What are you reading now?

[Quijote]

Thank you, Mr Violin. You wrote :

Some very interesting examples are given, which I really can't reproduce without a way to easily post notation [...]

Yes, this is quite frustrating. Would it work if one were to scan the score page in question, save it as a PDF file, upload it to PhotoBucket (or whatever), then post it on the forum?

[Chris]

It would, though I don't have a scanner.

[Quijote]

[...] "Wagner has, in his orchestral language, increased to the ultimate the reach of his 'endless melody' by ceaseless phrase-linkages from one instrument to another. Bruckner did not follow his master Wagner in this respect, but, for the most part, lets one theme die away completely before a new one arises; Reger, on the other hand, with his motifs organized from small elements is, in phrasing, to be considered a disciple of Brahms."

This is one more example of the sort of nonsense that gets written about Bruckner, and it is annoying that it continues to be repeated uncritically.

[Quijote]

Chris has kindly provided a couple of ideas from the book he is currently reading. It is only fair that I do so, too. So, I give you here a quote from the opening pages of Adorno's essay Alienated Masterpiece : The Missa Solemnis.
Neutralization of culture - the words have the ring of a philosophical concept. They posit as a more or less general reflection that intellectual constructs have forfeited their intrinsic meanings because they have lost any possible relation to social praxis and have become [...] objects of pure observation, of mere contemplation. [...] No less than Beethoven's Missa Solemnis belongs to this category. To speak seriously of this work can mean nothing less than [...] to alienate it, to break through the aura of irrelevant worship which protectively surrounds it ...

[Quijote]

Esteban Buch, L'affaire Bomarzo. Opéra, perversion et dictature, Editions de l'Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, 2011)[*].
A curious account of an opera by Ginastera (with libretto by Manuel Mujica Lainez) that received full backing for its 1967 première mondiale in Washington from the argentine régime under General Ongania only to be censured for its première in Buenos Aires by the very same.
Enrique : Are you familiar with this story? Do you know the opera? Might you have any background information about the whole affair?
[*] As far as I know, this book exists only in Spanish and French.

[Quijote]

?Enrique, donde esta Vd.?

[Sorrano]

?Enrique, donde esta Vd.?

Has the opera ever been performed/recorded?

[Quijote]

Has the opera ever been performed/recorded?

Performed yes: its world première was in Washington 1967. I quickly checked on Google and there is a recording of it on YouTube. I must confess - shamefacedly - that I haven't yet listened to it. When I finish reading the book I promise I will !

[Quijote]

Sorry, forgot to post the link I found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUFmOAzZVgM

[Sorrano]

Sorry, forgot to post the link I found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUFmOAzZVgM

Thanks! I will have to check that out, too.

[Quijote]

Alfred Mann, The Study of Fugue. Reprint. Originally published: New York: Norton, 1965.
I might be teaching fugue next year, so I'm refreshing my 'skills' so to speak. Anyway, what's relevant here to the BRS is the section on Albrechtsberger's Gründliche Anweisung zur Komposition that gives examples of Beethoven's counterpoint exercises corrected or commented on by the former.

[MaryG]

Very interesting book, but unfortunately I don't have much time to read it to the end.

[Enrique]

Thanks, Philip, Sorrano, for reminding me I'm a member in BRS. I intend to make amends for this absence.

[Sorrano]

Thanks, Philip, Sorrano, for reminding me I'm a member in BRS. I intend to make amends for this absence.

I was wondering where you had gone. I've missed your interesting topics.

[Preston]

I have just started to read The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H.G. Wells. This is the first book I will ever have read in its entirety (that I can remember or am aware of) if I finish it. I have read a lot on the internet and read many parts from books - particularly about Beethoven (kind-of got on a Beethoven kick), but never really read a book in its entirety.

Anyway, I watched the last 30 minutes of the movie The Island of Dr. Moreau (the one made in 1996), but it was the ending lines that caught my attention and then the symbolism became clear. The symbolism and the last lines from the movie moved me so much that I instantly looked up the article on Dr. Moreau on Wikipedia.

I just want to say that it is symbolism that I have thought for quite sometime. For instance, one thing that was very sad, yet true, and moving (moving, in the sense that someone else thought and had written it so clearly) was about how Dr. Moreau had created a society for the beast-man based on proper manners and all of these rules. The thing that happened though was the animals eventually could not stand the rules anymore and started using their own natural instincts. The point there is very relative to humanity and our laws and what we are actually doing to people just like ourselves.

Anyway, it seems to have a lot of very serious symbolism, very deep and serious. And the good thing is that it is not a hard read. I have finished chapter 1 and will start on chapter 2 soon.

Also, because of the book, hence my new signature.