Wednesday, July 22, 2009

July 22 - The Ghostly Fog of Peace


Up early past the morning glories of the Sulfur Springs Mountains, including



Long Barn and



the Horse Farm Hills,



grading papers at local breakfast joint across from views of palms and Diablo, blasting to History class for music from Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951): Pierrot Lunaire to Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): Firebird -- then more of the latter composer for the the Pianists as well as other delights.



Record veiled instrumental versions of Esther Xerxes:

V. ARIA - "There is a certain race" (The Plot Against the Jews)











VI. SCHERZO - "On the thirteenth day of Adar" (Esther and Mordecai)









(based respectively on Stravinsky's Rake's Progress graveyard prelude and an a bone fragment of Bela Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin -- the second trope instrumentally identical to Moses and Aaron: XVI. Send Forth Spies). In need of more advice from the G.F. Handel Xerxes score, head off to U.C. Davis Library again,


then home towards a strato-cumulean setting sun over the Coast Ranges to begin the orchestration EX: VII. ARIA - "If anyone" (which turns out to be fundamentally based instead on the beginning of Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw).