Continuing travails

First, I remembered that I forgot to tell you about the late-night Prom I went to on Wednesday. London Sinfonietta playing Weill's Kleine Dreigroschenmusik and Luciano Berio's Coro, starting at 10pm to a sadly more-than-half-empty hall. The Weill was fine, but the Berio was the meat of the evening. Random thoughts: (1) It is a work that totally depends on live performance. On record the idea of forty independant voices screaming at you would just be a mess. When you can see them, the effect is very different -- and in a way scarier. (2) It was interesting to see this immediately after visiting the Musicologist in Berlin Known to Some of You, who has thought in a more sophistoicated way about the dramaturgy and political potential of the chorus than perhaps anyone else in the world. And Berio very self-consciously wants Coro to be a disquisition on the dramaturgy (in a sense) and political potential (in several senses) of the chorus. I think Berio in the end fails to pull this off, but it raises questions... (3) The "folk song" stuff in Coro is dumb, and borderlne offensive. (4) There was one mezzo in the ensemble who knew how to do a real Berberian impersonation. She should have given lessons to the others.

Also that night I was standing by someone I'm pretty certain was someone famous. An old old man. An American who's lived in Britain for years. He looked... famous. Anyway his friend came up to him -- and I feel completely justified in eavesdropping, since his friend was practically stepping on me at the time -- and says "so we just got back from Slovenia! We were visiting our friend Vinko! You know him, right? Vinko Globokar? Yeah, he's divorcing his second wife and moving back to Paris. Well, we all knew his second marriage wasn't going to work out, ever since he left his first wife to be with her. They've always had problems." Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I am so in the know... Comme je suis dans le vent...

Okay, back in my real life, I took the laptop in to get fixed. Of course, when I showed it to the guy (that is, to the genius) the computer was just fine. It started up as normal. I looked like an idiot. I'm so, so sure that the problem is the same as it was last time this happened. But the ngihtmare scenario now is that, after 10 days, the repair people will declare that nothing is wrong and give it back to me, at which point I will have to turn right around and give it back to them.

Anyway, I've already bought a bunch of new A4 notebooks. I'm gonna be so old-school scholar for the next two weeks. Kickin' it Handschrift stylee!

Excitable Iberian teenagers are being rowdy in the internat cafe right now.

Did you all see my Stockhausen post? The Musicologist Known to Some of You said to me recently, "I've discovered a sucessful teaching strategy. When I have to teach something , rather than figure out something to say about it, I look in the Oxford History of Western Music, and just say whatever RT says. Works every time!"

Tonight: Anne Sofie von Otter.