Symphony in Sea (har har)

Well, I stand corrected - this is why I should reserve judgment on a piece until we've been through the whole thing! Today we rehearsed the the 2nd movement of the Vaughn Williams Sea Symphony called "On the Beach at Night, Alone" which was just orchestra and soloists and it was just beautiful. It was very intimate and I was thrilled, after all the blasting last night, that it was soft and gentle with intricately spun chords and beautifully balanced harmonies.

We also ran through Wagner's Flying Dutchman Overture, which is - well, loud. But it's fun and it ends.

I love these quotes on Wagner:

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches -- he has made music sick. I postulate this viewpoint: Wagner's art is diseased.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Der Fall Wagner (1866)

Of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningness,
endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, scrannel-pipiest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliest of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest -- as far as the sound went.

-- William Ruskin, letter, 1882, referring to a performance of Die Meistersinger

Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.

-- Gioacchino Rossini, 1867

I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

-- Mark Twain, Autobiography (1924)

I finished Memoirs of A Geisha, and it was just fabulous. It was so depressing though. The protagonist achieves the absolute height of her power as a geisha, which is more than most women similarly fated could ever hope of attaining. And yet she still was only the mistress to the man she loved; he was married. She was completely dependent on him. The book really exposed how difficult the power struggle for impoverished women was during the 30's and 40's; the only ways that poor women could survive were to be factory workers, wives if they weren't sold into slavery first, prostitutes, or geishas if they were pretty enough. They were only valued for their bodies, their worth measured only by how they could serve or please men.

Very depressing, in a good way. It was excellent perspective, reminding me of how fortunate I feel to be gainfully employed and receiving equal pay to that of my male colleagues for doing the same job (a rarity even today for a woman); and having enough power and stature that I could choose my own relationship and marriage based on my love and feelings and not have to depend on anyone else but myself for my financial stability (though of course two incomes are better than just one :D). Geishas were never allowed to marry, and even if they were to have feelings for their dannas or "husbands" (not in the literal sense, for dannas were almost always married already and were only taking the geishas on as subsidized mistresses) they were, in essence, owned by their dannas.

I watched a special on PBS on human trafficking and how still, women and young girls are still sold into prostitution and slavery every day, across the world, even in this country though moreso in less developed countries. It is a huge underground business, illegal of course; but in so many countries the laws against it go unenforced and there is tremendous apathy about the plight of the girls and women in captivity. Even if they escape, the chances that their traffickers will be penalized at all are very slim to none. I wept. It was so sad.

I'm going to go upstairs and clean up the kitchen now. Hope you all have a lovely Thursday evening!

XO Darcy