I learned to pronounce Goethe correctly as GUH-tuh (approximately).

But I always pronounced the main character in his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther as WERE-thur not VUH- tuh.

I probably learned to pronounce Goethe correctly after already reading The Sorrows of Young Werther and didn’t mentally correct the pronunciation in my head.

This morning i was listening to an old “Aria Code” podcast, The aria for the day was the Letter Aria from Massenet’s opera, Werther. As they were discussing it I immediately realized that I had always pronounced Werther incorrectly. Live and learn.

Trying to situate Beethoven’s first symphony into context I realize how much less I know about him than say Haydn or Bach. I turned to the Beethoven section of Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven.

I have always found Rosen’s observations enlightening and helpful. The Beethoven analysis I was previously reading by Samuel Hollister mentioned Rosen and also the fact that his terminology had been adapted by The Groves Dictionary. I don’t think of the many Rosen books I own as textbooks, I’m not sure exactly what they are except excellent and informative.

He is helping me sort through my misconceptions about Beethoven especially historically. For example, I was taught that Beethoven was the ‘Father of Romanticism. You may know the famous picture of Liszt and others sitting at the foot of a huge bust of Beethoven.

The Romantics admired him, no doubt. But when it came to the nitty gritty they actually derived many of their compositional techniques including their famous chromaticism from others.

Beethoven himself took a turn toward the past toward the end of his career nodding to Haydn and Mozart more than to the future. Granted he did so in incredibly beautiful and wonderful new ways. But this gauntlet of technique is not picked up by the next generation. It has to wait for Brahms, Mendelssohn, and others who in Rosen’s opinion do not extend the compositional ideas of sonata allegro form terribly successfully. Specifically no one ends up doing it quite as artfully as Beethoven.

Hmm. I did not know that. But when I think of it, it makes total sense.

Finally, I want to mention the group, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

How does one find new music? I’ve never had a very good answer to that question my whole life. In this case, I was helped by the damn YouTube algorithm which popped into a Dirty Dozen Band NPR Tiny Music Desk video after I listened to one by the Westerlies (whom I do admire).

Wow. This group can play. I love the tuba and the rhythms and the whole deal. Recommended.

This morning I listened to most of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band Album 2006 What’s Going On. Here’s a YouTube Version of the first track.

You don’t really get the joyful sense of this band from this track, but it’s still good I do love me some Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

When exercising my range of interests it never fails to surprise when coincidences occur.

When my brother was visiting recently in the course of our chatting he mentioned Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. Oh shit, I thought, I’m not sure if I read it or if I read it and I don’t remember it. Later I decided to add it to my list of things to read and pulled it out of my library.

I’m about a third of the way into the second volume. The writing is not great but it’s not bad for 1952. I read the first one and wasn’t excited to read more until my experience with Catling’s Vorrh Trilogy. Fuck it. Asimov at least has ideas and coherence.

It is in the Heinlein tradition of space operas which to me means more adventure than ideas and definitely omission of women or in Heinlein’s case full blown misogyny.

This morning while unloading the dishwasher and making coffee, I listened to the 538 podcast and got bored with it. Switched to Now and Then, Heather Cox Richardson’s podcast. Then I decided I need some upbeat music for my more strenuous exercise and switched to Vampire Weekend.

Finally I did my usual twenty minutes of “old man” running in place (or Bill Clinton running in place if you prefer to acknowledge my inspiration). For that I switched to Into the Zone, my current favorite podcast.

The Episode I was listening to was entitled Dead or Alive. I had listened to some of it and remember thinking this wasn’t that interesting an episode. Then when describing Nova Spivak’s crazy notions about preserving all human knowledge and burying it on the moon, it suddenly got my attention. I’ll let Wikipedia describe it.

“In 2015, Spivack co-founded The Arch Mission Foundation, a non-profit organization created to spread knowledge across the solar system. Through the Arch Mission Foundation, Spivack curated the first permanent space library, which contained Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy contained on a quartz disk aboard the Tesla Roadster that was sent to space aboard the SpaceX Heavy Falcon rocket in 2018”

The “arch” in “arch mission” is supposed to be pronounced “ark” I think. So it’s like “archives” but also Noah’s ark with Kunzru did not mention. Goofy, sure. Elon Musk sends a car to Mars. Spivak talks him into including a small quartz disk which contains the Foundation trilogy. But startling to me since I’m on page 64 of 224 of the second volume of Asimov’s trilogy.. .

The rocket was supposed to crash on Mars but according to Hari Kunzru’s podcast it missed and is on an incredibly large orbit in our solar system.

Kunzru admitted reading the Foundation trilogy as a kid and being happy that the main character’s name was Hari. That would be Hari Seldon whose name Mark had remembered in our chat.

Goofy stuffy first thing in the morning.