ROSL, 1st round 28Jan10 | 1

Waking up early in London is very easy: my body still remains in the continent so I got an extra hour to have a calm cup of tea and write this.

Since a couple of days ago, I feel sick (the extreme cold these days in Utrecht and the humidity through the window of my room certainly affected me), but yesterday Janet and me took the plane to London. Today we will play in the first round of the Royal-Over Seas League annual music competition… Bach and van Eÿck… Castello, Telemann and Yun will wait until Monday, and Vivaldi to the final on Tuesday (in case we get there, of course).

By now everything goes very well: a nice travel (far from my last experience with easyJet), a lovely evening, I feel less sick, and thermometers are more than 10ºC higher here. Today we will have a walk in London centre, and go to Long Clawson in the weekend.

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)