Flowers. And music.

It's been an uneventful week, partly because I've spent a long time on the computer trying to find a suitable holiday house for all the family to go during one specific week in August. The main problem is that I didn't start nearly early enough to find one house that will house 12 people, somewhere that we want to go and that's fairly accessible from various places; but a further problem is that the Edinburgh family are very allergic to dogs - even if the dogs aren't actually in the house, but had been present fairly recently. Reasonably enough, people with dogs like to rent holiday accommodation and, sadly (for us) most holiday houses allow them to do so. So this cuts out a good nine-tenths of the possibilities. 

Eventually we managed to find two cottages in Northumberland. They're not next to one another but they're not far apart, so we settled for them. One of them is a no-pet house, though the other isn't. It's the best we could do and I hope it'll be fine. 

On Friday, however, we decided to award ourselves a day off and went down to the Border country to visit Dawyck Botanic Gardens. We were there in the autumn, for the wonderful colours, and I thought this would be the time of year to see the rhododendrons and azaleas in flower. On the way down we became caught in a sheep jam, which was quite entertaining. 

Interestingly, we'd got it wrong, since most of the rhododendrons and azaleas weren't out yet - though a few were. Since Dawyck is south of here, we assumed that the season would be more advanced, but maybe because it's on higher ground (850 feet above sea level as against Edinburgh's coastal position), it seemed to be less so. 

I

Still, those that were flowering were very pretty. 

We also reacquainted ourselves with the wonderful lichen that drapes itself over the trees in the clear upland air. 

There are some wonderfully enormous trees. Can you spot Mr L standing at the foot of this one? He's wearing navy for camouflage but you may see his white hair and beard. 

Today we went to Edinburgh's Botanics, where there were lots of blooms. 

There's a moral there somewhere...

Yesterday was the concert of one of my choirs, so I spent some time going over the music to make sure I was confident with the tricky bits. We sang Rheinberger's Ave Regina and Stabat Mater and Vaughan Williams's Five Mystical Songs, which are set to George Herbert's wonderful poems. I didn't know any of this music before - indeed I'd never heard of Rheinberger, and he's fantastic. We also sang the Verdi Requiem - much better known but also splendid. 

In another couple of weeks it's my other choir's concert - the Mozart Requiem - lovely again - and Mendelssohn's Psalm 42. I'm sitting here listening to the seventh movement of the latter, which I felt I didn't know well enough. Letting it filter into the brain while doing something else works to some extent, but doesn't help with fitting the German words into the notes, so I shall go and do that now.
 

Time

Gosh, it's been a busy couple of weeks. My two choirs had their concerts on consecutive Saturdays, so one week I was frantically polishing up the hard bits of Mozart's "Coronation Mass" (which is in four parts and relatively short) and the following week I was even more frantically making sure I knew the fiendish parts of Handel's "Israel in Egypt", which is in eight parts and quite long and tricky. They're both wonderful to sing but the Handel particularly is fairly exhausting.

On Tuesday we went up to see Son and DIL and the Unbloggable Baby, who is such a cutie, with huge blue eyes. She's nine months old now, and crawling. She has an fixed ambition to chew their cats.

We had lunch at Dundee Botanic Gardens, which are pleasant but not as impressive as the Edinburgh ones (which are, moreover, free to visit, unlike Dundee's). The weather was lovely. Indeed, the weather has been unfeasibly lovely for weeks: Edinburgh was the driest part of Britain in April, which has meant practically not a drop of rain. The garden is parched (or, as parched as a Scottish garden gets).

Sweet feet. I miss them.

Grandson was ill all week with a fever and sore ears. He didn't eat much; and since his usual physique is like a piece of string, he became alarmingly skeletal, with every rib visible and his spine all knobbly. We spent quite a bit of time helping to entertain him, but thankfully he's much better now.

Then today was Mr Life's birthday. He's now in his 70th year. How on earth did that happen? (and me only 35, too...). How many more good years do we have, I wonder?

Daughter 2 is expecting a baby in October. She's had problems in the past so we're all hoping that things go smoothly for her this time. Then we'll have four grandchildren, though alas only two in Edinburgh and thus available for intensive grannying. When this one is 15, we'll be 82 and 84 if we're still here at all. A sobering thought... .

Notes

These were delicious chocolate truffles yesterday, thank you, Daughter 2.  There's one left over which has been promised to Grandson next time he's here. I wonder if he'll remember? (That's a rhetorical question.)

 

We just ate these ourselves today, since the grandchildren didn't visit. Yum.

 

Grandson likes to sit at the piano, bashing away experimentally. I wish I could play well enough to fascinate him with my brilliance and thus, possibly, inspire him to play an actual tune. (Mind you, my father could play brilliantly and this didn't inspire me other than in an I-wish-I-could-play-without-bothering-to-learn-and-practise way.)

Yesterday, however, he drew these notes. I was quite surprised; my music is open on the music stand bit of the piano (does this have a name?) but we'd never discussed it. Granted, they're not on a stave; but they are recognisable notes. He then proceeded to sing us the song that he said it represented: this was meant to be a carol, I suppose, which began "Baby Jesus didn't fall down" and continued for a while. He is a hoot.

The notes reminded me of my dad. Because he was very musical, people tended to send him birthday cards with musical notes on them, and because he was also a bit - hmm, well - critical, it would irritate him if they were just random notes, as above, rather than a piece of accurate musical notation. Card manufacturers, are you listening?

Deep sigh

Advent gifts day 9.

I've just come back from choir, where we're singing two pieces by Ola Gjeilo: "The Luminous Night of the Soul" and "Sunrise Mass". I keep hoping that they might grow on me but - nope, not so far. They manage to combine a) being quite difficult to sing even fairly well; b) sounding as if they would be quite easy (lots of repeated notes); and c) being extremely boring to rehearse. To make matters worse, we're singing his "Serenity" at my other choir. At least "Serenity" is mercifully short: over in six wafty minutes. Tonight's offerings comprise our whole programme. Gah.

I would just drop out for this year except that I'm the soprano representative - which basically involves taking the register, not a skilled task except that I'm the only one who knows all the sopranos' names (because of keeping the register). Also, it would seem a bit feeble. However, I'm strongly tempted. An weekly hour and three-quarters of watching the clock while we drone on; not my idea of fun.

He's an up-and-coming young composer so I suppose I must be wrong in my estimation of his music. But give me a bit of Mozart or Handel any day!

(I've just noticed that I put the apostrophe in the wrong place in sopranos'!! This indicates my level of overwroughtness! I have now corrected it. Goodness gracious me. I blame Ola Gjeilo, without a doubt.)

Grass

I've spent quite a lot of last week listening to Brahms' German Requiem, which is so beautiful. I didn't know it before one of the choirs I sing in started rehearsing it, but now it's one of my favourite choral pieces. Mind you, this makes it one of my favourite twenty or so choral pieces... my absolute favourite is generally the one I'm learning. But it's very special. We performed it last night - hence the last-week revision - and it was so exhilarating. I love singing in a big choir. The windows rattled in the doom-and-gloom bits! It's wonderful standing in the middle of such a huge sound - even the quiet parts are powerful when 80 people are singing pianissimo.

It does kind of make you think, though - singing about all flesh being like grass. The grass withers and its flowers fall away. Hmm. Yes. He was only in his mid-thirties when he wrote it (well, quite - gosh). His mother had recently died.

So today it was lovely to mess around in the garden with the little ones. It's very difficult to take good photos of Grandson these days. He doesn't stay still long enough. But Granddaughter's reactions aren't so fast and one gets occasional unblurry ones.

Grandson has always liked our little pebble pool.

The garden's becoming more and more colourful as spring burgeons.

Small boys do like playing with a stick.

My other choir is rehearsing Haydn's Nelson Mass and Te Deum, so I need to do some intensive singing along to those CDs in the kitchen for the next few weeks to polish them up. Lucky Mr L.

Homework

Two random photos of the littlies for the Worcester side of the family, who look at the blog for this reason alone. Isn't Grandson getting grown-up? At church creche on Sunday, the helper, who was getting things out of the cupboard, said to him, "What kind of toys do you like?" and he replied, "All the toys with four wheels." Which is very true and shows an impressive degree of self-knowledge for a boy of two and a half.

Granddaughter is now crawling in earnest. Her brother is remarkably - though not totally - patient with her as she scrambles along towards his precious vehicles. He has been heard to say firmly, "[Granddaughter] wants to sit on the sofa." Alas, she really doesn't. She wants to handle everything in sight, including his toys.

One of the good things about spring (I'm choosing to regard this as spring, even though it's only February) is that picking a few flowers and putting them in a tiny vase is an excellent procrastination device when I've got fed up with my piano practice and theory. I'm only on Grade 3 theory and I find even this quite challenging in bits. Heaven knows what Grade 8 is like. I can confidently say that I shall never find out.

What with that and trying to learn Mozart's Requiem for one choir; and Handel's Dettingen Te Deum and Bach's Magnificat in D (which is wonderful but HARD) for the other... . Too much of my time is being spent on music. I need some extra days in the week.

Talking of procrastination - piano lesson tomorrow and I need to do some more practice. I find even my easy little tunes quite difficult though (who knew?) practice does help. I just hope that all this effort is warding off dementia or making me a better person or something because it's not making me thinner, younger or richer and it's certainly not making me into a brilliant musician.

... just keeps rolling along

This morning we went for a walk along the Water of Leith at Stockbridge. Mr L is doing a photography course (learning computer techniques) and he needed to take a panoramic photo to manipulate at his class.

It's always pleasant walking here, a mile or so from the city centre but a world away.

I like the way you can see this church up on the bridge over which traffic trundles ceaselessly, while down here all is peace, the smell of damp leaves and the gentle trickle of water.

At the end of the path is Dean Village.

You can see the backs of the houses of the New Town ("new" in Edinburgh terms, meaning that building started in 1780).

 

This house has a nice little garden overlooking the water. It's very little; but it must feel quite rural.

On our way back we saw a heron. It posed like a statue of itself before unfolding its wings and flapping downstream.

Then the sun came out, which would have made my pictures much prettier but by then my phone had run out of battery. You'll have to imagine it.

It was all much pleasanter than what I've been doing tonight, which is my music theory: harmonic and melodic minor scales. I'm only on Grade 3 and already it makes my brain hurt.

Smiles

 

The autumn has been beautifully mild so far. This is Princes Street Gardens yesterday, snapped very quickly because my bus was coming.

 

I don't think my photography would win any prizes. I was trying to get the Castle looming through the leaves but the camera has helpfully focused on the railing spikes. Still, the colours are prettying up in seasonal fashion.

Here's Granddaughter this morning, stopping mid-foot-chew to beam me a lovely smile.

And Grandson paused for a second from his playing to pose for me. He knows all his colours now as well as his numbers from 1-9. I would have expected the colours to come first but they didn't. Daughter 1 knew her letters at this age but I don't remember her being so interested in numbers. It's funny what children decide to specialise in and it doesn't really have much significance in the long run. After a while all the other children can also read or count or hop on one leg or sing or whatever.

Mind you, the other day I turned on the car radio to hear a piece of orchestral music that sounded vaguely Mozartian but less striking. It was pleasant enough, though unfamiliar. I listened at the end to find out what it was. It turned out to be Mozart's first symphony, written at the age of eight. I myself am struggling a bit with Grade 3 piano theory at the age of sixty-three.

Where are those angels when you need them?

There are definite signs of spring (though these are supermarket daffodils, not flowers from my garden, apart from the polyanthus) and I actually did some gardening today: cut back lavender and clematis. I do love lavender. Even at this time of year, the scent of the cuttings reminds me of summer days with bees buzzing and soft air. I also did a little forking of the earth, though this didn't remind me of summer at all; indeed my fingers got cold through my gloves. Still, it's nearly March, which is good.

Unlike my piano playing. I know I probably don't practise enough, but I do practise and I find that:

1. at first I can't play my new tune and then
2. I get better and can sort of play it and then
3. I start getting worse again.

How can this be? It's SO frustrating. I think it's partly because, as I get slightly better, I start to speed up and that makes me get worse again. But anyway, it's really discouraging.

I actually wouldn't mind if angels descended from the sky, took me gently aside and broke the news that I would never be able to play the piano with any reasonable level of ability. I could accept that. Then I could stop the lessons and just occasionally have a wee twiddle to myself. But I keep hoping that I'll improve a bit more, to the extent for example that I don't keep having to work out what the notes are - dash it, I know what the notes are but I keep forgetting, mid-tune - and can reliably play some simple airs without making mistakes.

Anyway, our choir had its concert last night in the Usher Hall. We sang the Verdi Requiem and the Te Deum from Verdi's Four Sacred Songs, both of which are quite difficult in bits but WONDERFUL. It sounded quite good. Unlike my piano playing.

I'm sorry to have added the annoying verification thing but I've been getting spam from people who appear to think I'm organising a wedding or have a dog. No and no. However, the wonderful Thimbleanna has pointed out that you don't have to type the numbers correctly, just the letters - which does make the whole thing less of a palaver. You just type any number (a single one) and as long as the letters are right, it's fine. So wurfle2956 can be wurfle9 or whatever. Isn't that odd, but good?

No Volume 2 yet. Drums fingers... .

Two reasons to be cheerful

Any day - for example, today - is improved by a visit from this little chap. He is so yummy.

And then in the evening I went to a concert which featured (among other goodies) Boyce's 4th Symphony. It's one of those pieces of music that I know perfectly well - could have sung along to - but couldn't have identified. It's SO GOOD - very cheerful and brisk and no-nonsense - just the sort of thing to make one feel that the human race has a lot going for it, despite all the dire news.

I didn't know much about Boyce apart from the fact that he was an 18th century English composer but have just Googled him. In Wikipedia's picture, he looks a bit like a combination of Dr Johnson and Robbie Coltrane, but more stolid. Not a beauty, then, but what an achievement to create something that over 200 years later makes people (such as me) beam all the way home on the bus.

All cows eat grass

No, alas, I haven't seen Grandson today - not since Sunday. I must remedy this, though life is currently a bit full of thrills such as booking a coach for guests at Daughter 2's forthcoming wedding, taking my mum to the hairdresser, hearing her various woes, arranging for a chap to come and unblock her downpipe and so on. Tomorrow features the dentist and getting Daughter 2's oven cleaned in preparation for her tenants.

In between, I've been having a go at teaching myself to play the piano. I'm not impressed with my progress.

I have various problems. One is that I'm not good at reading music - though I can read it a bit. Many years ago, at school, I played the violin, but was never really taught any music theory. I know about the length of the notes and what sharps and flats are and, if I think about it, which lines/spaces signify which notes. But the notes I know best are the ones of the violin strings - GDAE - and of course these are all in the treble clef. Though I've sung in choirs for most of my life, being a soprano hasn't necessitated any great familiarity with the bass clef either. Both in playing the violin and in singing, I've relied a lot on my ear and my memory - the music is a great help but really I need to hear the piece first and then I can read the music. I don't really think that this is reading! It's more following.

However, I think I can learn this all right. It will just take practice and a book - which I've bought. But the thing I find really difficult is getting the two hands to do different (but similar) things at the same time. I'm sure everyone finds this problem. I just wonder whether there are some people - maybe including me - whose brains find it particularly hard to divide themselves into two. Or if you practise enough, does the breakthrough happen?

I only started last Wednesday and haven't practised every day so it's not suprising that I'm not at concert standard yet, and I am getting slightly better at playing the little tune at the beginning of one of my children's old piano books. Maybe it's a mistake to start with Book 3, but we don't seem to have Books 1 and 2. And I can play the hands separately - neither is difficult. It's the co-ordination! I'm okay for a few bars but I keep falling apart.

However, I often think that, if I couldn't read words and someone told me about it, it would sound like an impossible accomplishment. But it's easy. Touch typing sounds hard but can be learnt within a few hours. And piano playing (with both hands) can't be impossible. People do it. Children do it! My children used to, though none of them practised enough to become particularly good. My father was very good, though, as are my brother, my sister-in-law, my nephew and my niece. But they're all scientists. I wonder if this is relevant. Maybe my arty brain isn't up to it.

I'm going to have a go for a few weeks and if I feel there is hope of ever achieving even modest skills then I'll probably find a teacher. I just don't know whether I'm going to live long enough to train those hands to work independently.

Is there anyone out there who has succeeded in learning the piano at my advanced age?

With catlike tread...

It's so easy to have a conversation with family members who've been around you for years and know how your mind works.

In our choir, we've just started singing Rossini's Petite Messe Solonnelle, ie Little Solemn Mass. I didn't know that Rossini wrote sacred music; I was more familiar with The Barber of Seville and so on. Anyway, this piece starts reasonably solemnly but the fourth bit suddenly turns into something that sounds like a comic opera.

"Listen to this," I said to Daughter 1 and clamped my iPod to her ear. The words are very traditional: "Domine deus, rex caelestis, deus pater omnipotens" - Lord God, king of heaven, father God all powerful - and so on. But the music is very jolly.

She listened and her face brightened. "Ah yes," she said. "This'll be where the Pirate King comes in."

I don't know how much sense that makes to anyone else, but it's exactly what I meant. I love you, dear Daughter.

The weekend at last

Have you seen the YouTube clip of the silent "monks"? Sorry that I have again forgotten how to do the wee tv screen thing. Rather impressive, if a bit mad (the "monks", not me).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSk8h1oG8nY

Edited to add: stolen from Marcheline! - http://mrssplapthing.blogspot.com/


Below, you will see one reason why Mr Life is a fine fellow. He's been having trouble with the company that supplied 24-hour care to my confused aunt before she went into the care home. After many emails pointing out that they were charging us too much, he eventually got the following reply:

Following my investigation I can confirm that we have now amended all the incorrect invoices from 5th July.

As you had received previous amended invoices and credit/debit notes, we have cancelled any previous amendments that were made on the attached invoices and re-amended the invoices and have attached the final copies.

For example:

You originally received G1996827; this was then cancelled and replaced with G1996827-DN-1. Due to the errors on the invoices we have now cancelled G1996827-DN-1 and replaced this with G1996827-DN-2.

You originally received G2007172; an additional charge was then raised on G2007172Z. Due to the errors on the invoices we have now cancelled G2007172 and G2007172Z and replaced this with the attached invoice G2007172-DN-1.

I imagine that this actually makes perfect sense, but I think I'll just go and have a little lie down instead of fathoming it out. I'm sure Mr Life has it all under control.

In fact, my lie down will be in the bath, reading Diana Athill's Life Class - a more entertaining read than that email. Ms Athill was born in 1917, is still alive and these are her collected memoirs - she's had an interesting life and writes well and extremely honestly about it. My memoirs wouldn't feature so much event. In fact, none. Was born. Read lots of books. Got married. Wrote one book. Taught. Had three children. Read more books. Gardened. Three children grew up. A further chapter (I hope). The End.

Hmm. Maybe I ought to do something.

The trouble with my iPod

Twice a week, usually, I get the bus into work instead of driving. And then I walk home; my gesture towards the environment and fitness. It’s a distance of about three miles and I vary my route so that I don’t get particularly bored (lots of people’s front windows to look into). However, sometimes I remember to bring along further entertainment in the form of my iPod. My taste in music is almost exclusively classical and I often listen to the piece my choir is currently learning, to fix it into my head. I try not to sing as I walk (mad old lady in trainers and with rucksack, carolling as she marches).

Our students are keen iPod wearers. Whenever I see a lone student in the lifts or making for the bus stop, he/she is invariably plugged in. The music isn’t precisely audible but there’s what Garrison Keillor describes as “the sound of distant chainsaws” emitting from their headphones. Luckily I won’t be around when this generation suffers from the deafness that I’m sure they’re inflicting on themselves - lots of old people going “You’re mumbling!” and fiddling with their hearing aids. (Then they’ll be sorry.)

And possibly I will too, especially as a result of listening to our choir’s current piece, “Carmina Burana”. I’m not a natural with technology, and find that walking, plugging in earphones (L in the left ear, R in the right) and getting the device to work - simultaneously - is a bit too much multi-tasking for me. But I’m always in a tearing hurry to get home – having stayed too long at work – so I set out briskly, fiddling with the controls as I forge through groups of ambling young people.

I don’t know if you know “Carmina Burana” but it starts VERY LOUDLY, with the words “OHHHH FORTUNAAAAAAAA!!!”. And no matter how much I think I’ve turned the volume down before it begins – it’s never down enough. I shoot into the air like a startled cat – AARRGGHH - and my ears fly off my head, landing in little pink shattered pieces on the grass. Or so it feels.

By the time I’ve adjusted the controls and my heart’s returned to a normal rate, I’ve reached the road. Now the traffic is roaring and the choir has moved on to a quiet bit, currently inaudible to me. I have my iPod on a string round my neck (which is probably not a cool look) so that I don’t drop it, so I stuff it inside my jacket to stop it swinging around as I walk. But this means that whenever I want to adjust the volume – which is all the time – I have to fish in an unladylike fashion down my front. The timing of this particular piece ensures that by the time the singing is forte again, I’ve reached the next quiet bit of my walk and have to readjust it once more. And so it continues.

Maybe this is the reason why today’s popular music – I use this vague term because I don’t know the differences between garage and rock and dance and so on – is all loud. Yes, it’s deafening. But at least it’s consistently deafening and you don’t have to feel in your clothing to adjust it.

Music good and not so good

I’ve just come back from choir, where we’re singing Vivaldi’s “Gloria” – beautiful! – and Lauridson’s “Lux Aeterna” – ho, hum, lots of dissonance. Judging by past experience with horrid modern things, I’ll probably get quite to like this eventually; but the unfortunate audience at our performance won’t get the chance for their ears to become accustomed to it. I’ll recommend that Mr Life bring a crossword that night.

I was musing, during the boring bits of rehearsal, about music that I can’t stand. I mentioned “A Whiter Shade of Pale” recently. Ugh. Dirge. And “MacArthur Park”. Drone, drone. (In my opinion.) The other day some students were discussing songs that they were now embarrassed to admit having liked and asked me for my contribution. I came up with Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana” and they laughed – satisfactorily ridiculous in their eyes. I’m actually not much of a pop lover and certainly not a rock lover – don’t like noisy bangy music - but I still quite like “Copacabana” and some of the Beatles and various other things with tunes. But really Cole Porter and Gershwin are more to my taste in light music.

I really dislike the hymn “Amazing Grace". It was ruined for me some years ago by being constantly on the radio in a bagpipe version. Another set of drones. I don't mind bagpipe music really (from a distance) but somehow it did nothing for this particular tune. I couldn’t help singing along: “Uuuuuuuuuuu-ah-maaaaaaaaay-zzzzzziiiiiiiiing-graaaaaaayce…”.

What music can’t you stand? (Bah, humbug.)