The Winchester

[nerys @nerys]

@thane16 @syzygy Good to hear from you! And thank you for that bit of trivia on how much a cloud weighs. A hundred elephants, eh? Heavier than I would have guessed. As is often the case with this group, I learned something!

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@nerys Your FZ’s are a step above mine, in lens size certainly. I did love the light-gathering capability of my Konica film cameras with great big hunks of glass, but when I went digital I wanted something more portable. I also wanted a wide angle – 35mm or even 28mm, it was surprising how difficult that was to find in those early compact digitals. My first decent digital was a Panasonic TZ2 and I’ve stuck with TZs ever since, currently a TZ80. Which is just a ‘pocket camera’ size if your pockets are large. I guess at 24-720mm it’s a ‘superzoom’, though maximum zoom is only useable because it’s got OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation) which really does make a difference, essential on a small light camera. The steadying influence of a great big 200mm f3.5 lens on a 35mm SLR was something you only really appreciate when you don’t have it 🙂 In dim light it can’t quite match a full-size SLR, but almost, and it’s way ahead of anything I’ve had on a phone, as one would expect. As always with anything digital, it’s got 57 modes of which I’ve only ever used three or four.

I don’t use ‘the cloud’ for backups, like you I prefer to have my stuff in my possession. Except maybe texts on my phone.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@thane16 syzygy And a merry Christmas to you, thankyou. So a cloud weighs 500 tons (or tonnes – pretty much the same thing). Does that include the weight of the air in it, or is that the additional weight of the water vapour? (Is water vapour heavier than air?) That would imply 500 cubic metres of liquid water. But (Googles) water vapour is lighter than air – of course, which is why steam rises. So it must just be the weight of the cloud, air included, I guess.
Sorry for being such a geek. As you could guess, Kill the Moon caused me acute distress.

I do love quirky ‘fun facts’. I’m a fan of the Monty Hall problem, which seems incredibly simple yet so deceptive that professors of mathematics have gone into print with the wrong answer.

 

[nerys @nerys]

@dentarthurdent The FZ300 has a 25-600mm focal range, so yours is quite impressive. The main advantage the FZ300 has over some other bridge cameras is that it maintains a constant f/2.8 aperture across the entire zoom, so it’s good for low-light and distance shots. I really like both the FZ200 and FZ300 image stabilization systems, as well. And the Leica lens is a bonus (as long as I don’t scratch it, as I did with the FZ200).

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>@dentarthurdent</p>
if they’re clouds, and you see them, presumably they’re not vapour but condensed droplets not yet ready fall like the gentle rain from heaven

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@nerys      f/2.8   Wow.   That’s pretty nice.    The TZ80 is f/3.3 to 6.4.    I’m – almost – tempted to consider and FZ, but the same argument applies as did to my Konica (though obviously less cogently) – I can’t take photos if my camera isn’t on me, and the TZ is small and light enough to just carry as a matter of habit.   TZ has a Leica lens too, I assume Panasonic probably bought them at some time.

@ps1l0v3y0u    That’s true about the droplets, so maybe that is the actual heavier-than-air weight.   Of course if the latent heat of condensation is enough to produce strong enough updraughts (thunderstorm) to keep the droplets aloft long enough to coalesce into ice – they become hailstones and really not very gentle at all.   🙂

[nerys @nerys]

@dentarthurdent Fair point about having the camera with you. The FZ300 is too large to fit into a pocket. So I use the neck strap, but it can be cumbersome. I use my cellphone the way you do your camera. If I don’t have my FZ300 with me, or I just don’t want to be encumbered by it, then I use my cellphone camera. For landscape shots, it often outperforms my FZ300. But for bird or wildlife shots, I have to go with the FZ300.

I’m sure you’re right, that Panasonic, at some point, bought Leica. Side-note: I had two Leica cameras, circa 1946-47 and 1951-52 (a hardbound Leica Manual came with the newer one). Both came in brown leather cases and had Summitar lenses. The older of the two cameras (Leica IIIc) belonged to my father, who bought it while he was stationed in Germany as part of the Allied Occupation after the Second World War. My maternal grandfather had the newer camera (Leica IIIf), and later gave it to my father after buying himself another camera. I inherited both cameras after my father died.

I knew it would take serious money to get them working again, so they sat in my closet for several years. Then I decided to donate them to the group who holds auctions to raise money for our local hospital. A camera collector looked at them and bid $500. Apparently that’s the low end of what they are valued it, especially for the lenses. So I feel good that they went to someone who will appreciate them, and they also benefited a valuable local charity.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

The pub seems to be the most appropriate place to raise a glass and wish everyone on the forum a A Happy New Year and all the best for 2026, wherever you are and whatever your circumstances.

There is a year to wait until the resumption of service with the 2026 Christmas special:  may the time pass productively and may we all survive happily to view it 🙂

[winston @winston]

@mudlark    @nerys  @thane16  @dentarthurdent  @ps1l0v3y0u       and everyone else, just took a moment to say hello and Happy Who Year! We are still a few hours to midnight here and then the old year passes and a brand spankin’ new one begins. So exciting and full of possibilities.

Does anyone make new years resolutions? I have the usual ones like getting into better shape and finding time for myself and for a few weeks I will really try but then……….oh well.I hope you have more willpower than I do.

A whole year of waiting for more Who seems like cruel and unusual punishment but like so many things in life it is out of my control so I wait patiently. kind of.

Have a great New Years Eve or Day and in the immortal words of Bill and Ted “Party on dude!”

stay safe

 

 

[janetteB @janetteb]

Happy New Year all. Best wishes for the year ahead.

@thane16 Lovely to hear from you.

@nerys and @dentarthurdent I share your distrust of cloud storage. I have multiple hard drives, one backup I carry with me, one is in a sideboard. I once had two backup hard-drives in my laptop bag which was stolen. Have also lost hard drives so I no longer rely upon a single back up.

My camera is now a bit antique. A canon eos 60 D from 2012. I would like to get a Sony as I still have my old Minolta lens’s and would love to be able to use them as they are good quality. Second son just bought himself a Olympus OM5 mirror-less for christmas. It is a nice little camera and very portable. I am quite envious but also happy that finally one of the family has caught the photography bug.

cheers

Janette

 

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@janetteb If I don’t have my camera on me, I also use a cellphone. They have become remarkably good for what they are. My 150-dollar Android phone will take perfactly good photos and videos in a good light. But I think dedicated cameras will always be a step ahead, for simple reasons of physics – there are only so many photons per square centimetre per second, so a big lens will always be better, particularly for short exposures and/or in a dim light. That’s something phones can’t do anything about, it is physically impossible to fit a large lens into the thickness of a cellphone.

I just Googled and Panasonic don’t own Leica. That was a guess on my part from the prevalence of Leica lenses on Panasonic cameras. Pleased to hear your father’s Leicas were ‘collectable’, it’s nice when that happens.

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent @winston @nerys @janetteb @mudlark @thane16

Happy New Year!

[nerys @nerys]

@dentarthurdent Pleased to hear your father’s Leicas were ‘collectable’, it’s nice when that happens.

Yes, it is! That made me so happy, especially since a charitable organization we support benefited from it.

Happy New Year to you and all! @mudlark @winston @janetteb @ps1l0v3y0u @thane16 and of course @craig

[Devilishrobby @devilishrobby]

Happy belated Xmas and new year to all. Hopefully you’re all having a better start to the year than me. I went into severe heart failure following a cardiac episode at the end of October beginning of November. As a result I’m suffering from severe shortness of breath due to varying degrees of pulmonary odeama. As a result I’m awaiting insertion of a joint pacemaker/defibrillator which will hopefully improve my cardiac function.  On a the  main point for posting was to say how much I enjoyed the war between sea and land, yes it had a bit of a predictable ending.

[winston @winston]

@devilishrobby      Thank you for the well wishes! I am sorry that you have been facing such health problems and I really hope you start to feel better.

I have not had a chance to watch the new series but I will as soon as I can, I am glad you liked it.

stay devilish

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@nerys That happy circumstance happened to me just once. Decades ago I had a turntable and a couple of dozen LP’s. When cassette tapes came along, they were so much more handy (even though of doubtful sound quality) that I never listened to records any more. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of my LPs in their artistic sleeves. Then CD’s came along, as convenient as cassettes and as good quality as LP’s (better, in fact, because they were immune to dust and scratches).

So several decades later I finally bit the bullet and found, to my surprise, that ‘vinyl’ is now ‘collectable.’ Sold them all, except for Dark Side of the Moon, which I kept for its iconic** cover.

(**Badly overused word, but in this case it fits so I use it, reluctantly.)

And my turntable, which was a nice belt-drive Yamaha (yes, that old) in a nice wooden enclosure (yes, that old) – well, it was too nice to throw away even though it took up a lot of space and its belt was slipping badly, but I found that I could actually get a new belt for it. Which I did. And then I found that it too was collectible, got $400 for it.

Now I’m waiting for VHS to come back into fashion 😉

 

[nerys @nerys]

@devilishrobby I’m so sorry about your health issues. This must be a scary, overwhelming experience. I hope that your wait for a pacemaker/defibrillator is not long, and that once it’s implanted, it restores your heart back to proper function.

@dentarthurdent Wow, you scored in the collectibles department! LPs and turntables are indeed in demand. Who’d have thought? On the other hand, I’m not sure VHS will ever come back into fashion. We got rid of all our LPs, cassette tapes and VHS tapes several moves ago. Most of it went to Goodwill, which has a good network for used LPs and the like. So I feel confident that, rather than going to a landfill, they were routed to people who appreciated them.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@nerys   I was joking about the VHS.   I can’t see it ever coming back into fashion, for several reasons:   Compared with DVD’s, or other electronic storage, it’s much lower quality, much bulkier, VHS players are mechanically  highly complicated, the tape wears with each playing, jumping to a specific place on a track requires the whole tape to be rewound, so is very slow; and DVD’s can offer many extra tracks such as ‘commentaries’ and language options.     Our local charity shops won’t accept VHS any more because nobody buys them.   Though some are for sale on Trademe (our Ebay equivalent) so I might advertise mine for a couple of bucks in case ‘somebody’ wants them still.

Hopefully your VHS’s were sufficiently long ago that people did buy them.

[nerys @nerys]

@dentarthurdent Well, who’s to say? If cassette tapes can come back into vogue, then why not VHS tapes? Though it could be that the player mechanism for cassette tapes is much simpler than for VHS, so there’s that. We gave away our VHS tapes back in 2011, so I think there was still demand for them then.

[syzygy @thane16]

@devilishrobby

I must concur with @winston – Stay devilish!

Hoping for a great year for all in ‘26 with as much Who as possible.
@janetteb have you had any access to the War Between Land and Sea (what an overblown title)? Have any of our UK or possibly U.S. & Canadian members seen the series/season?
I’ve heard Russel Tovey’s brilliant.

Our new year kicked off as it often does with a dose of thrill, including Die Hard 3 (film’s great but McTiernan as director got himself into hot water about 10 years later).

Another genre on the list is horror. We saw Weapons and also Frankenstein, directed in lush fashion by Guillermo del Toro, with our Aus actor, Jacob Elordi playing the monster.

And I’ll be doing some conducting during late January in Victoria which is exciting. There’ll be some Brahms -hard going, but rather fun!

shout out to @craig for keeping this site merry & kind. I’ve re-learned of late that it’s the most important thing. Friendships only exist because of it; disputes are best settled with it, and no music can be made without it…

Cheers, Puro and Thane.

[syzygy @thane16]

@devilishrobby I really hope your health improves -it sounds very scary indeed. I also hope you have some music to focus on during the tough wait time for the pacemaker & defibrillator .❤️❤️

@winston  I almost always fail my NY resolutions so I’m trying to call them something else! Our local pool offers very cheap entry fees for us oldies so that’s a win. We can walk there, swim some laps and return (followed by a stint under the hose).

@dentarthurdent Dark Side of the Moon is very cool!!

Puro

[winston @winston]

@thane16     Happy New Year!  Congrats on conducting, it sounds exciting.

I give up on resolutions because I hate starting a new year with abject failure. It is hard to stay fit in the winter unless there is a gym or pool nearby or you like winter sports. These are a negative for me. I will admit that I am afraid of falling and hurting my leg again so my exercise is mostly indoors now. No skiing or skating for awhile yet but I still can’t resist making snowmen when the snow is right.

We are still waiting for Disney to air War between Land and Sea so I am waiting patiently to watch it. I love Russel Tovey.

@dentarthurdent      I have hundreds of LPs  and someday I will have to sort them all and sell most of them. They take up a lot of space and I usually listen to CDs now. There are some I can never part with and Dark Side of the Moon is one of them as well as Queen II  both I bought when I was a teen, so many years ago. Lovely covers and great music inside.

stay safe

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@thane16  @winston   Dark Side of the Moon is still my favourite album of all, musically.   And also, the cover is perfect – a simple strikingly individual design undiluted by any text  (which I thought showed supreme confidence).

[nerys @nerys]

@thane16 Congratulations on your upcoming conducting job! Brahms is challenging, but mastering those pieces gives us such a thrill of achievement.

My father taught music in public schools until he switched gears to teach counseling and teacher education at the university level. He was primarily a high school band director, but early in his career he was called upon to direct the orchestra and sometimes choir, as well. “When you’re small, you do it all.”

I did not inherit his skill, and I wish I had. I do still play clarinet. I started back up in 2016, after a 33-year pause. After the director of our small local band retired, a couple of friends and I began playing in a large concert band about an hour’s drive away. This is our second year with that group, and I am enjoying it.

People unfamiliar with the role of a conductor don’t realize how vital they are to a music ensemble. They aren’t just standing there, waving their arms … which I think is what a lot of non-musicians think. They are the rock, the glue that holds an ensemble together. They make the difference between a group of musicians playing or singing together, and an ensemble playing or singing as one. So kudos to you for giving this gift to your fellow musicians!

I echo your thoughts about @craig “keeping this site merry & kind” and that “no music can be made without it…” So very true!

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

Hipgnosis covers are very cool.

DSotM was a breakthrough; Floyd had some success earlier but, as a band they were unaccountably down on it. Lots of sterling work, largely the setlist of their ‘69 stage show, was frittered away on movie soundtracks and b-sides.

Richard Wright had been Syd Barrett’s biggest collaborator, but Waters and Mason could barely tolerate his compositions. DSotM supposedly featured his last major contributions though his work on Wish You Were Here and Animals sounds stunning to me.

[syzygy @thane16]

@dentarthurdent I remember when a neighbour showed me this album & I said, wait for it….“it’s nothing like the white album, is it?” Later, I asked “who are Dink Floyd?”

He buried his hands in his head at that point. Fortunately he took it upon himself to educate me (as so many men tried to do!).

I got better!

@nerys the “when you’re small you do it all” is absolutely what I recall, too. The clarinet is fabulous: I tried it but the oboe was more my thing, for a little while…..
Mozart’s clarinet concerto in A. K. 622 is delicious and roomy.

We’re performing Brahms 3: 1st mvt is playful & requires delicate, pulled-back strings & an empathetic conductor who doesn’t smash out the coda? So I’m looking  forward. ❤️

Puro

[syzygy @thane16]

@ps1I0v3you

Floyd’s interesting…. After awhile they lost their dreaminess, becoming doleful tragedians;  with huge cutting movements of electronic, uniform mass.  Their much earlier wry, and ungovernable, music, left.  And yet we all went with them…..

[syzygy @thane16]

Oops spelled your name wrong ! 😑

[nerys @nerys]

@thane16 Oboe is a gorgeous instrument! Also very difficult to play. IMO, oboe is the most challenging woodwind instrument, and french horn is the most challenging brass instrument. Both make a gorgeous sound … when played well. Mastering the technique to create that beautiful sound is what’s so difficult. I admire the players who do it!

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@thane16

Floyd… ah, that’s Rog that is. The music became his idee fixee because the rest gave up. Money was a huge issue, everywhere. There is such a sharp distinction between the post rock collective approach of Radiohead (and others but not everywhere) and the nastiness that preceded.

Even bands like Cream, a band formed specifically to write, but Jack Bruce did seem to undermine that.

That may not seem all that relevant now. Music today is about streaming not writing and contracts. And rewarding talent is a very different matter…

[syzygy @thane16]

@nerys oh oboe! Never was I more embarrassed when I auditioned for uni, played 16 bars of ‘When Johnny comes Marching home, Hoorah…” & promptly fainted. Not my finest, but panel placed loo rolls under my head to avoid too much pain 🙂

@psIOv3yOu

whichever way you look musicians are cult figures of their time & rock jumps on the societal hills & valleys & so it’s provisional.

And music can’t be known by any 1 mind (Stravinsky taken out of context who saw expression isn’t just a property of music so that there’s not always a correlation between a composers’s feelings & notation). Though Rog likes to think it! An intelligent guy determined to express his suprapersonal ideas.

& to your point, after the late 60s, power shifts from producers to consumers; seeing what’s popular: once making decisions they now followed impulses. & the press was often hijacked to consumer interest & for new Floyd this was spaciness.

[WhoHar @whohar]

@thane16

Land/Sea will be on Disney+ next month. Or you could use a VPN to access BBC iPlayer and see if it is there. Otherwise, it’s looking for one of the less legitimate streaming services.

I’m going to wait for D+.

And, if you are happy to say, where and when will you be doing your Brahms gig?

[nerys @nerys]

@thane16 Wow, what an experience! Did you continue playing oboe after that?

I had something similar happen last April, when my five-piece local band was still rehearsing together. We were about a third of the way into our first piece when I fainted. I was only out for a few seconds. Fortunately we were seated in chairs on a thick rug in the home of two of our musicians, so I had a soft landing. And one of our players, the trombonist, is a volunteer firefighter trained in First Aid/CPR, so he knew to turn me on my side in the recovery position.

I had donated blood earlier that day. In hindsight, I realized that until that night, I’d never played shortly after donating blood. Because of the blood donation, I had lower blood volume, resulting in less oxygen being delivered throughout my body. And then I overexerted myself by playing. They advise you not to do any strenuous activity for at least 24 hours after a donation. I guess I didn’t consider playing a wind instrument to be a form of exertion, but obviously it is. Lesson learned!

I would imagine that, given the breath support required to play a double-reed instrument, an oboist would have succumbed even more quickly.

@whohar I have tried using Nord VPN to access BBC iPlayer, but as I recall it detected that I was using VPN and blocked me.

[syzygy @thane16]

@whohar hallooo!!
The MSO’s Hamer Hall (Melbourne) has a collection of Brahms work over the second portion of its season.

prior to that, part of Ballarat’s ‘Symphony’ is having a rehearsal session with walk-in audience -shortly, which is where I step in as a favour for another conductor. It’s student based, for now & small. It could be called a master class but that’s being bombastic!

And as to the MSO, above, that’s much later & dependent on other criteria including health etc. -mine and the listed conductor.

@nerys -indeed I did. But mostly I was terrible! My breathing method caused me to be sharp. My minor was singing, though, & I had more fun with it. Yes blood donation can cause all sorts of problems physically. That would’ve been awful.

I knew a very tall gentleman with a massive chest space who continually donated blood & showed up an hour later for rehearsals. He was a bassoonist!! 🤣 Or perhaps he was from Krypton….

[WhoHar @whohar]

@thane16. <waves>

 

Keep me posted on the dates please (either here or DM), and I’ll see if can attend – bushfires notwithstanding.

[syzygy @thane16]

@whohar will do! It’s very kind of you.

[syzygy @thane16]

@whohar

one of my dear professors, Bebbington, loved Brahms, though himself, a student of Wagner & his conducting, recalled how Wagner enthusiasts fanatics interfered with the premiere of Brahms’ 3rd. Brahms, eternally calm, wrote hidden allusions to Wagner in some of his works.

It’s rarely played, & like a lot of his work, sometimes metrically ambiguous & antiquarian. The 3rd mvt’s famous; lots of gritty strings but winds, brass, tacet.

And it looks like we might be missing timpani…. 😳 I’ll get back to you.

Puro

[WhoHar @whohar]

@thane16

As a relative neophyte to classical music (outside of the better known pieces), do you have a link / source to a Brahms primer? ie a where to start with Brahms type thing.

[syzygy @thane16]

@whohar (I’ve DMed you too).

honestly, one of the best books on the Romantic style of music (ie 19th century) & its relationship with the social & political climate of its time, is Leon Plantinga’s [Yale] Romantic Music: A History of Musical Style… the chapter on Brahms is revealing. It can be borrowed.

The other is Jan Swafford, Brahms, A Biography. It’s a great read, & not dry. Also, Malcolm (or Calum) MacDonald, Brahms.

But as I mentioned, the Wiki article is pretty good & summarises his compositions; styles, “enemies” or frenemies 🙂 & his relationships with musicians or artists.

Kindest, Puro.

[syzygy @thane16]

@winston

I realised I hadn’t read your post properly. 😞
I hope your leg isn’t ailing you too much? Falls are an awful part of life.

Where we live, many paths have had roots & tree trunks encroaching on them & so daily walks are best, but if it’s hot, then evening walks are the only option. & then …..crash.

I like Russel Tovey too. First time I saw him was in one of the finales of Tennant’s Doctor? And then in an episode of Sherlock.

@mudlark happy new year to you, also. I hope your health is good? In our new year celebration, & for some reason, in addition to Diehard movies, we watched Clint Eastwood’s A Fistful of Dollars. Whoo! That was …..loud. 😬 I hadn’t seen this in 15 or more years.

@janetteb are you at risk of the bushfires (again)? or is it the terrible heat I recall from Adelaide summers? even here, we’ve had A/C on during the night, otherwise it’s ice buckets over head before bed & that leads to the dreaded …..chill.

Puro.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@thane16

Thanks, puro, and a happy new year to you also. And congratulations on the conducting gig.

My Christmas/New Year was quiet and pleasantly self indulgent – and for once the weather was good; cold but crisp and sunny. Sadly, shortly afterwards I received news of the death on Christmas Eve of one of my oldest friends , which put a retrospective damper on things. We had known one another for 60 years, having met on the Winchester excavations when she was an assistant in the finds shed and I was supervising on the site of the Saxon Minsters on Cathedral Green*  That summer we were billeted in the same quarters in the disused army camp which was at that time being used to house the large body of multi-national volunteer diggers, and she made a somewhat dubious start by blacking out the entire camp and, I suspect, a good deal of the surrounding district.  She had brought a kettle so that we could brew hot drinks in the evenings but, as it turned out, she didn’t know how to wire a plug, didn’t realise that the wires were differently coloured for a reason, and didn’t think to ask any of the rest of us for advice. She was clever, funny, and at that time a bit scatty, as well as being five years younger than me, but somehow we got along well. During recent years we only occasionally had the opportunity to meet face to face but I will miss her.

As for health, I’m happy to say that I’m pretty well, considering that at the age of 83 one must accept a certain degree of crumblitude.  My spine is for once behaving remarkably well and the thrombocythaemia (look it up) remains well under control 13  years + since diagnosis. I’ve also, recently, been diagnosed with wet macular degeneration, but so far my eyesight is not affected and my latest check-up on Dec 15th showed everything stable and visual acuity pretty good, so fingers crossed.

Over the holiday period I watched Rear Window, an oldie which, I realised to my shame, I had never seen previously, and Oppenheimer. Generally speaking though, I have watched very little TV in recent months, although I keep recording things with the intention of watching later. Instead I have been on a major reading binge, both new purchases and books from my extensive library, some of which I haven’t read in many decades so that it was like re-encountering old acquaintances. Now I have purchased a Kindle, which I shall probably regret – all those temptingly cheap e-books available at a tap on the screen! I hope to get round soon to watching War Between Land and Sea on I-player; I gather it is visually impressive, if perhaps a little less so dramatically.

* re the Winchester Saxon minsters, the word is that finally – Finally –  the definitive report on the Minsters is due to see the light of print this year; I had begun to think that I wouldn’t survive to see the day. The site was only one, though arguably the most significant, of the several sites excavated during the eight extended summer digging seasons from 1964 – -1971 (my involvement was 1965-69), but for various reasons the final reports have been scandalously slow to appear.

[janetteB @janetteb]

@mudlark. Good to hear from you but sorry to hear about your friend, (and the health issues. I hope they are all in hand.) Your story about the kettle made me smile. Back in 1983 my friend and I, newly arrived in London, bought a kettle. We had no idea of how to attach the plug. In Australia appliances always came with plugs attached. We were sitting down in the basement kitchen in the guest house where we worked trying to put it together. the Polish porter/doorman, who had not spoken a word in our hearing since we started working there was watching. fortunately, for he took the kettle from us in silence and fixed the wiring otherwise we might have shorted out Bloomsbury. We later found out that he spoke very fluent English having studied at London University and had many an interesting discussion with him.

The dig sounds interesting and that must be quite a report. I would love to re-visit Winchester. When I was last there was prior to my interest in the Anglo Saxon period.

@thane16 we have been spared bushfires this time around. I hope that @whohar is also ok in that regard. We did have one 46c day but remarkably the garden survived the heat, maybe not the possoms however.

Cheers

Janette

 

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@whohar @thane16

Howard Goodall (of multiple tv theme contributions) presented an interesting program a decade or more ago called ‘The Story of Music’, about the Western Classical Tradition. Not sure if it’s still in circulation.

However, I found I parted company with his narrative after Beethoven. Not because I don’t like Romantic Classical but I just had a different narrative in mind. I can see that after Ludwig, composers must have been forced to kick around for a new direction (in my mind they’re Spike Milligan and pals advancing on the camera saying ‘what are we gonna do now?)

So, Howard calls Berlioz psychotic (ok maybe he’s a little crazy), spent far too long discussing Liszt (Howard was lining up a good kicking for C20th tonalism) and ignored Tchaik and Sibelius. Can’t remember what he said about Brahms; maybe that Wagner had the good choons (though I’m sure he also repeated the line about Wagner having brilliant moments and terrible quarter hours). He quickly hurried on to Satie, Debussy and Ravel.

The Beeb have just done a brilliant Composer of the Week about Aaron Copeland; I somehow found the biography of a C20th composer much more engaging than some German/Frenchman/Russian/Scandinavian being tortured by their pretty piano students.

 

[syzygy @thane16]

@PS @whohar

ooh yes, I’m a Brahms fan. And I also like him because he understood the significance of technique (you mentioned this too, Whohar & its application to written structures) & that the pre-Romantic tradition of tight, organised, quite rules-driven composition needed to be understood before moving into an area where breaking rules could deliver something [else] magical.

In my heart I’m a classicist -Beethoven is ingenious, his structure, unearthly harmonies combined with his preferred scales & keys were connected to assured & perfect musical communication.

Critics at the time, & later, saw Beethoven’s music -whilst still classical in form -had effected a geological upheaval, with musical contours lying at strange angles underneath the surface of an entirely new & different landscape.

Brahms found that fascinating.

But yes, Wagner was no fan of Brahms & whilst the latter seemed to dislike Wagner, Brahms privately enjoyed Wagner’s esotericism. And if anyone was psychotic it was definitely Wagner.  😀

Absolutely PS, Goodall disliked Serialism as did the entire listening public. But he doesn’t dismiss all of the 20th century composers, just Boulez & Schoenberg.

And Schoenberg was a student of Beethoven in his own way. if I listen to Schoenberg, now, I get headaches!

@mudlark I’m so thrilled that finally you’ll see the publication of the papers associated with the archeological digs. I’ll write a longer response tomorrow.

Good night all!
Puro.

[nerys @nerys]

@ps1l0v3y0u Aaron Copland is my favorite composer. He kept his private life very quiet, while composing gorgeous music across a spectrum that ranged from the programmatic style he’s best known for, to a more avant garde style. Appalachian Spring moved me to tears the first time I heard it, and still does.

@mudlark I’m sorry about the death of your friend. Condolences to you and all who knew her. Rear Window is a classic, and I never tire of watching it. Glad you finally got to see it!

[syzygy @thane16]

@nerys @mudlark @whohar @PS

absolutely! Copland’s work was gorgeous. I think I was 10 or 11 & thought ELP composed Fanfare for the Common Man & Hoedown.

🤣 PDQ Bach (Peter Schickele) wrote Fanfare for the Common Cold. He died in 2024. It’s a fun 2 mins satire for a brass quintet. On YouTube too. @whisht we need you …… !

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@thane16 @nerys @mudlark @whohar @whisht

Much (though far from all) my knowledge of Classical comes via the prism of Prog. Mind you first time I heard Tapiola by Sibelius it was a ‘building a library’ program… basically a Head of David like 1/2 hour wall of sound interspersed with two terribly educated gents asking each other… ‘which one do you think is noisier?’

Thank you for the New Year effort whisht. Two options after Tom Waits (I laughed) was Fred and Rita cutting the rug to Led Zep. I laughed.

[nerys @nerys]

@thane16 Love Fanfare for the Common Man! I think part of the reason I love Copland’s music is because of his use of open fifths. Such resonant chords. In high school my wind ensemble played El Salon Mexico. Quite a challenge for a small-town Indiana band, but we loved it.

And I love it that as a young’un, you thought ELP composed that music. Excellent taste!

[winston @winston]

@mudlark    I am so sorry about your friend. It sounds like you had some good shared experiences that you will always remember.

I love the term “crumblitude” and intend to use it! Its a great word that totally works.

@thane16  Thank you for asking about my leg. It is  good most of the time although a little stiff in the morning but that only matches the rest of me. It is still a work in progress but so am I.

stay safe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[syzygy @thane16]

@ whohar @nerys @PS  oh yes! Sibelius’ style was something I came to appreciate much later in life. @PS I first read that post without my glasses & read “prism of the Frog.” Ok, there, better research THAT one, as I’ve never heard of The Frog. I thought it’s probably a libretto by Aristophanes with music by Schoenberg because that’s EXACTLY what he’d do 😀

The issue with Copeland’s programme music was me wanting to love it but noticing how his parallel 5ths -which you would’ve heard repeatedly too (taboo in voice leading harmony requiring independent melodic lines) led me to shout out involuntarily “nooooo he’s breakin’ the rules!!!” 😩

But those choices created such a feeling of the unconfined American Mid-West (the looming prairie space, along with Whitman’s & Sandberg’s  accompanying poetry) that I haven’t heard often except thru maybe Charles Ives; Bela Fleck & The Flecktones.

@winston @mudlark I’m with you, Winston on Crumblitude. What a great word.— Which doesn’t apply to either of you!

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