to take notice of.

There is one particular thing that written words can do that we sometimes find difficult.

Written words can remember things.

When you write a to-do list, or your list of goals, you are using the magical power of written words to change your reality.

Because the words are helping you remember and helping you direct your energies in a certain way.

They're not just words.

To-Do Lists and Goals Lists are important for this reason.

When you need to remember a goal that you want to achieve ten years from now...you can check the list every day and it will remind you even though you could forget without help. The world gets very busy and things try to deflect you from your preferred course. This is when your list could help.

If you need to remember who you were ten years ago, you can look in your diary. People change - sometimes deliberately - and if you have made any improvement, it is often difficult to see that. So it's good to have something to compare it to, a bit like the height marks on the frame of your kitchen door. When you were six, you were this tall. Now look how much you have grown!

But if you are planning to grow a certain number of inches, or the spiritual equivalent, then you need a similar kind of aid to plan your course. Memory is, of course, the thing that will do this for you. But when you are beginning, as I said, it is sometimes rather hard to remember in the face of a lot of confusion. So that's when making lists comes in useful.

Things you need to do. Things you want to do. Things you have to do. Things you wish you could do? Things you need to learn how to do. Things you have never done. Places to go, people to see, things to do. Things to say. Things to sing. Music to play. Games to play. Games to win. Battles to fight. Enemies to befriend. Friends to take care of. Flowers to grow. Children to meet. Your success is here. Plan it now, by saying one thing: I will do a little more each day, and I will do it a little better each day.

You can make a list if you want!

Strike Struck

2009-06-10T18:36:00.003Z

Today (and tomorrow actually) there is a Tube strike! (That means the workers of London's underground railway service are refusing to work, translated for people who don't know what tube and strike are)

It means you have to walk to your work, or sit (actually probably stand) on your bus for 2-3 hours!

So what was different about today? All the little people crawled out of their holes, yawned several times, and squinted their eyes and said What is that in my eyes? and the answer was It is the sunlight, welcome to the world!

They couldn't sit on the train scowling with their iPod banging away in their ears - they were RELEASED!

It was exciting and quite sweet because everyone had a map - they don't know where anything is in real life! Let's see, I"m standing on some kind of "road", it seems to be, and I need to get to a sort of er "street" I think it is called, but the Tube is not working. What do I do? Can you see a taxi...?

It was just like in the Simpsons when the cartoon Itchy and Scratchy is cancelled and all the children go outside to play, to the sound of Beethoven's 'Pastoral' Symphony.

Welcome!

You were annoyed about the strike perhaps, but I was happy to see you!

For the first time!

European Elections Problem

2009-06-04T08:52:00.003Z

There is a little problem. In Europe there are some elections. In the UK you can vote today. But there is some worry about voter turnout. Last time about 45% of people voted. That is taken to mean that 55% of UK people don't care about Europe.

Now the problem I have is: I haven't received any information about these elections. I don't know where to go or what to do. I don't even know what is being elected. I only know about it because a Spanish friend told me.

Is this anything to do with the low turnout that's expected?

What am I going to do? If you have the chance to vote you should use it - whether you believe in the process or not, you are at least increasing the chance that you will be happy with the result.

How many hours shall I spend on trying to locate this election?

**UPDATE** (the next day...)
I couldn't vote! It's really a shame. I was also working yesterday so I couldn't devote the whole day to this problem, but I tried the internet, I took my voter registration card out with me just in case, but there was no sign of any place to vote. So I didn't vote! It's rather a shame. One person doesn't make a difference on his own, but you still have to exercise your ability to vote. Now I wonder what it was that obstructed me this time?

"Modern Music"

2009-05-30T09:49:00.005Z

Yesterday I attended a lecture-recital on the piano music of Haydn given by Andras Schiff at the Wigmore Hall. He played quite a lot of the music (an early Capriccio in C major, F minor Fantasie, the last Sonata (E flat major)) and talked us through the harmonic movement, pointing out what harmonies were a surprise and in what way. It was very gentle and quite amusing for a typical Wigmore audience which is of course very music-loving and intelligent as well as, it has to be admitted, rather conservative.

I was disappointed by one of his comments, which was directed against "modern music". He was expounding the virtues of the wonderful way Haydn returns to the home key after all his excursions and surprise moves in the wrong direction, and said that's the thing that bothers him about contemporary music - that it never arrives home after it has begun. It wasn't a terrible comment, but I wasn't too impressed by it, and certainly not by the way he knew he could say that to this audience and be sure they would go along with him, and even find it amusing.

Do you think one day we will be able to have music in concert halls?

Yes, just music - sounds that mean things. Not "our music not yours" or "of course this music is some of the greatest ever composed (because it has existed for hundreds of years and hasn't hurt anybody since then)".

It's an interesting point that the very conservative repertoire often is some of the greatest music ever composed (it seems to me) but there are certainly plenty of gaps where other great music has been omitted, and where living composers do not have any comfortable place. Or at least the ones with the comfortable place are just lying around in comfort, not writing anything of any note.

England is unusual because it has a very conservative part which, while it inhibits change, succeeds in preserving (conserving) some things that, if we didn't have them, we would be much the poorer for that. So even though I don't like these remarks about "Listen to all the wrong notes! How silly it sounds" and so on, I don't actually mind too much. But one day they will appreciate that you can see in all directions out of the windows of your house, not only the directions you already know about.

There is great music now, and has been since the last officially great music was written (when was that, 1910 or 20? And even a lot of that is sometimes considered a bit modern, such as Ravel). I don't mind at all that we are taking it slow with the new repertoire choices. We could have a fast-moving all-changing society and it might not be long before we lose the good parts.

Yes, at the Wigmore hall you, like Volvic mineral water, must be filtered through volcanic sand for 15 years until you reach the required level of purity. Except it's more than 15 years.

But if we can stand the test of time, then we can wait a few years for the music-lovers.

Don't be scared, audience! It's just that we have some more things you can love.

Today in the news (my news)

2009-05-26T17:56:00.003Z

When you get the chance to speak to somebody I think you should, rather than avoiding it. It's easy to avoid, for any number of reasons, all of which make sense if you say them, yet the one that doesn't make sense is not talking to people. Because we are all in here together, and how will you learn things if you don't bother sampling things that are different from you - things that you don't already know about?

I spoke to a man today. I didn't have to, since he has only met me a few times and fairly certainly didn't remember me, but I was asking how things are and he says his son has died recently and he was only 35. So I could easily have passed him by. I'm not saying it's necessarily a good idea to talk to me about your problems, maybe it will just make them worse, but still I'm glad I could try to be helpful at least once. Next time, say hello to somebody! You can, you know.

In other news, there is a new winner of the Gaudeamus Interpreters' Competition, called Małgorzata Walentynowicz. As you can see, she is Polish and congratulations to her and good luck for your next success! Here is the video about it.

You see, we aren't the kind of people who have enemies in the same line of business. I don't mind that there's more than one winner of Gaudeamus - of course there will be! Good luck to all of them, they all deserve success if they try hard. Sometimes people get jealous, even of me (which is pretty amazing) but I think that's because they feel they aren't really that good. It means they'd like the people they think are good to fail please. Well that certainly is comprehensible but it doesn't make a lot of real sense, sorry. If people are better than me, wonderful. I seriously hope they are. If I'm the summit of excellence, we're in trouble!

Last of all, Marks and Spencer is the name of a shop in UK. They are mainly known for clothes but they also have a food wing or branch. The food wing or branch sells quite nice food, all of it very expensive and very over-packaged, however it is of quite a good quality at the same time. So sometimes I give it a try. Anyway, they previously had quite a good selection of salads that were well made. But all that has suddenly changed! Now every salad, no matter what it is, no matter what are the ingredients, has potato in it. Everything has potato. Why? Is there some sort of glut? Are the fields awash with potatoes?

Well I can tell you another thing. It's not nice. The one I just ate tasted like something they found in a ditch. The recipe made no sense and I hardly ate any of the potatoes. Well, they should think on that.

Please note: I said the salads were good previously. I have nothing against potatoes or their use in cuisine. It's just a question of mad recipes or sane recipes. Take your choice, Marks and Spencer.

What we learned today is: help people if you can, let them win if they can, and don't allow any more of this potato insanity. The end!

Saint-Saëns/Godowsky: Le cygne (The Swan)

2009-05-15T09:57:00.003Z

I have to go out in a minute so here is this morning's present for you. An elegant swan!

L'elisir d'amore

2009-05-10T00:08:00.004Z

I was once again the lucky recipient of a ticket for a General Rehearsal performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The opera was L'elisir d'amore by Gaetano Donizetti (first performed 1832). Direction was by Laurent Pelly, orchestra directed by Bruno Campanella. Cast included Giuseppe Filianoti (Nemorino), Diana Damrau as a sprightly Adina, Anthony Michaels-Moore (Belcore), Simone Alaimo (Dulcamara), and Eri Nakamura in the role of Gianetta, thanks to the Jette Parker Young Artist Scheme.

Although this was an all-the-way-through performance before an audience, it was technically a rehearsal so some things might go differently when the run proper begins. They always announce "some singers may mark their roles" but I haven't really noticed any of that in the two I have attended. All I can really say along those lines is that I sometimes get the feeling there will be a very small percentage increase in smooth running between the final reh and the official performances. It's hardly noticeable, and the roles are performed as they should be, the result of a lot of study and rehearsing.

Today I would like to draw a little attention to Simone Alaimo who really characterised his part and produced a lot of believable specific moments for the character; moments like these add up to give to the audience an experience you live through rather than one you experience. Of course this is what would be called a "character" part which naturally gets a lot of the attention because there is more "character" to notice, yet for example Anthony Michaels-Moore as Sergeant Belcore was perfectly able to produce everything necessary to that role, the only difference being that, as he did his duty so well, he sought not to overshadow the action and hence there was less to notice. But you may have noticed that I noticed there was less to notice, so, yes, there was a lot going on there too. But this is not really a review of the performance, especially it being a rehearsal. (And anyway I don't like to review performances because I generally have so much to complain about and it's not really fair)

As for Donizetti, I could see a lot of ability and talent. But ultimately the music is simply musical, doing a job and making sound of the right type at the right moments, rather than fulfilling the real purpose of music, which is principally to teach us more about music and hence (perhaps) about everything. You can compare it with the Verdi I saw recently and see the difference. In fact I have almost no comments to make about the composing, mainly because there wasn't much there.

But the man wrote 75 operas in 12 years! This total includes the now not very romantic-sounding Emilia di Liverpool, which I'd be (somewhat) interested to know about.

Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti. The only one not to have gourmet items named after him is Donizetti (Tournedos Rossini, and the Bellini, a cocktail of Champagne (or Prosecco) and peach). Why is this - did he not achieve the same greatness? [actually there is an asteroid named after him: 9912 Donizetti - but I don't believe it is a gourmet asteroid]

I have yet to hear Bellini in performance, just as there are millions of other things I've never heard, mostly by choice but often because I've had a lot of other things to learn about that seemed more important for me. Oh yes, actually I've never heard a Rossini opera performed either! So can I really make a comparison? No, I cannot.

Yes, you're right, of course I can! Rossini is the best, Bellini is the classic, and Donizetti is the "sports model". Is this true? I do not know. But I will eventually find out. I would particularly like to hear how Donizetti sounds on a more serious subject. Not that that is necessarily of greater import, as his genius may have been for comedy, but I'd like to know about it all the same.

What makes comedy funny? A combination of bad things happening in life from time to time and an innate human sense that appreciates absurdity. So, following on from reason (1), it's often a little bit of seriousness in a comedy that gives you the measure of it. In L'elisir that could be anything - although if it was there it was ignored by the production I saw - but it could most obviously be the aria Una furtiva lagrima (you can hear it performed by Caruso here). But this song is not so serious as it appears to people who, like me, have previously heard it on its own and assumed it was something sad. The tear in question comes from the eye of Adina, and it tells Nemorino that actually she does like him! So that's not so bad.

I wished for a little bit more than just light entertainment from this production. One can argue that as a comedy, it must be light. But one can argue (as I am) that the business of comedy is serious, and should be taken seriously! Once you're on stage, there are no great or small roles, just the role you are playing now. The greatest one you will ever play at this moment. And that's why it demands everything you can give.

What role are you playing now? Have you given everything to the part? Have you had gourmet items named after you? Well, that's not really a test of true value. But the point is, now is the time for now. You are on the stage. Who knows the comparative value of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, but in all truth, they are all different. Donizetti did his job and so may you!

75 operas in 12 years, eh?

And the people laughed at this one, you know. He knew they would. It was his job.

I, in a very modest manner, shall walk about with bowed head; I’ll have rave reviews…I can become immortal…My mind is vast, my genius swift...And at composing, a thunderbolt am I.

He wrote that when he was 14. And we're still talking about him.

Bravo.

Donizetti

2009-05-08T21:24:00.001Z

Donizetti, when asked which of his own operas he thought the best, spontaneously replied, 'How can I say which? A father always has a preference for a crippled child, and I have so many.

I'm going to see L'Elisir d'amore tomorrow, so I'll let you know how it turned out.

Linguistic Statistic

2009-05-04T00:47:00.002Z

According to what I just read, English has a vocabulary of 500,000-1,000,000 words, whereas French has 100,000. How do they manage? The score even includes words like le weekend!

Perhaps something is holding them back. They must start to create more! We often hear that Shakespeare invented 200 words which are still used today ("instinctively", "champion" as a verb, "torture", "mountaineer", etc.) so someone could give it a try.

Still, there is not a lot of chance of that today now that everything is set (or typeset) and settled and the only neologisms we get are such wondrous sparkling brilliancies as chav, which I barely understand and don't wish to go into any further.

Look up neologism (a neologism coined in 1803) and you will encounter the following:

In psychiatry, the term neologism is used to describe the use of words that only have meaning to the person who uses them, independent of their common meaning. This is considered normal in children, but a symptom of thought disorder...in adults.

Well what do you say to that?

Protboots, say I!

Time

2009-04-28T11:31:00.000Z

The sand will wash away but the gold will remain.

Suggestion

2009-04-23T17:14:00.004Z

Google is kind enough to suggest what you might be searching for, based on other searches.

It's surprising what is popular!!

Simple English

2009-04-20T09:38:00.004Z

Did you know there is a language called Simple English? It's a simplified version of the English language (as experienced on Simple English Wikipedia).

Actually I have noticed that a lot of the time I am writing in simplified English. The reasons for this are that a lot of the people reading this are not native English speakers, or that they might not be, or that in fact (and this is true) a lot of the people in the world are not actually native English speakers, believe it or not. People who speak English tend to assume that everyone else does, but they might not, you know...

So even though I know that most people reading this can actually read English (of course they can; that's how they are reading this), I try not to write anything too complicated.

Even for first-language English speakers (Anglophones - you see, it's complicated already!) I don't want to alienate anybody. It's easy to sound "clever" with a lot of po-ly-syl-la-bic words but that is not the same as being intelligent. And if I write something that someone can't understand then I feel it has failed. You see, sometimes the ideas are so difficult to understand that we need all the help we can get.

Here is an excerpt from an article in Simple English:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer and pianist. During his short life he wrote more than 600 pieces of music. Many people think he was one of the best composers of music of all time. He was born in the city of Salzburg on January 27, 1756. He wrote over 600 pieces of music, including the operas (music with a story) Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). His works began with a minuet (a dance) that he wrote when he was four, and end with his final piece, the Requiem, which he left unfinished. Mozart was a prodigy at the piano, and he was known as a great pianist as well as a great composer. He died on December 5, 1791 when he was 35 years old.

Well, you can't really fault it. It is clear what it means. But it is a little bit offensive when it gets over-simple. Or is it? If you are eight years old would you rather read this than

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (IPA: [ˈvɔlfgaŋ amaˈdeus ˈmoːtsart], full name Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart^[1] (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over six hundred works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at seventeen he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. Visiting Vienna in 1781 he was dismissed from his Salzburg position and chose to stay in the capital, where over the rest of life he achieved fame but little financial security. The final years in Vienna yielded many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and the Requiem. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.

Mozart always learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate—the whole informed by a vision of humanity "redeemed through art, forgiven, and reconciled with nature and the absolute".^[2] His influence on all subsequent Western art music is profound. Beethoven wrote his own early compositions in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years".^[3]

?

Well, otherwise, you end up with

Mozart was a music-man. He did a lot of music. He was alive. He is not alive. The end. Bye Bye!

I'd rather have the whole truth than the easy version of the truth. Even if it's harder work. Still, you have to reach as many people as you can.

I don't know if there is ever a perfect way of communicating.

A piece of music, a drawing, a poem - they don't exist without an audience. Even if the audience is the author. So you change it to suit the audience. You always do.

Or are there exceptions?

Spotify used for Classical Music

2009-04-19T21:08:00.003Z

Spotify is a type of software designed by Swedish people. It enables you to listen to music on your computer rather like you might listen to the radio, except you can choose what you want to hear.

To make it work, you just go to the website, create your account by typing in your desired account name and password, as well as a little personal information about yourself. Then follow the download instructions, and it will work.

When you search for music, e.g. "Beethoven", or whatever it is, you get choices that match your search. Then because it is a P2P application (Peer-to-Peer, like Skype) there is no appreciable time delay in downloading the music, because you're not really downloading it - it's being shared with the network and therefore they are getting it to you as fast as possible.

Used for classical music, it's a simple way of getting to hear what pieces sound like. It's free and easy to use. There is quite a lot of choice so far as pieces and composers go (e.g. they have Finnissy and Xenakis as well as more famous people), though you may perhaps only have a choice of one recording. This is different to more popular music where often the one recording is the work itself.

It's the new fastest way to hear what a piece of music sounds like, if you don't know it. And you can hear all of it, so that's helpful.

I don't really listen to music - for some reason - but if you do then it could be useful, especially if you don't much care who is playing the piece you want. If you are a music lover who just wants to experience music without paying anything then it must be wonderful!

Thank you to my colleague for introducing me to it.

What's Left or What Comes Next

2009-04-17T22:35:00.002Z

Hey, some people have a problem then they put it in a piece of music or whatever. Then they feel a bit better.

But how do we feel?

If we have the same problem (and probably, er, 30% of people will) then maybe it persuades us to feel better too?

But if it's new to us does it make us feel worse?

Probably not. But it's worth thinking about.

Then on the other hand, what do you write about if you don't have any problems?~?

I wonder...

Laugh Cry or be Serious - MARI ARAKI

2009-04-16T15:58:00.007Z

Hello my dears!

People can be a bit serious.

Why is that?

First of all everyone has to pretend to be grown up. That's one reason.

Why is it? It must be because of our training - I can't think of any real reason to be serious like that.

Also sometimes people get a bit gloomy in their life. Then they do gloomy things.

What about artists? Do they write happy music or serious music? Do they paint happy or sad pictures?

The same thing can seem sad to one person but not sad to another person.

--

Look at what I have written today, for example. It's serious! It's serious because I was trying to understand something.

People maybe prefer to have another Martini? Or make chit-chat.

--

Once upon a time, everything was whole. Things worked well and people smiled. You all remember it.

Let's bring it back.

If something is serious and important, we will listen quietly and think hard.

Otherwise we will enjoy ourselves and dance and sing - because we know a bigger thing.

Why do we do anything? To make the world whole again.

Did you know that? Of course you did!

Some things, places, and people are important and we must look after them.

Everybody brings a talent to the world. Most people are still learning their skill. Some don't know about what they can do.

What you can do? It is a happy coincidence - it's the thing you enjoy doing! You enjoy it because you were always meant to do it.

And when people follow their talent...and let the light come through the window....and open the front door for visitors....and protect their treasure and their friends...they will be very important to us.

When you use your talent you are keeping the world in one piece. That is why we have talents.

When your talent brings a special message from far away (but very near), something we needed to know, but something it was impossible to know before you said it...that's called genius.

It's talent-plus-impossible.

I like the impossible. It's possible! Let's do it!

Today I would like to introduce a talent-plus-impossible person.

There are not many, this is the first one I have introduced to you so far.

She is an artist. Her work appears simple, normal, or sometimes even cute. But it is a trick! There are messages in there for us. Sometimes it might be uncomfortable for you to see the work. Don't worry, you don't have to look! If it gets uncomfortable it's because she looked deep inside and said a true thing to us.

Then on the other hand, it makes me laugh too. Why is it not looking serious but it is really being serious? Because it is telling the truth.

We could all create a system called something-ism. Then give lectures about our system. And make work that fits the system. We would all be serious. We might get an award! But it's bad luck for us if the truth was different all the time.

The really serious person knows that some things are difficult. But they don't try to make it worse for you. They tell the truth and you can recognise the truth because it is still true even if you make a joke about it.

So my artist I am introducing is a bit like that. That's what I think anyway.

You can see it for yourself. Look at her website.

Her name is Mari Araki. Be nice to her.

Buy her work!! Now!!!

---

He who knows not and knows not he knows not, is a fool - shun him.

He who knows not and knows he knows not, is simple - teach him.

He who knows and knows not he knows, is asleep - wake him.

He who knows and knows he knows: he is wise - follow him.

~~Where are we in this? Who knows!!

Hahahahahahaha!!!!!!!

Health Warning

2009-04-14T20:31:00.002Z

I was just out of the city for a few days. Now i am back. Health warning! Being in the city is not so good for you! In many respects! So be careful there.

Quotation to think about

2009-04-10T23:16:00.000Z

"Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

-Victor Hugo

Today at the ROH

2009-04-09T23:24:00.002Z

This morning, thanks to a friend of Gabriel, I attended the final dress rehearsal of Verdi's Il trovatore ("The Troubadour") at the Royal Opera House. It was first performed there on 10 May 1855, eight days after its world première in New York - that's 154 years ago! It's still going strong.

Conducted by Carlo Rizzi, directed by Elijah Moshinsky, the cast included Roberto Alagna! (Manrico) and Dmitri Hvorostovsky! (Count di Luna) as well as excellent performances from people I did not know previously, particularly Sondra Radvanovsky as Leonora with some super pianissimo high notes and Małgorzata Walewska's well-characterised Azucena, who eerily and ambiguously inhabited the vocal range between female and male.

I had photographers in front of me but other than that it was the strongest cast I have seen in an opera, and my seat was in the sixth row!

I was lucky to see it.

Verdi is extremely good at his job. (He still is).

Just as the lighting designer (Mike Gunning) illuminates certain important areas, Verdi points out certain areas of the voices, supporting them and reinforcing their lines as if the orchestra is the canvas supporting the colour. The orchestra is always contributing to the feeling, but it's in such a subtle way because often the propelling phrases are so archetypically musical that you don't notice they are there. Not like a melody that you will remember and sing yourself, but like little cells of notes that are almost pre-musical.

Verdi supports the voices in this way, but most of all he supports the drama.

That is his achievement.

(And some good ensemble pieces with three or four things being sung at the same time!)

Thank you Mr. Verdi.

Thank you all!

Integrity

2009-04-07T00:43:00.002Z

Integrity means: doing what you believe is right, and sticking to it.

You should always do the right thing, but you don't always have to tell everybody what you think - sometimes being quiet is the best thing to do. "The tallest tree is the first one to fall".

It's really OK to do the thing you are interested in.

It's really OK!

Yes you can do it!

You can always pretend you are normal, if you would like to.

It will be our little secret!

Communications

2009-04-04T18:27:00.003Z

Today I went to Loon Fung to get some rice, and while I was at the checkout the manager came over to ask something to the checkout lady. He could of course ask her anything he liked because (a) he is the manager and (b) she wasn't talking to me because I am foreign. It's a strange syndrome, the "invisible foreigner" syndrome. I have studied a lot about Asian culture and behaviour so I have a small idea what it's about, but without study of this kind one might feel it's a bit rude.

Why am I invisible in a Chinese shop? Well, I'm less invisible now I have more training, but it's probably mainly caused by what people would term shyness, I think. The person is shy of interacting with a foreigner for some reasons which include having to speak a foreign language which might be complicated. The whole thing is complex and I don't know all about it by any means. This particular behaviour doesn't seem to be a feature of non-Asian cultures, which is interesting.

But what is more interesting is that probably if I joined in nicely and asked a question or whatever it is, everything would be fine. I'm sure she speaks English - she works in a shop in England. But it takes two sides to make a nervous situation.

And of course if I spoke Chinese (I can't)! What would happen? I've heard of Westerners speaking perfect Chinese and some Chinese people not being able to understand them. I think there could be several reasons for that too.

Anyway that's just all about "I heard this" and "Maybe that" so we have to go on what i actually know, don't we?

What I really wanted to say was, while the manager was talking to the lady, I heard him say, "something something san something". And I thought maybe san is three, because I know it is in Japanese. And I looked up and he was holding three things!

It's not worthy of the Nobel Prize for services to the translation industry. It's not going to get the Polyglot Pulitzer. But I am always amazed that one can learn a word and it will give you a secret key to understanding what previously sounded like a load of nonsense!

Amazing. (To me).

Yes it's worth learning a few things. They can be words - which you then understand - or they can be cultural facts about people and their behaviour - which you can then understand a lot better.

We're all the same really. It's just that some people say san and some say three. It's the same number.

Nugget of Information for Composing

2009-04-03T11:40:00.001Z

If you treat the piano like an orchestra, and the orchestra like a piano, then you'll be alright.

Bad News for Pianists!

2009-03-31T22:02:00.003Z

If, as I have said before, endurance is not the most difficult thing to acquire in playing, what, then, is most difficult?

There are two greatest difficulties, tone and pedaling.

And the pedal is hardest of all to learn!

Vladimir Horowitz, 1932

Oh dear! It could be true - many many things are difficult in piano playing, but AFTER you have fixed them all, there is still a basic problem to solve!

Tone is a very fundamental thing. Some people don't believe in it. They think you can't change the sound of the piano. Well, that's like saying the conductor doesn't change the orchestra. Some people don't believe in that either.

And pedalling is something that affects the performance of a composition from the early years of study, yet it is something that is almost never given proper attention. It's really quite important. Exactly what goes on with the pedal beyond what we at the beginning called "a pedal change" is quite complex.

There are many technical issues in piano playing. No matter how many, the number is limited. So if you study it systematically, and fix your problems, then at some point you will ARRIVE AT THE END. Or actually, as we call it, the beginning.

Ravel Codes

2009-03-28T09:45:00.001Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7968024.stm

A new theory concerning Ravel's secret use of musical code.

Szymanowski plays Szymanowski

2009-03-24T00:47:00.003Z

It would be good to collect together all recordings of composers playing their own music.

I notice in Szymanowski's performance of these two Mazurkas that while there is a sense of great freedom, there is also a very strict underlying pulse - which is an appropriate quality for a dance to have, wouldn't you say?

Coral

2009-03-21T15:38:00.001Z

"Coral reefs are the lungs of the ocean"

A nice thing I read today at Jeff Shaw's Okinawa Blog. Which he is not writing anymore. But anyway.

Thanks!

Who's Got Rhythm?

2009-03-20T20:55:00.003Z

I had a rehearsal with a very good jazz singer today - it's for a big piece by Michael Finnissy that's being put on in the Spitalfields Festival in June. More information about that in the future, no doubt, but I noticed one interesting thing: she had really good rhythm.

Now why do I never notice that about classical people?

Rachmaninoff had rhythm in the sense of knowing exactly how each part of the structure should be paced so that the work reaches its peak at just the right moment and everything coheres. And of course he also could play in time, which is rhythm too.

But jazz rhythm is not quite the same as playing in time, and not like structural rhythm. People aren't normally playing the same rhythms so you can't play "in time" as such, but it all fits into the beat. The structure is not normally so complicated or "composed" on the whole, so while you can definitely get a build-up or peak on the scale of anything up to 3-4 minutes, or perhaps longer in varying live situations, again rhythm does not normally exist in that way.

But this ever-present, imperative and unavoidable pulse with a slight flexibility (swing) is something that I consider important in classical-type pieces. In addition to the other kinds of rhythm mentioned above.

You've got to have rhythm. Yeah you gotta!

Our hearts always beat but not like metronomes. Probably it all adds up to a constant beat (like rubato, where rhythmic freedom must always be part of some rhythmic strictness at the same time).

There is some important point about that.

Ravel Concerto in G - learning resources

2009-03-16T17:54:00.015Z

For people learning Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, here are some bits of information to help you a little.

It was composed between 1929 and 1931 (Ravel was around the age of 55 and would live for another 6 years).

As you may know, the first performance was given by Marguerite Long on Jan 14th 1932 (with the Lamoureux Orchestra conducted by Ravel).

There is a recording of Long with the same orchestra made shortly after the premiere. There are some questions as to who is the conductor on this recording, but it is probably Ravel himself. Plus he is credited as the conductor so that perhaps makes it likely!

I have not heard all of this recording but I would like to. The only part available to listen on the internet is the second movement - it only appeared this week so it's fresh! Very interesting. There is some rubato but the tempo is generally strict. In fact we are often told how strict she was, then you actually hear her play and it's quite surprising when she does vary the rhythm - but then, a very "straight" performer of those times would seem pretty wayward today. It's nice to know she wasn't a robot. However, as people say, and as I can hear, she does play in time - so that's probably how Ravel liked it.

The other recording is that by Michelangeli with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Ettore Gracis (1957). This is a good one, and the piece was at this time about 25 years old so has had some time to settle (the Long recording has some shakiness from what I have heard of it).

Other people have performed this work, such as Martha Argerich, but for me the Michelangeli is the classic performance and the Long is of course the closest we can get to hearing what Ravel wanted.

Further Resources:
Some things you need to know about this piece.

Ravel was Basque, which means he came from the area known as the Basque Country which extends from around the North of Spain to the South of France. But it is not Spain or France, it is the Basque Country (Euskal Herria, Pays Basque, or País Vasco).

This is a special area for many reasons. You can find out why.

Ravel refers to Basque folk music in his Concerto. The first thing you hear is the piccolo from bar 2 of the first movement. This is not really a piccolo, because it is singing the sound of the txistu - a wind instrument that you can see and hear here.

In Euskara (Basque language) the sound "tx" is pronounced similar to English "ch". You will need to know this again in the next sentence!

There is also a percussion instrument called txalaparta. It's sort of not really an instrument, more of a way of playing, because it could be made out of different materials. The main way is to have planks of wood arranged together so that you can play them like this. Of course, it doesn't always sound as crazily exciting as this one! Also here is a more traditional one - can you hear how they bring out the harmonics of the plank? (It's hypnotic and amazing, like Mongolian/Siberian throat singing)

There is no txalaparta as such in the concerto, but I can hear it from figure 10 in the score (bottom of page 8 in the two-piano score). Can you?

The last thing I have to offer is the eerie sound of the musical saw. A saw is of course used for cutting down trees and other wooden things. However, if you play it with a bow it makes a special sound which is imitated in the right-hand trills of the first movement cadenza (page 18 of the piano score).
Here are your musical saw examples:

clip from film "Delicatessen" (1991)

and some kind of mysterious businessman

Right that's basically all my information about this piece. I hope it is useful.

The piece combines jazz (a sort of modern, "natural-sounding" music that seemed more real than a lot of classical concert music) and folk music (actually quite similar to what I just said, except it wouldn't have been called modern). Why are they together? To tell us something about why we have music and where it came from and what we can do with it.

Steps Along the Way

2009-03-16T01:00:00.005Z

One of the greatest barriers to progress is knowing you are already too good to need help.

I always try to help when I can, and some people actually improve, but of the rest, some of the sadder examples are those who sit proudly on a lump of dirt of their own construction and show you they have conquered Everest.

I'm far more impressed by those who make no claims to fame, who are not embarrassed to admit their deficiencies, and who would like to improve.

They will find someone listening who knows what it's like!

Hope Springs Eternal

2009-03-15T22:16:00.003Z

Well, I'm always optimistic.

Today was the first day this year that the air had a smell. Not a bad smell, but a smell - it was the first time it was warm enough to taste the air. The temperature difference between yesterday and today is no doubt extremely small, but it registered with my sensitive sensing equipment and I therefore decree that it is the first sign of Spring.

There have been some flowers springing up out of the ground for some time, but with the seasons all being a bit confused these days I'm not really counting that - although it is very nice too!

Spring doesn't have to be warm to be Spring, of course. So it probably actually is Spring already. But perhaps I am sensing the appearance of "Season Two" in my personal calendar: apart from the usual four seasons which I also recognise, we have a choice between "not yet warm enough for me" and "warm enough for me". Because it is almost never warm enough for me (though all temperatures can be pleasant in their way), optimism is paramount in judging whether the weather is right. Without it, I'd get about three days a year of good weather. But with optimism in place, we're doing a lot better.

What can you smell in the air today?

(A Little) About Tycho Brahe

2009-03-14T23:27:00.004Z

It is reported that Tycho Brahe (Tyge Ottesen Brahe, 1546-1601), the Danish nobleman astronomer and alchemist, lost part of his nose during a duel with Manderup Parsbjerg in the dark at Christmas 1566 (Brahe was 20) and after that wore a prosthetic replacement made of silver and gold (the injury sparked his interest in medicine and alchemy). At one time in the 1580s he was said to own 1% of the entire wealth of Denmark. He also numbered among his retinue a clairvoyant dwarf called Jepp who resided under the table at banquets, and a moose who unfortunately died after one such banquet, having drunk too much beer and finally fallen down the stairs.

He also made progress in astronomy, but I have chosen not to mention that today.

Land of the Free...style

2009-03-14T02:23:00.001Z

Chairman

2009-03-14T01:46:00.000Z

What Upsets Me Is...

2009-03-12T23:19:00.004Z

What upsets me is that I occasionally think of listening to some piece of music (principally for research, but I'd like to be able enjoy it too) but it is impossible to do so.

It is impossible because apparently nearly nobody can be bothered discovering the true character of music. They instead prefer to play "their version".

It's very lazy!

There are always an infinite number of ways of playing music. Even if I somehow magically guide you to see the composer's way, there is still an infinity of choices. There is no such thing as an "authorised version", except in rare - and unhealthy - cases. Yet I'm claiming that there is some way of testing if you've got the right way.

It's a bit much to go into today, but it's along the lines of

Jack: I don't actually know who I am by birth. I was... well, I was found.
Lady Bracknell: Found?
Jack: Yes. The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old gentlemen of a kindly disposition found me and gave me the name of Worthing because he happened to have a first class ticket to Worthing at the time. Worthing is a place in Sussex. It's a seaside resort.
Lady Bracknell: And where did this charitable gentlemen with the first class ticket to the seaside resort find you?
Jack: In a handbag.
Lady Bracknell: [closes eyes briefly] A handbag?
Jack: Yes, Lady Bracknell, I was in a hand bag. A somewhat large... black... leather handbag with handles... to it.
[pause]
Lady Bracknell: An ordinary handbag.
Lady Bracknell: And where did this Mr. James... or, Thomas Cardew come across this ordinary handbag?
Jack: The cloak room at Victoria Station. It was given to him in mistake for his own...
Lady Bracknell: [Shocked] The cloak room at Victoria Station?
Jack: Yes. The Brighton line.
Lady Bracknell: The line is immaterial.

[The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde, first performed 1895]

In the case of the famous line "a HAND-BAG?", we know the handbag is important so that's why the word is emphasised. It's not normally a question of "A handbag?" because this is not the important word, so far as i can see.

I know this is an extremely simple example.

It's a simple thing I am telling you, you see.

Anyway, it's a bit like that. you work out the handbag is important in one line, then it gets mentioned again so you know there is something about this handbag.

But to take the musical analogy, some actor (musician) has discovered that he pronounces the diphthong "A" rather well. So she decides to make that the focus. No question of meaning, just effective sound.

Ok fine but unfortunately music is a language too and if you ignore the meaning then it becomes meaningless.

It's not that difficult to work it out. I'm sure lots of people will disagree with me over the future years, and they are welcome to as long as they don't damage anybody in the process, but we will gradually get to the point where we understand the language of music. Yes!

----------------

It has recently come to my attention that there is an excellent recording (1952) of the Liszt Piano Sonata in B minor, by Maria Grinberg, the pupil of F. M. Blumenfeld and K. N. Igumnov at the Moscow Conservatory.

Although - to be unneccesarily honest about it - this recording does not entirely speak in the language of the music itself, by virtue of the personal choices of the artist, this recording makes so many great choices and shows many faces of the work that are normally smoothed over in favour of "playing the piano well", that: I think...that...if this were the only recording in the world...then I'd be quite happy with that. It's that good. That's what I think.

I may wish for other things in this piece, but that is a true fact that I just told you. I.e. for me it is possible to be better than this but it is good enough. And that's extremely good if you are familiar with my exacting standards.

Thanks to Prof. Pascal Némirovski for finding it for us.

part one

part two

part three

While the Blog was Sleeping...

2009-03-05T20:22:00.003Z

Look what happened while the blog was broken!

(that was on 2nd February 2009)

It's not news now. It's more like a historical blog today.

Anyway, there it is! The worst snow in 20 years...except I think they meant the best snow...

Fairly Amusing Pizza Restaurant Article

2009-03-04T21:14:00.001Z

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/04/restaurants-food-and-drink

A fine review of some not-so-fine pizza restaurants in England.

Much of today's news is aimed at people who are trying to save money in the face of credit crises and having to cut down on their eating-out spending. For example, formerly leading bankers and stockbrokers, heads of industry, friends of Madoffs and so on.

I have eaten at most of these places at one time or another and I would tend to agree with the opinion espoused in the review. Therefore it must be correct!

Right?

It's back!!

2009-03-03T14:37:00.003Z

Amazingly I have fixed the problem!!! It's back!

More exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well that's a big help anyway.

The problem was that my web host had changed my ftp login details (passwords etc for saving files onto my website remotely) so that's why it wouldn't publish. It doesn't take years and years to fix that but it taks a while to figure out what the problem is and finally fix it.

It's a relief!

See you soon!

Problems

2008-10-09T21:54:00.001Z

There have been problems with Blogger for me for some time which is why there is never anything new here.

If you can read this it means it's all finally solved...

Races and isms

2008-08-31T20:38:00.007Z

Foreign countries and people are a bit of a mystery in the beginning. There was we and us and our village and the people we knew about, but then sometimes there was something else too. Of course, to them, we were the strange ones, but we didn't know that then.

Are foreigners strange and mythical? Are they legendary beasts who live in the places on the map illustrated with dragons?

Are different people different from you? Do they even look different? Perhaps we people who think we all look the same really look quite varied. We just don't really think about it.

Anyway, once upon a time the idea of the foreigner was born and it lived several lives. Some of the lives were used to keep foreigners foreign - like wartime propaganda. No, we can't have you thinking they are human, or you will want to be friends with them.

A few of the lives made us think that the way of living in a far-away place might be better than that here, or at least there might be significant advantages to it.

As humans, we can't help being sympathetic to a character (unless we are psychologically unwell), as long as we have a little time to think about it. Unfortunately we aren't always given time to think about it - because the propaganda machine must keep us on the move! (going round in circles)

Characters like Fu Manchu or Ming the Merciless (although Ming is from the planet Mongo so presumably not literally intended to be Chinese) obviously owe their existence to racist misperceptions and misinformation, yet...they are rather exciting. Let's have a bit of thrill and passion in life please! And often the well-behaved characters are not the most interesting...

And someone like Mr Moto the detective equally relies on the idea that foreigners are different, yet there is enough to empathise with in the character that we can perhaps watch without becoming too disturbed. While the question will always remain (to modern eyes though less so to eyes of its own time) - why is this actor not Japanese? - and so on, Mr Moto's portrayal by Peter Lorre is very sympathetic and allows the part of us that lives stories and doesn't just read them (a childlike part) to follow the character and care for what happens to him. Lorre was born László Löwenstein and played outsiders to perfection, such as the serial killer in Fritz Lang's M("M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder"). I would hazard a guess that his ability to empathise with the outsider comes not from his own status as such a person (Jewish, Hungarian, Austrian or whatever) but from his ability to act.

So there's a lot of racism about and has been for a long time, yet at least it gives us the chance to think about people different from ourselves, and perhaps to find out a little about them - and us.

Now see what you think.

You Need Some Time

2008-07-29T16:22:00.002Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7530594.stm

A quite interesting and useful article...

Speaking of taking time, I should be taking time to write more on here. Ok well a few sentences is a start...

The unaided eye

2008-07-22T19:38:00.001Z

Kalidasa

2008-07-04T23:42:00.001Z

...For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!

Enescu Lives

2008-05-02T10:50:00.002Z

I'm saying this is a "must-hear".

Sometimes, listening to a performer of the past play something of the "standard repertoire" seems strange, because each age has its own "standard" way of playing. Fashion is always fashionable until it ceases to be so. That's why the way we play today will one day be seen as strange (I hope, because it sounds rather strange to me now). Yet to hear someone of any age play his own music poses no cultural problems for the ear. Every part of the style is perfect and perfectly appropriate.

Here is Enescu! He's playing some of his magic music for you.

I'm afraid I can't work out which Sonata this is he's playing here - but there are only a few so we should find out eventually.

New Life

2008-04-26T08:44:00.005Z

I'm afraid the butterfly is not alive now. Unfortunately before it was released into the outside world. But then it couldn't fly so we don't know what would have happened to it out there...

But look what has appeared on the tree next to the butterfly's place! A new shoot! So life is always appearing, even when you think it is disappearing.

Real People

2008-04-07T22:15:00.005Z

It's hard to imagine old black-and-white people as real colour people. All the old people - Busoni, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Alkan, Chopin and company - they were all colour people.

And then it's hard to hear old recordings as real performances ("colour"). I hear Rachmaninov tearing away at 300 mph in his 3rd Concerto and wonder what he really sounded like.

I'm sure we can get closer to imagining what it was all really like.

They were people, like all the people you see today. Not monochrome prints.

Something must be done to invite them to step out of the page...

Feeding Nicely

2008-04-07T13:50:00.003Z

The butterfly is still going well. Here it is feeding nicely.

As mentioned before, I give it a solution of honey and sugar in water, on a tissue. It's not a flower but the butterfly seems to like it!

The butterfly is still considering being released into the wild but we were waiting until the weather got warmer. Yesterday there was a lot of snow, so I'm quite glad we're still waiting. Both quite glad, I would think!

Chasse-neige (Snowdrift)

2008-04-01T20:21:00.006Z

Liszt is strange sometimes. He had problems with being considered serious. He wrote so much for the crowd that he must have felt a bit odd. Maybe he felt he was not quite being himself most of the time. Was he a serious composer or just an octave-merchant? Well, you know, Beethoven wrote octaves...but not like that!

Perhaps this is one reason he liked to paraphrase (transcribe) other people's music.

Yet Liszt also wrote more serious-sounding music, such as his earnest and for-posterity Sonata in B minor. Serious composers wrote sonatas, remember!

On the one hand, to me this work sounds like a more cerebral version of the Mephisto Waltz no. 1, with added religious subject matter (also improved with things stolen from Alkan's Quatre Âges sonata). On the other hand, the Faust story (Liszt picked the Lenau version, but he would obviously have known the Goethe one too), no matter how sensational the episode, has serious philosophical undertones - and with Liszt, as a cultured and intelligent man, no matter how much of the music is directed at the gallery, I think there is always some serious purpose not far away from the surface.

Anyway, there is a nice piece at the end of his Transcendental Studies, called Chasse-neige.

These studies are often difficult, and often quite big and "Lisztian". Yet writing studies is a scholarly occupation, like writing sonatas, so Liszt is being serious again as well.

Bearing this in mind, I think it's interesting that he ends with a more introverted piece. It's true, it does get loud, but also it has some of the quietest, lightest writing of the twelve studies.

What I wanted to tell you was this.

Liszt seems to me to go in a serious direction at the end of the Transcendental Studies. This serious snow-music reminds me of something else - the lonely figure at the end of Schubert's Winterreise, left out of the village like the old organ-grinder, in the end perhaps being erased by the white snowy landscape.

I find it amusing to note that while Schubert does it his way, Liszt's idea has us not so much erased by frozen blank finality - more like completely buried in the avalanche!

It was rather a dramatic snow-storm, after all.

But we shouldn't judge Liszt by our own standards, or anyone else's. Times were different then.

All the same, I rather like this piece.

It's really transcendental, too. To play it at its best would not sound particularly obviously difficult. But someone good enough to do that would be quite shockingly good!

I don't think I've ever heard it played exactly as I imagine it...but Mr. Arrau is good.

Earth Hour

2008-03-29T19:45:00.002Z

You live on Earth - your hour is near.

Earth Hour happens between 8 and 9 pm tonight, NOW!

To participate in this hour, turn off electrical things and lights and so on.

Perhaps even your computer?

You've got 15 mins. Go!

Escape from Stalag Howard

2008-03-27T17:20:00.002Z

The butterfly has escaped!

It has become quite strong (and a bit fat) by eating my fine cuisine de papillon and has started to search for...something!

It knows to go towards the light and has already got as far as the window!

It might still be a bit cold for releasing it to the outside, but it seems to be getting warmer. This butterfly mostly walks (with a bit of fluttering) but it has still got plenty of chance to succeed.

The carpet wasn't very tasty so I am feeding it again. But it has been out of its house for over 24 hours now!

You want to protect things from danger but you shouldn't protect them from development - even if it is more dangerous. Anyway, soon, soon it can go for its biggest adventure!

Still Going

2008-03-13T00:54:00.003Z

You can see: the left wing is a bit damaged. Two-spot markings. Nice yellowy colour. Proboscis - curly bit at the mouth end with which butterflies drink nectar out of plants.

Our friend is still going well in the safety of its home-made butterfly house. It can't fly well so I try to keep it out of trouble for the moment. It sleeps at night and wakes up in the day. It likes warmth from about 25°C, but becomes immobile if the temperature drops below 20 or so. It can still move if necessary in a cold temperature - I know this because when I first found it inside the fridge it could flutter and display its defensive "eye" markings on its wings. Anything with big eyes like that - you'd better keep away! It worked on me the first time.

I'm feeding it on a solution of honey and sugar in water. It is fed this on a chopstick. Since today I have a bit of tissue on the end which can soak up the solution. It would be nice to give it something to drink out of (like a flower) so it can use its proboscis properly.

Ideally this butterfly will get better and start flying properly, then the weather will get warm so I can release it into a lovely garden somewhere near. I try to give it some quality of life but it is designed to live outside, even if it is more dangerous out there.

I will see how it is looking.

A Colourful Visitor

2008-03-10T21:17:00.003Z

I was looking in the fridge for the butter.

I looked for a while but I couldn't see it.

Then I moved some potatoes at the bottom of the fridge.

And I found something buttery.

But it wasn't butter.

It was a BUTTERFLY!

That's not normally found in a fridge, is it.

So I have taken it out on a piece of paper.

I let it warm up in the room.

Then I started to think about releasing it.

One of its wings seems not to be working very well, so it was a bit hard to release. When it got warm it started walking across the table towards the light. I'm sure that's a healthy sign but I knew there was a long drop coming up if it fell off the table. I tried letting it out of the window, thinking it might be happier outside even if it was damaged. But the wind was too strong! It's very windy lately.

Then I left it on my doorstep for a while. I thought it might fly away or go to a butterfly-friendly place. I looked again after a while and it was still there! I think it was too cold outside.

So now it is living with me.

I left it some lettuce at first, but it seems that's what the caterpillars eat. Butterflies eat nectar. Or they drink it. They have a long tube that sucks it out of flowers.

So I have been trying to feed the butterfly. It has been given water with honey in it, on the end of a chopstick. I think it got stuck a bit but it's OK now. Honey is rather sticky as Pooh will tell you...

I hope it will get stronger!

Let's see what happens.

Pianoforte

2008-01-10T00:47:00.000Z

I don't know if people realise how much skill it takes to play, not just the wrong notes, but the right wrong notes - and to play them at the right time.

No, my dears, I'm not talking about my piano-playing...

Christmas Pudding - Your Instructions

2007-12-23T20:00:00.001Z

To those people who kindly accepted the gift of one of my premier high-quality Christmas puddings - here are your instructions!

1. Condition after transportation

The muslin may have slipped a bit during transit. If so, either pull it down at the sides so it gets tighter (more like the skin of a drum) or you can even re-tie the string if you wish.

2. Storage

Fridge or somewhere cool is good. The muslin has brushed with clarified butter so obviously that will solidify as it gets cooler, and if it's warmer it smells less attractive in my opinion. It makes no difference to the pudding though! Don't worry!

3. Heating

In order to eat it, you have to heat it!

Having removed all the plastic packaging, you will now have a pudding in a basin covered with muslin and tied up with string. OK?

To warm it it needs to be steamed for 2 1/2 hours (two and a half hours).
Use a large saucepan. Put something in the bottom of it like a very small bowl or saucer. Then put some water in the saucepan and put the pudding on top of the bowl or saucer, with the little end at the bottom and the muslin at the top. The water should come no more than halfway up the sides of the pudding basin. Put the lid on the pan. Turn on the heat so the water starts to boil then leave it simmering for 2.5 hours, adding boiling water if the pan starts to get dry. Just let it simmer, it doesn't need to be boiling fiercely thank you very much! And don't let the water get in the pudding, we are steaming it not boiling it!

You could also do a similar method, but using a roasting tin with water in it and the pudding basin in the water. Cover everything with foil to keep the steam in, add water if it starts to dry out. Oven temperature 150 degrees centigrade or equivalent.

4. Sauce

(for 10 people)
500 ml (18 fl oz) double cream
70 g (2.5 oz) sugar
8 g (1 tsp) potato flour (or cornflour), mixed with 1 tbsp milk
70 ml (3 fl oz) brandy

Put the cream and sugar in a saucepan, bring to the boil, then lower the heat and reduce gently by a quarter. Stir in the flour and boil for 1 minute. Add the brandy. Keep the sauce hot without letting it boil.

5. Serving

When you have finished heating the pudding, remove the string and muslin and the round piece of greaseproof paper. Now we're getting closer!

Gently release the pudding from its basin. put it onto your serving plate with the big end at the bottom, like the Great Pyramid except round!

Pour a bit of brandy on it, touch a flame to it and it should burn merrily and mysteriously with a magical flame. Turn the lights down to appreciate. Don't trip over the dog though.

After the flame has burned out, cut the pudding into portions and bash them gently and stylishly into everybody's bowls. Then you can put the brandy cream on.

Then eat it!

Notes:
tsp: teaspoon
tbsp: tablespoon
oz: ounce
ml: millilitre
fl oz: fluid ounce

I hope this wasn't complicated! Good luck!

And of course, Merry Christmas, and to all a good night!

Performances

2007-12-14T19:32:00.000Z

Performances of my music are quite rare. Though not yet extinct!

So it surprises me that people are playing my music and not telling me about it.

There is a long piano piece by me, called "Good Night!" (named after a Janáček piece from "On an Overgrown Path"). I think it has been played in Japan by a pianist called Kentaro Noda. But I didn't hear for sure.

And now the PRS are telling me it was played in the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, on 17th June 2007.

Who did it? Any ideas?

By the way, classical music royalties are now very low indeed. I calculate that in order to get a reasonable amount of money from performances, at the current rate of pay each piano piece would have to last for 20 hours! And that's not even making a living out of it!

I am afraid it is true! You do a lot better in film and TV. But it's probably right, because lots of people "consume" TV music, and not a lot go to concerts. So what can I say?

See Vees ("CV"s)

2007-12-14T01:14:00.004Z

It's quite common for me to get emails from people keen to trumpet to the world on the subject of their forthcoming engagements and general wonderfulness. This is fine inasmuch as I'm delighted if they are doing well, etc., whoever they may be, but I do find the biographies slightly aggravating.

All publicity is naturally one-sided, and if it is relevant it can only refer to the event at hand (things must be excluded). We understand that, while professional qualifications and accolades may be mentioned, criminal convictions and misdemeanours might not. Good reviews to quote could be "The greatest I have ever heard", rather than "Have you considered the trombone?"

That's fine, and we know how to read CVs to detect what they are really concealing. You know that "Sublime." (New York Times) suggests one thing, while "Sublime." (Detroit Arc-Welders Monthly) doesn't necessarily imply the same. "Great!" (Maxim Vengerov) is a single syllable taken from many which could indicate Mr. Vengerov thinks you are indeed great, or something quite different - "Great! Doughnuts!"

Did you know that you are just as good even if no-one ever praises you? Most people like to hear good things about themselves, some people often don't hear anything good, but I think the one person you should be able to rely on is yourself. That doesn't mean it's just you against them all (Every man for himself, or "Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle"), but that you know if you've done your best or not, you know what you need to improve, and that any failure is not because you are a failure, but because you have not succeeded completely YET! I hope you think that way, and if not, you can start now.

It's good to have good "quotes" or reviews. (It doesn't mean anything, but it is a sign of something and at least shows that someone recommends you). It's rather sad to have good reviews from puny sources. ("It was as if Brahms sat down at the piano himself" - Salt Lake City Catering Gazette).

All in all, I'm in favour of truthfulness in CVs. "Studied with X" should mean exactly that - not the same thing as "had some lessons with X" or perhaps "watched X's DVD training course twice".

I think what aggravates me the most is the matter of prizes. You know, I've won a couple of prizes. I mention them in programme biographies and things. That's because it's true and relevant. It doesn't mean I'm good! Who knows, it may mean the opposite! I admit, of course, that I will generally want to show my best (or least worst) side in publicity materials - this is fine. But it's very lazy and a bit dishonest to, er, rephrase things in your favour. Have you heard of this?

"Won the Tchaikovsky Competition Prize" (He won the 100th Prize but it's true, it was A prize though perhaps not THE prize?)

"Was awarded the first prize" (Yes, last place is normally awarded first. Different to being awarded First Prize...)

And so on and on. Anyway, you get the idea. Watch out for this measly rewording of the truth!

I guess people want recognition, don't they. Well here are my tips (time to get tough!)

1. If you want to be recognised, WORK HARD and TRY YOUR ABSOLUTE BEST then something may happen.

2. If you wish you could win a prize then WIN SOMETHING. Come on! Winning is the only way to win, look in the dictionary!

3. Please, it doesn't matter what you won or didn't win. Just show the things you care about, as only you can, and you should do fine.

4. Tell the truth! It's OK to make a nice story out of it, as long as it's still the truth. After all, it's the story of your adventure!

If somebody tried hard and got 5th place, I like to hear about it! But as for exaggerations and vaguenesses like "top prizes" and the (fictional) examples above, I don't like to hear about it. The end.

Ah well, anyway, in life everybody wins my prize. What I have cleverly not mentioned is that there are several categories, hee hee...

Latest Update

2007-12-11T22:36:00.000Z

The puddings are done and should be maturing nicely. The whole house smelled puddingy and wet while they were steaming. It was quite nice actually!

And your fact for today is the King Charles II was so keen on clocks that he had seven of them in his bedroom. It sounds a lot but then I don't know how big his bedroom was and it could well have been ENORMOUS, perhaps rendering today's fact not-so-remarkable. Nevertheless...

Big Pudding Project

2007-11-13T23:36:00.000Z

It's a bit late for making Christmas Puddings...but I think it's best to do things rather than not. So they will have at least one month to mature before any eating happens. That's something!

What is alarming is how long it takes to make them.

I have finally gathered all the ingredients after about four days of scouring the streets of London for currants (they don't have them on the streets, you have to look in shops - maybe that's why it took so long?) and have the bowls etc. Now I have read the recipe. I thought I could have them finished by tomorrow night but the mixture has to rest for two days before it can be cooked.

Do you think that's long? Every aspect of this recipe requires great patience. Here are some further figures:

Cooking time: Eight hours!

Heating time: yes, HEATING, how long it takes just to get them hot when you want to eat them - two and a half hours!!

Preparation time, as it says in the book: "two hours, to be done one to five years in advance"

I didn't put a "!" at the end of the last sentence. I think you probably put your own one in there...

!!!

The recipe is from my excellent book, "The Roux Brothers on Patisserie". They say the recipe came from a "superb English cook" called Mrs. Bradbrook about 50 years ago. I don't know, there's something about the word "superb" there. Is it "superb" and "English"? Would a Frenchman normally use both in the same sentence? It certainly has some sort of unusual air about it.

Right so they should hopefully be done by Friday. I'm making four!

Advertising

2007-10-27T19:07:00.000Z

If you have been wondering what I've been up to lately, here is one of the answers!

I have been playing in an advert for Sony Walkman. The concept was to take 128 musicians, give them all one note to play, and add the bits together to make a complete piece. It took three days! It's called "Music Pieces" and has just started airing on UK TV. You can see me, you know. I apologise for wearing a cravat. That's what wardrobe gave me, you know. I'm sure it looks very dashing...

Also we have a "Preview Trailer" you can see. That shows you something of what it was like to film the project.

We also have for your viewing pleasure another "Teaser" of a more tantalising nature.

I hope you all buy Walkmans now!

The spot was filmed in the crumbling old Victorian theatre theatre at Alexandra Palace, London in rather low temperatures on 2, 3, 4 October 2007. Musicians were too numerous to mention, music was by Peter Raeburn of Soundtree, co-written by Nick Foster. (I can't remember the name of the other writer, sorry. He's called Jason something. That's not very helpful, I'll try and find out who it is). Directed by Nick Gordon with production by Academy Films. Many other people worked on it but I don't know their names or companies.

Anyway the people mentioned here are good at their job, so you can watch out for them in future. I am giving them a good review!

ALKAN

2007-10-15T23:24:00.001Z

I do like to read some nice information about Alkan. The fact that I have written it myself doesn't put me off at all, oh no.

Alkan is...well you really should know. If not find out!

Alkan is my favourite composer. Although my favourite piece is the Beethoven Violin Concerto (not by Alkan). However, statistically Alkan wins by having more pieces I like. But let's not have Alkan and Beethoven competing, please. After all, they are different. There is no comparison!

So what to tell you about Alkan? The following shiny fishes of delight, which I have gathered from Ronald Smith's book (two books in one now, Alkan: The Man/Alkan: The Music). In English it's the main book (or only book?) for reading in some depth about this great composer. Yes, great, not odd or unusual. Busoni says, in the Foreword to his edition of Liszt's Studies:

These fifty-eight pianoforte pieces alone would place Liszt in the rank of the greatest "pianoforte" composers since Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Alkan, Brahms.

And that's true so just think about it please.

OK good things to tell you about Alkan:

1. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of six.
2. He won first prize for solfège at the age of seven and a half.
3. He won first prize for piano when he was eleven!
4. Much later, when he was teaching at the Conservatoire, he awarded a special prize to César Franck. The reason was that Franck decided his sight-reading exam was too easy so played the piece perfectly but in a different key and thereby failed the exam! Presumably Alkan thought he was worth a prize.
5. Alkan may have had (or definitely had, or something) a son known as Delaborde, who was keen on swimming. A joint natatory outing in the river Seine shortly preceded Bizet's death! Not only that but soon after Bizet died, perhaps from swimming with Delaborde, the survivor began the process of marrying Mme. Bizet!
6. Well actually these are all quite gossipy facts, aren't they. Wouldn't it be better to talk about something more useful?

Yes, I certainly will. But that's for next time...

"Breaking News"

2007-09-27T15:59:00.000Z

This is the closest we get to Reuters...

This morning Sir Colin Davis was presented with half an acre of woodland in Suffolk in honour of his eightieth birthday (two days ago) and with thanks from the London Symphony Orchestra.

Well, that's news isn't it?

How to Cook Chicken

2007-09-15T23:41:00.000Z

OK here's a cookery tip for you.

Chicken (if you eat it) is one of the most difficult things to cook because it easily gets into an upsettingly dry, tough, squeaky condition which nobody wants but many people don't know how to avoid.

Here is the secret.

OK assuming you have cut it into small pieces, and you are frying it in a frying pan, all you have to do is: leave it. Yes, you read me correctly. Do nothing!

The side of the chicken pieces that is in contact with the pan is the side that is cooking. Turning it over now will make it cook faster (two hot sides). If you have other ingredients to add, and often there are lots of things to add and not enough time, then you don't want the chicken to be cooked before you start the other bits. No you don't, because the chicken will be over-cooked then. So just leave it in its initial position. THEN, when everything is cooked right, and the plates are ready, etc, then and only then should you turn it over. This way, it will be ready when you want to eat it and not before.

Remember that hot food continues to cook while it's on the plate. So stop cooking the chicken just before it looks ready. This means, if you cut a piece or split one with the cooking implement, it should be, well, not exactly pink in the middle, but certainly not quite white yet ("cooked chicken colour"). Yes, stop BEFORE it is ready. Stop when it is NEARLY ready.

So when it is on the plate in front of your guest or customer (or you) it will be the right colour inside. Because it is hot, and is still cooking itself as you watch!

Does that make sense?

To summarise:
1. in the pan, leave the top side of the chicken raw until you are ready to go.
2. turn it over to complete the cooking but stop just before it is cooked all the way through.

Now please tell me it worked.

In the Supermarket

2007-09-12T01:41:00.001Z

Tesco is a famous kind of supermarket. There's nothing so super about a supermarket - they just want you to think it's super. That's not to mention hypermarkets, which must be in a different league altogether.

In my view, it's better to grow food than to buy it, but if you're buying it get it from nearby, from somewhere trustworthy. It's better to buy with no packaging than with tons of illustrations attached to the food (think carefully: are you enjoying the food or what the picture tells you the food should be like?). Lots of things are better, but they are not necessarily convenient in some kinds of lifestyles.

So, in the absence of the above, we go to Tesco.

Today I wanted to tell you a few strange things that Tesco have offered me in the way of unusual experiences recently.

Not the man who bought a single banana and asked for a bag.

Not the homeless man who dashed in to steal food and took...chocolate cake.

Not the young men who looked so pleased with themselves for stealing pizzas.

Not the lady who bumped into everyone she passed in the shop.

No, this is to do with the conversations you find at the end of your journey to hunt and gather a simple meal of yoghurts and curry meals (taking an example at random). Because there are people who take your money in exchange for the goods you want, and those people sometimes like to have a bit of a chat with you. Do you have that? It's fine, but listen to what they say. It's rather odd in my Tesco (when I can actually understand what they are getting at).

A relatively normal conversation was proceeding when one man asked me, "are you Chinese?"

What do you think of that? Look at my picture...do I resemble your typical citizen of the Middle Kingdom? I wonder what made him ask if I'm from China? It's EXTREMELY odd!

The other one is less strange but I still remembered it. I bought two muffins and the following exchange took place:
Man: "......(indecipherable)...."
Me: "What?"
Man: "You have party?"
Me: "...party?" (thinks: what is he talking about?)
Man: "You buy cake. You have party!"
Me: "Oh. No. Well, I suppose I could....Good idea." (leaves)

That's on the evidence of two muffins (blueberry). Whatever next?

Maybe they are nervous. I would like to set them at ease but I'm too apprehensive of what they're going to come up with next!

And this is neither the time nor the place to relate what I have heard from taxi drivers over the years! Maybe one day.

The funny thing might be...are these people wondering at my strange behaviour?

One of Many Herzog Interviews

2007-08-30T21:58:00.000Z

Anything by or to do with Werner Herzog is interesting. I recommend it to you. Here is one interview.

Read it if you have a moment!

I've only seen three films by him - Nosferatu, Fitzcarraldo, and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. There is always a unique feeling to them which isn't present in any other work. It doesn't matter what they are about; if you find something as strong as this you have to at least take notice for a while.

He once promised to eat one of his shoes if Errol Morris ever finished his film Gates of Heaven. He finished it, and Herzog ate the shoe in public. You may think that's not a very good thing to do, but it's really quite a small thing when you consider what really unpalatable things people have to do all the time.

Then during the filming of Even Dwarfs Started Small, one actor was run over but escaped unhurt. Then the same actor caught fire and Herzog had to run over and put the fire out. So he told them all that if there were no further accidents, after the end of filming he would jump into a cactus patch and they could film him doing it.

I mean, these aren't things that I would necessarily do, and some people will certainly find them strange, but what is good about it is some visionary power of his is providing an incentive for other people to achieve something. Couldn't that be said of his films too?

It's also important to note that he does what he promises. I think you have to have integrity if people are going to believe what you're doing.

The Hobbit (Film)...?

2007-08-24T12:48:00.000Z

I was just thinking about what I thought was Peter Jackson's upcoming film adaptation of Tolkien's story "The Hobbit". I was going to begin: "So they're making a film of The Hobbit". But they aren't! They are nearly making a film of The Hobbit. The original plan was to make it then go on to film the three episodes of The Lord of the Rings all at the same time. But that was a long time ago. It seems there are problems about a number of things, particularly who owns the production rights, who owns the distribution rights (not the same people, I think, unfortunately), and a law suit which has apparently offended New Line Cinema and made them vow never to use Peter Jackson for anything ever again...so I hear, at least. I don't know what is true, but it seems there is some trouble with this project getting off the ground.

So is it still worth writing my thoughts about the music for this film? Of course! Let's go!

Now, The Hobbit is a good story. It's a very good read. I always feel with Tolkien that it is somehow offensive to "right-thinking literary people" because it is a little bit naïve and doesn't subject its literary form to any radical exploration or expansion. Yes, it's not Finnegans Wake. Well those imagined opinions undoubtedly have some truth to them, but you could also say that since Tolkien goes back to the sources he knew so well - the Sagas, Eddas, poems and prose of Northern Europe which are our surviving mythological and legendary heritage - and since he tries to make a real story like stories used to be told, maybe that is a radical thing to do, in a way. But it's true that it's not avant-garde. It's rather conservative in that it wants some things to remain a certain way. Certainly in The Lord of the Rings the peaceful way of life of the Hobbits living in the Shire is threatened by the "development" and "progress" that comes out of the land of Mordor. It may mean several things but one is certainly that rural life is threatened with extinction by the Industrial Revolution. Plus there is world war, too - I'm sure people have looked into all this in plenty of detail.

So anyway, it's not a great work of modernist fiction, but I will include it as an important work of modern fiction because whatever is good or bad about the writing, the idea and its world have found many ears eager to hear more. It's a good story, like The Three Musketeers or a James Bond novel. I mean it's a GOOD story - I'm praising it, not belittling it!

All of which is not to complain about the book, but to examine why I feel I should be slightly embarrassed to be discussing it in public. Well, I'm not. It's a proper story, so there. Ha!

The Hobbit is fun because you can read it in a day (if you have all day). There are plenty of excitements, some spooky bits, some magic and comedy too. And plenty of escapism if you enjoy reading about home comforts. The Hobbit, it seems, is a homely creature who enjoys his bit of supper. Often more than once!

I was thinking about the music for this projected film. I imagined it would be in the mode of The Lord of the Rings, which I feel is an extremely strong score (from Howard Shore). Its use of Leitmotiv (a theme for each character or thing, so you can see how they are interacting in the story, associated most with Wagner - very appropriate for a legendary story about a ring) provides a great way to unify all three films, almost as good a unifying factor as Peter Jackson's brain, which must be enormous to have made all three films at the same time!

On the other hand, once you have your motifs worked out, not much has to change. Because Wagner operas are mythological, they are supposed to be beyond the scope and compass of mortal time, so time gets stretched out. There is climax, or course (see Isoldens Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde) but time is a bit flattened out. So maybe leit-motifs prevent a more natural flow of musical events? Maybe, maybe not. Anyway they definitely made the right choice for those three films.

But the embarrassing moments for me are: the "Happy Shire" music, intended to be antic and comically endearing, but rather annoying for me, and the songs.

A big song in a film (or "movie", as they are called) is normally a signal for you to go out and buy the record (or "CD" as they are called). Yes, it is a marketing opportunity, almost a moment of "branded content" - entertainment that is actually selling you something. But if the song has a dramatic purpose, that's different. If not...why is it in a film? Do they stop the story to say "buy Simpson's Shock-Absorbers"? Yes they do. It's called product placement. However, that doesn't happen all the time.

But it's the little songs I'm worrying about here. Why do they go wrong? In fact, musical examples of "real music" in films go rather badly - look at Mr. Holland's Opus! The Piano! Dear me. Supposedly examples of great music and would be fine on the soundtrack but not when you take the same level of musical discourse but expose it on a completely different level.

I'm talking about songs because there are quite a lot in The Hobbit.

Far over the misty mountains cold,
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere the break of day,
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

has potential (could still be ruined though) but

Chip the glasses and crack the plates!
Blunt the knives and bend the forks!
That's what Bilbo Baggins hates -
Smash the bottles and burn the corks!
...So, carefully! Carefully with the plates!

could go badly wrong. You see, musical music (as used in an opera by someone who is intending the music to carry important meaning) has a great emotional and expressive range which includes comedy as well as more serious thoughts. But "background music" (which film music is not when it is one of the characters in the story but which it easily can be) doesn't have much range. It can illustrate or echo what is happening on-screen, but it needs more wide possibilities of expression, obviously, to express more things. Bad examples go like "Aha there is something nasty happening me better make loud noise bang bang!", but in a good example you hear an added level of story. Maybe it would be more dramatic with quiet music. Or no music. And so on.

So the score needs to be thoughtful, but it should think on a different level when the music gets exposed and we are asked to listen to it as "real music" in the story.

You have to think carefully, though, because a film score mostly can't have quite the same depth as music on its own in a concert, because film + music is the totality of the offering, each playing its part which should add up to 100%. But that's about good partnerships. When person X is doing something important, person Y should try to help...perhaps even by doing nothing.

Style is difficult for songs in a film because one assumes the audience has a very limited imagination of what songs should sound like. Songs are...well, anything from pop music, or "a folk song". What is a folk song? Why it's Irish of course!

Yes why does it always have to be Irish? Come on, you've got more choices than that! Or could it perhaps be because most films are aimed at the USA? Where there are a lot of people who think of Ireland as "home"? Or the home before this home? Could be.

Yes there are perhaps limited references to work with when you want to engage with the audience, but I still think you should give it a try. People are more intelligent than you might think. Still, they have to sell the picture. I understand.

If The Hobbit has embarrassing aspects, then they may extend to the film version too...and that may include the songs. Let's wait and see.

But Tolkien wasn't embarrassed, and neither are the fans of the stories. You have to get into the world to learn how to show people what it looks like. Being intelligent about it doesn't mean it has to sound "clever". It just will take people there, that's all.

I'm sure it will TURN OUT FINE!

The Great Interpreters

2007-08-23T12:21:00.000Z

People think they have to discover something about themselves that they then put into the music they play. They think they have to have something to say, or some special way of saying it.

Maybe they think that because they see "the great interpreters" playing and see that it's very distinctive. There is some unique character there that you would recognise immediately no matter what they were playing.

Now, a good player has learned how to play well - they were not always able to play as well as that, they had to learn - but the basic character you hear was always in them from the beginning.

So what does somebody do who thinks they are not one of the great interpreters? How can they improve?

As I said, one way people try to do it is by "putting themselves into the music". But is that really what Glenn Gould or Sviatoslav Richter were doing? It's obviously them playing, you know immediately with no doubt. And the uniqueness comes from them. But the reason for it is that that's the way the music flows through their system. It's not something they add, it's a live connection to the music direct. On a bad day, they would tell you they were not connected, but on a good day the difference is that there is less of "them" and more of the music.

So the answer is not to add more of yourself. That is adding more ego. What is important, you or what you are playing? What is more important, telling the audience something you already know or discovering something new? Showing your heart or just pretending?

If you don't feel you are great, don't worry because the great people weren't great either. They thought they were rubbish. I'm telling you.

If you think you are good, you are wrong. If you think you are bad, you are wrong too. The only answer is to keep looking. Even if it's going well, there is still more to find. And if it is going badly, that's an excellent sign because you know you have got somewhere to go.

How to get better? How to get great?

Don't try to add things. Take things away. The more you put in, the less of the composer we are hearing.

Can you control your beating heart and the allocation of hormones and adrenalin and blood and electric communications in your body? I don't think so. So don't interfere.

The little "I" is not much help. All it can do is be selfish, which gets it a few advantages but only in the short term. The big "I" is a genius and you find it by being interested in what is not you.

For example the music. You have the score - read it! Enjoy it! The composer had a special reason for writing it and that reason still exists but we have to discover it. He saw something special and important. Now you have to show people where to look to find it themselves. Point in the direction. Or even carry them there. It's all in the music. READ IT!

And you know if you get it right or wrong, and you know if you don't know enough, and you know what you have to practise. You are the one who learns to get better, nobody can tell you how to be good. But people will help you. Everybody knows something nobody else knows - that's why there's more than one person in the world. That's why we need you!

Don't try so hard, try LESS HARD! But try your best! Your improvement will depend on how hard you look for the answers. Plus, bear in mind that you already know all the answers....if you look....

Appearances

2007-08-16T23:48:00.000Z

I was just remembering something.

When I was at the R.A.M., we used to have to go to early evening student concerts once a week. Attendance was compulsory, and we had to sign in so someone could decide whether we'd get a good mark or not.

I used to go to the concerts but I thought it was so stupid to make them compulsory that I fairly often didn't sign in. While many people tried to sneakily sign the names of their friends who were too busy sleeping to attend the concert, I was coming to listen but doing the opposite.

I just thought it was more important to hear the concert than to get a mark for hearing the concert. Maybe I am a bit silly.

I graduated, though. I must have got a good mark for something....!

The Simpsons Movie

2007-08-07T11:48:00.000Z

The Simpsons Movie is 100% recommended by me. What more do you need to know?

People who have been watching The Simpsons assiduously for many years will benefit the most from this film. Yes, it means you will laugh! I did.

English Weather

2007-07-24T14:20:00.000Z

It's the end of July and most of England's underwater while at the same time most of Europe's on fire and there was a tornado in Poland. What you would call typical English weather really, except it's just spread a bit further than usual.

However, but! Today the sun came out, the temperature soared into the early twenties (centigrade), and I went out without my coat on!

I guess it'll be back to normal tomorrow.

I hope you are not being damaged by your weather!

Basketball Saves Lives

2007-07-20T21:25:00.000Z

Basketball saves lives - it saves the lives of dolphins.

How can this be, you ask?

Dolphins sometimes get bits of plastic stuck in their stomachs. They are friendly but it's not very friendly of us to leave plastic flosting around for them to swallow.

But dolphins are long. Tall is what they would be, but they are normally not standing up.

Dolphins are long, and to get the plastic out can be difficult. That is where basketball players can be useful.

Currently the world's tallest man, Bao Xishun (鲍喜顺, "The Mast") played basketball when he was in the army. He had to leave because of rheumatism, so is no longer a basketball player as far as I know. That is the only thing detracting from the truthfulness of today's assertion that "Basketball Saves Lives", but I think it's broadly true. How so? Because the people at the Royal Jidi Ocean World had two dolphins who were suffering with trapped plastic in them, so they called Bao Xishun so he could reach in and get it out. It worked! The same thing happened when a California dolphin swallowed a screw in 1978. The dolphin's name was Mr. Spock, but they had to call Mr. Ray for assistance - Clifford Ray, player for the Chicago Bulls ('71-'74) and the Golden State Warriors ('74-'81). His arm is 114cm long - 8cm longer than Bao Xishun actually, which I bet the dolphin was very glad of. On the whole!

So there you are. That is your useful fact for today.

Blank

2007-07-15T21:32:00.000Z

Mel Blanc, voice of Bugs Bunny for 49 years, lived from 30th May 1908 to 10th July 1989. Known as the Man of a Thousand Voices, he admitted he could only really lay claim to about 850.

History

2007-07-12T22:57:00.001Z

I went to see the DINOSAURS. They live at the Natural History Museum. I had never seen any before which is why it was quite exciting.

I had read about dinosaurs before, especially a long time ago, so it was nice to see my old friends Iguanodon and Triceratops again. Disappointing to see no Tyrannosaurus skeleton. You could really say One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (a film the racist undertones of which are not condoned by this establishment).

The other disappointment was the Blue Whale - the world's largest mammal, but here presented as a feeble plastic model. It is life size, so you can appreciate the dimensions. You can imagine the real thing of course, but I don't really like to be told what to imagine. I think that defeats the object of imagining.

Dinosaurs are really an alien thing. Nothing much like them here now - unless you look closely and think of evolution. So the skeletons are worth seeing. Also the fossils of strange and varied megafauna. And the petrified tree stump.

But as for the animals which exist on Earth today, I don't really have much interest in seeing models and so on. They exist! But these models are not really real. I suppose it's supposed to give you an impression or appreciation of the real thing. I think it may do that, but it is rather a poor substitute.

I don't know if I am not using them correctly, but the museums in Kensington are not as good as I was expecting. They are good buildings, though. And enough good things in them to justify having a look. For a good museum I'd go to the British Museum in Russell Square/Bloomsbury. There's plenty to see there. But no dinosaurs!

Over Here

2007-07-08T21:51:00.000Z

By chance I was just reading the stories of some Chinese immigrants to Liverpool. This is interesting to me for lots of reasons, particularly because I come from near Liverpool.

Still lots of people are emigrating from lots of different countries to lots of other countries. East London is still welcoming immigrants, like it has done for a long time, though you don't hear much Yiddish round there any more.

The thing is, even if you have lived in the same place all your life, you have got there from somewhere. Even if you think there is nothing before we are born, it is still somewhere else, somewhere not here, not now. So that's worth thinking about. Welcome!

The stories I read are nearer the bottom of the page which you can find here. It seems people had to work very hard.

Corporation

2007-07-05T22:47:00.000Z

Good heavens.

I really don't know what to say about this. I'm glad not all the notes are together, though. (There is a "rubato" in the main theme, but I'm not sure why it's in a samba rhythm - it's a minuet!)

Today's Picks

2007-07-03T22:00:00.000Z

It's JULY, it's RAINING every day, and I'm still wearing my COAT outside.

Other than that, here is today's choice of interesting materials for you:
1. The Cat Parade of Ypres (Kattenstoet)

A parade all about cats, possibly connected with the burning of witches, which isn't a very nice thing to do. It sounded good the first time I heard about it, but now I'm not so sure.

2. The Bicycle-Eating Tree

Now, it's an unlikely sort of thing, is a bicycle-eating tree. How do you explain, then, the fact that I've just found two of them? I think it just shows us that trees have secret sides we ought to think about a bit more...

The first tree is in Scotland.

The second is in Washington, U.S.A.

You know what? I'm sure there are lots more strange things in our world!

Portraits

2007-06-24T22:58:00.002Z

Here (click the word "here"!) are some quite good portraits to look at. They are by Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002).

Mostly I prefer portraits to be more natural, rather than posed, but these are good all the same. Especially with actors and people with "public personalities" it can be just as important to see their projected persona as to see their secret face. Still, I know which I find more valuable.