Assorted musings

I apologise for the length and pomposity of yesterday's post, which I have substantially shortened and enhumbled. Perhaps I should start a second geek-specific blog where such things may gyre and gimble at full length without disturbing normal healthy readers?

Anyway. The weather remains grey and windy though the temperature has reached the dizzying height of 10°C, so I remain indoors working (well, blogging; soon to be working) and drinking coffee and eating delicious Italian biscuits ("Baiocchi con crema al latte" by Mulino Bianco, whose rather primitive website doesn't list them. For American readers, they look like Oreos but have less sugar and are more flavourful).

I am listening to Glenn Gould playing Liszt's transcription of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony for solo piano. Compressing a piece of orchestral music down to one single (albeit polyphonic) instrument is an almost absurd act, but it works very well. Liszt has captured the essence of the Sixth quite brilliantly. Thanks to Antonia for the kind gift.

We lived around the corner from Gould for a few months in the early Sixties, between our moving into the neighbourhood and his moving out. That would have been the summer of the year that Gould gave his last public performances; I presume that he moved to be nearer to his recording studios which were downtown, but also (given where he settled) because he felt himself to be too successful and rich for our neighbourhood. Or perhaps he simply felt out of place in suburbia, at the end of a forty-minute commute by bus and subway from the heart of the city.

This brief elbow-rub with fame may come as a surprise to my sister, but I didn't know either until last Autumn, when my father happened to mention it as we walked past a particular house one day. He and my mother had gone to a viewing when it was on sale, and were most impressed by the handmade hardwood music shelves (aka bookcases) on nearly every wall of nearly every room.