Friday 30th November - Busy times ahead

   James MacMillan's   'Miserere' That's the music for today.

Today is not the last day before Advent. It is the last day before Advent Calendars. NOT the same thing.

So tomorrow I will light the first tealight,
and the Advent candle,
and investigate the first drawer of my Advent calendar,
and take a decoration from the pocket on the cloth Advent calendar to hang on the patchwork tree, and click on the first bauble on my Jacquie Lawson computer Advent calendar,
and read the first entry in my 'Art of Advent' book,
and the first entry in my 'Haphazard by Starlight' book.

And I will try and do this every day for as long as the calendars, and the chapters in the books last - that's 24th, or 25th of December, or Epiphany in January next year.

That's not including trying to follow Dame Catherine's advice - which luckily doesn't start until Advent, which is Sunday 2nd;

read the scripture passages for each day (in my little old prayer book - a Confirmation Present from my Godfather),
and spend a few minutes in prayer
and find time for silence
and be kind to people
and not get too cheesed off when I don't manage to do all these things!

There won't be any time left in the day for anything else!

Thursday 29th November - The End Is Nigh

The end of National Blog Promotion whatsit thingy is what I'm talking about. Only one more post to go.....

Today's music - I haven't heard it yet as the television is on and I'm not sure if Monteverdi opera and adverts for men's shavers go together. They are two very different styles of music.

So I will have to wait for a suitable moment to listen to the duet 'Pur ti miro' - 'I gaze at you' from The Coronation of Poppea by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). It seems that back in Ancient Rome (AD65) Nero, the emporer, is married to Octavia but in love with Poppea, who is engaged to Otho who is beloved of Drusilla. It is all going to end in tears, I reckon.

Aha, the TV has been switched off - I'm listening to this version, sung beautifully by Danielle De Niese (soprano) as Poppea in a gold sequinned, strapless, drapey dress, and Philippe Jaroussky as Nerone, (counter-tenor) in another gold-sequinned, mercifully not strapless, drapey dress. The duet is so lovely I'm going to listen to it again.

I had my lesson observation this afternoon. It went well - what a relief. Glad that's over. I had to prepare three 'proper' lesson plans because of  all the delays and rescheduling -  very wearing. My usual efforts are handwritten jottings - the same sorts of words, but not organised into boxes and bold and italic type.

What else? This book arrived in the post; a present from a member of the family.



It is one I have had my eye on since I dipped into it at a friend's house a year or so ago. I have managed to read just the introduction and no more.

'Haphazard by starlight' is a quote from a poem by U A Fanthorpe;

U.A. Fanthorpe (born 1929)

BC:AD
This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.
This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.
This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

Just imagine composing these words

'Walked haphazard by starlight straight into the kingdom of heaven'.

I hope U A Fanthorpe was pleased with herself; this phrase is giving me a lot of pleasure.

Ah well. Time to walk haphazard by electric light straight up the stairs to bed. To sleep, perchance to dream. Sweet dreams, I hope.

from Spooky Pianotime (I'm teaching this to a pupil at the moment)

Although the Tchaikovsky piece is Much Sweeter

Wednesday 28th November - Advent begins to begin

Once my birthday has happened, I really start thinking about Advent, and then Christmas.

Each year I try and make time for a bit more Christian spirituality in Advent to balance the practical preparations for Christmas. This year I have bought a book (or rather downloaded it) called Art in Advent which takes a picture as a starting point for a daily meditation. I have refrained from reading too much in advance; just enough to see that the first picture is this;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ancient_of_Days

 by William Blake, called 'The Ancient of Days'. Interestingly, wikipedia notes that the image was used for the cover of Stephen hawking's book 'And God Created the Integers'




I follow the blog written by a Benedictine called Dame Catherine Wybourne. Today she gives 5 suggestions to follow in Advent;

Summarised, they are

1. Read the daily lessons set for the Mass (or Eucharist)
2. Try and find a few minutes every day for prayer
3. Try and find some silence each day
4. Keep it simple, and keep it kind 
5. Try not to worry about all the commercialism, or meeting the demands of everyone. A smile or some kind words can be a precious gift to share. 

I reckon I can 'try', starting on Sunday 2nd December, the first Sunday in Advent - and I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't succeed.

Less 'spiritually', I will enjoy opening the little doors in my wooden Advent calendar (a birthday present from several years ago), lighting the tealights and the advent candles I have bought, and hanging the decorations of the cloth calendar I made.

The Tree will be going up this weekend, or more likely next weekend. Good and Early!

Meanwhile, right now, I am celebrating finishing a course of antibiotics by having a glass of ginger wine and some palmiers.

I have already listened to some of today's music from the 'Year of Wonder' book;
Chopin Nocturne in D flat major. I didn't like the first version I listened to, but this Barenboim one suits me better. I have been learning this one in B flat minor, but I've a long way to go. Here's Barenboim again...

Monday 27th November - It was a dark and stormy afternoon

By half past three, when I looked out of the little room where I had been teaching all day, it seemed like it was already dark. The sky was overcast, and it was raining, and all definitely dusk-like.

I've discovered how to crash my laptop. Put it in my back-pack in such a way that it manages to press down the volume and on-off control at the same time. Luckily, he has also discovered how to recover it from it's unhappy state. So that's all right then.

Here's today's music - I was amused to find it is 'Hymn to the Dawn' (bearing in mid how dark the evening was) from 'Choral Dreams from the Rig Veda' by Gustav Holst. Only three minutes long. Rather good.

Monday 26th November - A Very Important Day

Hooray! I've had a pretty good day today; lots of cards, happy birthday texts, presents, steak, cake...

and that's on top of an early birthday at the weekend (cards, present) and a birthday treat this coming weekend (meal out).  Thank you everyone.

I'm looking forward to Advent too; I've done my Advent tea-lights, extracted the wooden Advent calendars from the not-in-the-loft-with-the-other-Christmas-things place (yes, we've made That Mistake plenty of times before!) and loaded the Jacquie Lawson Advent calendar (a birthday present from Canada) onto the computer;

This is the icon that sits on the desktop screen, with the flakes of snow gently twirling around. I have resisted opening up the scene (so far).

I did have a sneak preview of the music for today. It is by Steve Reich, an American minimalist composer. I am delighted that this is the choice for my birthday. I have come across Steve Reich's music in only two contexts, both of which made a big impression on me. Once wa in my first few weeks at university; somewhere I still have a copy of the excerpt of his 'Clapping Music' which we struggled with in a seminar.

Here's score;

https://musescore.com/user/28073984/scores/5067795

It is a pretty straightforward idea; each numbered section is played twice. Clapper 1 (top line) keeps the same pattern through out, but Clapper 2 shifts their pattern by one count at the beginning of each section. It was composed in 1972; we were trying to perform it in 1975 - talk about 'Early Adopters'!

The second piece of Steve Reich's music I encountered is called 'Different Trains'. A short recording was included in the resources for a music scheme I was using when teaching back in about 2001. Again, it is a surprisingly modern inclusion, as it was composed in 1990.

Here's wikipedia describing this;

Different Trains (1988), for string quartet and tape, uses recorded speech, as in his earlier works, but this time as a melodic rather than a rhythmic element. In Different Trains, Reich compares and contrasts his childhood memories of his train journeys between New York and California in 1939–1941 with the very different trains being used to transport contemporaneous European children to their deaths under Nazi rule. The Kronos Quartet recording of Different Trains was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in 1990. The composition was described by Richard Taruskin as "the only adequate musical response—one of the few adequate artistic responses in any medium—to the Holocaust", and he credited the piece with earning Reich a place among the great composers of the 20th century.^[22]



Anyway, back to today's music; Steve Reichs 'Music for Pieces of Wood'. I was mesmerised; wonderful. This 'Year of Wonder' wander through November has been an unexpected source of pleasure. Here's a graphic score version, using electronic sounds which makes everything clear. Sort of.

Sunday 25th November - None-day

Last week was pretty busy, and I was glad of the opportunity for a lazy day today. Too lazy to even play with my pre-birthday present;



not just an ordinary every-day saxoflute, but the Super Saxoflute Builder Kit! Weird and wonderful.

I finished reading my book, and spent some time pondering why I found it rather unsatisfying. I think it is the writing style - not enough time given to describing the characters and the locations, too busy getting on with the plot. I'll go back to reading Jane Austen's 'Northanger Abbey' for a while now. The hardback copy I found in my bookshelves is going on the charity pile as I cannot bear the soppy illustrations. Somehow the faces of the people, and the way their clothes are portrayed, seems to be out of phase with the 1800s as I imagine them. My kindle copy doesn't have any pictures, so I am spared that irritation.

So what else did I accomplish today? Having a bath, getting dressed, watering the houseplants, knitting a bit more of the multicoloured scarf, visiting my father...

ordering some music, and a few other bits and pieces....

yup. that's about it.

Tomorrow I'll be back at work, teaching, and I'll also be a whole year older.

Music; Barber's Adagio for Strings, composed when he was only 26 years old.

This is the original version, composed for string quartet,

and quite different to the orchestral version. He used it again, for a choral setting of the Agnus Dei.