morning musings of a church organist

I didn’t have time to learn my postlude today (Christ lag in Todes Banden BWV 695 by Bach) with a soloed out melody in the pedals.

I went through it yesterday that way and found a few mistakes in my new version. It’s not really unusual to find mistakes in freshly made copies of music. It’s another reason to have rehearsals before performances.

Then I went through the original manuals version (no pedal part) and discovered it was easier at this point to perform it that way. I will still correct my manuscript, maybe even throw it up here.

I missed my morning poetry reading and blogging time yesterday because I was hosting my brother and his wife. They left after lunch. This morning I have had time to read and am now blogging (after slowly going through “Christ lag” on the electric piano to ensure more accuracy of today’s performance).

I also wrote a little poem. Lately I have found that the poetry I am writing might be painful for my loved ones to read. So I just keep it, emily-dickinson-like, tucked away. Not that I have the effrontery to compare my meager efforts with her opus.

I guess if one keeps reading poetry and learning music, it’s not too weird to keep making up one’s own. At least that has been my life.

I am in dire need of some time off. This need seems to come and go. I haven’t really had much time off since way before Xmas. I am thinking of getting on a plane by myself (Eileen can’t get off) and flying to New Hampshire to visit my brother. I haven’t seen his new digs.

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Sustain Your Mortal Existence Without Facebook – Wired How-To Wiki

Amusing little article. At least it looks like it, I haven’t read the whole thing.

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Connecting Music and Gesture – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com

I had a buddy when I was young who knew nothing about music technically but loved to pretend to conduct his record player. At this time, I thought it was pretty silly. But now I don’t know. I think of music more and more as aural gesture. In this video there is beauty both in the music and the representations of the conductor’s movements and his verbal descriptions. Worth the eight minutes it takes to watch, in my opinion.

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How to Listen to Music: A Vintage Guide to the 7 Essential Skills | Brain Pickings

Never hurts to think about this stuff.

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Prado Researcher Finds Insights Beneath Copy of Mona Lisa – NYTimes.com

It looks like someone painted a copy of the Mona Lisa simultaneously to Da Vinci creating of it Justice for Trayvon – NYTimes.com

… very cool.

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Justice for Trayvon by Charles M. Blow – NYTimes.com

I am growing very fond of this columnist’s writing.

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Bo Xilai Scandal and the Mysterious Neil Heywood – NYTimes.com