Blogging again

Well...I'm back to blogging. It's probably not the wisest thing to reinvest time in considering I'm about to start my last semester at college that will do all but claim my soul and even then...

I had a xanga and then all my friends switched to facebook. And then I had another blogspot but I was told it was naughty to write whatever I felt like by a Professor who has way too much time on his hands. That site is still up but I've reverted to this one for the time being. The reason: there have been so many times I'll be up late listening to some piece of music or other and I'll have some semblance of a poetic thought that I'd like to share.

By the way, the first word of my blog title is a gargantuan symphony of ridiculous proportions by French composer Olivier Messiaen - if you do not know it, find a recording of it at all costs. It will change your life. It basically is the Rite of Spring's tonal cousin.

I'm listening to Mahler 4 right now. It's the last symphony of his to have captivated me which is probably because of it's smaller proportions and understated extra-musical meaning - at least compared to his other works which are so much more overt.

Specifically, I'm listening to the Adagio of this symphony. There are many beautiful moments in Mahler but I don't think of them speak to me with the same fervent beauty and poetry as the Adagios of his 3rd,4th,5th,6th and 9th Symphonies. Of the adagio of the 3rd, I'm always especially moved by it because it signifies to me a great spritual transformation.

The first movement of that symphony is this huge, almost banal dirge containing everything from insistent marches, to dramatic recitatives, to passages of such lyrical prose. In some ways it depicts death but by the time we reach the end of the last movement - the adagio I'm speaking of - we, the listeners, have been transformed with the figurative hero of the symphony from this death-like, forbodding state, to one that's been filled to the brim with timeless beauty and finally irrevocable redemption.

I suppose that curt synopsis makes no sense to those of you who don't even know the piece. But I'm not going to pretend like that paragraph did the symphony justice. Perhaps I'll talk about it in more detail later. That was more or less of the thought I had last night while listening to it. If you close your eyes for the last 6or so mintues of the symphony, you can almost see the hero of the symphony ascending to heaven - it is utterly breathtaking and poignant and one of the closest examples a composer has gotten to describing grace and redemption in music.

Ah, Mahler. I could go on about him forever.

Speaking of marching...and death - school starts in a few weeks. I'm frantically trying to tie up my loose ends before it gets here, but knowing I won't possibly get to them all, I've prioritized. For the time being, the first order of business is the song cycle - a cycle of four songs for baritone and orchestra that North Park is considering for their fall orchestra concert, which, oddly enough, falls on Halloween. More on this later.

My Love leaves for New York next week on business. While she's gone, I'll put the finishing touches on the cycle, scrounge up some possible repertoire selections for the duo children's choirs I'm heading come mid-September, and do some work on the analytical papers (and manuscripts) I have to submit to Northwestern with my doctoral portfolio in December - more on all this later.

Then school starts. But it's only one more semester.

Now that I've given you a whirl of events you had no idea were in my life, I must leave you now. I'll fill you in in the coming months.