ricardienne | (no subject) (Reply)

ad diem X Kalends October

Today was another fairly good day. The people at the Conservatory Office had no problem with me using a practice room for two and a half hours. Granted, I got kicked out of the first one after about an hour and a half, but the one next door, which a) is bigger (so less echo) and b)has a really nifty tattered-brocade-covered piano bench that is exactly the right height for me, was open by that time. And I think I'm starting to be able to play Popper No. 4. My thumb callous is about twice as big as it used to be, but I am no longer living in terror of the constant thumb position in 6 sharps. I still think that David Popper must have had abnormally big hands, though.

I should probably be thinking about St. Augustine, as I just got back from an evening discussion on him.

I cornered Christian afterwards, to keep talking about religion. He actually is Christian, as opposed to pretty much all of the rest of us, who were nevertheless making all sorts of grand statements about religion and faith. Faith. It all comes back to faith. "It's just something I know," he was saying, "and I forget that it isn't something everyone knos." (That being a rather loose paraphrase.) It was a relief, I think, for St. Augustine, to find his faith. But I just don't get it. At all. All this about intuition, about "just knowing," about having an epiphany, a revelation: it's completely alien to me.

But here's something: Augustine was an intelligent, (fairly) reasonable person. Where did he come up with this all from? If I accept his Confession as genuine feeling, I have to accept that he found something, either through self-delusion, through actual realization, or through the basic beliefs that were instilled in him as a child. (He did have a Christian upbringing, and he does say that he never doubted such fundamental truths as the existence and omnipotent omniscence of God and Heaven.) Or I can say that no, he isn't being genuine. He's writing a book to bring converts, to persuade other people to join his religion, which he can then use to his own ends. I don't know.

I did get to use my "St. Augustine praises himself with strong damnation" line during discussion today. The professor thought it was funny.

Hey…

I just remembered what I was originally going to post about.

So, this afternoon, when I should have been practicing my sight-singing preparations for the test next week, I started flipping randomly through my sight-singing book. They mostly have just melodies, excerpts from various folk songs or themes from longer classical works. But they had the Thomas Tallis complete. The Thomas Tallis theme that Vaughn Williams used in his Fantasia that is. It's a setting of the Second Psalm:

Why fumeth in sight the Gentiles spite: in fury raging stout.
Why tak'th in hand the people fond, vain things to bring about.
The kings arise, the lords devise in councils met thereto.
Against the Lord wit false accord against his Christ they go.