I just signed a rental contract. It was the first place that i looked at. It’s near a park, close to school and the rent is right in the normal range. I will have 3 housemates. Two are brother and sister – postgrads from africa. The third room is unrented. The house comes furnished, has bike parking and a backyard. So it’s acceptable.
I hate shoppimg for things and will always grab the first adequate thing. But i think it’s ok in this case, since my internet search turned up nothing.
I fiund the apartment by walking into a ‘letting agent’ and announcing that i was looking for a houseshare. I let them say they only had one spot before i told them that i had an adorable, small, quiet, adult dog.
It may have been the first house, but it wasn’t the first letting agent. I had been in the offices of every single other agent on the street. It’s the main shopping street near campus, so this was not a small number of agents. You’d think that nobody in the history of student-dom ever had a dog before. Sheesh.
No, i can’t just leave her at home! I’m over 30, not 17. There is no adult figure waiting in the wings to come rescue me should i fall on my first feeble attempts to leave the nest. Well, ok, somebody would probably come rescue me and it wouldn’r be hard to find a permanent home for xena. But it would be permanent.
Anyway, i’m too old to be a student. I need to grow up and join real life. Again.
After signing the contract and emptying my bank account to pay the deposit, i called the airline to ask if i could fly back today. No dice. It’s a weekend in birmingham. Where everybody speaks english – not that you can tell by overhearing.
I should have put some mp3s on my little, travel computer.
Flying to Birmingham
I’ll be in Birmingham tomorrow (Saturday) and back in The Hague on Sunday night for my last week here. My plan for this weekend is to find a flat and over the next week, I plan to put my things in boxes and lug them to the post office. And also go to the SuperCollider con in The Hague.
I am visualizing what I want: It’s £300 / month or less including utilities. It’s 8 km or less from school along a reasonable bike route. The folks who live there like dogs. They’re easygoing with a nice vibe. There may be more than one of them. They are relaxed. The room is big enough to hold me, my dog and my gear. There is internet in the house. My room has a window. It has wood floors or other hard material. The house is in good repair, especially the plumbing. The ‘fridge works. There is a good place to park my bikes.
I can be flexible about some of these points. Do you live in Birmingham? Are you looking for a flatmate? Send me email, quick!
I spent hours of my life yesterday looking at flat ads on a service that i’ve subscribed to and sending email to the folks listed there and I’ve gotten exactly one response – a no.
I guess I can just mail everything to school and deal with it later, in case of disaster.
Godless
“Le pape Benoît XVI a déclaré samedi qu’un monde sans Dieu qui ‘ne sait plus distinguer entre le bien et le mal’ était soumis à la ‘terrible menace de la destruction’ . . .” (http://www.tv5.org/TV5Site/info/afp_article.php?idrub=2&xml=070908102101.5mq6e2lp.xml) Roughly translated by me: Pope Benedict XVI declared Saturday that a world without god ‘can no longer distinguish between good and evil’ and is in ‘terrible risk of destruction.’
Well, goodness, just the morning I bit the head off of several live kittens and since I’m an atheist, I felt no guilt about it whatsoever. This afternoon, I intent to stomp on tiny, adorable puppies and then climb up to a high place and shoot passersby with a sniper rifle. then, I think I’ll take a sledge hammer to bicycles parked on my street and smash them. Just because.
Ugh, this cold I’ve got has put me in a horrible mood. Not bad enough to smash bicycles, though. I still love bicycles. But anyway, I don’t think I have the energy to operate a sniper rifle, even if I knew how. I’d get up the first set of stairs on the bell tower and then need to stop for a nap and realize I forgot my handkerchief and then pout while I trudged homeward. Anyway, at no point, while smashing bikes, or trudging along dragging a loaded rifle on the ground behind me, or snatching puppies from children and stomping on them, at no point would I face arrest. Because the Netherlands is a secular state and as such has no idea whatsoever about good or evil actions. So wanton destruction of the beloved pets of kindergartners is totally within the law.
Meanwhile, over in Iraq, where an evangelical christian american army faces secular insurgents, there is terrible bloodshed, but not when it faces religious foes. For further example, in another part of the world, the extremely religious Osama bin Ladin just made a videotape proclaiming his entirely peaceful feelings towards the secular-in-name-only American government. And for my final example very godly american congress person (I’m too sick and lazy to look up whom) recently suggested that the American military response to another terrorist attack should be to bomb Mecca. This good and holy action would certainly not increase the chances of world war three.
And that’s the news from Bizzaro World. Meanwhile on Earth . . . is the pope even on Earth? What is wrong with this guy? How fucking arrogant is he to say that atheists have no moral basis! I’m sure god whispers directly into his ear (even while Bush weeps on his shoulder) and he’s got some sort of insider information that using condoms to prevent AIDS in Africa would be a terrible sin and invading Middle East countries right and left is a great idea.
I’ve known people who believed deeply in God and whose spirituality is/was exemplary and whose deeds and faith were good. None of those people believed themselves to better than anybody else. But the Pope does. Clearly, he’s following the model of Jesus who drove tax collectors and prostitutes from his midst and said of people who claimed to follow him, “by their words, you shall know them.”(*) Just as clearly: forcibly trying to convert everybody to Christianity as a path to peace is a really, really fucking great idea. You get right on that. I’ll be here, digging a bomb shelter.
(Since not all of you went to Catholic school or bible study or whatever, Jesus was criticized during his life for hanging around with tax collectors – who were agents of foreign occupation, and prostitutes. Also, the quote is “by their FRUITS, you shall know them.” In other words, if somebody says they’re for go(o)d, but causes all sorts of death and destruction, they’re not actually for go(o)d and are not the kind of folks you would want to, say, give leadership over high profile religions or extremely armed governments.)
Horrifying Moments
Redaction
One of the most horrifying moments in film is the crucifix scene in The Exorcist. That scene stands out of one of extreme drama, and, indeed, horror. I’m talking about it non-specifically because I haven’t actually seen the movie. But I want to, because it’s reputed to be an excellent film and a classic in it’s genre. And there’s a famous scene involving a crucifix which invokes horror in the audience.
The reason that I bring this up is because I fell victim to knee jerking even as I tried to resist it. Horrifying is not the same as horrible. Saying that Beethoven’s 9th is a horrifying depiction of violence does not mean that it’s horrible. Nor does it mean that the horror lies in people’s enjoyment of the piece. Instead it means that McCleary would like to put an additional genre description on the 9th. In addition to it’s musical form and it’s time period, she would like to add the label “horror.” A label worn by excellent works in other genres.
This sort of generic description is not often applied to musical works and so McCleary is often misconstrued. Including by me. Which is why I should not blog about books that I haven’t actually read.
But what about porn?
(Musicology is so much more exciting than one might think!)
The director of The Exorcist created a film about demonic possession. However, I wouldn’t say that he was advocating for the same or trying to encourage it in any way. I’m guessing most Beethoven scholars would assert that Beethoven wasn’t advocating for rape. However, pron occupies a somewhat different realm in society. For starters, unlike demons, we all agree that it exists. Secondly, unlike rape, it’s legal.
So I think most of my questions from my previous post still stand: Does a pron sample carry the male gaze with it (“the male audition”)? Does intent matter? Does usage matter? What are the implications of whether or not they matter? Does the amount to which they matter vary over time?
Questions in Feminist Musicology
Instrumental Music
To call Susan McClary‘s book Feminine Endings “controversial,” is an understatement. It inspires not just controversy, but also outrage. One guy I knew said of it and her, “she should stop writing.”
Those of you who are not in the music world may be unfamiliar with this book. What it could it say that would cause folks to want to mute the author? “The point of recapitulation in the first movement of the [Beethoven’s] Ninth [Symphony] is one of the most horrifying moments in music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which finally explodes in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release.” (found here) (Let’s leave aside that this sentence doesn’t actually appear in the book, she did write it and the book has a rephrased version of the same sentiment.) Note that she is speaking metaphorically about the piece of music, not literally about Beethoven. She speaks of his creation, not of he, himself. Still, that’s provocative as hell. Is there anything to it?
I kind of like the 9th and the drama of it, so rather than knee jerking about how I don’t consume that kind of pron, I want to instead address the idea underlying this oft quoted sentence: Are ideas of sexuality and violence expressed through instrumental music? One place to search for the answer to this query is to look at how instrumental music is paired with words and actions in cultural product that seeks to express those same ideas. That is, does Hollywood assign certain sexualities or actions to certain musical idioms? If, for example, woodwinds and especially saxophones were often used as musical cues attached to the sexual other, such that they came to stand as a character note, that would suggest that instrumental music could carry those sort of cues. And indeed, the saxophone’s association with jazz and thus black people (an alien other) lead it to be associated with other alien others like queers (as Norman Mailer wrote, “the white negro”) and fallen women. It is the case that certain instruments and tonalities tend to have cultural baggage rooted in their history. A sax playing a ‘blue’ note invokes all the baggage of jazz music. A drum and bugle corps playing in major invokes the baggage of military pride. Indeed, it would be more surprising if these associations did not exist as it would mean that people had no connection to their cultural history.
Lest anyone argue that the newness of ‘talkies’ means that poor Beethoven was writing before associations came to be attached to musical cues, I have two answers to that. 1. The term “feminine ending” is an archaic musical term, referring to cadential weakness. (wikipedia) This shows that ideas of assigning sexuality to musical structures pre-date hollywood. And 2. She’s using present tense not past tense. “The point of recapitualtion” means not the intention, but the moment: the place where the theme returns and is restated. She asserts that it “is one of the most horrifying moments in music” now. I have to disagree, purely on aesthetic grounds. However, she’s talking about what it means to a listener now, not what it meant to the composer or people in his time period.
Tape Music
I meant to just have an intro paragraph on McClary, but I got carried away, as one so often does. (I have to confess that I haven’t actually finished reading the book. I can’t even swear that I finished the first chapter, but I can’t say for certain as it’s in California and I am not.) Anyway, my point of bringing it up was to make the assertion that if the use of certain instrumental sounds can reference particular ideas, this must also be the case for musique concrete. That is, if a certain schmaltzy sax line implies a sexual encounter, a musician playing a sample of a moan from a porn movie must also have certain baggage. It unarguably conveys sexuality. To say otherwise would be silly. And with it, I think, it brings all the baggage associated with pron.
The first piece that I know of which uses the sounds of a woman experiencing orgasm is Tiger Balm by Annea Lockwood. This piece is feminist in intent. And the sample reflects that. It sounds like a home recording and while the fact of it’s inclusion is a bit shocking, the sonic effect does not carry the titilation that one would expect. I communicated as much to Lockwood over email, after she sent me the record (I met her by volunteering for the Other Minds festival, but that’s a longer story). Her reply acknowledged this.
Since then, I’ve heard orgasm samples used in (at least) three pieces by two male composers. Both used what sounded like recordings of commercial pornography. The first one was by Jascha Narveson, who was a colleague at Wesleyan. He played it in class and I remember it using mostly porn-y sounds. I was dismayed, but then he explained that the piece was feminist in intent. The other two pieces were both by Alvin Curran. One he performed this last spring at the Royal Conservatory. He has a large keyboard loaded up with samples and he improvises playing them, building up dense and often unexpected textures. The first inclusion of the woman moaning was a surprising juxtaposition and a funny moment, but when it returned, the humor was lessened until it was gone. The other piece was on a podcast which I just listened to and which inspired this post. It sounded like he was using the sample sample in the same keyboard. I suspect that it’s a sound that he uses often, as are, probably, all the sounds in his keyboard. Therefore, it’s affect cannot be merely novelty or it wouldn’t bear repeating in multiple pieces and would instead wear thin as a joke that gets old.
So does a pron sample carry the male gaze with it? The production values and sound quality are as instantly recognizable as pictures of Barbie-smooth skin and shaved pubic hair. Can one speak of a male audition to compliment his gaze? And does intent matter?
If intent does matter, then McCleary seems to have slandered Beethoven. (*) I can imagine that his primary conscious desire was to create a compelling piece of music. Certainly, he had unconscious goals, firmly tied to his time and place. But even then, when women’s roles in public life were less than they are now, rape was still far out of bounds. (I presume. Scholars are free to correct me.) If intent doesn’t matter, then Narveson’s piece would be perpetuating our hypothetical male audition. Or does it matter how the music is used? I recall that the music was composed for a feminist benefit of some kind. Does the importance of intent change over time? Beethoven’s intent doesn’t matter because he’s long dead and we’re modern listeners, so therefore, over time, the importance of the intent and original use of Narveson’s piece will gradually fade and it will slowly fall into the male audition. If the intent and usage is a deciding factor in how one regards a piece, do the program notes then become an integral part of the composition? What you hear is always colored by what you know (or think you know), so, to avoid the male audition, would it be necessary to insist that everyone acquaint themselves with the program notes?
How much importance to composers should this be anyway? There is (or was) a group in the San Francisco area called the Porn Orchestra. They played live music to accompany muted porn films. Sometimes with the fast forward button firmly pressed. Amusing, certainly. When I first learned of them, it was via the internet and their information spoke of the “universal” experience of hitting the mute button while viewing porn, because the sound so often sucked. I polled my female friends and almost none had participated in this “universal” experience. So it’s universal for who? (We all know the answer to this question.)
So what about using pron samples? I hope for discussion in the comments, as I don’t have answers to these questions.
Edit
Something just occurred to me. There will be a followup post shortly.
Edit 2
Ok, I knee jerked a bit. Sorry. followup is here
testing
wow, the beta browser for n800 is awesome! the previous version couldn’t log in to blogger, but now I’m tapping out a post! I got this browser by enabling “red pill mode.” This is how you put your application manager in non-consumer mode so you can get the cool stuff. The n800 is really ffor geeks. Everybody using it should probably be in red pill, but with great power comes the ability to break things, so I see why it ships in blue pill.
Writing my congress people
Dear Honorable –,
I’m writing because I want American immigration to be the best, most navigable process that it can be.
I’ve been studying in Europe the last couple of years and as I try to get student visa number three for country number three, I sometimes feel very frustrated. Some countries explain things very clearly, and some do not. Some seem to operate more or less at the whim of the official with whom I am speaking and others have clearly defined processes. Some are flexible and reasonable and others are legalistic to the point of absurdity.
The immigration process creates my first impression of what life in these countries will be like. It reflects the culture and the national character and showcases the strengths and weaknesses of their systems. The consulates and immigration offices are reflections of their nations – a miniaturization of what I can expect to encounter during my period of study.
Therefore, I would expect the American immigration process to be similarly a reflection of American culture. We see ourselves as friendly, fair and efficient and our process should be the same. However, when I speak to other students who have studied in the US, this is not what they report. The system they describe is so frustrating that some of them quit their studies there rather than struggle with it further. I feel guilty complaining about how I’ve been stymied in my attempts to get my paperwork in order, when the stories I hear coming from my own country are so much worse.
We have some of the best universities in the world. They retain their reputation by being able to attract students from all over the world. What’s more, cultural exchange is extremely valuable for everyone involved. Those who travel abroad are made richer by the experience and those who study at home gain wider perspective from their foreign classmates.
By rights, America should have the best immigration process in the world. We have the best schools. We’re a nation of immigrants. We’ve got a lot of pat practice to draw on. I’m saddened that it’s not the case.
Please, let’s make our consulates and immigration offices reflect the very best of our culture. At the very least, let’s make it so I can whine without my fellow students rolling their eyes.
Dagnabit
What am I up to? Glad you asked. I’m still in the Netherlands, but (theoretically) getting ready to move. I decided not to try to move before September 1, so I could do my Copenhagen bike trip. And since I’ve gotten back, I’ve done a whole lot of nothing. I mean, aside form hanging out and sometimes pontificating on my blog.
Today, I finally kicked myself into gear and went to look at the website from the British embassy. Not only do they want more documents than even the French, they want me to have a valid residency card for the Netherlands.
Ok, it’s not that I have an invalid residency card. I’m very kosher on immigration status. Well, pretty kosher. As in, nobody wants to deport me or deny me entry or anything. However, my Dutch ID card expired 4 days ago. Renewing it is absolutely no problem. You just make an appointment. However, I don’t intend to renew and I wouldn’t be able to get an appointment for any time soon.
but the British demand that I have an ID which is not expired. And since I’m not going to get one, that means that the only way I can get a student visa is to return to the US.
As an American citizen, I can get a 6 month tourist visa. And then I can come later change my status. So as long as I don’t seem like I’m doing something untoward, I won’t have a problem getting in. (Sorta Kosher.) And I’ll have to ship my stuff, because if it seems like I’m coming in to gig illegally, that’s a problem.
So all is ok, but really, really frustrating.
And I must fly there soon to find a flat. My immigration status means I must find shared housing and must find folks who are going to be chill about it. But I want chill folks anyway.
It’s alllllliiiiive!!!!!!
Caravia asks, rhetorically, I hope, “Is feminism dead?” There’s nothing as fun as answering a rhetorical questions, so therefore, my answer is “if it was, you wouldn’t be asking that question.”
She goes on to point out that the key players in the Iraq war boondoggle have been almost all men. That’s true, but I would caution against the drawing of certain conclusions based on that. Lest anyone think that women are automatically better, more peaceful leaders, may I draw your attention to Marget Thatcher. I think it’s an error to assert the automatic superiority of women in any matter. Women suck just as much as men. We already have equality in stupidity.
The reason fewer women were in war planning has to do with the spectacular level of sexism in the US. However, it may also be the case that the war itself is a result of the same sexism. The US seems to be going through a certain crisis of masculinity. There’s a desire afoot to assert a masculine presence. Columnists fret about a metaphorical castration of the armed services. Voter’s positive evaluations of Bush before his re-election also seem to be mostly based on the perception of him as the more manly candidate. Therefore, I would say that the lack of women in high levels of the Pentagon did not cause this disastrous foreign adventure, but instead, is also an effect of the same social forces that caused the war. What better way to assert a hyper-masculine presence than kicking some ass.
Note that the war was marketed as “ass kicking.” Toby Kieth sang, in the widely played song Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue, “An’ you’ll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A. / ‘Cos we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way.” Of course, it was not Iraq that “messed with” the United States, it was Al Quaeda, but an extensive misinformation campaign caused the majority of Americans to believe that Iraq was at fault. Kieth sang, “A mighty sucker-punch came flying in from somewhere in the back.” obviously alluding to the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York. A sucker-punch is an unexpected hit: a tap on the shoulder from behind followed by a fist to the face. He felt this was a damage to the dignity of the US, singing metaphorically about a “big black eye,” which is used, typically, not to just refer to an physical injury, but also a humiliation. In the barroom brawl in which he imagines foreign policy occurring, the US’ masculinity has been compromised.
Alas, the “boot in ass” did not go as well as some might have hoped. Osama bin Laden was at large. There was no catharsis in extending the suffering of Afghanis and the already-destroyed infrastructure in Afghanistan. By contrast, there were plenty of things to blow up in Iraq.
The recipient of a sucker punch must retaliate to the punch or risk being labeled a “pussy.” “Pussy,” of course, is a crude word for a vagina as well as a descriptor for an insufficiently masculine man. The symbolism of the toppelling towers was not lost on the American subconscious. We were castrated, a hole left where once a tower stood.
The presence of more women in the Pentagon, then, wouldn’t mean the women there would be any smarter or less loyal Bushie than their male colleagues, but it would imply that the crisis of masculinity was lessened or passed, thus causing a decrease in sexism and an increase in female participation.
Caravia goes on to note:
The idea with . . . peace movements driven by women is to raise awarness about the consequences of the war, the millions of civilian casualties. Not only the killed, but . . . the raped women, carrying the children of their rapists, the people killed in genocides around the world.
Her implication is, then, that male-driven peace movements focus on something other than civilian casualties. Perhaps they focus more on the (not inconsiderable) harm suffered by American soldiers? This is an interesting assertion and one that bears further analysis. It’s certainly the case that woman are more able to have an immediate empathy with foreign victims of rape. American women are taught rape fear from an early age. Outside areas at night, mall parking garages, even the homes of friends are all fraught with danger. This ever-present rape awareness creates a connection between American women activists and their sisters in war zones. (I can’t speak for European women’s experiences.)
Others seem to have a harder time empathizing with women. In his song, Keith clearly imagines his metaphorical protagonist as male. What happens when somebody “sucker punches” a woman? Firstly, I doubt many would refer to it as a sucker-punch, but rather as an assault. And the response to an assault isn’t to get into a brawl, but rather a more legalistic approach of calling the police, pressing charges, etc: a due process where, ideally, everyone involved is treated fairly and justly. This kind of response is one that might not work as well in a song (“Whip out my cell, before you can run / dial the operator at 9-1-1. / The police will come and put you in jail. / It takes 72 hours to set bail”), but is one that doesn’t harm innocent bystanders or set off a larger, regional bar-brawl.
That Keith and others couldn’t imagine themselves as acting as anything other than a humiliated man may stem from a horror at their tower being replaced by a hole but more likely shows that the crisis of masculinity was already present, probably brought about by other social factors, probably including economic insecurity. This shows that a thriving feminist movement could result in peace and also that it’s tied to other struggles, like class inequality and the healthcare crisis.
Organ Concert Review
The Grote Kerk in The Hague is having an organ festival right now, which explains why I keep hearing organ music while walking the dog. Last night, I saw a very small flyer for it posted to the church door and decided to check it out. I really like organ concerts and I can name one organ composer off the top of my head (Henry Brant), but I’ve never written for the organ and don’t know too much about the instrument. As a former resident of the Bay Area, though, I was pretty lucky as there are two Mighty Wurlitzer organs installed in local movie theatres. One is in the Grand Lake in Oakland and the other is in the Castro. Also, Wesleyan University, where I was in 2003-5, has a pretty nifty organ which was brand new when I was a student, so I got to hear a lot of organ music, including a new piece by Christian Wolff. This whole paragraph is a long way of saying: I don’t know much about the organ (factoid: invented by ancient Romans), but I dig it.
The performer last night was Leo Van Doeselaar of Amsterdam / Leiden. There was a pre-concert talk of which I understood nothing and then he went up to the organ loft to play. Church organs are often located in the back of churches, which is the case in Den Haag’s Grote Kerk or sometimes on the side. Almost never does a listener actually face the organ (Wesleyan is an exception to this). However, the chairs were arranged, so the audience sat facing the back of the church and hence the organ. Also, it’s often the case that the organist can’t be seen. They had set up a screen and a projector so that there was a camera pointing at the organist and the image was projected where we could see it. Kind of strange, but also interesting.
This particular organ has two panels of stops on either side of three manuals (keyboards). the stops control which pipes are getting air in them and they’re a bunch of knobs which can be pulled out or in (hence the expression, “pulling out all the stops.”). The organist had an assistant who was a page turner, but also did a lot of stop manipulation. The music would switch manuals without a break and while one manual was being played, the busy assistant would re-set the stops for the return to the original manual. Interesting to watch.
The first two pieces were from the 17th century. Which, alas, is not my favorite century. Also, note in the first paragraph that most of my organ listening has been with theatre organs, which often play a more popular repertoire. So the music just seemed kind of . . . sedate. The organ was not punching through and not filling the space. I could see the performer and I could tell he was playing is heart out, but it just wasn’t translating for me. So I wondered if it was the music or the organ. “Well, they can’t all be Bach’s Toccata in d.” (You know the piece. It’s a very dramatic and cliche organ piece. Nicole associates it with horror movies.)
Even as my mind wandered, certain sonic effects were occasionally interesting and I wondered if I might want to exploit them by writing an organ piece. (Well, why not?) Then, the organist started on the third piece, Gioco by Peter-Jan Wagemans (wikipedia). I do not need to write an organ piece, as Wagemans used all the cool bits that I had noticed and several I hadn’t. The piece was astoundingly amazing. The composer is an organist himself, so he is able to write as somebody who really, really knows the instrument. And as he’s a local guy, it’s very well-suited to the sort of organ they tend to have in Holland. It played off the reverb in the cathedral very well, using short notes played quickly to create textures. There was a section where a certain flourish was repeated a few times and each time there was a note repeated afterwards like an echo. The stops for that note were really mushy sounding, not cutting through at all, so it was hard to tell when it started and stopped. It was more of a presence. And I swear, it sounded like a real echo. One that boldly defied physics: believable and slightly disorienting!
There was no clapping between pieces, but the audience was all abuzz after that one. Organists, take note: you can make people very happy if you depart from the 17th century. There are composers alive today and some of their work is amazing.
Then, alas, we returned to the dusty past. But, much to my delight, the last piece actually was Bach’s Toccata in d. Man, I love that piece. It’s great. So unapologetically dramatic! And it’s got these huge parts that should just, imo, shake the fillings out of your teeth. There’s a piece for an organ, something that fills a space! A gigantic installed behemoth, an ancient roman excess! Crashing and pounding like the ocean! Huge! but. It just wasn’t. Ok sure, it was dramatic. And it had a couple of moments that were kind of big. but. Maybe I’ve been conditioned by Mighty Wurlitzers to expect something too big, too much. Maybe what I expect is gauche and ostentatious and not what Bach had in mind at all. Maybe I’m crass. But crass is great fun but this was restrained and smallish.
I think the organ is just too small. It’s also kind of recessed, which can’t help.
I also think that I just must be crass, because the audience gave the organist a standing ovation and then rushed to the CD table. I do think he was a really good performer (especially the new piece was fantastic), so maybe they’re used to the organ and I’m not? I’m probably going to skip the rest of the series, however it also includes carillon recitals (no wonder the bells have been so interesting lately), so I will definitely listen for those.