Breaking down the moonlight

The "Moonlight Sonata" looks difficult on the page, but its difficulty has more to do with its musical notation than with its execution on the keyboard. In other words, it presents a problem of information rather than one of playing. My approach to learning it, then, is to decipher the score step by step, beginning with the left hand part. This part consists almost entirely of octaves, so perceiving this fact simplifies the process almost immediately: there is only one note to learn for each chord, not two. The next simplification comes in realizing that Beethoven uses only certain notes, mostly C#, G#, and F#, the I, V, and IV of the key of the piece. Another apparent difficulty is with enharmonics: instead of writing C natural, he writes B#; there are also some double sharps. These are difficult to sight-read, but not difficult to decipher more slowly. A similar process will work for the treble part, which is almost entirely ascending arpeggiated chords of three notes. The process will consist of systematically figuring out what the chords are.

***

The above paragraph is an exercise: I wanted to write a paragraph about something that I know, in a limited time frame, in the way suggested by Thomas Basbøll.  This took me 13 minutes. Of course, I could edit it for style: the repetition of difficult is not very elegant, but it is not at all a "shitty first draft."

You ought to be able to write clearly and basically about something you know. That is basic competence. To get to the next level, of stylistic elegance, you can simply revise your first, competent draft.

happiness

Music Therapy

I don't play music for therapy, but there are certain effects. When I play Mompou's Música Callada, it is a meditative feeling. When I improvise over Bemsha Swing, I can explore seemingly endless possibilities. Beethoven feels a certain way different from all of these.

Classical*

I am playing some Beethoven sonatas. One is #20 in G major. Relatively simple, and with only two movements. The other is #14 in C# minor, known as the "Moonlight." It is more difficult, and the final movement, the presto, is way beyond me. I have learned about half a page of the first, most famous movement. The second movement does not look like it will be beyond my reach.

Anyway, I've found that my relation to the classical style has changed when I can play it myself. I've never really had a personal relationship with this music before. My previous interest was mostly in string quartets by Haydn and Mozart, but I don't play those instruments so it was a listening interest, which is quite different. The sonata 20 is more Mozart like than like Beethoven's other music. I find I can express that lightness and grace and it is a wonderful feeling. I love the parts that are "just" scales going up and down, or repeated arpeggios. They are deeply calming. There are turbulent moments, but turbulence is temporary. The therapeutic effect is a different one than I have with Mompou, given the difference in their styles.  

*[I am thinking here of classical music as music of the period from Haydn to Beethoven, as opposed to baroque or romantic musics coming before or after.]

Fake bad poetry

My bad poetry is not really, bad, but a carefully modulated variety of parody. It is impossible to write bad poetry on purpose, because the result will be a parody, not a genuinely bad poem. Because the parody can be modulated, I can also sneak in things that are deliberately "good."

Today, I thought up the beginning of a poem:

I went to live among stupid and humorless people
In a place far from mountains and sea

I was an arrogant stranger among them
They brought me fruit...  

So you see everything depends on keeping the tone at the exactly correct temperature. The poem can go anywhere from there. Each line has to follow the previous one and be both surprising and inevitable, in some way.

The speaker refracts some of my experience but is never me, exactly. In genuinely bad poetry the speaker is always just the poet. The poet has never learned to imagine someone else speaking, which I think is fundamental. To write parody the speaker must be a bit naive, or self-involved, or clueless about how he or she might sound to someone else. Here, for example, the speaker accuses others of being humorless, but is over invested in himself.

***

A new classification of arrogance came out. The authors say that arrogance can be individual (thinking oneself superior), comparative (thinking oneself superior to others), or antagonistic (voicing this belief about others' inferiority). My question, probably an arrogant one, has to do with the way they define arrogance as an exaggerated opinion of oneself in relation to the truth. Actually, the arrogant person might actually be superior. In other words, arrogant behavior is the same whether the person is justified or not in the belief of superiority. I am not excusing arrogance, but just the opposite.  I'm saying that being superior on some given dimension does not justify the attitude we call arrogant.  For example, suppose there are four physicists.

1) A brilliant physicist, and arrogant about it.
2) A brilliant physicist, who has no doubts about ability but is not arrogant in showing it.
3) A physicist of barely average ability, but an arrogant person.
4) A brilliant physicist, but who suffers from impostor syndrome.
5 A physicist of barely average ability, who is well about of averageness.

1 and 3 are arrogant. 3 and 4 misperceive their own abilities. 2 and 5 have an accurate reading of their own abilities, and neither is arrogant.

Dream

A student was arguing over an A-.  I gave him justfication, etc..., but then later realized that he had written in English rather than in Spanish. I told him then that he had to do the paper over again. He came back at me again and said that the instructions had not specified a language, even though it was a Spanish composition class. He referred to Spanish as a "Ghetto language" that was not worth his time. I realized that is was improper, but I began swearing at him violently and then beating him up.

Tradition

My clock radio is set to KJHK.  Since I have taught at KU, they have had the same program in the morning, "jazz in the morning," but now the DJs have been born approximately 23 years later than the first ones that I heard in 1996. This morning, I woke up and they were playing Herbie Hancock, then they had Nat King Cole, Count Basie, and Billie Holiday. Of course I recognized everything they played. What I like is the idea that nobody in the past five cohorts of student DJs or managers has successfully questioned the idea that jazz must be played in the morning. Every new person spinning records in the morning just steps into that format, taking it as a given.