The End is Nigh

My spring semester is quickly coming to an end...and I'm loosing steam.  Summer is fast approaching, and I have camp to finish planning among other fun summer things.  I have two science finals next week, but I am basically finished with my music history project (just have to finish a couple measures of orchestration and write a poem)

I am curious to know what music you listen to in attempt to keep yourself chugging down that academic track.  Artists, genre, a specific bpm?  Do you have a playlist? etc.

Ravel's String Quartet

Copyright 2011 Chrissy Misso.  Click for larger image

My favourite movement of the quartet is the second (Assez vif – Très rythmé), and although my favourite recording is the one on the CD I have from the Alexander String Quartet, I have posted the performance by the Hagen Quartet.  I have a visual poem-like thing that I feel embodies my response to the movement - think of the words as lyrics to the pizzicato melody.

ENJOY!! 

“In here can be found those well wrought, yet sensual melodies, amazing range of tone color, vibrant rhythm and touch of the exotic that characterizes Ravel’s music” (Joseph Way, programme notes 1994) 

Wozzeck

After watching the final scenes of Alban Berg's Wozzeck (an expressionist opera; soldier driven insane, murders his wife, gets found out by the people at a bar, doesn't immediately recognise what he's done, runs to clean up after himself, drowns himself in the lake when he tries to wash off the blood) in class, we were asked to write a poem...this is what I came up with...

Blood Lake

A red sky on the lake-shore
Surrounded by a persistent tension
So dark and quiet, a man going mad
His eyes looking off into the distance
His eyes no longer looking at anything
Sense drowning in his insanity
A red knife, a bloody moon, caught red-handed
The lake takes the man as the insanity took his mind
Nature tells the story as the curtain falls
And yet the tension prevails
The curtain falls again
A child left alone in the world

The Unknown Frontier

Wide open expanse, slowly changing  yet providing stability

A separated conversation, a breakdown in communication? One against many?

A group promotes chaos, but reassuring sounds linger to hold the universe together

The traveller calls into the distance, waiting for a response

Will the chaos scare him off? or will he pursue his journey?

Among the stars and planets, the traveller sours through space and time

Among the stars and planets, chaos lurks

But even in chaos there is order, a pattern to be sought

The traveller continues his exploration across the unknown frontier

Chaos tries to rule the unknown frontier

Wide open expanse, slowly changing yet providing stability

That is the Unknown Frontier

this is a poetry response to Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question (video w/score above)

Musical Comparisons

today is my birthday and i have heard MANY renditions of Happy Birthday - solos, remixes, groups with harmony, groups that weren't in tune with each other...it's been kinda fun to compare all these performances throughout the day!!

I've shared cake, candy, and 25+ fb birthday wishes.

Here's to another year down and another years to come!

World Application of Music History...

the random things I learn in orchestra with George Skipworth and in History of Western Music have become useful beyond my studies...kinda sorta, this is a FB conversation...but I won the prise!

Sister's Friend 1: did not believe Engelbert Humperdinck was a real person when she first heard about it on "Arthur"... until now .____.

Sister's Friend 2: Humperdinck? Like Humperdinck from Princess Bride?

SF 1: Uh, maybe? he's apparently a singer of some sort

SF2: You have seen that...right? Oh, then blah to him

SF1: yeah

SF2: OK, good, because if you hadn't...

Chrissy Misso: awesome composer!
he was one of the few students of wagner's
most famous for his opera Hansel und Gretel

Julie Geweke Workman (high school orchestra teacher): Chrissy wins the prize!