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Random Ranting XIX
Mar. 26th, 2005 11:48 amRecently, Jörg and I watched Pride and Prejudice.
Which made me want to play the piano again. So I tried and found I had forgotten most of it, except for the last few pieces, so I had to dig out the books again. Which reminded me.
I had begun to learn the piano at age six not because I wanted to. Not that I minded it, in the beginning; but I learned the piano because my mother had, and because my mother had inherited a grand piano from some grandfather or other, and because an accomplished lady had to know how to play the piano. I kid you not, that was the most important reason.
At age six, becoming an accomplished lady fits into every little girl's princess dreams, so I accepted that reason.
I began to loathe the piano when practicing time switched from 10 minutes a day to 15 minutes, then 30, then 60. I began to loathe it when there came the presentation times, when we had to play our pieces in front of an audience.
And I began to loathe it when my mom refused to buy new song books. After the beginner's books were through - "Rico is learning the piano", books 1 through 3 - and the first collection of advanced pieces, there came the traditional sonatinas and preludes and inventions. And everyone would get new song books: Collections of classical music, or Baroque music, or whatever.
But my mother, having been born in Swabia (the Swabians are the Scots of Germany), was a collector and saver. You don't waste money on a classical music book when you have ancient collections of classical composers at home. You don't buy a collection of simple baroque pieces if you have a collection of Bach's works. So I was playing from ancient books with yellow pages, notes printed narrowly because paper was expensive, where pages might crumble if you touched them too roughly, and the binding was dark and unsightly.
Today I enjoy looking at these books: The fading-out front pages with art nouveau decorations, the dedications in the corner: A ma chère Caroline, de son affectionée Hélène F. -Leipzig, 29.Mai 1900 (said Caroline was, apparently, a sister of my great-grandfather). The pieces of music are the same, and the narrowly printed notes mean you don't have to turn the pages so often.
But when you're 13 going on 14, you want to have the shiny new pretty white-paged books everyone else has.
Anyway, what I really just meant to say was, I actually found I enjoyed playing the piano when I tried it again. Only if I don't have to, of course.
Having finished Pride and Prejudice, we had to watch ordinary TV again yesterday. Good Friday is not a good day to watch ordinary TV. We managed to escape the overblown bathetic Hollywood Easter homilies at first and watched the ending of Kagemusha. Which was sort of funny because we came in really when the movie was almost over; the Takeda generals were just meeting and boasting about how the Takeda army had never ever been overthrown. And I said, "Except in 1575. When Oda Nobunaga used muskets against the riders..." and I gave a two-minute summary of the Battle of Nagashino.
Which was, two minutes later, what the movie was about. Ok, so at least I've learned to recognize when some Japanese movie is set. Am I good or what?
Of course, the movie has Oda Nobunaga as the villain - of course it must, if Shingen Takeda is the Good Guy. Which is something I'm not so happy with. It's silly, but apparently after doing one presentation and one term paper on Nobunaga, I feel sort of responsible for him. OK, maybe he wasn't the nicest of guys. But come on! Fierce little provincial lord who rebelled against all the big guys, killed lots of people (including some of his... uncooperative kin), united almost all of Japan, had more power than anyone else while he lived, was besieged in a temple, died (either of arrow wounds, or of seppuku) and burned to ashes (for reasons unbeknownst to posterity; it is suppoed he put fire to the temple before he diedbut it might just as well have been the ferocity of his fëa as it sped. Bwahahah.). Way to go. Vilified posthumously, too, which is unfair because he was no worse than his contemporaries and better than his successors. And yet, of the three unifiers of Japan, he is considered "the cruel one". The two others are Toyotomi Hideyoshi, "the cunning one", and Tokugawa Ieyasu, "the patient one". The latter was actually probably the worst bastard of them all, and, incidentally, probably the one responsible for the vilification of Nobunaga.
Poor little Nobunaga.
Aaaanyway, after Kagemusha we watched the ending of Midway, because apparently you get either Easter movies or movies including Japan. This one was already pathetic enough, and when that was over too, there was nothing left but the above-mentioned bathetic overblown Hollywood Easter homilies. We ended up with The Robe, which was every bit as bathetic as you would expect. The bad thing about these movies - aside from the inaccuracies in costume design and story, the lousy settings and the strange but unaccounted for fact that you are a Good Guy if you try to thwart God's great plan - is that you can hardly know the difference between the seriously-meant movies, such as this one, and the parodies, such as The Life of Brian. I mean, honestly. They're all so involuntarily hilarious they might just as well be intended to be hilarious. And they provoke mockery, I swear they do. You don't actually need the parodies, you can just watch the serious movies from the 1950s in a 2000 frame of mind. Slash. Nonsense. Parody. It's all inherent.
At least it was a funny evening.
- - -
( Zusammenhangloses XIX )
- - -
Which made me want to play the piano again. So I tried and found I had forgotten most of it, except for the last few pieces, so I had to dig out the books again. Which reminded me.
I had begun to learn the piano at age six not because I wanted to. Not that I minded it, in the beginning; but I learned the piano because my mother had, and because my mother had inherited a grand piano from some grandfather or other, and because an accomplished lady had to know how to play the piano. I kid you not, that was the most important reason.
At age six, becoming an accomplished lady fits into every little girl's princess dreams, so I accepted that reason.
I began to loathe the piano when practicing time switched from 10 minutes a day to 15 minutes, then 30, then 60. I began to loathe it when there came the presentation times, when we had to play our pieces in front of an audience.
And I began to loathe it when my mom refused to buy new song books. After the beginner's books were through - "Rico is learning the piano", books 1 through 3 - and the first collection of advanced pieces, there came the traditional sonatinas and preludes and inventions. And everyone would get new song books: Collections of classical music, or Baroque music, or whatever.
But my mother, having been born in Swabia (the Swabians are the Scots of Germany), was a collector and saver. You don't waste money on a classical music book when you have ancient collections of classical composers at home. You don't buy a collection of simple baroque pieces if you have a collection of Bach's works. So I was playing from ancient books with yellow pages, notes printed narrowly because paper was expensive, where pages might crumble if you touched them too roughly, and the binding was dark and unsightly.
Today I enjoy looking at these books: The fading-out front pages with art nouveau decorations, the dedications in the corner: A ma chère Caroline, de son affectionée Hélène F. -Leipzig, 29.Mai 1900 (said Caroline was, apparently, a sister of my great-grandfather). The pieces of music are the same, and the narrowly printed notes mean you don't have to turn the pages so often.
But when you're 13 going on 14, you want to have the shiny new pretty white-paged books everyone else has.
Anyway, what I really just meant to say was, I actually found I enjoyed playing the piano when I tried it again. Only if I don't have to, of course.
Having finished Pride and Prejudice, we had to watch ordinary TV again yesterday. Good Friday is not a good day to watch ordinary TV. We managed to escape the overblown bathetic Hollywood Easter homilies at first and watched the ending of Kagemusha. Which was sort of funny because we came in really when the movie was almost over; the Takeda generals were just meeting and boasting about how the Takeda army had never ever been overthrown. And I said, "Except in 1575. When Oda Nobunaga used muskets against the riders..." and I gave a two-minute summary of the Battle of Nagashino.
Which was, two minutes later, what the movie was about. Ok, so at least I've learned to recognize when some Japanese movie is set. Am I good or what?
Of course, the movie has Oda Nobunaga as the villain - of course it must, if Shingen Takeda is the Good Guy. Which is something I'm not so happy with. It's silly, but apparently after doing one presentation and one term paper on Nobunaga, I feel sort of responsible for him. OK, maybe he wasn't the nicest of guys. But come on! Fierce little provincial lord who rebelled against all the big guys, killed lots of people (including some of his... uncooperative kin), united almost all of Japan, had more power than anyone else while he lived, was besieged in a temple, died (either of arrow wounds, or of seppuku) and burned to ashes (for reasons unbeknownst to posterity; it is suppoed he put fire to the temple before he died
Poor little Nobunaga.
Aaaanyway, after Kagemusha we watched the ending of Midway, because apparently you get either Easter movies or movies including Japan. This one was already pathetic enough, and when that was over too, there was nothing left but the above-mentioned bathetic overblown Hollywood Easter homilies. We ended up with The Robe, which was every bit as bathetic as you would expect. The bad thing about these movies - aside from the inaccuracies in costume design and story, the lousy settings and the strange but unaccounted for fact that you are a Good Guy if you try to thwart God's great plan - is that you can hardly know the difference between the seriously-meant movies, such as this one, and the parodies, such as The Life of Brian. I mean, honestly. They're all so involuntarily hilarious they might just as well be intended to be hilarious. And they provoke mockery, I swear they do. You don't actually need the parodies, you can just watch the serious movies from the 1950s in a 2000 frame of mind. Slash. Nonsense. Parody. It's all inherent.
At least it was a funny evening.
- - -
( Zusammenhangloses XIX )
- - -
