Hello to TimT, who guessed that the mystery location was the White Horse of Uffington, seen here again from a more comprehensible angle. If you plan to visit between September and May, bring wellingtons! Chalk mud is a bastard.
The Scalagna debacle, as promised, keeps rolling along. In the latest news, Roberto Alagna has been staging a one-tenor picket outside La Scala, singing (badly) and reminding everyone that his last wife died, and appearing on TV playing up his Sicilian roots by singing a traditional song about a dead donkey, complete with hee-haw noises. No, it’s not about the donkey’s head ending up in a theatre manager’s bed.
Also, an expanded version of Contextualising the Contemporary Artist Yadda Yadda Tracey Emin is now posted at Sarsaparilla.
Hoorah, I got a mention! I'm still waiting to read the Morton Feldman post. I heard some Feldman pieces a few years ago at a Sydney music festival and was intrigued; couldn't understand a note (and quickly became bored out of my brain) but still intrigued.
Okay, okay, I'll finish the damn Feldman article already.
What pieces did you hear? The thing about his music is that there's nothing about it to be "understood", so if you come in trying to follow its structure or direction, well, it ain't there, so you're gonna get flummoxed. It's all about going with the flow.
I really can't remember, I took a look at a list of works on the net and no names leaped out at me. All I remember is that the performers sat at pianos and occasionally played a note; then, at some indefinable time after that, they'd play another note, that was either very far or not so far from the note that they'd played before. The programs may still be at my parents place in Newcastle.
Yeah, that's Feldman! One of his earlier pieces: sounds like the prosaically titled "Piece for Four Pianos". Or, one of several other works he wrote around the same time for two or more pianos. His later stuff (1970 onward) gives you something more to latch onto. But in that case, you're kinda meant to appreciate each sound for its own intrinsic merits.