No I haven't...but it looks like you've supplied enough information to get a Degree in Classical Music. :O:

My connection would collapse and die under that amount of youtube. :dead:

Good lord, you are quick, Frau!...

I have listened to Wagner in the past, but, as with you, my loyalty has always been with Beethoven. There is no other composer I admire or enjoy listening to more than LvB. My mp3 playeris loaded with the symphonies, sonatas, and other pieces by Herr Beethoven. I also have a bit of space for Haydn, Beethoven's teacher. I have always said, if you want to understand a master, learn to understand his teacher...

<O>

Well, that's the background music for tomorrows Simcity 4 bash sorted. :up:

Nowt wrong with a bit of Beethoven either...although a nice run through the solar system with Holst followed by a bit of French defeat by Tchaikovsky and fading out with a nice bit of Rachmaninov. Good stuff... :yep:


Getting back to the housing, touché on the convicts, the only problem with that island was that most of it was trying to kill us, I think we kind of hoped that the islands hunger would be satisfied with the criminals we sent but it all went a bit wrong. Still, could be worse, the other island we tried wasted a batch of perfectly good tea, that's a crime worse than treason. :nope:

Much worse...

It's Teason...


http://imageshack.us/scaled/landing/836/tumbleweedv.gif


Yeah...I'll get my coat... :dead:

I own the 1990 Met Box Set with James Morris, Christa Ludwig, Matti Salminen, Ekkehard Wlaschia, a very annoying Siegfried Jerusalem and conducted by Levine. Overall, it is a pretty good traditional production and I completely agree with your view of modernist interpretations. I am particularly disdainful of the 1976 Chereau production.

Again, sorry for the continued hijack.

:haha: Wagner is an acquired taste, particularly late Wagner.

Pfft. Rossini was a sellout.

Sorry guys, I didn't mean to flood with information. My concentration is Wagner Studies, and I actually teach a course on the Ring Cycle. It is hard to turn off professor mode sometimes. Feel free to disregard.

EDIT: In fact, that goes for everybody. I am sorry if I am droning on and lecturing. I try not to talk about music here for fear of being overbearing.

I think the technical term for the homes in that community is "landominium," which I suppose means they are more like homes attached to one or more other homes in the same building with private entrances and exits. Instead of being stacked one on top of the other like apartments.

And the phrase "glorified apartments" is exactly what I used to describe a lot of the places I looked at - I didn't even bother looking at anything with a stacked design, but even some of the two/three story townhouse style places were, in matters of interior design, little more than larger versions of the apartments that are ubiquitous here in the small municipality where I currently live. Some of them looked exactly like my own apartment inside, just with a couple extra rooms thrown in. No thanks!

I suspect a lot of the condos and apartments complexes were built around the same time, when the population here really started to take off, and thus the interiors all look very familiar unless someone has done a lot of renovating and remodeling. Most people haven't and some of those who have did a very bad job. We looked at one place where we all stood around in a couple of the rooms scratching our heads saying "WTH were they thinking?" And it wasn't design choices, it was counters that were obviously not level and new paint that didn't cover a whole wall because they were too lazy to move something and paint behind it.

Everybody who looked at this place with me got the same impression - that it looked like a home inside, not a cookie cutter duplicate of a thousand other units in complexes all over the area. Yeah it's got some of the issues that any 34 year old, lived-in place is gonna have but it's also got more character inside than anything else I saw.

I'm so excited! Just the thought of having a bedroom that is not also an office and an office that is not also a bedroom is a real thrill. A room for just my computer and personal business stuff and bookcases! A room that is actually dedicated to sleeping and relaxing! And a kitchen with more than two square feet of counter space! And a dishwasher that is not Frau Kaleun standing there trying to wash something that is 50% bigger than the sink it's being washed in!

Does this mean if we listen to all your Wagner postings, we'll get course credit?...

<O>

Sure, full credit at the University of Tak. Accreditation pending.

No, just a headache. :O:

Speaking of acquired tastes, I went to the symphony again last month - Pinchas Zuckerman (sp?) was guest conductor/performer and they opened with Beethoven's violin romances and closed with Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony.

In between they did Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht and much to my surprise I really sort of... liked it. Of course IIRC it is a very early composition.

This Sunday I've got tickets again and they'll be doing something and something else and then the Emperor Concerto. It has become one of my very favorite pieces over the past couple of years and I'm really looking forward to it.

Next season they are doing a whole BUNCH of Beethoven, including the 8th symphony, and in all honesty I might even like that one better than the 9th. I never even listened to it until a couple years ago, I mean with LvB it seems like the focus is always on 3-5-7-9 and sometimes 6, but man when I got a complete cycle on CD I listened to it and it took me DAYS just to get through the first part of the first movement, I would get to the part where it - crap I don't know the technical terms - it all builds up and then you get that big "da da da DUM da da da DUM da da da DUM da da da" and then the last "DUM" bounces you right back to the beginning again. IT BLEW ME AWAY. I just kept listening up to that point and then starting over again, because it's so awesome.

Then I listen to the rest of the first movement and it gets EVEN BETTER. When it gets all minor and tense and builds and builds and then there's that moment where it all resolves back into a major fanfare and it's like the sun suddenly breaking through the clouds after a dark and violent storm. TA DA!!

And the fourth movement is seven minutes of pure bliss, unless the conductor sets the tempo too slow in which I case I turn it off and go listen to somebody else's version. :O: Too slow it loses what I love about it most, which is that it feels so playful and mischievous. The image I always get in my head is someone dangling a string in front of a kitten, where of course you are the kitten and the music is the string and LvB is the one dangling it and chuckling every time you jump.

Oh hey yeah and I also bought a condo, what were we talking about again? :rotfl2:

You youngsters and your newfangled violins and forte-pianos. I've been listening to Hildegard von Bingen and the hurdy-gurdy all week. :O:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2aKyH2NhW0

You misunderstand me, I think. I wasn't complaining about the amount of information, or the amount of music. It's just that when someone posts links like that I want to go listen to the whole thing. When I don't have time it's frustrating. :sunny:

I know the feeling (which is not the same as "I feel your pain.")...

It does seem a bit strange LvB's seemingly best symphonies are the odd numbered works. It is rather like the first set of "Star Trek" movies...

I have a number of favorite movements in LvB's symphonies; my favorite is actually the melding of the 3rd and 4th movements of the 5th Symphony, particularly the transition. The 3rd is so labored and angst-ridden as it continues, then, just as it transitions into the next movement, there is a slow, hopeful swell in the strings and it burst into a loud, joyful cekebration of what I have sometimes referred to as "free flight"...

I particularly dislike recordings where they separate the 3rd and 4th movement with the standard silent space used between numbers on a disc...

Speaking of the 5th Symphony, some co-workers of mine several years ago were debating "the world's greatest riff". They turned to me as the ancient keeper of long-forgotten rock lore and asked my opinion. I replied "The opening notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony; just two notes, the first repeated 3 times followed by the second. It is the most identifiable, referenced, imitated sequence of notes in all music history. No other comes close." They looked at me and then decided the greatest riff was the opening to "Whole lotta Love"...

So, Frau, what's new with your house?...

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I am still coming to terms with the 5th. Of all his "great" symphonies, that's the one that I've so far had trouble really connecting with. Don't get me wrong, I know it's brilliant, and there are parts of it that I've always loved - that segue from movement 3 to 4, and the first part of 4, being one of them - but for some reason the big emotional attachment just hasn't happened. It's more of an intelletual appreciation than a big emotional reaction. I'm more drawn to it now than I was in the past, so it may just be a matter of "the right music at the right moment" - sometimes you just have to be in the right place in your life and development before the light bulb over your head clicks on and your heart really takes something in completely.

Maybe it's because the opening motif is so prevalent - I mean, everybody knows it even if they don't know that they know it - by the time you sit down to really listen to it for the first time, it can be more of an "oh, that" moment than an "a-HA!" moment.

Well, in the absence of anything else to do at the moment (I was too tired to pack up much of anything tonight) I've been looking at things on line that I want or will need to buy or replace. A new desk, new bedroom furniture, etc. Mostly just to get some ideas and keep some price comparisons in mind for the near future.

Think I found the desk I want today, a nice corner workstation altho I may have to look at it in the store again, possibly with a piece of cardboard cut to match the dimensions of my monitor which should fit but it's going to be close. It has a nice lower ledge which will keep my CPU off the floor without buying a separate stand for it, probably also hold the subwoofer and some other stuff. Downside is that it has no drawers of any kind, but I'll have plenty of room to add a file cabinet and pick up a little cabinet with a few drawers to sit on either side and it will still likely take up less or about the same room as the standard L-shaped desk. I wanted a lateral file cabinet anyway, which can double as a place to put the printer.

Also looking at this bedroom set, I'd like to go for a clean, simple Asian influence there and I really love the the looks of the bed. Not so sure about the finish on the wood, though, I'll have to look at it in person. Definitely not the bedding in the picture though. DO NOT WANT. Thinking of something with maybe shades of lilac or plum and/or a very pale, cool green. Not having much luck finding anything so far, altho they do have this set currently at the same place. Not crazy about the gold but it's not too, too yellowish in the picture so I dunno. It doesn't look much like purple in the pic either altho the description says it is. I like that it has the black added in as I have some nice black lamps with an Asian feel, one of which would make a nice nightstand lamp if I convert to a "touch" lamp.

Also looked at this set and thought it had the pale green I wanted, but the comments from buyers describe it as a pewter/silver grey, and it's not in the stores so I can't see it in person without buying it and then returning it if I don't like it. I would probably like the silver grey, but not sure how it would look with the beige carpet, and the hardware on the furniture I like above appears to be some kind of silver tone... of course the carpet could come up and be replaced eventually... so many decisions! And then what to paint the walls and trim?

Man I bet you can find lots of cool, legit Asian-inspired stuff on the Left Coast, here it's not so easy.

:har:

Too funny, i say it all the time. I forget where i got it from though. :hmmm:

:har:


Congrats on the new home, it looks really nice! :up: