As I have noted before, the Search Terms stats that WordPress supplies can offer intriguing insights. I especially like the last item in today’s list:
Sort of like something in Borges, no?
Tag: humor
“Quiet, Andres, it was the Freemasons” - Wozzeck, Act 1
WordPress gives you all kinds of neat stats to let you know how your blog is faring in the world. (By the way, Secret Geometry recently passed 16,000 views!!) This includes what search terms people are using to get to your blog. Here is a screen grab of the search engine terms stats for today:
So, the first item, I assume, means somebody is trying to rip off Chinary and get some free sheet music - nothing novel about that, sad to say. But note the second item. Pierre Boulez, a Mason? Doesn’t that at least give you a moment’s pause? Might that not explain something about the history of high modernism and the post-war avant-garde? Didn’t you always suspect there were connections between and among Boulez, the CIA, Die Zauberflöte, the Trilateral Commission, integral serialism, Mary Magdalene, and the pyramid on the dollar bill? And if you didn’t have these suspicions, well, why not? Because they don’t want you to, right? Now, go back and re-read Ligeti’s analysis of the first book of Structures with all this in mind…
Composer Not-in-Residence
This is great; after all, don’t you know all too many composers whose work makes you want to sign them up for something along these lines?
Fact-like statements
A Problem Identified
Addressing a problem in the brass section at Wondermark.
Not exactly funny cat videos
Chord of Evil
Richard Thompson, creator of the wonderful comic strip Cul de Sac, offers some election day musical insight here.
Kitten on the Keys
Check this out, and then tell me: what is the piece of music used in the third panel?
To-do list
“While he was washing his hands, I eased my way over to the desk and stealthily turned over an envelope lying on top of the pile of manuscript to steal a look at the notations typed on the back of it. Mr. Kaufman’s appointments and reminders to himself, which he typed out daily and later stuck in his breast pocket, always fascinated me, and whenever I could, I would shamelessly rubberneck, for they invariably listed meetings with a number of people whose juxtaposition on the same day never ceased to tickle my fancy. The list for tomorrow, freshly and neatly typed, with three dots between appointments, said in part: ‘Francis Fox… Scalp Treatment’; ‘Aunt Sidonia… Gloria Swanson.’ The jump from Aunt Sidonia to Gloria Swanson was just the kind of unlikely contiguity that delighted me, and there was an even more satisfying conjunction farther down on the envelope, for later in the day, which read: ‘Inlay… Croquet mallet… Norma Shearer.’ Satisfied that Mr. Kaufman’s day would be as piquant and provocative as I had hoped it would, I turned the envelope over again…”
-Moss Hart on George Kaufman in Hart’s memoir Act One
Alban ‘n’ Franz
In honor of the Berg festival happening up at Bard this month, here is a picture of Alban with writer Franz Werfel, third husband of Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel (This may be helpful if you are already confused.) The image comes from the UPenn library, which happens to possess Alma’s papers. Alban, the tall fellow, appears to be saying something, but what could it be? My best guesses:
1) Are those handcuffs too tight for you, Franz?
2) Are you really knock-kneed, or is it the suit that makes you look that way?
3) Franz, you’ve got your knickers in a knot again! Ah, well, Alma does that to men.
4) I understand you were much taller before you met Alma.
