the Phantom library 26Aug09 | 0

What would you feel if you go into the library to pick up those books you need for your paper in methodology, and discover that they are moving away? Emptiness? It would match literally with the situation of the building…, but I couldn’t do anything else than go back to the locker to catch the camera and make some pictures: who knows when will be the next time I see a dessert library again…

I guess that my “never-mind” answer was compensated by karma when I went to pick up the “artist” badge of Accademia dell’Arcadia to attend the concerts of the Oude Muziek Festival, and found the rehearsal of Al Ayre Español, jejeje…

Take a look in the Oude Muziek programme…

… and also the Fringe concerts! [pdf]

Milonga on the street 20Aug09 | 0

Just returned home from a street milonga. Today work has finished early and in the way home I have encountered again the spontaneous people that meets (now I know) every Thursday in the small square behind the Utrecht City Hall to dance tango. And today I felt like stopping.

No tango shoes, but after five (!) years without tango, who cares about shoes! It has been a lovely experience again (thanks to my two partners).

who said...

"[Beethoven] went in his usual (I might say, ill-bred) manner to the instrument as if half-pushed, picket up the violoncello part of Steibelt's quintet in passing, placed it (intentionally?) upon the stand upside down and with one finger drummed out a theme of the first few measures. Insulted and angered, he improvised in such a manner that Steibelt left the room before he finished, would never again meet him and, indeed, made it a condition that Beethoven should not be invited before accepting an offer."

F.W. Wegeler & F. Ries, Biographische Notizen über Ludwig van Beethoven (Koblenz, 1838)

"[...] the king [Charles II of Spain] eagerly asked me if I had heard Matheuchi sing, when he would come, and if he was impertinent or not, and as if there were no army in the world, nor Milanese state, completely forgot such matters, but this is not surprising given that all his ministers, or most of them, have had the same experience [...]"

Letter of Carlos Felipe Spinola y Colonna to the duke of Medinaceli (1698)

"I was in St Alban's Abbey and I was intrigued: they were building a new organ and I went up to - I suppose it must have been - the verger and I said, 'Is the organ baroque?' And he said, 'No, it's in perfectly good order.'"

John Tavener, The Music of Silence, A Composer's Testament (Faber ISBN 0571200885)

"The Second Harpsichordist will go only to the last rehearsal, sending the Third One to the previous, who won't read more high Clef than Soprano, trying to play without using the Thumbs, don't follow the Numbers, play always the Sixth, don't meet up with the Master, and close all the second Parts of Arias with major thirds, etc. etc. etc."

Benedetto Marcello, Il teatro alla moda (1720)