'After my instructor had taught me the hardest contrapuntal arts, he said to me: "You probably will never require to write a fugue; only, the ability to write one will give you technical self-reliance, and make everything else quite easy."'

~Richard Wagner in Zukunftsmusik (1861)

This is certainly not going to be the first time you read about Wagner here. This fall, when I was working readings for my comprehensive exams and reading a lot of Wagner, I definitely had some blogging material, but they never materialized. I'll be working closely with some of those sources in the future, so I'm sure that there will be future ( Read more... )

Life has been too busy lately - so busy that it's been a little lacking on the life part.  There hasn't been much time for anything but school.

And reading blogs.  It's the one mini-break that I'll let myself have when I'm chained to my computer, trying to write.  (Unless I've disabled my internet, but that's another story.)  That and making tea, ( Read more... )

Why don't people see what is new in my works, how in them, as is found otherwise only in Beethoven, the human being visibly plays a part in the work...

~  Richard Strauss, 19 June 1949
 

"I used to feel so alone in the city.  All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside.  Because how do you meet a new person?  I was very stumped by this for many years.  And then I realized, you just say "hi".  They may ignore you.  Or you may marry them.  And that possibility is worth that one word."
    ~ Augusten Burrough, Author*1

( Read more... )

    I was struck by something that my friend Ernest pointed out tonight - he said that Paul had it all planned out in his head.  That Romans wasn't written in little chunks, but was a letter that he felt he needed (was inspired by the Holy Spirit) to write to the dudes in Rome and so he sat down and wrote it.  Have you ever done that?  Have you ( Read more... )

My favourite Spacing Montreal blogger/journalist Christopher DeWolf recently posted on a commuter freeze at Berri-UQAM.
http://spacingmontreal.ca/?p=676

It's pretty awesome.  The group who did it has a facebook group and might be doing another one, so if you're interested at all, I suppose facebook is the place to be (this I say with much chagrin).  ( Read more... )

"A man's library is a sort of harem."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson - The Conduct of Life

"When I speak of home, I speak of the place where -- in default of a better -- those I love are gathered together; and if that place were a gypsy's tent, or a barn, I should call it by the same good name notwithstanding."

~Charles Dickens in Nicholas NicklebyI've been thinking about home lately ( Read more... )

overheard at McGill is back - after two months of no new posts, I now have one of my favourite dailyreads back. *grin ( Read more... )