Well, I'm another week pregnant since last week. Up to 31 weeks and 4 days, and I'm exhausted all the time. I am so looking forward to August coming, and getting back to myself again, albeit me as a mom.
This week I listened to Beethoven's Fifth String Quartet, still part of the Opus 18 that was published in 1801. All of the liner notes said that Beethoven was inspired by Mozart's A major quartet, K 464. So I listened to that one too, and definitely heard the similarities.
The biggest thing I recommend while listening to this piece is to really listen and not get distracted during the third movement, which is a variation on a theme that is so simple and sublime, it gives you goosebumps. The melody is simply part of a rising and falling scale, and the fourth variation in particular has the juiciest harmonies I've heard in one of his quartets yet.
http://thebeethovenproject.com/exploring-beethovens-quartets-richard-wigmore-writes-about-op-185-op-593-and-op-131/
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Saturday, June 15, 2013
The Beethoven Project: String Quartet Op 18 No 4
Of all the Beethoven String Quartets, this is the one I know the best, having seen it performed on two separate occasions. I'm not sure why people choose this one to perform more than the others, but for whatever reason, I'm pretty familiar with Number 4. Which is a pretty good one to be familiar with - I love the drama in the opening movement. When I compare this to his first one, it sounds so much more Beethoven to me; so much more passionate and emotional.
Take a listen:
"In the crisply effected first movement we feel strong purpose rather than the tragedy or pathos often associated with a minor key..." Dr. Robert Simpson at http://robertsimpson.info/writings/simpsons-writings/beethoven-string-quartets.html#op18no4
I also found this awesome color-coded video going through each section and explaining it. Super cool.
I like that there's no slow movement in this quartet. The third movement Minuet is meant to be the most serious of all the movements, but it doesn't sound like a death march. The final rondo is apparently taken from Haydn's Hungarian style, and I appreciate the final dancing notes. And I appreciate the minor key, yet the music still sounds upbeat.
Further reading:
http://rolf-musicblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/beethoven-string-quartet-op184.html
"In the crisply effected first movement we feel strong purpose rather than the tragedy or pathos often associated with a minor key..." Dr. Robert Simpson at http://robertsimpson.info/writings/simpsons-writings/beethoven-string-quartets.html#op18no4
I also found this awesome color-coded video going through each section and explaining it. Super cool.
I like that there's no slow movement in this quartet. The third movement Minuet is meant to be the most serious of all the movements, but it doesn't sound like a death march. The final rondo is apparently taken from Haydn's Hungarian style, and I appreciate the final dancing notes. And I appreciate the minor key, yet the music still sounds upbeat.
Further reading:
http://rolf-musicblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/beethoven-string-quartet-op184.html
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Cricket: The Sport for Nerds
For the past two months we have been streaming lots of cricket matches in our house. The Indian Premiere League cricket tournament has been on since early April, and while we can't get it on our TV through our dish (thanks DirecTV), we pay to have access to the archives on youtube. So every day we've had my Chromebook set aside dedicated to simply streaming cricket.
Cricket is a sport that is uniquely set up for nerds. There are definite feats of athleticism (one particularly stunning catch early on even made the top 10 list on SportsCenter on ESPN). And certainly the players are athletes. But the real beauty of cricket is the rules, which take hours to explain and make little sense. Bring into it the fact that there are now three types of cricket going on simultaneously (test cricket, which lasts for days and can have no winner at the end of it), One Day Internationals (the original attempt at shortening cricket to a manageable level for the masses; it's 50 overs each side and lasts a full day) and Twenty-twenty cricket, which is what the IPL is (20 overs each side, it lasts about 3 and a half hours.
On the surface the rules are easy enough. Unlike baseball, you're not really batting for runs. I mean, you are, but the runs aren't the huge deal. The huge deal is the outs. Whether you're playing test cricket or T20, your team still gets 10 outs and that's it. You might score 150 or 300 runs, but unless you hit it out of the park (for 6 runs), you're really just batting and trying to avoid getting out. Where in baseball runs are rare, in cricket it's outs that are special.
So there are two teams. A bowling team and a batting team. The batting team has two players on the field. The bowling team is fielding, so they have all their players out - 10, I think. The batters stand on opposite ends of a dirt patch that has little stump things on either end. There is a bowler, like a pitcher, who bowls the ball to one of the batters. One batter will always be on "strike". When he hits the ball, both players run back and forth along the dirt patch between the stumps, and for each pass, they get a run. So it could be that batter A hits, and runs to the side where batter B is, and they got one run, and now batter B is on strike because he's on the end where batter A was.
If the fielders catch the ball and get it back to the stumps before the batter gets to the stumps, the batter is out. Then a new batter comes in, and the process is repeated until there are 10 outs. Every six balls is an "over" and a new bowler will come in. So you hear sentences like, "after 10 overs, the Chennai Superkings are 80 for 3." which translates to "after 60 balls bowled to them, the Chennai Superkings have 80 runs and 3 outs."
The whole point of batting is actually to protect the stumps. You want to hit the ball away from the stumps, and you need to do it with your bat. If you accidentally kick the ball away, that's an out. And you can't hit too hard, because if the other team catches the ball in the air, that's an out.
And here's where the strategy of different types of matches comes into play. With Test cricket, you play for five days, and you still only get 10 outs. So you play very carefully. You don't hit at every ball that comes your way (unless it's obviously going to hit the stumps and you need to hit it away). You don't try to have huge hits out of the park, which count for 6 runs. You don't try to have the ball hit the edge of the playing field, which is known as a boundary and counts for 4 runs. You're very protective of your outs, because they need to last you for so long. But with T20, you only get 120 balls bowled to you - 20 overs (and an over is 6 balls, remember), so the chances that you'll try to hit a six, or be a little more reckless with what you hit at is a little higher because your team still has 10 outs. So getting out doesn't screw up the potential for three more days - it only potentially screws it up for a few overs.
There is a lot of strategy in cricket, and one of the biggest things to watch for is the partnership between the two batters. At any given time, it's possible that only one of the two can see where the ball is headed, and so the communication needs to be really on. Remember, if the fielders get the ball to the stumps before the runner is there, the runner is out. So if there's a miscommunication and one runner runs, or hesitates because he can't tell what's going on, he could be out for that. So the players need to really trust each other, and there's always a big deal made of the total for the partnership - when the partnership hits 100 runs, for example.
It all takes a huge amount of thinking, both to play and to watch. Most people don't take the time to really get into understanding it, but the rewards if you do are high. Even though I lived in the UK for years, it took going back there during the Ashes with my hubby to really start to learn it. He's a huge sports nut, and wound up getting really sick on one of our trips, and camped out on my friend's sofa watching the Ashes tournament (between England and Australia). With the help of google, and my friend explaining things to him, he figured it out, and is now a huge fan.
Every April we look forward to the IPL, which is a tournament in India where they take the best players from all over the world and play exciting T20 matches for 8 weeks, and it always makes me a little sad when it's over. Because with the exception of Formula 1 (which is a Physics and Math Nerd's dream sport) there are very few sports as well designed for nerds as cricket.
Cricket is a sport that is uniquely set up for nerds. There are definite feats of athleticism (one particularly stunning catch early on even made the top 10 list on SportsCenter on ESPN). And certainly the players are athletes. But the real beauty of cricket is the rules, which take hours to explain and make little sense. Bring into it the fact that there are now three types of cricket going on simultaneously (test cricket, which lasts for days and can have no winner at the end of it), One Day Internationals (the original attempt at shortening cricket to a manageable level for the masses; it's 50 overs each side and lasts a full day) and Twenty-twenty cricket, which is what the IPL is (20 overs each side, it lasts about 3 and a half hours.
On the surface the rules are easy enough. Unlike baseball, you're not really batting for runs. I mean, you are, but the runs aren't the huge deal. The huge deal is the outs. Whether you're playing test cricket or T20, your team still gets 10 outs and that's it. You might score 150 or 300 runs, but unless you hit it out of the park (for 6 runs), you're really just batting and trying to avoid getting out. Where in baseball runs are rare, in cricket it's outs that are special.
So there are two teams. A bowling team and a batting team. The batting team has two players on the field. The bowling team is fielding, so they have all their players out - 10, I think. The batters stand on opposite ends of a dirt patch that has little stump things on either end. There is a bowler, like a pitcher, who bowls the ball to one of the batters. One batter will always be on "strike". When he hits the ball, both players run back and forth along the dirt patch between the stumps, and for each pass, they get a run. So it could be that batter A hits, and runs to the side where batter B is, and they got one run, and now batter B is on strike because he's on the end where batter A was.
If the fielders catch the ball and get it back to the stumps before the batter gets to the stumps, the batter is out. Then a new batter comes in, and the process is repeated until there are 10 outs. Every six balls is an "over" and a new bowler will come in. So you hear sentences like, "after 10 overs, the Chennai Superkings are 80 for 3." which translates to "after 60 balls bowled to them, the Chennai Superkings have 80 runs and 3 outs."
The whole point of batting is actually to protect the stumps. You want to hit the ball away from the stumps, and you need to do it with your bat. If you accidentally kick the ball away, that's an out. And you can't hit too hard, because if the other team catches the ball in the air, that's an out.
And here's where the strategy of different types of matches comes into play. With Test cricket, you play for five days, and you still only get 10 outs. So you play very carefully. You don't hit at every ball that comes your way (unless it's obviously going to hit the stumps and you need to hit it away). You don't try to have huge hits out of the park, which count for 6 runs. You don't try to have the ball hit the edge of the playing field, which is known as a boundary and counts for 4 runs. You're very protective of your outs, because they need to last you for so long. But with T20, you only get 120 balls bowled to you - 20 overs (and an over is 6 balls, remember), so the chances that you'll try to hit a six, or be a little more reckless with what you hit at is a little higher because your team still has 10 outs. So getting out doesn't screw up the potential for three more days - it only potentially screws it up for a few overs.
There is a lot of strategy in cricket, and one of the biggest things to watch for is the partnership between the two batters. At any given time, it's possible that only one of the two can see where the ball is headed, and so the communication needs to be really on. Remember, if the fielders get the ball to the stumps before the runner is there, the runner is out. So if there's a miscommunication and one runner runs, or hesitates because he can't tell what's going on, he could be out for that. So the players need to really trust each other, and there's always a big deal made of the total for the partnership - when the partnership hits 100 runs, for example.
It all takes a huge amount of thinking, both to play and to watch. Most people don't take the time to really get into understanding it, but the rewards if you do are high. Even though I lived in the UK for years, it took going back there during the Ashes with my hubby to really start to learn it. He's a huge sports nut, and wound up getting really sick on one of our trips, and camped out on my friend's sofa watching the Ashes tournament (between England and Australia). With the help of google, and my friend explaining things to him, he figured it out, and is now a huge fan.
Every April we look forward to the IPL, which is a tournament in India where they take the best players from all over the world and play exciting T20 matches for 8 weeks, and it always makes me a little sad when it's over. Because with the exception of Formula 1 (which is a Physics and Math Nerd's dream sport) there are very few sports as well designed for nerds as cricket.
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