Last day before a new work year

It's been a mostly relaxing day, my last vacation day. It's also been a day full of the music of Bach! (Those of you who might not know why I always write about Bach can read my essay, The Cosmic Bach?)

Bach at Indiana University

Yesterday, from the Bach_Cantatas group, I learned that a lecture on the B Minor Mass that Christoph Wolff (eminent Harvard music musicologist and Bach scholar) delivered at Indiana University was available on the Web. It turned out that his lecture was to serve as the pre-concert talk for a performance of the Mass, also archived on the Web.

I was thrilled with this discovery. After I listened to most of the Mass through realaudio, I decided that it is of sufficient quality to use to prep a discussion group on aspects of Bach's music. It's so wonderful that listeners who have not had any exposure to the B Minor Mass can now have access to a complete performance through the Web.

Bach Sacred Songs

One of the many ways I was hoping to spend my vacation time was to dive into the 153 CDs of the Bach 2000 collection. Well, the days passed and the CDs were left untouched -- but with the new year, I've resolved to listen to all the CDs. I've also decided that a good approach would be to throw random CDs into my CD player or computer, though this might present other problems. There is so much beautiful and rich and densely powerful music among the CDs that rushing through sometimes feels like a

So...I'm now listening to a collection of sacred songs from Bach/Schemelli songbook (BWV 439-507) -- works I knew nothing about until five hours ago. My CD is stuck on the first song (BWV 505) Vergiss mein nicht (Forget me not).

Bach Sweatshirt

Thanks, Ginny, for the San Francisco Symphony Johann Sebastian Bach sweatshirt. I will wear it proudly and fondly:

Bach Sweatshirt:

Ah, that's how they do it

Thanks, Catherine, for filling us on in how Gandalf is made to look so tall compared to Frodo in LOTR.

Back to work

I go back to work tomorrow. Alas, I don't feel that well-rested. Maybe I just stayed around the house too much. I'm ready to start work again. We'll see how things go tomorrow.

Dec Feb

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