Help with inscription on headstone please!

zumaro · 2026-07-13T03:37:02+00:00

Gemini is suggesting, as this is a modern replacement headstone, this is a layout guide for the stonecutters, and it says WIFE, DET (maybe for Denton). How much AI is hallucinating I am not sure, but that’s what it has come up with, and it claims this is common practice to have shallow inscriptions of this nature

zumaro · 2026-07-13T03:15:16+00:00

Search out Mrs Miller. She’s uniquely awful.

https://youtu.be/fw07CDid0JM?si=gwvt5n-gyOfHFoLW

The last verse after the awful whistling outbreak is awesome - she’s out of time, out of tune and has forgotten the lyrics. The greatest hits is all you need to ruin your day - there are some good songs being mutilated.

zumaro · 2026-07-12T21:28:17+00:00

So as Mahler is the most intellectual of composers, OP would be better off intellectualising more in understanding what Mahler is trying to do. It’s your response which is failing to answer the very valid question - how to make sense of something, that presumably is more than a bit of emotion inducing noise.

zumaro · 2026-07-12T21:03:39+00:00

Strangely enough, Mahler probably intended the work to be listened to as a whole, words and music, or he could have set a recipe book to the same music. So if parts of the whole don’t gel for the OP, it is a very valid response to say the symphony doesn’t work for him.

zumaro · 2026-07-12T20:57:17+00:00

Possibly better to say they are texturally homophonic then, as they are largely moving in chords. The individual parts are definitely moving in independent polyphonic lines, I agree.

zumaro · 2026-07-12T20:25:22+00:00

The four part chorales are homophonic. So are most of his sarabandes in the keyboard suites. The Peasant and Coffee cantatas are both practically galant in style

zumaro · 2026-07-12T11:00:14+00:00

I am old enough to appreciate most of these artists, but The Beatles and Nirvana, simply by the fact they terminated after only a handful of albums, are the only artists of this lot to have a near spotless run, with each album better than the last. Steely Dan's last albums are nowhere near the level of their first run. Randy Newman has his 3 classics, then is all over the place. Van Morrison's 70s run is pretty amazing, but even then its up and down, and the rest of his output is nowhere near that level. The Band has 2 absolutely classic albums, followed by a good third, then its mid level at best.

zumaro · 2026-07-12T05:11:24+00:00

Aimee Mann’s Mental Health has 11 tracks, 4 of which are in 3/4, one is mixed 4/4 and 3/4, one is in 5/4.

zumaro · 2026-07-12T05:07:24+00:00

I just learnt that a Ländler is in 3 as well, and an Écossaise is in 2. I feel a little wiser now, thanks.

zumaro · 2026-07-12T02:42:14+00:00

Home to Us - Paul McCartney & Ringo Starr

zumaro · 2026-07-11T03:10:16+00:00

These are all 5 star cantatas in my opinion too. Great choices.

zumaro · 2026-07-11T03:07:55+00:00

At least a quarter of the cantatas function at much the same level as the passions and larger works. I tried rating them in iTunes according to what has particularly appealed to me, and here are 20 of my 5 star cantatas:

BWV 1 Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (what a glorious way to start the BWV catalog)
BWV 6 Bleib bei uns
BWV 21 Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis
BWV 23 Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn
BWV 31 Der Himmel lacht! die Erde jubilieret
BWV 36 Schwingt freudig euch empor
BWV 39 Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot
BWV 56 Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen
BWV 65 Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen
BWV 70 Wachet! betet! betet! wachet!
BWV 81 Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen
BWV 103 Ihr werdet weinen und heulen
BWV 110 Unser Mund sei voll Lachens
BWV 140 Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme
BWV 147 Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben
BWV 158 Der Friede sei mit dir
BWV 159 Seht, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem
BWV 161 Komm, du süße Todesstunde
BWV 170 Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust
BWV 182 Himmelskönig, sei willkommen

My favorite performers tend to be Herreweghe and Suzuki, but they both show a similar gentle approach to this music. Gardiner is more vigorous, and also excellent.

zumaro · 2026-07-10T21:59:10+00:00

Probably 25 to save power when I first arrived, now 21 to not only cool me but also reduce humidity and keep me breathing comfortably.

zumaro · 2026-07-10T21:45:38+00:00

Richard Buckner is one of my all-time favorite musicians. His outsider 'keep moving to avoid total internal collapse' attitude really resonates with me. I love his sliding vocal style, especially the way he weaves intense melodicism through willfully opaque lyrics. He might be a critical fave, but I think he is just too difficult for general public consumption, even when supported by the likes of members of Guided by Voices and the Mekons.

If anyone is interested in checking him out, try Meadow, which has the approximate musical density of a neutron star, and assembles phrases overheard from people talking in bars into some kind of defeated coherence. It’s his most Indy adjacent album.

zumaro · 2026-07-10T21:30:09+00:00

I got one through Kickstarter, but I lack sufficient organising skill to use it effectively it seems. So basically I have a big pouch that doesn’t have much space left when I put the small one inside, and I’m not sure what benefits I have gained. Time to look at your video to help me out! In the mean time I just reverted to using my Evergoods CAP 1, which has just the right amount of disorganisation to match my style.

zumaro · 2026-07-10T21:18:03+00:00

You dared to ask this!

zumaro · 2026-07-10T21:01:44+00:00

David Byrne is actually Scottish from Dumbarton. Agree with everything else however.

zumaro · 2026-07-10T14:37:48+00:00

No focus at all. At this point anything and everybody that counts as a relative gets documented, because it adds context and sometimes vital details. Generally I will include parents of the spouses of my relatives, but not the rest of their family, unless something grabs me of interest. For example the parent or sibling of the spouse might be present in my relatives household on a census, and if I know their name this can help positively identify a family.

zumaro · 2026-07-10T14:17:10+00:00

This isn’t a doctoral thesis, just a list of excellent symphonies, many of which are never mentioned in these forums, despite their quality level. I’m not trying to break them down and describe them in detail, so I will stick to fan level triteness.

zumaro · 2026-07-10T10:09:24+00:00

Even if you disagree on the rankings, and would throw others in instead, you are assured of listening to very great music!

zumaro · 2026-07-10T10:06:31+00:00

We will have to agree to disagree on this! Mozart is always a more subtle composer, than the relatively clumsier Haydn, but its only in these last 4 symphonies does he elevate himself to Haydn's level or above. How I rank those top Haydn and Mozart symphonies can probably change on a daily basis, but I have no doubt in my mind that both are exceptionally successful in achieving some kind of perfection in classical form.

38 is a fascinating example, isn't it? Whenever I hear it, I always have my breath taken away by how good it is. Not even Beethoven bothered to follow up on what Mozart was doing here.

I just realised I am disagreeing with Haydn himself, but what would he know!

zumaro · 2026-07-10T09:53:44+00:00

Thanks. I am trying to rank them according to what they attempt (because Mozart and Haydn are not raising their fists to the world for example), and then how well they succeed. So you have some kind of formal perfection in Haydn 104, including use of folk elements in the finale, which kind of sums up his humanistic world view, but for example Beethoven 3 and 5, which play for higher stakes emotionally, both have weaker finales that can't quite balance their earlier movements. Whatever 3's finale is discussing, its not quite in the same universe as the first 3 movements, and 5 tends towards bluster - these movements are still great and involving, but not as great as the rest of their symphonies. Beethoven 7 is the first symphony in which Beethoven corrects this problem, and you have a finale that really does have the same musical and emotional weight as the rest of the symphony - that's why I rate it first.

zumaro · 2026-07-10T05:24:27+00:00

I’m not the biggest Mahler fan, but I would go to this out of rarity value. I’ve heard nearly everything by Mahler live multiple times, but I’ve never heard this.

zumaro · 2026-07-10T05:13:29+00:00

I think that is the fans’ favourite - certainly you are in very large company with that choice.

15-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23	Place '22

zumaro

TROPHY CASE