The organ

[+ g56whiz]

Am I really the only person here who has seen Britten's "Death in Venice" in person?

 

No. The Met did it many decades ago and I attended ONCE.

[AdamSmith]

Seeing the music in print reveals some complex rhythms and even the contrapuntal "Oh, come, come, come, etc" underlying "Come to the church etc." melody.

I think I'm so smart, but then I struggle to really read music. Just as I read a poem and think I understand, then a day or two later the real thing elects to reveal itself, and shows the 98% that I missed completely.

 

So with these notes. What subtle wonders they contain! Hidden within such at-first-glance simplicity.

 

Close to Bloom's summation of Hart Crane's writing: an "impacted density."

[AdamSmith]

Which is a greater piece of music Mahler's Ninth or The Beauiful Blue Danube by Johann Strauss Jr. In culinary terms that might be like comaring the perfect Chateaubriand to the perfect three minute egg. Yet a case can be made for both types of perfection. Plus, I wonder which composition has given the most pleasure over the years as that might be another measurement to consider.

[MEDIA=vimeo]42097740[/MEDIA]

[AdamSmith]

[+ g56whiz]

Plus, I wonder which composition has given the most pleasure over the years as that might be another measurement to consider.

 

Interesting question that generates several more. How does one measure "most pleasure"? Is it an objective demographic count of the number of people who are recorded as having derived pleasure from hearing the Strauss or the Mahler. Or is a subjective count based on the intensity of the pleasure received. I'm guessing Strauss would win the former and Mahler the later. But the most accurate and unattainable measure would be some abstraction of the two. But Strauss and Mahler are both Viennese only several decades apart.

 

How would you make such a comparison if the composers were Bach (Johnnes Passion) and Berlioz (Les Troyen)? Would it even be relevant?

[whipped guy]

I think I'm so smart, but then I struggle to really read music. Just as I read a poem and think I understand, then a day or two later the real thing elects to reveal itself, and shows the 98% that I missed completely.

 

So with these notes. What subtle wonders they contain! Hidden within such at-first-glance simplicity.

 

Close to Bloom's summation of Hart Crane's writing: an "impacted density."

I always marvel when I look at the score of a Haydn Symphony. It all looks so simple on paper. Yet the orchestral textures that he is able to coax from the basic classical orchestra are shear genius. Plus he's always playing around with contrapuntal textures whether it is the beginning of a mini unfinished fugue or the bass line that pops out of nowhere and challenges the treble theme for prominence. Always masterful!

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

Could You Survive for 14 Seconds in the Vacuum of Space Like in Kubrick’s ‘2001’?

 

Let’s look ahead to the future. Close your eyes and picture the technologically advanced world at the dawn of the 21st century, all the way to the year 2001! By this time, as predicted by author Arthur C. Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick, we will have manned space flights to Jupiter and beyond. Pan-Am space planes will have been around for years. Artificially intelligent, allegedly infallible supercomputers will be capable of being in charge of life support for everyone on board a spacecraft. What could possibly go wrong?

 

Kubrick’s visionary and groundbreaking 2001: A Space Odyssey presents an ultra-realistic tale of space travel and exploration that didn’t exactly come true more than a decade ago. However, even steeped in 60s science, it helped bring science fiction films out of the realm of corny monster movies and into the modern age. But how accurate is it?

 

After the HAL-9000 computer kills Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) by severing his oxygen line while on a space walk outside the Discovery, David Bowman (Keir Dullea) takes an escape pod to save him. However, HAL refuses to let Bowman back into the Discovery. In an act of desperation, Bowman

. He is exposed to approximately 14 seconds of the vacuum of space before he can manually engage the airlock and repressurize the chamber.

 

As much as we love 2001: A Space Odyssey, that got us thinking: Could someone really survive being exposed to the vacuum of space, even for just 14 seconds?

 

The Answer: Yes, but it would suck

 

With the exception of ridiculously cheesy movies like Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, in which Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow) literally flies Lacy Warfield (Mariel Hemingway) half-way to the moon without nary a blood vessel bursting (as well as a deleted scene in which Superman flies a child into space), most Hollywood films at least acknowledge the danger of explosive decompression when faced with the vacuum of space.

 

In one of my favorite guilty pleasures, Event Horizon, Ensign Justin (Jack Noseworthy) is

, which results in massive trauma to his flesh and his eyeballs bursting into strings of blood and eye goo. Mission to Mars sees Tim Robbins pull off his space helmet and flash-freeze like a package of supermarket spinach. These are, not surprisingly, more extreme versions of what would actually happen, exhibiting the excessive creative license of Paul W.S. Anderson and Brian DePalma.

 

According to William P. Jeffs from NASA:

 

“The 14 seconds in vacuum would have been unpleasant but survivable.”

 

Jeffs points to Air Force experimentation on chimpanzees as evidence. Back in the 1960s, the Air Force conducted a series of tests on chimpanzees, among which they inflicted sudden decompression on 17 subjects and left them in a vacuum between 5 and 210 seconds. All but one of the chimpanzees survived and recovered from the experiments with no noticeable cognitive or nerve damage. The only subject that died, who was exposed to a vacuum for 90 seconds, was an older chimpanzee with high blood pressure and a heart abnormality.

 

Of course, these chimps were put in a 100% oxygen environment from 4-to-24 hours to recover. David Bowman had to walk to the HAL-9000 central core and deactivate the supercomputer’s higher brain functions before traveling through a stargate and becoming a star-child. This wasn’t exactly a relaxing day for him.

 

But what about those explosive bolts?

Bowman was definitely not working in a 100% atmosphere situation because he used explosive bolts to break into the Discovery’s airlock. As a general rule, pure oxygen and explosions don’t play nice together.

 

 

In the early days of the space program, explosive bolts were commonplace. Space capsules are notoriously compact and crowded, so Bowman was crouching right next to them when they went off. However, he would be likely perfectly safe. As Jeffs points out, “Given the fact that all but one Mercury astronaut fired the explosive bolts to egress the side hatch, I don’t think proximity is an issue.”

 

It’s not that explosive bolts haven’t posed a threat to some astronauts. In fact, when Gus Grissom splashed down in his Mercury capsule on July 21, 1961, the explosive bolts fired prematurely, and he had to scramble out of the capsule before it sunk like a stone to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. While explosive bolts have their hazards, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bowman was in very little risk of drowning while orbiting Jupiter.

 

So, we’re cool in the vacuum of space, right?

 

I wouldn’t want to spend my vacation at 0 mm Hg, but biology can be highly resilient. It’s been more than 45 years since 2001: A Space Odyssey was released, and it continues to be one of the most scientifically accurate depictions of space travel ever committed to film. Even today in a post-Star Wars, post-CGI world, the effects hold up. Compared to films that were actually released in 2001, like Tim Burton’s not-so-epic retelling of Planet of the Apes or the CGI mess that is Cats & Dogs, 14 seconds in explosive decompression might be desirable.

 

Just don’t put an “infallible” supercomputer in charge of anything. Those things are egomaniacs.

 

 

https://filmschoolrejects.com/could-you-survive-for-14-seconds-in-the-vacuum-of-space-like-in-kubricks-2001-d5f0a873f302

[AdamSmith]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgkyrW2NiwM

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[whipped guy]

What a thread! We have experienced among other things a Bach Odyessy and a Space Oddessy and even played a bit of good ol' boy gospel music not to mention even some Haydn-seek along the way... there was even a train ride!

 

Is this not the best and most interesting show in town if not....

?!?!?!?!

[AdamSmith]

What a thread! We have experienced among other things a Bach Odyessy and a Space Oddessy and even played a bit of good ol' boy gospel music not to mention even some Haydn-seek along the way... there was even a train ride!

 

Is this not the best and most interesting show in town if not....

?!?!?!?!

Merely the striving ever to evade & elude that most mortal enemy known to man, boredom!

 

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Boredom

[AdamSmith]

'2001' landed its Cretaceous/Tertiary Boundary impact on my mind when I was nine. Shaped all since.

 

Kubrick is incontrovertibly the Beethoven of filmic art.

[+ g56whiz]

Merely the striving ever to evade & elude that most mortal enemy known to man, boredom!

 

And denying the rest of us the opportunity to experience it (thankfully).

[+ g56whiz]

'2001' landed its Cretaceous/Tertiary Boundary impact on my mind when I was nine. Shaped all since.

 

Kubrick is incontrovertibly the Beethoven of filmic art.

 

Barry Lyndon is my favorite film. I own a copy. But it's on Laserdisc and I've long ago given up the real estate that player took on my shelf.

[+ g56whiz]

Haydn-seek? Shameful! Simply shameful!!!

You've come upon a new pain to inflict. Lol

[TruHart1]

Am I really the only person here who has seen Britten's "Death in Venice" in person?

I saw the first MET production in 1974, with Britten's life-long partner, tenor Peter Pears as Aschenbach, just two years before the composer passed away in 1976. I thought then, and continue to think, it is Britten's most "modern" opera composition. Very stark in places and very haunting in others! The next group of performances at the MET in early 1994 had Anthony Rolfe Johnson as Aschenbach and though I only heard that on a radio broadcast, Rolfe Johnson's lyrical sound was a true revelation compared with the interpretation of Pears, in what proved to be Britten's final opera.

 

TruHart1

[+ g56whiz]

I saw the first MET production in 1974, with Britten's life-long partner, tenor Peter Pears as Aschenbach, just two years before the composer passed away in 1976. I thought then, and continue to think, it is Britten's most "modern" opera composition. Very stark in places and very haunting in others! The next group of performances at the MET in early 1994 had Anthony Rolfe Johnson as Aschenbach and though I only heard that on a radio broadcast, Rolfe Johnson's lyrical sound was a true revelation compared with the interpretation of Pears, in what was his final Britten operatic role.

 

TruHart1

 

I saw the later run with no reference to the the Pears performance. But I had similar experience with Britten's Billy Budd. Pears was the Met's first Capt Vere. It was a haunting performance although Pears' voice was no longer up to the role. Can't remember who the next Vere was.

[TruHart1]

I saw the later run with no reference to the the Pears performance. But I had similar experience with Britten's Billy Budd. Pears was the Met's first Capt Vere. It was a haunting performance although Pears' voice was no longer up to the role. Can't remember who the next Vere was.

I stand corrected, Pears final role at the MET was Captain Vere in Billy Budd in 1979. After Pears, Richard Cassily owned Vere for a season and a half, though I seem to recall Cassily had some vocal fatigue which was apparent during a broadcast I heard. I saw the production of Billy Budd at the MET, an almost overwhelming example of how impressively the MET stage could be used, with 4 or 5 different elevating deck levels appearing and disappearing for different scenes. My favorite Captain Veres at the MET were Graham Clark, a phenomenal character tenor, and the late Philip Langridge, an excellent lyric tenor.

 

TruHart1

[whipped guy]

What a thread! We have experienced among other things a Bach Odyessy and a Space Oddessy and even played a bit of good ol' boy gospel music not to mention even some Haydn-seek along the way... there was even a train ride!

 

Is this not the best and most interesting show in town if not....

?!?!?!?!

 

Haydn-seek? Shameful! Simply shameful!!!

You've come upon a new pain to inflict. Lol

 

The first bit of Haydn that I ever played was a piece entitled "Haydn Go Seek". It was a simplified three page arrangement for solo piano of the last movement (Rondo all'Ungherese) of Haydn's Klavierkonzert in D major Hob. XVIII/11 that was originally published as a concerto for either piano or harpsichord. I fell in love with Haydn and was determined to eventually learn the entire piece in its original form. The only recording that the local library had was the ancient version by Wanda Landowska on harpsichord that was based on a very corrupt version of the score. I learned the piece from a less corrupt Schirmer Edition that had the most god awful cadenzas that had nothing to do with Haydn and had all sorts of 20th Century harmonies. Being a purest even back then I composed my own cadenzas in a very 18th Century style that Haydn would have recognized. Over the years scholarship has revised the score with the current Henle Edition bring the most reliable. Still no authentic cadenzas have surfaced and mine are as good as any that I have heard and unlike some others (out of necessity given my technical abilities) are not more difficult to play than the Concerto itself which is really not a very challenging composition. As I noted above it is always amazing how Haydn can do so much with the simplest means.

 

Bottom line: many others beat me to the "Haydn Seek" quip:

 

http://mrsbrinkmanschoirs.weebly.com/uploads/8/9/6/2/8962991/2359377_orig.jpeg '

 

[AdamSmith]

Barry Lyndon is my favorite film. I own a copy. But it's on Laserdisc and I've long ago given up the real estate that player took on my shelf.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erKsIJyfB_Q

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]