MEMETERIA by Thomas May

Music & the Arts

Which Mahler Symphony Comes to Mind?

Which Mahler Symphony Comes to Mind?

Carbon Glacier (north slope of Mt Rainier)

Filed under: Uncategorized

Screams and Drums: Nature’s Score for “Götterdämmerung”?

Volcano erupting
(Credit: Oliver Spalt)
According to a report released yesterday by the University of Washington, “Some volcanoes ‘scream’ at ever-higher pitches until they blow their tops. It is not unusual for swarms of small earthquakes to precede a volcanic eruption. They can reach a point of such rapid succession that they create a signal called harmonic tremor that resembles sound made by various types of musical instruments, though at frequencies much lower than humans can hear.”

Smithsonian’s blog has a recording of an eruption sequence from March 2009 at Alaska’s Redoubt Volcano.

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Filed under: science

“Missing Out”

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I’ve been told I should read Adam Phillips – and I now see why. Just began his latest, Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life, which shows a real inside understanding of tragedy:

And yet there is something symmetrical about Lear and Cordelia; they both, at the beginning of the play, know exactly what they want. And I don’t think we solve this problem by saying…that what Cordelia wants is better than what Lear wants.

Filed under: book recs

The Ehnes Era in Seattle: Season Two

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My take on the opening week of the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival, now underway (from crosscut):

Everyone has their individual barometer when it comes to deciding whether summer has actually “arrived” in our fickle city. But for many local music lovers, Seattle Chamber Music Society’s (SCMS) summer festival clearly marks the cultural solstice…

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Filed under: chamber music, James Ehnes, ,

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