How to Listen to and Understand Great Music

I have never learned to love opera, but I may be beginning to do so.

Inspired by last month’s book group selection — Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music, which is, in part, about the life of a string quartet — I have eschewed my normal audiobooks in favor of Robert Greenberg’s Teaching Company course entitled How to Listen to and Understand Great Music.

The Teaching Company is an organization that provides outstanding college lectures on CD and DVD and other formats. To quote the company’s FAQ:

The Teaching Company brings engaging professors into your home or car through courses on DVD, CD, audio, and other formats. Since 1990, great teachers from the Ivy League, Stanford, Georgetown, and other leading colleges and universities have crafted two hundred courses for lifelong learners. We provide the adventure of learning without the homework or exams.

How to Listen to and Understand Great Music is both a music appreciation course and a music history course. It is long — forty-eight lectures of forty-five minutes each — but I love it. Greenberg is passionate about his material, and this enthusiasm is contagious. The course touches on early music, on the music of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance. It delves into the Baroque Era, the Classical Era, and — my favorite — the Romantic Era. Tomorrow I will begin the last section, which covers music of the twentieth century.

A course like this allows the instructor to cherry-pick. Greenberg not only focuses his lectures on the best compositions (from the best composers) throughout history, but he also selects some of the finest recordings. The recording he uses for Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” is bright and vibrant. In his choice for Beethoven’s fifth symphony, each instrument sounds marvelous and clear; I thrill to the deep thrum of the cellos.

It is Greenberg’s discussions of opera that have opened my mind. Opera has always seemed to me a pursuit for the wealthy. I have viewed it as the ultimate in highbrow entertainment. Apparently, this has not always been the case. In fact, it’s the opposite of what once was true. Originally, opera was music for the masses. Before the era of radio and television and motion pictures (and the internet), opera was the ultimate popular entertainment, a position it held for three hundred years.

During his lectures, Greenberg highlights an opera or two from each compositional period. From the early Baroque, for example, he features Henry Purcell‘s Dido and Aeneas. In particular, he discusses the well-known aria, “When I am laid in earth” (a.k.a “Dido’s Lament”). I say “well-known”, but I had never heard of it. What a shame. Listen and weep at its beauty. (Note: this is not the recording featured in the course.)

(Greenberg does not discuss Mozart’s The Magic Flute, but since Kris loves the Queen of the Night’s aria (“Die Höle Rach”), and since I have an mp3 handy, I’ll post it. I recently watched The Magic Flute on Discovery HD‘s Friday night opera lineup. This aria, in the context of the show, kicked major ass. The Queen of the Night is pissed. She gives her daughter a dagger and commands her to kill Sarastro, the Priest of the Sun.)

From the Romantic Era, the course includes “Una Voce Poco Fa” from Rossini‘s The Barber of Seville. Here I’ve posted tracks eight and nine from Greenberg’s lecture. Track eight features one recording of the bulk of the aria. Track nine features the full aria (including the introductory bits). Both tracks include some of Greenberg’s lecture.

The highlight of the course so far (for me, anyhow) has been The Wolf’s Glen scene from Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber. Drawn from a German opera of the Romantic Era, this music sounds absolutely modern. It is raw and powerful. It is dark and fantastic. It is filled with eerie malevolence. It is amazing. I listened to it on the drive to work today and it gave me chills not once, not twice, but three times. (No, the chills were not from the frozen air outside.) This is an astounding piece of work and I am shocked that I’ve not heard it before. The scene lasts for sixteen minutes, which is a long time, I know, but it’s worth listening to if you have the chance. The setup:

Kaspar has sold himself to the devil (who, in this case, takes the form of the wild huntsman named Zamiel). Kaspar’s time is running out. In order to gain more time, he plans to trade the life of his friend, Max. Kaspar brings Max to the Wolf’s Glen and together they mold seven magic bullets. The first six will go true to their mark, but the seventh will go where Zamiel wills it.

If this is opera, then sign me up. I want more. I guarantee I’ll be purchasing another Greenberg course, How to Listen to and Understand Opera.

Courses from The Teaching Company are expensive; they cost several hundred dollars on CD. However (and this is important), at least once every year, each course is marked down significantly. A $500 course like this one, for example, might be marked down to $140. I know that $140 for a college lecture series on CD might still seem expensive, but I believe this one has been worth every penny.

Other courses I have purchased include: Soul and the City: Art, Literature, and Urban Living; Biology and Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of Individuality; The Roots of Human Behavior; The History of the English Language; and The Iliad of Homer. Earlier this year, another Metafilter reader noted my interest in Teaching Company lectures and shipped me a boatload of courses on history and philosophy. (Thanks, Lee!) I’ve managed to convert most of these from audiotape to mp3, and they’re on my iPod, ready to be audited.

I would love to share these lectures with you. Because they’re expensive, and because they’re good, I want them to get as much use as possible. If you have the time and the interest, please let me know. I will loan you whichever course suits your taste. Maybe you, too, will learn to love opera!

The Great Book Purge

“Who are you and what have you done with my husband?” — Kris

I’ve been quiet around here lately, but that’s a good thing. I’m tidying the nooks and crannies of my life. For example:

We have many bookcases with many shelves. To be precise, we have eighty-five bookshelves of about thirty inches each. That’s approximately 2550 inches of books, or about 213 feet. That’s a hell of a lot of books.

The recent change in my mental outlook has allowed me to realize that I don’t need to possess as many books as I once did. It used to be that I felt the urge to own any book that looked remotely interesting. No longer. Nowadays I’m more interested in purchasing high-quality copies of books that I already love or want to treasure. Girl With a Golden Earring? A low-quality book group selection that I certainly don’t need to keep. Moby Dick with woodcut illustrations? A keeper! Most books I can find at the public library.

Spurred by Live Simple, I’ve scoured our bookshelves in an attempt to free space. To do this, I deliberately shut off my sentimental faculties. “But that was a gift from Joel! But that was a book that I read when I first met Kris! But that was my favorite book when I was twelve!” So what? If it’s not a book that I want to re-read or to keep as reference then I set it aside to purge. Kris vetoed some of my choices, and I kept books that I knew would be difficult to replace (The Dune Encyclopedia is highly collectible and out of print), but to the extent that I could, I was ruthless in my culling. As a result I’ve purged hundreds of books. (This sounds impressive, but really it only freed about twelve shelves of space. I still have seventy-three shelves filled with books.)

The Great Book Purge is but one example of the recent changes in my life. There are others, and they’re all good. I am happy with this place, this new me that I’ve found.

Today was a big day at Rosings Park, a day we’ve awaited with much anticipation. It was the day of the New Range. Exactly at noon, we took receipt of a brand new Maytag Gemini Precision Touch 750 gas double-oven range. Good-bye, old range, with your unpredictable heating and igniters that didn’t work; hello, new range, with your continuous grates and two separate ovens!

After the range was installed, and I had tested it with a can of bean-with-bacon soup, I headed out to purchase a light fixture for the study. As you may recall, I’ve been coveting a specific art deco slipper-shade lamp from Rejuvenation.

Alas, dear light fixture, I want you NOW

I wasn’t able to fulfill my dream today, however; the lamp is a special-order. Dejected, I drove home and purged the encyclopedias.

Overrated

Somebody on AskMetafilter recently wondered “What are some of the most over-rated movies you’ve ever seen?” Though, as you might expect, the discussion was overflowing with subjectivity, there were also some interesting observations. One commenter noted that it’s possible for a film be both good and overrated, as in those well-reviewed small art films that don’t lend themselves to mass appeal. More often, however, it is the over-hyped blockbusters of mediocre quality that seem to garner more acclaim than their modest pretensions can bear.

The AskMe commenters considered Forrest Gump the most over-rated film they’d seen. The Lord of the Rings trilogy took second place, and there was a three-way tie for third between Napoleon Dynamite, Titanic, and the most recent Star Wars trilogy.

I noted that recent years have often seen the Oscar for best picture go to overhyped, overrated films in lieu of films of greater merit. I make a point of seeing all the Best Picture nominees each year. Each of the following struck me as overrated and undeserving: Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, The Return of the King (aka Peter Jackson’s The Long Goodbye).

This trend is not new, however. Last night, Kris and I watched an overrated film from 1973. How The Sting managed to win eight Oscars (including Best Picture over The Exorcist) and rake in a pile of dough is beyond me.

The Sting was released when I was four years old. All I can remember of it is how for a time the film’s theme song — Scott Joplin’s piano rag “The Entertainer” — seemed to be everywhere. Over the past thirty-two years, I’ve picked up something of the plot, but until last night I had never seen the film.

The film is set in 1936 Chicago, at the height of The Depression. The prohibition-era gangsters are gone, but their legacy lives on in small-time hoods and grifters, and in organized dens of iniquity throughout the city. One of these small-time players is Johnny Hooker. When one of his scams accidentally nets $10,000 he finds himself playing for even bigger stakes. His partner is killed, so he seeks the help of Henry Gondorff, a big-time con artist. Together, they orchestrate an elaborate revenge.

The film is stylish, but its style seems a sort of melange of different early twentieth century eras. The score is all ragtime piano, music that was popular in the late 1890s and early 1900s, not in 1936. (That’s like using big band music for a film set during the 1970s.) The costumes look more 1920s than the 1930s.

The sets also contribute to this patchwork quality. Many of the interior shots were shot on soundstage. (Even the golf scene was shot on a sound stage.) Most of the exterior scenes make obvious use of a studio backlot. I don’t mind soundstages and backlots, but it’s nice when they’re less obtrusive.

The film has other problems. There’s a subplot with a sort-of-love-interest that makes little sense and serves no purpose. It ought to have been excised from the script. The director isn’t content to cut between scenes, but uses an array of distracting wipes. This works for George Lucas in his Star Wars films, but it doesn’t work here. Because of the extensive use of sound stages and back lots, the entire movie has a stage-y feel, as if adapted from a play. (Kris and I both noted this independently of each other.) I got the impression that Robert Redford (as Johnny Hooker) was supposed to be playing a young punk in this film, somebody maybe 21-years-old, yet at the time the film was made he was 35- years-old and he looks it.

Though The Sting is likable enough, it’s ultimately forgettable popcorn fluff. There’s nothing there. It left me with a sort of empty feeling. “Is that all there is?” I asked kris when it was finished, but she only shrugged. It’s not that the film is bad; it just isn’t good. It feels like average entertainment. Why is it so revered? To me, it’s just another overrated movie.

Helpless

Simon is sick or hurt, and his inability to communicate his ailment is tearing me apart.

Parents talk about how frustrating it is, how heartbreaking it is, to not be able to help an ailing infant, and I want to tell them, “It’s the same way with cats,” but I never do. They wouldn’t understand. They’d think I’m trivializing their child’s problems, when actually I’m sympathizing with them.

Simon seemed fine Sunday morning, but by mid-afternoon something was wrong. He was sitting on the porch, on a bench, and I could tell merely from looking that he was unhappy. I went outside to pet him, and he didn’t move. He didn’t say a thing. I picked him up and he whimpered a sad little kitty whimper. (Or, in his case, a sad BIG kitty whimper.)

I carried him inside and put him on his chair. He stayed there all evening, never moving. When we went to console him, he growl/whimpered at us. He wouldn’t take food. He wouldn’t take water. He did get up at one point to use the litter box, which was something of a relief. Several years ago, he had a urinary tract infection, and I was afraid that had returned. I’m pleased to report that he pissed long and strong, just like a horse. But then he went back to his chair without stopping for a snack.

This morning, he was either better or worse, I cannot tell. He didn’t whimper when I stroked him, but just sat there, a dull expression on his face.

Poor Simon.

I don’t know what is the matter. He is not limping, but it almost seems like he’s sore when I touch certain parts of his body. Was he bitten by something? Did he get stung? Did somebody kick him? Is he sick?

If only cats could speak.

Sssssssssssssnake!

I just got back from a walk with Jason. On the way, I picked a snake up from the road. It seemed stunned when I found it, as if it had just been run over (an SUV had drive past a couple minutes earlier). I haven’t examined it closely, but it seems to have a broken spine a couple inches up from the base of its tail.

It’s a small snake, maybe a foot long, and actually rather pretty: dark brownish with two thin yellowish stripes down the side of its body. I’m glad I was wearing my gloves, though, because it stinks vaguely of cat shit.

Jason said that Maren is obsessed with snakes and death and things of that sort. “She’s a four-year-old goth,” I told him. “I’m going to patch up this snake and give it to her.”

I don’t know if this snake can be patched up, though. It rested in my hands for most of the walk, but toward the end it became active, trying to slither away. I suppose I ought to let it free for nature to do as nature will, but I sort of miss having a snake. (We had Sanderling, Kris’ childhood snake, for a decade before it died about five years ago.) Snakes are rather unresponsive pets, but they’re fun. They’re exotic. Kids love them.

Toto loved Sanderling. We kept him in a glass aquarium with a wire screen for a lid. Toto would perch on the wire screen for hours, staring down at the snake, watching him crawl around. Sometimes she would try to grab the snake through the glass. She never succeeded. I’ll bet Nemo would love to see a snake.

I’ve placed my new snake in a bucket on the back porch and covered it with grass. If it has not escaped by the time I leave for home, I’ll try to transport it in the car. I wonder if we still have that old pink plastic animal carrier at home. The snake has to have someplace to live.

And what would one feed a snake this small? Sanderling was large enough to consume small rodents, which was always a gruesome sight, but I suppose this sort of snake eats crickets and the like.

Autumn at Rosings Park

You’d think that autumn would see a decrease in wildlife activity in our yard, but sometimes it seems the opposite is true.

Filbert, the world’s fattest squirrel, is convinced that he should be able to snatch seeds from the feeder on the dogwoods. Filbert leaps onto the screen and scrambles around, looking for a hole that might be slightly larger than the others. Then he r-e-a-c-h-e-s inside with his little squirrely arm, trying to grab the goodies.

Filbert the Squirrel is certain that these seeds would be mighty tasty.

He is not successful.

The jays scold Filbert. “We can’t even get to that food,” they seem to say. “It’s for the little birds.” The little birds are none to happy with their rodent friend, either. While he’s dangling from the feeder, they’re unable to eat.

Meanwhile, there’s trouble at one of the birdbaths. The male flicker has been fluffing and flopping for several minutes, and a certain robin thinks that it’s about time she got a turn. “Get out. Get out,” she calls, and she makes several attempts to share the basin with him.

Though it’s difficult to make out in this photo, the robin is flying up to share the bath with the male flicker.
The female flicker is waiting patiently on the ground.

Unbeknownst to the robins and flickers and squirrels, there’s another wild creature about. Oreo, the cat from next door, is lurking under the hydrangea. While the robin and flicker are arguing over rights to the birdbath, Oreo makes a charge at them. He doesn’t even come close.

Poor Simon would love to be outside, too — he longs to taste the blood of a squirrel again — but his parents are just too mean. He can do nothing but sit on the kitchen counter and stare at the action.

Alright, I admit it -- this is a year-old photo taken from a different location, but come on: it suits my needs.

Simon thinks that we are unfair to cats.

Don’t worry, Simon: spring will be here soon.

Natural Sleep, and First Frost

“I’m trying something new,” I told Kris last night as we were getting ready for bed. “I’m taking Sabino’s approach to sleep.”

“What’s that?” she asked, frowning.

“Well, Kim and Sabino don’t use an alarm clock. They rise when they wake up naturally.” She furrowed her brow, full of doubt. “It works! Sabino’s never late to the office. I didn’t set my alarm last night. I just got up when I woke at 5:15.”

Kris did not reply, but turned over to fall asleep.

As I do every night, I checked the time before I closed my eyes: 10:45. As I do every night, I computed my expected wakeup time based on my typical sleep cycle: 4:45 or 6:15. “Hm,” I thought. “Maybe I should stay up another half hour so that I wake at 5:15.” My normal wake-up time is 5:30, but I’m okay getting up fifteen minutes earlier or later.

I dreamed of cats from outer space, cats with unspeakable powers. I slept well.

I woke at 4:48 and thought, “Maybe I’d better get up now. If I go back to sleep, Kris’ alarm will wake me in the middle of my sleep cycle, and then I’ll be tired the rest of the day.”

I didn’t get up. I fell back asleep. I dreamed of a church service at which Pam and I were arguing together against Joel and Kris regarding an esoteric point of Catholic dogma. Pam and I won the debate, of course, and celebrated with an asparagus pie.

I woke again to discover Toto sitting in front of the clock. “Move,” I said, pushing the whiny blob of black fur aside. “Uh-oh,” I said, elbowing Kris. “I guess maybe Sabino’s sleep method isn’t the best for us. It’s 6:17.”

6:17! While this was exactly the time I had expected to wake, it was also three minutes before I needed to leave in order to be on time for work. “I guess you forgot to set your alarm,” I said. Kris muttered something under her breath and stumbled downstairs for her shower.

On Monday night at our football gathering, some of the older kids played outside on Ron and Kara’s deck. “It’s icy,” they said when they came in for dessert.

“No it’s not,” the adults told them. We knew that we’d just had a rainstorm a couple hours ago, and that a heavy layer of cloud cover meant that temperatures wouldn’t drop significantly. Besides, there were no freezing temperatures in the forecast.

“Yes it is,” said Harrison, but we ignored him.

After dessert, I went outside to play a little with the boys. They were taking turns sliding across the icy deck. “Well I’ll be darned,” I thought. “It is icy.” I took a turn skooching my shoes across the slick spots. Before I went back inside, I looked around the yard for other signs of freezing. There were none. Somehow an isolated patch of ice had formed on Ron and Kara’s deck. There were no signs of frost on the drive home, either, though the sky was completely clear.

On Tuesday morning, however, it had frozen. The grass wasn’t too crunchy, but the car windows were frosted. Here at the shop, the thermometer read -2.8 degrees centigrade. I didn’t expect frost this morning, either, and I didn’t find any until I started the car. Though the other windows were fine, the front windshield had a thin layer of the stuff.

The first frost to me means winter is approaching, and so it is. The rains have come. Nights are cold. Darkness reigns supreme.

Voluntary Addiction

I’ve begun playing World of Warcraft again.

My return to the game has led me to wonder: do most people struggle with low-level addictions, or is there actually a type of addictive personality? I don’t just mean addictions to drugs or tobacco or alcohol, but addictions to little things: coffee, chocolate, ice cream, and computer games. How common are these small compulsions? Or are there simply People Like Me who are more susceptible to addictions than normal folk?

My life has been filled with addictions since boyhood. What are collections if not manifestations of addiction? My web-surfing? That’s a sort of a addiction. My collection of comics? That’s also an addiction. My library of books? That’s a rather large addiction!

Does it take a special personality to succumb to addiction, or does everyone suffer from these compulsions, if only to a small extent? I’m curious.

You may recall that I became addicted to World of Warcraft earlier this year, spending fully ten percent of my life playing it between last November 23rd and April 15th. At the height of my addiction, I spent twenty percent of my life in game: four or five hours every day.

As may be expected, I’m wary about playing again. Addiction may rear its ugly head once more. The World of Warcraft experience is so fun, so immersive, that even six months after having quit the game cold turkey, I found myself dreaming of its virtual environments. I longed to roam the savannah and the jungle and the mountains defeating gnolls and the like. So I’m giving it a chance.

I have been back in-game for ten days now, and have been pleased with my restraint. I have placed limits on myself. I have a kitchen timer by my side, and it serves as a constant reminder not to become swept up in the game. I stop playing after designated periods of time. I spend days between each play session. I don’t do “just one more thing” before logging off for the night.

I am exercising moderation.

My goal is to limit play to between seven and ten hours a week. This may seem like a lot, but an ancillary goal is to take time from other wasteful activities rather than from those things that are important. So long as I trade web-surfing time or comic-book-reading time for World of Warcraft-time, things are fine.

It’s been great fun to start a new character on a role-playing server, adventuring with both Joel and Scott, as their time allows. I do not regret this decision.

Yet.

Now that I’ve managed to stabilize my weblog, I’m gradually bringing others back on-line. My brother Jeff returned last week, and the Mirons made a new post over the weekend. Welcome back!

(And stay tuned for the debut of Amy Jo’s weblog…)

Messenger

It’s Thursday afternoon and I’m driving home from work. I’m a little blue: I’m tired from lack of sleep, I’m sick, I feel fat. My mental energy is sapped. I am a mass of melancholia. As I enter the last straight stretch before Oregon City, I glance to my left at the open water of the Willamette.

There, in the center of the riverway, is a bird (a duck? a goose?), flying parallel to the road and at exactly my velocity. The bird is skimming the river. Its flight is an arrow. From time-to-time a wingbeat grazes the surface of the water, scattering flecks of white. We travel in tandem at fifty-three miles per hour, the bird slightly ahead of my car. We race past the trailer park, the motel, the marina. For more than a minute, we seem to be joined by a fixed but invisible cable.

It is a thing of wonder. A thing of beauty.

It is exhilarating.

When I go over the hill and enter Canemah, I am no longer blue.

I Heart My C-PAP Machine

Since July 27th, I’ve been using a C-PAP machine to cope with sleep apnea. I’ve used it every night, but have been disappointed because my quality of sleep hasn’t improved as markedly as I’d hoped. “What would happen if I stopped using the C-PAP machine?” I’ve wondered. Last night I got the answer.

I’m still sick, but now the illness has spread beyond my throat. My sinuses are stuffy. Since the C-PAP machine requires the user to breathe through the nose, it’s impossible to use when one has a cold. I slept without it last night for the first time in three months. This morning, I’m exhausted.

Here’s how a typical night works when I use the C-PAP machine:

I take between one and three mg of melatonin a half an hour before bed.
When I’m ready to fall asleep, I strap on the breathing mask. I fall asleep within a couple of minutes.
I sleep soundly for most of the night. Occasionally I wake because the mask has slipped and is leaking air. Else, I wake maybe once each night.
About once every couple weeks I have to get out of bed to go to the bathroom.
When I wake in the morning, I’m not exactly refreshed, but I feel okay. I certainly don’t need naps during the day.

Here’s how I slept last night:

I took three mg of melatonin at bedtime.
It took a while to fall asleep, but I was out by 10:15.
I woke at 11:45.
I woke at 1:15 and had to go to the bathroom.
I woke at 2:45.
I woke at 3:45.
I woke at 4:15 and had to go to the bathroom.
I woke at 4:45.
I woke at 5:15.
When I got out of bed at 5:30, I was exhausted. I’m still exhausted.

Last night is typical of my sleep pattern before I got the C-PAP machine. It seems that the time and expense have been worth it after all. I’m generally not as wholly rested in the morning as I ought to be (this could be improved by getting an extra half hour of sleep, I think), but at least I don’t have to take naps during the day. There’s no question that I’m going to have to catch an hour of sleep at some point today. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. I need to drive to Salem and back shortly; that’s going to be a challenge.