Sunday Music

Here we are, filled with salad, waiting for rain. The rain was promised for several days to come through last week. But while other places, like Suebia, got washed, sun dried Franconia still has to wait for some sparse droplets of heavenly water.
Did something happen in my world ? Nothing at all. I do my nerve wrecking work (trying not to strangle my booming co-driver ; she has the ability to make me fall silent, not that she’d realise, with one sentence : We passed one of the huts where local farmers offer fresh asparagus, when she happily bawled out that “in my kitchen asparagus comes out of the glass – that’s as good as fresh, ha !” I glanced over to be sure that she was serious about this, and she was. Irony is an alien concept for her.), nerve wrecking I say ; the rest of the day I try to cook, and of course read. I expect this week to be similar to the last.
It is summer now, and soon this Sunday will end. This Sunday Music is aptly titled Sommerabend, and we have it performed by Ralf ILLENBERGER (Ger., Eng.) and Peter AUTSCHBACH (Ger., Eng.). ILLENBERGER is of course one half of the legendary guitar duo KOLBE (Ger.)-ILLENBERGER (website).
In the course of the last week I found one or two things I wanted to write about here, but for what ever reasons I did not. And now I have forgotten what it was. Wasn’t important then.
I hope you enjoy the music. May we all have an uneventful week.

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Sunday Music

A sudden “spike” in the statistics of my blog made me wonder – fifty readers from the US on one day ? A look in the overflowing spam filter taught me that the “Oraggs” (Ugo, Adelaide and all the others) felt the urge to bring me in contact with “girls”. Oh yes, it is so bluntly boring, I miss them Nigerian princes, businessmen, and astronauts – those were the days …
Innocently enough I was reading about days of past in a book about Bavarian history, where I found the following text cited :
“Rußland kann und wird nicht ruhen, bis es entweder selbst gebrochen ist oder das Präsidium der bewohnten Erde errungen hat. Soll Europa russisch oder soll Rußland europäisch werden ?”
Roughly : “Russia can not and will not rest until it is either itself broken or the ruler of Earth. Shall Europe become Russian, or Russia European ?”
These sentences were written by Jakob Philipp FALLMERAYER (1790-1861) (Ger., Eng.) in an essay about the “oriental question” (known as the Eastern question in anglosaxon historiography) (Ger., Eng.), “Deutschland und die orientalische Frage” in 1855. No real change there in the last 170 years.
The only antidote to brutality & uglyness is beauty – as it may be found in music, and elsewhere too. Today’s Sunday Music finds beauty in a composition by Gabriel FAURÉ (1845-1924) (Ger., Eng.): Nocturne No.3 in A-Flat Major (that’s As-Dur, Op.33 No 3), performed by Kun-Woo PAIK (Eng.). I hope you like the music.

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Sunday Music, Monday Edition

I am tired. Tired of all that “heroism” that pops up like mushrooms after a warm rain. Mostly performed in the form of breast thumping speeches by people who never have been forced to shoot a gun in their lives. Tired of war mongering backbenchers, or self styled intellectuals, of any colour. I am tired of the nonsense I see in politics, in the society, in academia and culture – we live in perverting times. Words & meanings get perverted, turned around, abused, sometimes I think a part of the western society is suicidal, and I can not help – and do not care whether this marks me as an “elitist” – but the level of stupidity has risen. And I am too sad, and fed up, to look for excuses in me (Age ? Self loathing ? Early senilism ?). I am not in the mood for listing examples, a look into the news should be enough.
Anyway.
This Sunday Music is titled L’Indifference, performed by the Cafe Accordion Orchestra. (Here is a song with the same title performed by Gilbert BÉCAUD (Ger., Eng.), with English subtitles).
I hope you like the music. May it be a bearable week.

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Sunday Music

Last week is gone, I am back in my apartement, stowed away like a toy mago in a doll’s house, and tomorrow the little tin machine will dutifully go back to work, cleaned & cranked up, robota robota. The last two weeks were good days, it becomes a little bit more difficult to separate at the end, every time.
This Sunday Music is composed by Nicola MATTEIS (ca. 1650, after 1713 ?) (Ger., Eng.). an Italian violonist & composer who lived & worked in London, and died at a place in Norfolk ; the piece is titled Diverse Bizzarrie Sopra la Vecchia Sarabanda o pur Ciaccona, the performing group is called Ground Floor (I could find nothing about them). I hope you enjoy the music, may the coming week be bearable.

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