Mark Alburger, 2010

Saturday, April 3, 2010

April 3 - Songs, Sex, Shostakovich

Up early again (do we detect a pattern here?) to finish The Song of Solomon: II. I Am the Rose of Sharon (25 pages total), begin III. of same, and publication-prepare page 3 of Psalm 15 "But Who May Abide." Then off to second rehearsal of Job, with Marilyn,

Sarita, Heather, Harriet, and

Keisuke. Now off to dine with Ms. March Page -- more later...

After Connecticut Yankee al frosto (thankful for the outdoor heater), we check the mail at Goat Hall with financial greetings, and head to the Sex and the Bible video party at

Robert's

beautiful

spread with views

north,

northeast,

west, and

down, with

Kim (clearly getting into the spirit of the event),

Maria, Robert,

Crystal (doing an SATB move "You Are So Beautiful"),

Theresa, and Barney.

Hasty retreat through a mad padded elevator and

appointed hall towards the

Civic Center and

Davies

Hall

(arriving precisely at the appointed hour) to review the

San Francico Symphony in Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor (which receives a

partial standing ovation)

and

Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 8

(which receives another -- latter part of report in 21st-Century Music -- 21st-centurymusic.blogspot.com, 21st-centurymusic.com, and in print -- soon).

Into that good night and (t)hereafter, home.

Friday, April 2, 2010

April 2 - One Day Later

Up early to compose six more pages (through 16) of The Song of Solomon: II. I Am the Rose of Sharon, publication-prepare page 2 of Psalm 15 "But Who May Abide", and put the blog version of 21st-Century Music (including a nice article on Elliott Carter's recent music, by Chip Michael) up at 21st-centurymusic.blogspot.com, with the archival (21st-centurymusic.com) and print (P.O. Box 2842 San Anselmo, CA 94960) versions soon to come. Then Harriet and I are out in the rain towards Raney Rock in Capell Valley (picture westbound last Sunday in decidedly fairer conditions) and beyond to the Napa vineyards and Calistoga, celebrating 53 years (kind early birthday greetings yesterday from our fine Music Theory class -- despite the quiz!) on the planet at

Bosko's Trattoria -- including pasta, meatballs, salad, bread, 27-cent champagne (celebrating their anniversary for the month of April), and a free wine flight and coffee (celebrating mine, etc.).

Gift opening includes Sorrel's present of the Chuck Close Philip Glass portrait ("Phil") on a t-shirt (interesting that it is signed only with the visual artist's name). The world's gift is

clearing

skies on the way home,

the traditional route

south on

29,

west through Jameson Canyon,

then north, variantly on Abernathy in the viewshed of the shrouded

Twin Sister,

palmy

Gomer School,

and the plowed-field approach to Fairfield Vineyard Hill -- towards cake and ice cream. Sorrel checks in, and I call Bette and George to say thanks, with greetings here as well to Crystal. Do some final touch-up of the first-movement full score of Job: A Masque and post at Scribd and http://markalburgerworks.blogspot.com/1999/08/job-masque-op-79.html

Thursday, April 1, 2010

April 1 - Fool's Progress

Update. Up early and compose another page (10) of The Song of Solomon: II. I Am the Rose of Sharon, and the new Encore program doesn't crash, so maybe there's hope. Aside from this potentially major problem, really like the update...

Further update. Later in the morning, bring up Job: I, save it in the new format, and program consistently crashes, so, alas, will not be able to use. Such hope. Upshot, at least, is that I've learned how to use the magnification feature which was built into the old version, so there's been some benefit to this exercise, one supposes...

Even further update. Well, the magnification sometimes distorts the notation, so back to point of origin, almost. Have been opening Encore files in a bigger window, however. How's that for triviality?

Spend additional part of the morning re-imputting the last few pages of Psalm 14 "The Fool Has Said" into old program. Gratified that memory (personal, not computer, in this case) is still functioning reasonably well.

And on other computer-conspiracy fronts: for the first time since iPhone has been aquired, iPhoto crashes during an import/delete and pictures have been lost. Not good. So we'll just have to survive without yet additional photos of Mt. Diablo, Shakespeare Hill, Mt. Tamalpais and the Richmond Bridge, Sears Point Mountain. One supposes we'll all survive, at least this...

Just Googled the issue, and this has happened to other users (not the particular pictures of course). Can't help but think that the update that Jason did for the iPhone is responsible. This is now the second example in 24 hours of an update (first above with Encore), where the improvement is absolutely no improvement at all, and indeed a debit. Related has happened with iTunes update from years ago, from which my pictures-attached-to-sound-files has still not fully recovered.

And... the first time iPhone was updated last August, when the process crashed the new laptop and the Sacramento store was initially reluctant to fix the matter the same day...

Before heading out today, begin publication-preparation of Psalm 15 "Who Shall Abide."

The Theoreticians abide Quiz 10 (Counterpoint), with musical examples drawn from George Gershwin's Three Piano Preludes, Rhapsody in Blue, and Porgy and Bess; Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera; Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf; and Anton Webern's Cantata No. 1.