Thinking about my violin lesson this evening and with the day I'm having, it can't come soon enough.

My Head of Music said I am 'becoming an accomplished accompanist' (nice use of alliteration there )

Teaching three lovely people - one was PianoNotes, another was Baz!



And the third was a chap who lives in Perth (Scotland, not Australia!) who gets the 5.15am bus to the airport and flies down to me for a lesson in Sunny Croydon once a month - he arrives at 9.30am. Amazing. I have only just got myself out of bed then.

Pupil played well in his Jazz sax grade 6 and the examiner commented on what a great team we made (I accompanied) and I PASSED MY FINAL MEDICAL SCHOOL EXAM!!!!

Aw, I agree, he is lovely



Well Done Appassionata

Congratulations! That must be a great relief after all the years of training.

Congratulations Appassionata!

Congratulations!

The above (catching up with Cyrilla) was my 'happy' for the day



Very well done, Appassionata!

I just had so much fun with a friend who came round who is an excellent piano sight reader (as apparently she never practised as a child, so became good)-- I played the clari and she accompanied me... we played Brahms F minor sonata and Mozart Quintet.

So glad it went better than you thought! Obviously the examiner agreed that your patient-from-h.ell was... well, h.ellish!

my violin practice, the new set of strings has made so much difference

might try similar with a new reed....

but I hate new reeds!

I like the nice ones.

Just won the Adult solo section of the Gibraltar music festival (all instruments/vocals in one class together) singing Vilja Lied with great comments. Including that my German was ACCEPTABLE!! Absolutely delighted and shocked

Means I'll probably be singing in the concert next Sunday

Very well done Dawn

Many congraulations!

Sorry it's a bit late but I became an Auntie on Thursday night. I now have a gorgeous liitle niece called Madison Susan. Her middle is Susan after my mum.

She's as good as gold

Great news, LoopyLoz

Congratulations, LoopyLoz :-)

And thanks guys - I was even more delighted as decided I should do the second verse only yesterday - so was by no means sure I'd get safely through it!
And DD's and my rendition of Sull Aria was good too - and we managed to make our teacher cry!! Got back to our seats and he had tears streaming down his face.....awwww

Wow congratulations Dawnmc71 and LoopyLoz - for vastly different reasons!

I'm happy because my only piano student (Mr corenfa) had his first lesson after 6-8 months of no lessons and has improved by leaps and bounds- I'm taking no credit as he had no lessons for that whole time!!

A 2,000 word essay due in to 21st April...which I have written 1,148 words of today
Hoping to get this one in early in order to concentrate on the 3,000-word-essay-instead-of-exam that comes next and which is ludicrously broad and hard to decide what to write (basically the question is 'write 3,000 words on the mythological figure of your choice')

well done! And as for the next one, I'd never manage that!!!

I think I'd approach that one by woffling around 5,000-6,000 words on said mythological figure, and then looking at the woffle for common or emerging themes. These can then be targeted in a more structured 3,000 word essay.

But what do I know, engineering students don't ever write essays!

*stands up*

It's been eleven months since I wrote my last essay. I would quite like to write another one. Would it be really WEIRD if I do it just for fun?...

3000 words on "Why does the Contemporary Art World sideline skill over concept?"

I have to write some very detailed technical reports as part of my work. These usually include a discussion section where I tease out and then answer every point of argument that might be raised by 'Learned Counsel' in court. Total word count is often 10,000 words or more; and yes, I enjoy it.

SB

I don't see why not - if you'd enjoy it, go for it. And then see if you can find someone who will publish it for you


Well, there is a bit more in the rubric - we have to trace the development of our chosen character, using at least three sources and no more than eight sources. One source must be ancient (Greek or Roman) but other than that it is up to us - they can be all ancient, or all-except-that-one-modern, etc.
Say you pick 5 sources - that's 500 words per source, plus 500 for intro + conclusion. That starts to seem extremely tight.

I've chosen Orpheus...and my sources so far are
1) The voyage of the Argo - Apollonius of Rhodes. Orpheus was one of the Argonauts who travelled with Jason, and in the Greek world this is the story he was best know for.
2) Virgil's Georgics
3) Ovid's Metamorphoses
Two Roman sources, written at a similar time, both concentrating on the Orpheus/Eurydice myth - though Ovid also includes the death of Orpheus and that his detatched head was found continuing to sing...
4) Sir Orfeo, an anonymous 14th century English poem, where Eurydice (now named Heuridis) is snatched away by the faerie king - combination of the classical myth with English folklore. There's a translation by Tolkien, as well as a freely available early 20th century translation online (but I can get Tolkien from the library!)
5) Brueghel the Elder's painting of Orpheus in the underworld (see here). It'd be nice to include a non-written source, and this one tells you lots about the mediaeval mind - Orpheus/Persephone/Hades is such a small part of the painting, which is so much more about a terrible underworld/afterlife.

And that's five sources, and I haven't even got to the invention of opera yet! From which you could choose so many - Peri, Monteverdi, Telemann (just because it's Telemann!), Gluck (for wanting to bring 'noble simplicity' to opera), Offenbach (for parodying/satirising Gluck), all the way up to Birtwistle's 1986 'The Mask of Orpheus' - whcih wonderfully examines the contradictions in various tellings of the myth, kind of like the essay is going to! Though I don't know if I could convincingly write about opera, seeing as I don't listen to it...

Plus, Orpheus playing to the animals was a very common theme in Roman mosaics. In 4th century BC, the Etruscans often portrayed the prophesying head of Orpheus on the backs of mirrors, which would likely have been wedding gifts!

And then Cocteau did a play then film based on it, though the Orpheus/Eurydice relationship is very different in those, which is interesting in itself...actually there were a few Orpheus films in the 1950s...

So many things I could write about, so few words to write it in! I may end up dropping the Virgil and just using one Roman source, so I can bring in something later instead. But perhaps get going with the five I've got, add a sixth or seventh if it comes to it, and then drop out sources as needed to get it down to 3,000!!

New idea, new idea!

Forget anything post-Roman

So on the Greek front, you can use the Argonautica as I mentioned above, and also Plato's Symposium (where Orpheus is portrayed very negatively - it's only brief but it's still significant).

Then on the Roman front you have Ovid and Virgil - and you can explore the differences between them, despite the fact that they were writing at almost the same time.

Then there's a later chap called Philostratus who wrote in the 3rd century about Orpheus and the animals - at which point you can bring in a couple of marvellous mosaics depicting Orpheus with the animals, notably one I've found which is extremely Christ-like (Orpheus descended to the lands of the dea yet returned - ressurection, you see...)

And you can get in your prophesying head on the Etruscan mirror-wedding-presents as well...


Now I think I have to write two essays and choose between them (especially as my current bedtime read is "Orpheus in the Middle Ages")

Piano lesson

we're getting busier at work !

I can now play this on the trumpet:

band last night, it was gooooooooooooood

I passed my driving test, with 2 minors.

Its been a long time coming.

Yay! Congratulations!

Well done!!!

Congratulations Tamsin!

Well done tamsin

Excellent. Degree next.

Well done!

Car Expert

My new piano arrived today

I love mwl1 a lot!



( Sorry!)

You wouldn't be a little biased, would you?
I can't play anything else though - trying to go below B and it suddenly goes higher again by mistake. same problem with above G (it goes down).

Ah you'll get there Just try not to make the mistake of feeling you have to press your mouth harder to the mouthpiece to get the higher notes

and biased?? Moi???

I hesitate to say "At last!", but I'm so pleased for you. Will it help with getting to the new job?

really really enjoyed band tonight

mucking about dancing to the wii with my husband and the kids

It's a new acquisition - from some vouchers my husband was awarded over the last year in a works reward scheme

Sounds like fun Dawn