A lot of modern packages which began outside emacs have now been
gradually been merged into the main emacs tree and come pre-installed
(use-package for clean per package configuration, eglot for LSP
support, tree-sitter, which-key etc). So you just need to learn how to
configure them.
The most important packages which make emacs feel "modern" that are
still outside the emacs tree for now are the ones which makes
completion better, both in the main buffer and also in the minibuffer
(what others may call your "command palette"). They are
- consult: search and navigation commands, provides candidates for...
- vertico: vertical display of candidates in the minibuffer
- marginalia: annotations for the candidates
- orderless: orderless fuzzy match for candidates
- embark: right mouse context menu for candidates
Getting these setup would make your whole journey onwards much
smoother.
That Byrd is very nice! The individual voices came across very well on
my IEMs.
I'm used to reverb as well, and the complete lack of reverb in these
recordings still sound a little weird to me, as if they are singing in
a closet. But even in the 15th and 16th century vocal polyphony was
likely performed (often?) in places other than the resonant nave or
choir of a large church. I read that aristocratic (or ecclesial)
patrons would have singers perform in private chambers, and
performance of votive masses at a private chapel to the side of main
space in the church would have very different (and quite dry)
acoustics.
A recent recording of Obrecht masses had close mic, recorded in a studio usually used for pop music with very little echo, with one voice per part [1]. The effect really is quite startling. The last time choral music was recorded like this was (coincidentally another Obrecht mass) more than 30 years ago [2].
I think a lot of vocal music written around 1500 would benefit from this approach. It has been remarked that this is really a sort of sacred chamber music rather than music requiring a huge choir. The music moves too fast and it's very difficult for a big choir in a very resonant space to do Obrecht, Josquin and friends full justice.
The main reason for the commotion during the Paris premiere seems to be the publicity which whipped up the audience on both sides and made a clash inevitable. The Russian ballet had been playing the snobbery of the Paris audience for Stravinsky's two previous ballets, but misjudged the response in the third.
The subsequent performances, the London premiere, and the Paris concert premiere in 1914 all went off without a hitch. And the status of the Rite has only steadily increased ever since.
As Taruskin says, the music of the Rite is actually not very difficult to appreciate[1]:
> While it was at first a sore test for orchestra and conductor, and while it took fully half a century before music analysts caught up with it, The Rite has never been a difficult piece for the audience.
> The sounds of the music make a direct and compelling appeal to the listener’s imagination, and the listener’s body. In conjunction with Stravinsky’s peerless handling of the immense orchestra they have a visceral, cathartic impact. They leave—and to judge from the history of the score’s reception, have always left—most listeners feeling exhilarated. It is only the mythology of The Rite that would suggest anything else.
> Universalism: that is the intellectual realm abutting utopianism and ethnocentrism. "There are universal values, and they happen to be mine," was Stanley Hoffman’s delightful definition of the latter. Like utopianism and ethnocentrism, universalism normalizes, excludes, and shouts down. If “universal” does not mean universally accepted, then it means nothing. Those who do not accept must therefore at least be marginalized, and if possible stigmatized.
Great job! For converting music to readable images, the latex of music
typesetting is lilypond, which has the ability to create legible music
at any size by scaling the notational glyphs accordingly[1]. This
sounds like what you were trying to achieve achieve with opencv.
With that being said, although lilypond is very intelligent about all
sorts of typesetting minutiae, but it's probably difficult to wrangle
it to run on smart glasses.
I recall that Charles Rosen wrote somewhere that one of the reasons the string quartet took off in the classical period was that it allowed the playing of all the notes in a dominant seventh chord without double stops. Although this was probably a better explanation for the relative paucity of string trios in the output of Mozart (1) and Beethoven (0). The establishment of four parts as the "standard" scoring for vocal ensembles can be traced back to the 15th century.
On the other hand the second and more famous dining (and conversation) club founded by Dr Johnson had originally 9 members, and gradually grew from that to dozens. Although many including Johnson may have not been entirely happy with the expansion.
Yes, although they are either juvenilia or relatively small pieces that would not greatly change our understanding of the composer in question.
On the other hand there is another piece of music "recovered" this year not by rediscovery but by recomposition/restoration, and it's quite a substantial piece that should provide quite a useful new perspective on the composer[1][2].
>Shakespeare plays were made for broad appeal (he was a professional playwright, after all). Mozart's music was made for the broad appeal.
This statement is misleading because the broad appeal of both Shakespeare and Mozart today is the culmination of centuries of attempts to understand (and misunderstand) them. Calculus can be taught to high schoolers nowadays, but how many scientists in Newton's days could understand the Principia in its entirety?
Not to mention that Shakespeare and Mozart were both able to produce works of the highest sophistication that leaves most of their contemporaries (and many today) baffled. Harold Bloom wrote that the sophisticated word play in Love's Labour's Lost was not surpassed until Joyce, and Mozart's contemporaries complained endlessly about the complex textures in his opera finales. When Mozart wrote piano trios for the public, his publisher cancelled the series after two pieces because they were judged far too difficult for the masses, and when Mozart intended to write some easy piano sonatas at the end of his life, the first (the only one he completed) turned out to be the most difficult he ever wrote.
Invoking the popularity of Shakespeare or Mozart as analogues to Mr Beast reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the longevity of both Shakespeare or Mozart, and leaves unmentioned the extensive body of difficult works on which their reputation rests today.
>In the end, maybe the crucial difference between those who read once and those who reread is an attitude toward time, or more precisely, death. The most obvious argument against rereading is, of course, that there just isn’t enough time. It makes no sense to luxuriate in Flaubert’s physiognomic details over and over again, unless you think you’re going to live forever.
This is a curious argument. Does the author never listen to a song more than once?
It's not at all surprising since Benjamin's tract was notoriously impenetrable, even to his original examiners, which resulted in his habilitation being rejected. Not to mention that the Origins of the German Trauerspiel only received an english translation in the 70s (and also in the past few years, as your link shows). I would expect someone of uncommon erudition to have read and understood that book, so it's not surprising that the author of the article doesn't mention it. Teaching Benjamin to the HN crowd is like teaching algebraic topology to MFA students, I applaud your effort but I don't think it will have much effect.
Melancholy was quite fashionable in early 17th century England, and many songs of John Dowland were heavily melancholic. This wasn't mentioned in the article, but since it is an extract from a longer book, maybe it appears elsewhere in the book.
>What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.
The late and great Richard Taruskin used this incident to frame a book review in the New Republic[1]. Many people have commented on the location of Bell's stunt, which was chosen to deliberately make a point. I think it's more interesting that Taruskin mentioned a contrasting incident discussed in one of the reviewed books.
>With that in mind, consider Kramer's cleverly titled final chapter, "Persephone's Fiddle," which is largely devoted to--guess what?--a violinist Kramer once heard busking unaccompanied Bach in the New York subway. Unlike Joshua Bell at L'Enfant Plaza, this fiddler drew a rapt crowd:
>It was early fall, the start of a new academic semester, and the performer on the platform--Times Square, my usual spot--looked like a music student trying to pick up some extra cash for books or scores. She was young, in her early twenties, blonde, attractive, and well dressed, which may help explain the unusual amount of attention she was getting from a crowd that in normal circumstances wouldn't give a busker a second glance.
>Or maybe it was the music. . . .
>Kramer goes on to speculate about what it was in Bach that so captivated fifteen or twenty listeners in that noisy atmosphere, and moved them at the end to "a moment of complete silence followed by a smattering of applause." My question, rather, is whether you noticed the difference between the scene Kramer describes and the one that the Washington Post reporter engineered for Joshua Bell. It couldn't be simpler, or more crucial.
>Bell was playing at the entrance to the station, where trains cannot be seen and everyone is hurrying to catch one. Kramer's little Persephone was playing down on the platform, where riders are apt to be at (enforced) leisure. Little Persephone knew that she needed an appropriate location to get across her message ("Isn't this beautiful?" or "Can I have some money?" or whatever you like). The Post reporter chose the least appropriate location possible. One of them was trying to make money, the other was trying to make a point. And Bach served them both equally well.
A fine article on the role of timbre which is indeed discussed little compared to the focus on harmony and form for classical music. Charles Rosen gave one possible reason for this neglect in his book "Piano Notes", where he traces it to a philosophical prejudice of composers from Hadyn onwards against variety in tone colour and in favour of more abstract qualities.
> The utility of the piano for composing was its neutral and uniform tone color: in theory (although not in reality) the tone quality of the bass is the same as the treble. In any case, the change in tone color over the whole range of the piano is, or should be, gradual and continuous (there are breaks, of course, when the notes go from one string in the bass to two and then to three in the treble). The monochrome piano might be used therefore just for its arrangements of pitches, and the quality of the sound could-absurdly in many cases-be considered secondary.
> What made it possible for composers to refuse to acknowledge the difference on the piano between treble and bass and leave whatever problems arose to be solved by the performer was the fact that the change in tone color over the span of the keyboard is not like the leap from a bassoon to a flute but continuous and very gradual when the instrument is properly voiced. These imperceptible gradations are the result of a deliberate policy of a unified sonority on the part of musicians and instrument makers. All attempts over the history of piano construction to incorporate anything analogous to the picturesque changes of registration in the organ and the harpsichord had little success, were not exploited by composers, and were finally abandoned. Radical contrasts of tone color were traded for the possibility of making a gradual crescendo or diminuendo. This was a decision that took place at the same time as the preeminence accorded to the string quartet over all other forms of chamber music; that, too, emphasized the importance of a unified tone color. Chamber music with wind instruments, while the occasion for several masterpieces, became the exception, an exotic form. That is why the use of colorful sonorities in the orchestra has so often been considered somewhat vulgar, as if calling attention to the sound were paradoxically to detract from the music. The prestige given to pure string sonority is part of the asceticism of nineteenth-century high culture. Contrasts of tone color were given a significantly lower place in the hierarchy of musical elements. This is one reason that only the piano repertory rivals the string quartet as the most respectable medium for private and semiprivate music-making from Haydn to Brahms.
It should be mentioned that "old" violins that are still used today have all been substantially rebuilt to accommodate later repertories. There is a lot of difference between an early Baroque violin and a late 19th century violin including the fingerboard and the type of strings, and only a few museum strads that have not been played have retained their original configuration. One benefit of the early music movement that took off in the second half of the 20th century was realising that the "old" and "original" instruments weren't actually that old or original after all, and new baroque violins had to be made from scratch to attempt to reproduce what they would have sounded back like in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The survival rate for certain 15th/16th codices in Western Europe aren't great either. From England there are only three choirbooks (Eton, Lambeth, Caius) surviving from the first half of the 16th century, when the catalogue from just a single college at one university lists tens of choirbooks. Given the sheer number of cathedrals, colleges etc which supported musical institutions in pre-reformation England, the scale of the loss becomes apparent. Similarly there is almost a complete loss of all musical manuscripts from the royal court of France, such that the compositions of the leader of its court chapel need to be recovered (incompletely) from a Vatican manuscript.
> “Almost all music is written with a strong melody line,” she said. “We call that the lead line. Then, the three parts that harmonize with that, usually they are written just to harmonize. And they do. With this dispersed music, each line is a tune unto itself. It is not written just to harmonize with the lead. It's a tune unto itself. That's why they call it dispersed harmony.”
> The light came on. Four separate melodies, sung simultaneously. Four different songs, really, but each with the same words. Which makes it an even more welcoming tradition than the one I grew up with. If you don’t like the treble line of a song that much, then sing one of the other three. Nobody cares.
This is of course more commonly known as "polyphony". Written sources of polyphony in western sacred music survive from at least the 12th century AD, and the unwritten practice must go back even further. Polyphony has been a inseparable, and some may even say distinguishing feature of western (literate) music ever since. It seems that the author and her interviewee are somewhat insulated from the mainstream of western music to be unaware of this.
Interesting interpretation of "he was orphaned at 10 and left with nothing and had to go and live with his brother".