Albumleaves

“Song, with Replies”

December 2, 2010 – 9:00 AM

Albumleaf 48: November 30, 2010 (Farmville)

By David Salvage | Posted in Albumleaves | Comments (1)

“The Red and Heavy Audit”

November 30, 2010 – 5:50 PM

Albumleaf 47: November 29, 2010 (Farmville)

The city below them was locked up in its own torments. Sulpher fires blazed in the streets; the conches in the Hindu temples screamed and bellowed, for the gods were inattentive in those days. There was a service in the great Mohammedan shrine, and the call to prayer from the minarets was almost unceasing. They heard the wailing in the houses of the dead, and once the shriek of a mother who had lost a child and was calling for its return. In the gray dawn they saw the dead borne out through the city gates, each litter with its own little knot of mourners. Wherefore they kissed each other and shivered.

–from Rudyard Kipling, “Without Benefit of Clergy”

By David Salvage | Posted in Albumleaves, Quotations | Comments (0)

Joseph BÃ¶hm Speaks

November 25, 2010 – 9:00 AM

In 1825, Joseph BÃ¶hm was the first violinist of the Schuppanzigh Quartet. He relates this anecdote.

The unhappy man [Beethoven] was so deaf that he could no longer hear the heavenly sound of his compositions. And yet rehearsing in his presence was not easy. With close attention his eyes followed the bows and therefore he was able to judge the smallest fluctuations in tempo or rhythm and correct them at once. At the close of the last movement of this quartet [Op. 127] there was a meno vivace, which seemed to me to weaken the general effect. At the rehearsal, therefore, I advised that the original tempo be maintained, which was done, to the betterment of the effect. Beethoven, crouched in a corner, heard nothing, but watched with strained attention. After the last bow-stroke he said, laconically, “Let it remain so,” went to the desks and crossed out the meno vivace in the four parts.

–reproduced from Lewis Lockwood’s Beethoven: The Music and The Life, p. 352