Boom's 401k asset allocation chart

Modern dentistry at its best...

Recently I complained to my dentist that my teeth have become sensitive to cold.
He said I should consider moving to Florida...

Psychopathology in the score

Imagine a situation in which I observe the suffering of an innocent human being.  Imagine also that, while I'm at it, there is a dreamy smile on my face, my eyelids are half closed, my lips are slightly parted, my fingers gently caress the armrests of my chair, and my breathing becomes progressively heavier and more rapid.  I think it would be perfectly reasonable for you to infer that the emotional (mental) states behind my behavioral responses are those of a full-fledged psychopath whose neural circuitry for empathy is either badly miswired or entirely missing.

Never too busy for this...

A few more live recordings of Carter's music came my way, and I thought I should not delay adding them to the blog.

A Good Friday indeed...

Any day of the week on which I would come across my first live recording of a favorite piece by Elliott Carter would be a good day.  It just happened to be this Friday, so I am happy to think of this day as my "Good Friday".
    
The piece in question is Triple Duo, performed by the Doelen Ensemble on Dec. 4, 2008 at the Muziekgebouw aan't IJ in Amsterdam.  Although the old studio recording by the Fires of London (on Nonesuch) is splendid in every respect, there is no substitute for hearing Carter's playful music in a live recording which captures face to face, real-time communication between musicians and their audience.

Femiquavers

 In the real world, the average life expectancy of a woman is significantly greater than that of a man.  In the world of opera, by contrast, the average life expectancy of a lead female character is, to put it mildly, less than modest.  If she does not succumb to a fashionable disease in the prime of her life (La Traviata, La Boheme), she can look forward to being stabbed, strangled, or poisoned by a jealous lover (Carmen, Wozzeck), husband (Otello, Il Tabarro, I Pagliacci, Violanta), brother (La forza del destino), or rival (Rigoletto, Adriana Lecouvreur).  On those rare occasions when the plot does not provide any of the already listed sources of early death, the soprano is expected to do the dark deed herself (La Gioconda, Madama Butterfly) or at least die of a broken heart brought about by sexual exploitation and emotional abuse in the hands of various men in her life (Manon Lescaut, Der Ferne Klang, Die Gezeichneten).  Even in operas with nominally optimistic endings the soprano may still meet with premature (and violent) death, if only as part of some lurid fantasy in the mind of the male protagonist (Die tote Stadt).