Productivity

We've had a super productive week: cleaned out the garage, the piano was tuned, Eve was groomed, air ducts were cleaned, and went through all the stuff in Dylan's room (took down the changing table pad and diaper station since those are no longer necessary). Wahoo! I feel so productive and accomplished. There's still plenty to do around the house, but isn't that always true?

I also finished the C's! I never thought I would get through them. It was a very large chunk of the dictionary, and I'm pretty much convinced that everything you ever wanted to learn about classical music can be found in this "chapter." In my last post I mentioned a bunch of the major concepts covered and here are a few more, just to prove my point: chromaticism, church music, clavichord, classical, clef, composition, concert, concerto, consonance and dissonance, counterpoint, country and western, and criticism. Counterpoint wins for 2nd longest article so far (6 pages) which wasn't surprising. A few things that were surprising...

-You could play vibrato on a clavichord.
- Bach wrote a cantata titled "Schwiegt stille, plaudert night" (be quiet, don't prattle) which "relates the predicament of a burgher's daughter whose coffee habit her father wishes to break." I'm not sure what a "burgher" is, and I'm not even sure what "prattle" means, but I think it's pretty cool that Bach wrote a cantata about a girl with a caffiene problem. I was under the impression he only wrote music with very lofty intentions.
-Because of the Copyright act of 1976 establishments with a jukebox supposedly pay $8 a year to performing rights organizations (like ASCAP who in turn reimburse the owners of the song when it is performed)
-Many composers over time have left hidden "messages" in their music... I already mentioned the B.A.C.H. example, referred to as musical cryptography. Perhaps Dan Brown can include some of this in his next book.
-Counterpoint notes: Counterpoint has distinguished western music from all other cultures for nine centuries. I also saw a very familiar definition of appoggiatura in this section, as in a non-harmonic tone, or non-chordal... I forget which term the dictionary prefers.

A couple direct quotes I liked

"The essential quality of dissonance is its sense of movement and not, as it is sometimes erroneously assumed, its degree of unpleasantness to the ear." which is actually a quote in the dictionary, here's the source (Piston, 1978, p. 7) There are very few quotes that aren't lyrics, so I guess the editors really liked this as well.

"Even the most rigorous analysis derives its authority only from the extent to which its readers agree, at least tacitly, on the criteria for significance that it brings to bear on what it observes." (p. 213) This has far reaching applications, not just musical.

Now on to the D's!! (actually I'm a good way through them already, I'm just a little behind in my blogging)

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