MaW’s Blog

Well what do I write? I don’t really feel like much has happened to write about, but then again I do feel that I should write something, at least to prove to all the Livejournal people that it is worth sticking their heads out of that particular little world to look at the rest of the Web from time to time. If only free LJ accounts acted as RSS aggregators…

But such issues aside, I do seem to be finding a lot of people on LJ lately including Ciry and Chili from NWTSweS, a great pleasure. I should have tracked them down a long time ago.

Supposedly I have a concert on Friday with the Society of Recorder Players. This is find and dandy, and I can actually play the music for a change (it’s tenor stuff and none of the tenor parts are particularly complicated — especially the tenor part for Country Gardens which, save for the occurrance of one dotted quaver, one semiquaver and one triplet, is so dull as to be difficult to practise. Unfortunately it is, as with many tenor parts, fairly important when you look at the overall sound of the piece).

Although I do moan about boring tenor parts, I am fairly grateful I’m not playing descant. Not only are descant parts frequently more complicated, but if you get something wrong… let’s just say everybody notices.

Now I need to get hold of someone from the SRP and find out what they tend to wear to concerts.

Soph posted a meme where one is requested to list seven songs that one is really into right now. My selection is likely to be quite different to hers… but I took a cue from her and allowed ’song’ to mean something instrumental. After all, if Soph can have a Rachmaninov piano concerto, then I can have Mozart.

So in no particular order, I present:

• Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto
• Lecken Mór - Lúnasa
• My Favourite Place - Kathryn Tickell and Corrina Hewat
• The Dreadful End of Marianna for Sorcery - Malinky
• Artificial - Martha Tilston
• The Tortoise and the Hare - Flook
• Underneath the Stars - Kate Rusby

In other news, I bought a tin whistle. Now I have to learn how to play it.

Today is the day for dancing for joy: I passed my grade 4 descant recorder exam with a merit! 127 points, which means only three from getting a distinction. I’m absolutely overjoyed and gobsmacked — I thought I’d pass, but I really didn’t think I’d get a merit. Wendy said she was sure I would, but I thought if I did it’d be by the thinnest of margins. Turns out that thin margin was the one between me and a distinction instead. If I’d just practised my scales more, I might have got that.

The recurring criticism was a lack of dynamic range, which is tricky to do on the recoder so I generally just don’t bother. I’m going to have to change that — an extra mark for each piece and in the sight reading could once more make the difference. Also, it’s nice to get nice comments from the examiner, and this set of comments was generally positive and all very helpful. I’m on top of the world!

My readers (yes all three of you) may have noticed a distinct lack of blogging lately. Things happened, I went a few places, saw a few films (_Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest_, and Superman Returns — both excellent), played the recorder some more, bought a new recorder even, and stressed a lot about my PhD.

It was to spare the Internet the latter that I didn’t post much in that time. Also at the moment I’m not entirely sure what I want to be using this for anymore, so things might be a little quiet for a while.

Then again, they might not! Why not come back next week and find out?

My final point is to note that it’s far too hot, and the place I live is too noisy. Mornings have not been a good time for me lately. I hate having to sleep until half past nine, but at the moment I’m just not getting enough rest because I can’t get to sleep early enough! Roll on autumn.

It didn’t work quite as well in the title, so I’ll put it here instead: what I actually want to talk about is people who don’t respect the sanctity of the cinema. It’s not a way I’ve really thought about it before, but it does make sense, my reaction when people are getting up and walking about and in and out all the time, talking to each other, giggling at things which have nothing to do with the film, playing with their mobile phones… my reaction is of horror and shock that people behave like this in this space which I feel is designated for a purpose, and the purpose is the watching of a film.

Not just the watching of the film, but the appreciation of it. The acceptance of its story, the suspension of disbelief (as far as the film itself allows that of course, some don’t!), the catharsis, the inevitable aural assault of the sound system that’s always rather too loud, and the endless stream of adverts which always seem to run for much longer in the cinema than they do on television.

Perhaps I could do without the last two, but I hope some sense of my point is getting through.

The film in which all this happened was Jet Li’s Fearless. It’s a big flashy martial arts film and it’s really rather good, but it’s clear they cut a lot out — more than an hour, I’m told, including everything with Michelle Yeoh in it. The result of this is that the plot takes some leaps in places which I don’t think all of the audience could follow, which might explain the restlessness. Although it might not — teenagers with mobiles are restless to start with these days, and nobody seemed to be able to decide where to sit.

There might be something about films in Mandarin with subtitles, too, but I’ll take that over dubbing any day.

So I mentioned a concert in the title. It was indeed a concert, and I went to help out as it was one in which I didn’t have to play. It was, it must be said, a concert at a much higher standard than I can currently play at. Musica Donum Dei is a group in which my recorder teacher plays. The programme was a nice selection of Telemann (my favourite, a suite for recorder and strings), Bach, Scarlatti (the usual stuff from Scarlatti — a very surprising harpsichord sonata) and Handel. Was a lovely day, and the cycle ride to Holme Pierrepont Hall is quite pleasant in good weather, especially once past Trent Bridge and out into increasingly rural settings.

Okay so it was only the one piece I mucked up, but…

1. Be nervous
2. Get distracted by another person misplacing their music
3. Repeatedly count crotchets as if they were minims during the difficult bits

What really irritates me is that I played it just fine in rehearsal.

Other than that, it was okay with just a finger-fumble in the second piece.