"And He will give you peace which transcends human understanding"...as usual for me, I don't know the location of that scripture...but I know it's in the Bible!! And, it's going to become my quote for the weekend, for the week, for the semester, and for the rest of this year!!
You see, I have spent the past aproximately 13 hours, give or take a few small breaks to teach a student and finish a couple of chores/errands, but most of that time was spent at my desk, at home, studying Beethoven sonatas, and reading reading reading!! My word for today is "axiomatic" You don't know what that means? Well, it's SOOOO axiomatic!!! :) (look it up and you'll get my joke :)
As I mentioned in an e-mail earlier today...I'm beginning to seriously question whether my dollars are paying for an education in music, or the art of sounding snooty when I talk to people :) It's bad enough that musicians use words like exposition, thematic development, modulatory transitional material, recapituations (which I one humurously confused with another word on a vacation...I said "I'm all recapitulated!!" I think I meant to say turned around or something like that...everyone in the car looked at me with the "HUH?!" look :) Or how about this, taken from one of many obserdly over-complicated passages in an article I've been reading for the past several hours.
"All of which is tantamount to the truism that sonatas can no more succeed without significant ideas, however these may be defined and typed, than without convincing rhythmic flow, compelling tonal organization, or euphonious, idiomatic scoring"
I KID YOU NOT!! I literally looked at the page I was reading (Before I got off-track with blogging :) and just randomly selected one sentence from the page...I've been stuck in this world of lofty musical analysis for hours!!! Let me see if I can sum that sentence up into laymen terms! "A sonata won't sound good unless the musical idea or theme is just as convincing as the other elements of the music (such as the rhythmic flow, tonal organization, or idiomatic scoring..meaning the piece fits the demands of the instrument it's written for" ....any better???
Well, I'm back to my idiomatic, axiomatic, altruistic, contemplative, and obscurely dissolutional world of Wm Newman's chapter on "Romantic Sonata Form: Process, Mold, and Unicom"
and would someone please do me a favor, after praying for me, and remind me WHY IN THE WORLD did I want to get my doctorate????
THANKS! :)
