Countdown 36

Literature:
Read Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God".
A slow but interesting read because it is in dialect.

Film:
Watched Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. I'll give this movie five stars. I loved the cinematography, the different accounts and the lack of a definite answer to the mystery.

CD Ideas that Shaped Mankind
Lecture 10 - The Enlightenment
East/West exchange of ideas 18th Century Jesuit accounts of China, India and Japan
Values of Enlightenment: Denis Diderot's Encyclopedie - How to make the world work practically.
Progress was absolutely fundamental.
Free will to do good.
.Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations - everyone seeks their own best advantage. Prosperity would be maximized if people were free.
.William Godwin proposed dismantling of the state.
Struggle between constitutionalism and absolutism.
Rights of the citizens guaranteed by law -- inalienable rights of humankind

Countdown 37 and Boring Stats

Cello practice weeks 44-48 (out of 35 days)
57% Minuets 20
54% Bow exercises 19
28% Lully 10
22% Left hand exercises 8
20% Thumb 7
20% Book I exercises 7
20% Bouree 7
14% Brevel 5

Started using timer
Week 46: 4 hrs
Week 47: 2 hrs
Week 48: 4 hrs
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Humanities Studies
Philosophy: Ideas that Shaped Mankind
Lecture 7 Age of Sages
Religion - Ideas of Creation, Matter arising from pure thought, One Universal G-d, Divine Love, Man as Master of the World

Lecture 8 Ideas about Religion
.William of Ockham 14c - denounces advocates of reason for forcing G-d's behavior into channels permitted by logic "necessitarianism" /
.St. Augustine of Hippo (4c) Mysticism - Doctrine of Illumination

Lecture 9 Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution
.The Columbian Exchange - separated continents are re-seeded with plants, animals, etc. carried with people across the oceans.
.Hermes Trismegistus (Greek patron of magic) Hermetism - humans could do magic and influence nature - alchemists, magicians, hermetists.
.Sir Francis Bacon (scientific method - experiments and observations with consistent results).
.Rene Descartes (rationalist tradition -- I doubt,therefore I exist) People believe in their own realities but deny the reality of everything else.
.Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince "The State exists only for its own ends"
.Bartolome de las Casas Dominican Friar (16th c)- mankind as a single moral community -- the family of man: Universality of mankind.
.Hugo Grotius - doctrine of international law and state sovereignty


Literature: Harlem Renaissance Tie-together
Nicolas Vachel Lindsay (The Congo/Prairie Troubadour) claims to have discovered
Langston Hughes (Soul is a River / Dream Deferred)
Lorraine Hansberry's play - "A Raisin in the Sun" about an African American family in Chicago.

Literature: Poetry Devices

spondee consists of two stressed syllables one after the other, as in the first two syllables of “ripe apples.”

Iambic pentameter consists of ten-syllable lines in which unstressed syllables are followed by stressed syllables in a regular pattern.

Alliteration, the repetition of consonant sounds

Assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds

Enjambment, in which a pause or caesura occurs naturally in the middle of a line rather than at the end.

Synaesthesia, the description of one kind of sensation in terms of another kind (as in “a delicious vision”)

Literature: Novel technques

Indirect discourse is a technique in which the narrator mimics the voice or thoughts of a character without actually quoting the character or using the character’s voice.

picaresque is the novel form used to describe journeys whose aim or destination is unclear from the outset. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding is a picaresque novel.

Fine Arts: Music
Beethoven describes his first movement of the 5th symphony as "Fate knocking on the door"

Countdown 39

Fine Arts: Literature
Read Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Fine Arts: Film
Watched Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman

Notes from SHOF: Chapter 7
World Cinema in the 1950s
1950 Japan's Akira Kurosawa "Rashomon effect" to describe differing eyewitness accounts POVs that cannot be reconciled.
1957 Sweden's Ingmar Bergman "The 7th Seal"
1954 Italy's Federico Fellini "La Strada"
1959 "La Dolce Vita" coins the term paparazzi
1950 Michelangelo Antonioni "Cronaca di un amore"
Luchino Visconti goes for the theatrical style. "White Nights" "Bellissima" "Senso"
1968 English Sir Carol Reed "Oliver" won Academy Award for best picture
England's EALING Studios produce Ealing Comedies.
1951 Charles Crichton's "The Lavender Hill Mob" with Alec Guinness,
1955 The Lady Killers
The St. Trinian Films and the Carry On Comedies
Hammer Films specialize in horror and science fiction
French Jacques Tati "Mon oncle" 1958
Robert Bresson creates his own form of cinema for himself influencing future generations.
John Rouch and Ethnographic Cinema.
Max Orphuls "Gigi"
Jean Renoir humanist
Roger Vadim "And God Created Women" (Bridgitte Bardot 1956) Liaisons dangereuses


Notes from SHOF: Chapter 8 - The 1960s Explosion
French New Wave - political and social issues furvor
. Francois Truffaut "400 blows" "Shoot the Piano Player" "Jules and Jim"
. Jean-Luc Godard "Breathless" "The Little Soldier"
. Alain Resnais "Hiroshima mon amour" "L'Annee derniere a Marienbad"
. Claude Chabrol "The French Hitchcock" "Bitter Reunion" "The Cousins"
Sweden:Ingmar Bergman
Italy: Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns "Once Upon a Time in the West"

Stanley Kubrick - Dr. Strangelove

"Bonnie and Clyde": Arthur Penn - slow mo, romantic deep focus shots, abrupt editorial transitions
Hitchcock's "Psycho"
Schlesingers "Midnight Cowboy"

Skip Chapters 9 and 10 - 1970's to the present / The New Hollywood
Most of this was familar to me

Countdown 43

Fine Arts: Film
Notes from SHOF - Chapter 5

International Cinema through WWII
1933 Alexander Korda does The Private Life of Henry VIII which becomes the first British film to win an Academy Award for best actor (Charles Laughton)
1937 Jean Renoir - The Grand Illusion
1942 Rene Clair - I Married A Witch
1930 Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet with music by Georges Auric - lots of trick photography to create this opium dream
1950 Jean Cocteau's masterpiece Orphee
Propagandist and documentarian Nazi Leni Riefenstahl
Luchino Visconti version of the Postman always rings twice "Obsession"

Notes from SHOF - Chapter 6

Postwar Challenges to the Movies
Italy - De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief" - plot reminiscent and probably influenced recent movie "Beijing Bicycle".
1944 - US Supreme Court "de Havilland decision" rules that the 7 year contract for actors could not be indefinitely lengthened by suspensions.
1947 - US Supreme Court declares practice of Block Booking a violation of antitrust laws.

James Steward becomes the first actor to command a percentage of film gross.

Rossellini's work "The Miracle" is banned by Catholic Church. The Supreme Court in 1952 decides that this is a violation of church and state separation and that Movies fell under the 1st Amendment of "Freedom of Speech"

Film Noir
Newman's Abandoned
Siodmaks's The Killers
Dassin's The Naked City
George Marshall's The Blue Dahlia

Women as the vicious femme fatale. Barbara Stanwyck "Double Indemnity"
1945 Joan Crawford "Mildred Pierce"

HUAC starts the Communist scare in Hollywood and the blacklist
Rise of Television
3D and Cinerama (early 3 projector wide screen) Roller coaster rides like Disneyworld Circlevisions, etc.

Auteur Theory makes the director the most important person involved in the creation of a film.
Marlon Brando "rebel" formla with Laszlo Benedeks "The Wild One" 1953
Roger Corman's "Little Shop of Horrors" 1960. Low budget crime, horror and sci fi thrillers.

Musicals
Billy Wilder's 1955 - Seven Year Itch with Marilyn Monroe

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Watched ROPE by Hitchcock. The main reason for seeing this movie was to see how the long takes were done. The movie looks like a play and after looking up the info on imdb this proves to be its origins. Another interesting point was the veiled gender issues. Hubby didn't pick up on this but I suspected.
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Philosophy: Listened to 3 lectures from audio book - Ideas that Shaped Mankind
Lecture 4 - From Settlement to Civilization - Crisis and Wars. The reign of Kings.
Lecture 5 - Thus Spake Zarathustra - The fall of the early civilizations, zoroastrism
Lecture 6 - The Age of Sages - Plato, Buddha, Confucius

Countdown 45 and Results of Holiday Concert

Today's holiday concert at the library with SMA scored C+ as I drew a blank on the first entrance piece but did a reasonably good job playing from memory on the Minuet II. The piece clipped along at a faster pace than anticipated. Had a few other mishaps on the holiday pieces which I hadn't played since last year, mostly unnoticeable to the audience. I'll get another chance next Saturday.
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Humanities Studies: Fine Arts - Film

Notes from A Short History of Film - Chapter 4
The Hollywood Studio System in the 1930s and 1940s

Populace entertainment for the 1930s was mostly escapism to provide relief from the drudgery of daily existence.

Theaters ran films continuously sometimes for 24 hours a day

Studios forced theaters into buying package deals - B Films vs A Films
Performers were typically under contract for 7 years.

New technical difficulties with sound.
Microphones on Booms allow for more mobility for perfomers

Advent of color technologies
Technicolor by Herbert T Klamus and pushed by his wife Natalie who made sure that Technicolor was used to its best advantage in movies like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.

John Ford specializing in westerns mostly shot in Monument Valley. Noted works: Stagecoach, Grapes of Wrath / John Wayne taught to react to other performers and keep his gestures to a minimum.

Howard Hawks: The Gray Fox noted for Dawn Patrol, Scarface, Bringing up Baby, To Have and to Have Not, The Big Sleep, Red River. His key to good film was simply "3 good scenes, no bad ones".

Hitchcock: 39 Steps, Secret Agent, Sabotage, The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much. Storyboarded all his shots before filiming. Was detached from shooting process which allowed him to design his films as intricate puzzles to hook the audience with clever and exciting touches.

Fritz Lang: Departed Nazi germany to America. Couldn't see why he couldn't work through lunch and dinner times. Pessimistic stylist who viewed humanity as essentially flawed, foredoomed and inherently corruptible.

Charlie Chaplin: Modern Times 1936 still silent. The Great Dictator 1940 not well received.

Ernst Lubitsch Touch - romantic comedies with a bite. His "The Shop Around the Corner" is remade by Nora Ephron's "You've Got Mail". "To Be or Not to Be" was one of Lubitsch's most accomplished farces and the highlight of Jack Benny's screen career.

Max Ophuls was romanticist. Most famous film was "Letter form an Unknown Woman" A sense of fluid restlessness pervades all of his best work.

Orson Welles - Citizen Kane makes Hearst mad. Welles becomes noted for being brilliant but a difficult and potentially dangerous filmmaker.

Frank Capra - Small Town America - Mr. Smith goes to Washington well received but It's a Wonderful Life wasn't a box office hit.

George Cukor became known as a "woman's director" because of his skill in managing stars such as Katharine Hepburn

One Take Woody / WS Van Dyke - Tarzan the Ape Man

Spectacle: Cecil B DeMille - Cleopatra

Josef von Sternberg - Marlene Dietrich: The Blue Angel

Preston Sturges - foremost social satirist of the period.

Walt Disney and UB Iwerks - Steamboat Willie
Looney Tunes - Leon Schlesinger
Tex Avery
Max & Dave Fleischer - Betty Boop

1934: The Code stymies Mae West. Hollywood is brought to heel with no drugs, crime methods, excessive lust, white and black romance, etc.

Shirley Temple rises to fame.

Most famous film of the era 1939 Gone with the Wind

Hollywood goes to war with films like Casablanca
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Listened to 3 lectures from Ideas that Shaped Mankind by Felipe Fernandez Armesto
The Idea of Ideas - so what differs us from the apes? Imagination?
The Mind of the Hunter -- The unseen world, spirits, planning and trying to influence the outcome of the natural world -- be it a successful hunt or praying for rain.
Of Ice and Mud -- the tyranny of agriculture and the concept of labour and feeding the masses, storage and domestication.

Countdown 46

Humanities
Fine Arts - Film

Notes from Chapters 1, 2, 3 "A Short History of Film" by Wheeler Winston Dixon & Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. Films I've actually seen highlighted in bold.

1878 Edward Muybridge creates motion studies using a series of cameras triggered by wires and settles a bet about horses having all four legs in the air while galloping.

1895 Louis and Auguste Lumiere make the 1st commercial breakthrough by combining a photographic and projection device in one machine.

1898 Thomas Edison creates the first case of "censorship" with Ella Lola. Her body display was obscured to cover offending portions of the anatomy.

Edison creates sensationalist films appealing the basest appetites of sex and violence with The Kiss and Rat Killing. Creates sequels with "Rat & Terrier #2, Rats and Terrier #3, Rats and Weasel". Edison also creates the first paid advertisement: "Dewar's: It's Scotch"

1902 Georges Melies "A Trip to the Moon" (starts "Sci-Fi" genre) creates a series of special effects that would dominate cinema until the digital age: double exposures, dissolves, mattes, reverse motion, cutting, etc.

Frenchwoman, Alice Guy, becomes one of the inventors of narrative film.

1903 Edwin S. Porter "The Great Train Robbery" uses intercutting and camera angles for suspense and action (starts "The Western" genre)

1908 Thomas Edison attempts to monopolize industry and creates the Motion Picture Patents Company aka "The Trust".

Carl Laemmle manages to lure away the alluring actress Florence Lawrence away from the Trust and signs her up with his company IMP. She becomes known as the IMP girl. Thus setting the scene for actors and get name billing, popularity and higher salaries -- the Star System. He also creates "spin" by setting a rumor that the girl had been killed. He creates a publicity campaign to debunk this silly lie. By 1915, Edison's monopoly is broken.

Rise of the Studios: Universal 1912 (IMP), Fox 1915 (20th Century), MGM 1924

1913 - Mack Sennett creates Keystone Kops and Charlie Chaplin's his biggest star.

Early movie stars:
Mary Pickford / Pollyanna
Theda Bara / Femme Fatale - A Fool There Was
Buster Keaton / The General / Great Stoneface
Rudolph Valentino / The Sheik
Lon Chaney / Hunchback of Notre Dame
Rin Tin Tin
Laurel & Hardy

1914 - 1918 Movies move out west to better weather. America produces movies in Hollywood while rest of the world is concentrated on fighting WWI

1914 Winsor McCay, newspaper cartoonists animates "Gertie the Dinosaur"

1915 DW Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" runs 2.5 hrs with an astounding admission price of $2. Average salary was $25/week. KKK used film as a recruiting tool.

1922 The Code - Will H. Hays heads MPPDA "Hays Office" to police the private life of stars.
1922 Robert Flaherty / Nanook of the North -- the first staged doc-dramas (new genre: documentaries)
1923 Cecil B DeMille / The 10 Commandments -- one can get away with greed, sin and decadence provided there's a moral ending.

Race films: 1910's onwards catering to African American audiences. Oscar Micheaux, African American filmmaker made more than 20 silent films but was criticized for depicting blacks as well off and well educated.

Late 1920's the move to sound.
Warner Bros embraces sound and creates the Jazz Singer with Al Jolson

Rest of the world
1915 German Paul Wegener creates Gothic Horror fantasy with the Golem
1918 Russian's revolution - Lenin senses the power of cinema to mold the populace and creates "agit-prop" trains to generate propaganda.
1922 German FW Murnau / Nosferatu with Max Schreck
1925 German Fritz Lang "Metropolis"
1925 Russian Sergei Eisenstein / Battleship Potemkin "The Odessa Steps" and the famous baby carriage. / Alexander Nevsky / Ivan the Terrible
1928 Danish Carl Theodor Dreyer / The Passion of Joan of Arc
1929 An Andalusian Dog, surreal film by Dali and Bunuel causes riots with its shocking sequences: slitting eyeball with a razor, ants spilling out of decayed hand.
1931 French Rene Clar /A Nous La Liberte with music by George Auric
Elvira Notari, Italian filmmaker inventor of Neorealistic cinema, shot on location often using nonprofessional actors.
1930's Alfred Hitchcock adapts from silent films to talkies.

Countdown 47

Humanities
Fine Arts - Film
Started reading "A short history of Film"

Literature - Poetry
Looked up some recommended poets by hubby.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)
who coined

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!

First woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry


And THE CONGO by Vachel Lindsay ( 1879 - 1931) a poem that uses a lot of onomatopoeia. Lindsay is criticized for stereotyping. He considered himself the discoverer of Langston Hughes. THE CONGO goes on and on and on with its BOOMLAY BOOMLAY BOOMLAY BOOM.

Which reminds me of a joke:
A missionary is out in the jungle and meets the head witchdoctor. The drums are booming away. All day, all night, the drums are booming.
After a day of this, the missionary asked the witchdoctor "What's with the drums?"
Witchdoctor says "DRUMS GOOD, NO DRUMS BAD"

After three days of this, the missionary asked the witchdoctor "Don't these drums every stop?" Witchdoctor says "DRUMS GOOD, NO DRUMS BAD"

By the fifth day, the missionary tells the witchdoctor "Please make these drums stop!" Witchdoctor says "DRUMS GOOD, NO DRUMS BAD"

THEN all of a sudden the drums stop. The witchdoctors eyes grow very BIG and the missionary asks concerned "What now???"
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The witchdoctor whispers "Piccolo solo"

Countdown 48 and Bulgarian Folksong

Humanities
Literature - Fiction
Read: House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Fine Arts - Visual Arts
Looked up my hubby's favorite Pre-Raphaelite painting "Ophelia" by John Everett Millais

Visited local museum which was displaying Salvador Dali's Dante 100 print series and an exhibition of never-before traveled works by Italian masters Leonardo da Vinci, Tiziano Vecellio and Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis, and German master Albrecht Durer.

Also had a nice exhibit of paper fold-out books and paintings by Lea Nickless: Bound Unbound.

Tonight was the "One Night Stand" at the local community orchestra. Unfortunately, the guitar and mandolin duet never quite came together. However, here's the amusing entry done by hubby of a bulgarian folk song with me singing backup.

Countdown 49

Humanities
Literature - Fiction

• Read Short story THE LIFE YOU SAVE MIGHT BE YOUR OWN by Flannery O'Conner (1925-1964). Title refers to the old signposts found along highways. Flannery trademarks seems to be using "disabled" characters in her stories and there is often a reference to peacocks.

• Read Short story IMAGINED SCENES by Ann Beattie (1947-) Postmodernism.

Fine Arts: Visual Arts
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, English painters, poets, critics founded in 1848.

• James Collinson (painter)
• William Holman Hunt (painter)
• John Everett Millais (painter)
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti (painter, poet)
• William Michael Rosetti (critic)
• Frederic George Stephens (critic)
• Thomas Woolner (sculpter, poet)

The Brotherhood's early doctrines were expressed in four declarations:

1. To have genuine ideas to express;
2. To study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
3. To sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parodying and learned by rote;
4. And, most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.

They were influenced by Romanticism but were fascinated by medieval art.

Persephone, by
Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

John Everett Millais - Christ in the House of his parents

Medea by Evelyn De Morgan, 1889 in quattrocento style

50 Days to Review Humanities

I signed up for the Humanities FTCE 2/5. Therefore, I need to review the subject and will subject my blog to things I didn't know or forgot. Took a diagnostic test and my weakest subject is Literature. Well, it has been over thirty years and I'll admit that reading the classics hasn't been high on my list of things to do.

Pulled out the guitar to practice a couple of pieces for the "One Nite Stand" and found out that my strings really needed to be replaced. Guitar strings usually don't last beyond 3 months. At least they are cheap.

Registered for Chamber Music and Intensive Chinese starting January. I haven't studied Mandarin Chinese since 2004 so when I received an email from the college stating 25% off the cost of the course I thought it might be good idea to review my knowledge of the language. Gosh, it's been 4 years already.

Cello has not been forgotten. Memorizing pieces for the SMA concert Saturday and after I finish all my "have-to-do's" I play around with the Breval. Maybe I can get the first movement ready for a Chamber Music recital next year.

Okay, here's my first humanities entry.
Fine Arts - Visual Arts:
Michaelangelo Merisi was known as "M" but we know him as "Caravaggio" 1571-1610. Big rep of Baroque painting and chiaroscuro (sharp contrasting lights and darks). Thought to have utilized projection using mirrors with dark rooms illuminated with a shaft of light from the ceiling as a helpful technique in achieving photorealism. Since he worked on one setup at the time, he might have been the first cut and paste artist. His overly realistic paintings were controversial as he would depict saints with dirty feet.


The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, 1601. Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome.
I remember seeing this painting but not at the Cerasi Chapel. It must have been on tour.

Literature - Poetry:
Harlem Renaissance
Langston Hughes (1902-1967). Born in Missouri.

First published in The Crisis in 1921, the verse that would become Hughes's signature poem, THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS, appeared in his first book of poetry THE WEARY BLUES in 1926:

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy

bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Ah, I remember this raisin in the sun poem from school but didn't know that it by a "Harlem Renaissance" author. This classification is new to me.

Fine Arts - Drama:
August Wilson (1945-2005) Playwright. German father, mother from North Carolina.
Best known for The Pittsburgh Cycle: 10 plays that span 1900 to 1990 starting with GEM OF THE OCEAN which is about Aunt Ester, a 285 year old "soul cleanser" and the people who pass by her parlor. Virginia Theater in Broadway was renamed after him.

Wilson's best known plays are FENCES (1985) (which won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award), THE PIANO LESSON (1990) (a Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award), MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM, and JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE.
Not familiar at all with this. Too modern. Wikipedia and YouTube are wonderful resources. Here's an excerpt from Fences (video's not great, but you can hear the actors dialogue clearly)

Literature - Fiction
Another Harlem Renaissance person
Zora Neale Huston: Novel - "Their Eyes were watching G-d." Set in Florida 1937
Book on order from library. American folklorist, short story novelist. Died in Ft. Pierce where they celebrate Hurston annually through various events such as Hattitudes, birthday parties, and a several-day festival at the end of April, Zora Fest. Her life and legacy are also celebrated every year in Eatonville, the town that inspired her, at the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities.

Fine Arts - Film:
Another new category. I had clepped humanities and I'm sure the test didn't have any film questions on it back in the 1970's.
ROPE was a bold experimental film by Alfred Hitchcock that was shot so it appeared to be a continuous single take. DVD on order from Netflix.

Has anyone seen "Russian Ark" by Alexander Sokurov? The 96 minute film was shot in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and was actually created in one long continuous take.

One Night Stand

Next week is the local community orchestra's Holiday Party and "One Night Stand" where members and nonmembers can come and play anything they want. I was thinking of doing the little Suzuki Bach Minuets. However, I cannot find a violinist who will play with me. You'd think hubby would be a mensch and do the chore, but nooo. Anyway, I've been tapped to play guitar with a friend who wants to play mandolin.

I'll get a chance to play two holiday concerts with SMA this month so that will be good for cello practice.

More good news is that my chamber music class is now available as a noncredit course. I'll be able to officially enroll in January.

Intoning Until It Hurts

R insisted I play in tune today. This seemed to require switching my left hand position until I was using tender finger parts. Oh well, such is art and exercise. No pain, no gain.

Recommendation

R recommended that I check out this website.
http://www.celloprofessor.com/