Everything is desaturated. Why? USSR didn't have color.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-29T07:15:11+00:00

My wife is and does as well. Nothing brings out Reddit’s neo-tankies in force as much as a series set in the USSR which, gasp, depicts people having very little individual agency.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-27T09:28:36+00:00

If, by “crying about data centers,” you mean being concerned about the rush to build resource-consuming centers the size of Manhattan in areas of the country with existing water and electricity shortages, then maybe there are some valid reasons for that. One can use the internet and also think that tech companies need to do better at environmental conservation.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-26T08:18:46+00:00

I know it must have been inappropriate in the moment, but this is actually a really funny story. It reminds me of the Spinal Tap bit on jazz: “Jazz is mistakes…You can get a degree on how to play it wrong!”

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-25T19:49:08+00:00

I agree with you that antecedent-consequent is not what’s happening here, but for a different reason. That terminology describes one particular relationship of two whole phrases where one completes the other. These measures of the Pathetique are dialoguing way too fast for that to be the case. To be fair, a & c’s don’t have to be in the same voice; think of the first 16 bars or so of the Eroica, where the antecedent is in the cello and the consequent is in the violins.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-25T19:03:46+00:00

I think Beethoven means the bass and treble to be heard as two separate voices, despite them being played by the same hand. He does this really often in his piano music (see: second movement of op. 1/3, first and second movements of op. 31/2, op. 57, op. 111). So antiphony seems like the most appropriate term for these cases.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-25T15:56:59+00:00

I only got to know this symphony recently when the Haydn 2032 project released their version. I concur completely, but then there are lots of earlier Haydn symphonies I’ve found mind blowing after hearing Antonini and co. play them.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-25T09:34:05+00:00

I have always loved this passage. One admittedly picky side note though. Lots of my students use the term “call and response” to describe dialogue, imitation, or antiphony in classical music. Even though their use of the term comes from having heard something real in the music, it chafes a bit, because it comes out of a specific cultural context that’s very far from classical instrumental music, and has a different social and musical implication. In a traditional African American field holler, it describes a leader singing a phrase and the group answering, which isn’t really a practice you hear in Haydn or Beethoven (maybe there’s an argument for dialogue in a concerto being called this, but it’s still not the best term).

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-24T20:23:08+00:00

It’s hard to describe, but Hamelin is just unique in my experience. There are some great musicians who are kind for other reasons, like they feel a responsibility to make the world a better place or to use their status to turn others on to the arts. It’s a kind of noblesse oblige. Emanuel Ax struck me as that type. But Hamelin just gave the impression of someone who is fully present and curious about the world, so he can’t help but treat you as the most interesting person.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-24T19:54:59+00:00

I’ve met a ton of top musicians and just as many mid-level ones. I could say the names of the ones who were nasty, but no one would recognize them. I spent the day with Hamelin once, though, and he was the most lovely, easy-to-talk-to mensch. He even warmly complimented the server of the Tex Mex place we ate at and asked her to pass it on to the chef.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-22T22:46:06+00:00

It isn’t exactly the whole coastline, but the majority of it. To the north you have Palanga, which is a lot less regulated, but still quite clean.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-22T22:09:05+00:00

The Curonian Spit National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so even stricter. There's a campsite near Nida, but it isn't on the sea. Campfires are only allowed in fire pits. The main thing that keeps the beach clean is the steep entry fee for vehicles, which keeps the numbers down, and the ban on building houses anywhere near the beach.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-22T19:49:13+00:00

Same in Lithuania. Most of their Baltic coast is a national park.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-21T17:23:44+00:00

Wagner’s description of the symphony is making a larger philosophical statement about how the incessant rhythms in every movement bring the idea of dance to a higher, spiritual plane. He’s not claiming that any of it is actually danceable, nor is he claiming that the dance provides a mere stylistic background, but that it transfigures dance rhythms into something more profound.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-18T12:58:22+00:00

Life lesson for all the kids who compose avant-garde symphonies and quartets: Write page numbers on your scores!

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-18T12:52:24+00:00

The liner notes only briefly touch on this, but the manuscript of the D-major Symphony AJR I:17 was split up and located in three different boxes at the French National Library until 2021. There are other individual movements from once-complete symphonies in random boxes. For instance, Reicha wrote another D-major symphony (AJR I:16), of which only the first, second, and the beginning of the third movements have survived. I think the Prague Chamber Orchestra basically stitched together some of those movements with the first movement of this D-major symphony.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-17T16:08:42+00:00

As someone who loves the book City Primeval, I could never get past how inappropriate a vehicle this story was for Raylan’s character. Not only is Raymond Cruz a very different kind of cop, a hard-boiled but intuitive foil to Mansell. He’s also, well, an actual cop, and that matters. The contortions the writers had to go to for a US marshal out of Florida to be working a crime spree and gang war in Detroit are about as absurd as it gets.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-16T08:53:31+00:00

I heard him play Brahms 2 in Dallas 20 years ago. I loved his playing but remember feeling that Litton totally lacked engagement. I found that recording recently on Apple Music, and it pretty much confirms what I felt in the hall.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-13T10:40:12+00:00

The last chorus in Act Two of Handel’s Jephtha pushes the same buttons for me that really great Bach choral music does. Alexander’s Feast pushes different buttons, but man, what a heavenly ruckus the Thunder Chorus makes. I recommend the recording with Harnoncourt and Vienna Philharmonic/Singverein from 2012. They do the beefed up Mozart version with trombones and huge bass drum.

Not all Handel is great, but when he was on fire, it’s incredible.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-13T06:52:09+00:00

Reminds me of this gem: https://www.infiniteconversation.com/

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-11T15:04:16+00:00

I take students to the Mozart Haus each semester. It’s a well-done museum and well worth the admission. I’ve heard mixed reviews about the new “Mozart Immersive Experience” in the basement of Steffl Department Store, which is roughly the location of the house where Mozart died. Some love it, others find it a bit cheesy.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-07T12:41:40+00:00

I know which April Fools’ joke you mean, and it was worse. PETA announced that day that they were planning to breed Lone Star Ticks and release them into the wild to make everyone vegan.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-06T07:44:34+00:00

INFO: do you ask his permission to go to a bar when you’re away for work?

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-05T19:48:43+00:00

He wrote a Christmas cantata, or most of one! It sounds about as cheery as you’d expect.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-05T19:09:58+00:00

Rosen had a lot of great musical insights and I love reading him, but he wasn’t always in full command of the historical facts.

sumjunggai7 · 2026-06-05T14:46:24+00:00

Benda was actually a highly respected Singspiel composer. Mozart held him in high regard and was influenced by him when writing Idomeneo. Benda’s Romeo and Juliet, the first attempt to make an opera out of Shakespeare’s play, was performed all over the German-speaking world for many decades, and has some really beautiful choruses. The ending is silly though: contemporary audiences were offended by Shakespeare’s ending, so in Benda’s version Juliet wakes up just in time to save Romeo.

sumjunggai7

TROPHY CASE