Duets

Over the last week or so, I have been playing recorder and cello duets with my brother -- a surprisingly enjoyable activity. The book we've been using is called Duos für Violine und Violoncello (für Anfänger), edited by Pejtsik Árpád and Vigh Lajos. As the title of the book suggests, the duets are actually intended for the violin and cello, but the recorder usually works as a replacement.

Generally, I begin by sightreading the first measures of a given piece. If the piece is to our liking, we practice a phrase or so at a time. We each play our parts separately and together until we have grasped the timing and the proper sequence of notes. It often takes many repetitions. They are not tedious repetitions, though, and it is gratifying when we achieve some measure of fluency. Either way, playing unfamiliar pieces is good sightreading practice.

Of the songs we play regularly, my favourites are a "Canzona" by Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi and an "Aria" by Evaristo Felice dall'Abaco. The "Canzona" is a joyful Renaissance piece in 3/4 time that is probably better suited to a brass instrument than a recorder. As for the "Aria," it is a Bach-like Baroque piece that, in fact, begins much like Bach's "Little Prelude in D Minor" (BWV 935).

Upon occasion, my brother also plays part of the accompaniment of Benedetto Marcello's Sonata No. 12 (for flute and piano) on the cello. Usually, however, it is my sister (on the piano) who plays the sonata with me, along with Georg Philipp Telemann's Suite in A minor and selections from Schubert's Gesänge, Weber's Der Freischütz, and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.

On the whole, I like playing with others better than playing alone. Company is agreeable in any case. It's nice to be able to laugh and joke together while practicing. I also find that the recorder sounds rather thin and lonely by itself. Accompaniment adds body to the music, and renders mistakes, questionable passages, and unsteady notes less evident. I suppose I'm stating the obvious, but that is my specialty. :o)

When I do play by myself, I often play songs from Chantons Gaiement, a book of French folksongs edited and annotated by Howard Beinhoff and Karl-Heinz Färber. We have the record that comes with the book, so I know many of the songs well (and have known them well since I was a child).

On the record, the singers are accompanied by a guitar -- a very suitable accompaniment. Unfortunately, we don't have the score for the accompaniment, nor do we have a guitar. Furthermore, I don't think that any of us are skilled enough at the ukelele or mandolin to make up or play accompaniments using those instruments. So, I play alone.

Among my favourites from Chantons Gaiement are: "Le roi a fait battre tambour," "Dans les prisons de Nantes," "Chevaliers de la table ronde," "L'amour de moi," and "La Carmagnole." I probably shouldn't like "La Carmagnole," since it is a French Revolution song, but the tune is cheerful and pleasant. Dance-like, actually, which is not surprising since the Carmagnole is a dance as well. Speaking of which, here is an excerpt from A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens:

[. . .] presently [Lucie] heard a troubled movement and a shouting coming along, which filled her with fear. A moment afterwards, and a throng of people came pouring round the corner by the prison wall, in the midst of whom was the wood-sawyer hand in hand with The Vengeance. There could not be fewer than five hundred people, and they were dancing like five thousand demons. There was no other music than their own singing. They danced to the popular Revolution song, keeping a ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison. Men and women danced together, women danced together, men danced together, as hazard had brought them together. At first, they were a mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags; but, as they filled the place, and stopped to dance about Lucie, some ghastly apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose among them. They advanced, retreated, struck at one another's hands, clutched at one another's heads, spun round alone, caught one another and spun round in pairs, until many of them dropped. While those were down, the rest linked hand in hand, and all spun round together: then the ring broke, and in separate rings of two and four they turned and turned until they all stopped at once, began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then reversed the spin, and all spun round another way. Suddenly they stopped again, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines the width of the public way, and, with their heads low down and their hands high up, swooped screaming off. No fight could have been half so terrible as this dance. It was so emphatically a fallen sport -- a something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilry -- a healthy pastime changed into a means of angering the blood, bewildering the senses, and steeling the heart. Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped and perverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenly bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child's head thus distracted, the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types of the disjointed time.

This was the Carmagnole.

Even given the incongruities mentioned by Dickens -- even given the fact that the dance is a warped form of an innocent, healthy pastime -- I find it difficult to picture the song in the book being sung by an ugly, demonic rabble. How could they maintain suitably brutish, bloodthirsty expressions? Perhaps their expressions are more devilishly cheerful than brutishly bloodthirsty? Well, it is possible that the scene is included in a film adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, or in some other French Revolution movie. If so, I won't have to strain my imagination and can see what others came up with.

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Note: Today is the last day of September. If I don't receive a letter of acceptance or of rejection today, I will begin to be displeased with the Freie Universität. Classes begin in October, after all. Surely there is a limit to last-minute notification. My usual explanation is that, since my marks and my qualifications in general are subpar, I don't deserve to be notified in a timely fashion. :.o( I'm not really serious about that, of course, although my most recent marks *are* bad, but the delay is worrisome. Perhaps I didn't complete the application correctly. Perhaps I missed an important step. Perhaps the letter is lost in the mail. And so on . . .

Origami and a Crow

The year before last, during an origami phase, I borrowed Nick Robinson's Encyclopedia of Origami from the public library. Before I returned the book, I copied down the instructions for folding one of the figures (a bear). As origami animals go, I think the bear design works well. There is no gluing or cutting (i.e. cheating) involved, one begins with a standard square, and the figure is a pretty good likeness considering the level of difficulty (admittedly nothing compared to the moose and the squirrel on the cover of the book).

Speaking of the squirrel, I think the design for it is very cute and well done, too. I didn't attempt to fold the figure, however, because it clearly requires much care, precision, and patience. The pointed limbs, for example, are troublesome in any case; the folds must meet exactly and -- if there are too many folds -- the paper soon loses its stiffness and neatness. The clean lines of the tail and body in general are probably difficult to preserve. As for the head, it looks as if it requires sculpting rather than folding. :o/ Altogether, more than a bit above my abilities.

Anyway, here are the instructions for folding the bear. As aforementioned, the design and the original diagrams (of which mine are copies) are from the book. The instructions are also based on those in the book. As far as the diagrams are concerned, I think they follow diagramming conventions. For example, dashed lines signify valley folds, and lines with both dashes and dots represent mountain folds. In addition, you should flatten or push in points indicated by black triangles, and if an arrow has a line through it, that means that the same fold should be performed on the other side. These conventions, and several others, are covered in most origami books, and can easily be researched on the internet. Instructions for basic folds (rabbit ear folds, crimping, inside reverse folds, etc.) are also readily available.

As shown above, you should begin with a perfectly square piece of paper, and place it on a smooth surface with the coloured or patterned side down. Crease the paper so that it is divided into sixteen squares, then make diagonal creases as shown. Steps 6 and 8 are tricky. I'm not sure if the diagram is clear enough, but -- as with step 2 -- if you can just create the folds as shown without making extra ones, the desired result should fall into place. Helpful, eh? >:o) Well, it does help to look at what the result should look like.

In step 12, you should only fold the top layers of the figure, so that the bottom layers can swing around from underneath. Basically, steps 11 and 12 describe a sort of accordion fold. In steps 15 to 18, everything that is done on the bear's right side should be done on its left side, too. That is, fold both back legs forward, inside-crimp both front legs, squash-fold both ears, etc.

Voilà! A delightful little origami bear. It can stand on its own as long as you pull the feet apart a bit.

Now, on a completely unrelated note, here is a sketch of a crow that I made a while ago (based on this photo). Considering that the proportions, texture, and shading leave much to be desired, I am unreasonably pleased with it. Not unexpectedly pleased, however. I tend to take a rose-coloured view of any recent drawings of mine (unintentionally).

I actually rather like crows in principle. They may well be my favourite airborne scavengers -- mainly because they have a neat air. Seagulls, in comparison, are ungainly creatures and tend to look dirtier. Neatness aside, I also find that crows pace with more dignity and gentlemanliness than other birds (pigeons, for example). There is a definite charm in the strutting about of a crow.

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Note: I hope that the seagull community will forgive my rude comments.

Sweet and Sour Stew

Today, my siblings and I made a kind of sweet and sour stew. My middle brother was the chef, I was the sous-chef, and the others helped when they felt like it (wimps!). Since the recipe is comparatively healthy (compared to what? -- he he), and since I find it yields good results, I thought I would post it here.

The amounts provided reflect the amounts we used in making dinner today (i.e. the finished product can feed seven or eight people). Needless to say, however, the amounts can be changed according to taste and according to the number of people to be served.

Without further ado, then, the ingredients required are:

1kg of chicken breast or pork or (preferably) a combination of both
6 bell peppers
6 fresh plums
1 jar/can of plums (about 680g including juice)
2 cans pineapple chunks (about 1130g in all, including juice)
2 lemons
100g tomato paste
125g butter
75mL soy sauce
4 tbsp corn starch
4 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp salt
2 cups rice (to be cooked alongside the stew)
some more salt for the rice

These are the pots we used:

1 large pan (for the meat)
1 medium-sized pan (for the bell peppers)
1 medium-sized pot (for the rice)
1 large pot (for the stew, excluding the meat)
1 braising pan (functioned mainly as a serving dish)

. . . and this was our procedure:

- cut the bell peppers into pieces (about an inch square)
- cut the fresh plums into quarters
- extract the juice of the two lemons
- cut the meat into bite-sized(?) pieces
- put a little over half the butter in the large pan and heat it over medium heat
- put the rest of the butter in the medium-sized pan and heat it over low/medium heat
- when the butter is sizzling, put the meat in the large pan, and put the bell pepper pieces in the smaller pan
- stir both occasionally
- when the meat is cooked, mix in the soy sauce
- let the soy sauce soak into the meat for a while, then put *only the meat* in a covered dish (e.g. the braising pan) and keep it warm in the oven (at about 150°C)
- pour the juices and soy sauce from the big pan into the big pot
- add the fresh plums to the big pot
- simmer the plums until they are nice and soft
- add the jar of plums and the pineapple chunks to the big pot
- when they have been heated and softened, add the lemon juice, tomato paste, sugar, and salt
- after the mixture has simmered for a while, add the cooked bell pepper pieces
- mix the corn starch with water so that it forms a relatively fluid paste
- add the corn starch mixture to the big pot, stir well
- when the stew has perceptively thickened, pour the contents of the big pot over the meat, and serve with the cooked rice

There you have it! The preparation is time-consuming, but it's fun if you have one or two people helping you. Besides, the resulting meal is hearty and delicious. :o9

Ubiety and Other Obscure Words

Like many people, I often find myself sidetracked when looking up a word in a dictionary or encyclopedia. The last time I was thus sidetracked, I stumbled upon "ubiety" -- a word that I consider as amusing as it is obscure. Literally, the word means something like "whereness" (a concept that, perhaps unjustly, strikes me as silly). The more correct and dignified definition is: "the fact or condition of being in a definite place; local relation." That definition, by the way, was taken from the second edition of the Oxford English Reference Dictionary (or "OERD," as I shall henceforth call it).

Well, regardless of the meaningfulness (or lack thereof) of "ubiety," it is as good an example as any of the many interesting words that I continue to discover, even after so many years of going to school and reading books. Another example is "adumbrate," which I encountered while forumming. The OERD definition is as follows:

adumbrate v.tr. 1 indicate faintly. 2 represent in outline. 3 foreshadow, typify. 4 overshadow. [L adumbrare (as AD-, umbrare f. umbra shade)]

One advantage that "adumbrate" has over similar words ("indicate," "hint at," "intimate," "allude to," "portend," etc.) is its rather poetic imagery, which ties its various meanings together nicely. On the other hand, one disadvantage is the fact that, having come across the word so rarely, I'm not comfortable using it in a sentence. Besides, as with other obscure words, "adumbrate" would not be immediately understood by most people. In that sense, using such words -- however interesting, descriptive, or pretty they may be -- defeats the purpose of writing or speaking in the first place. It is all very well to say that people should look things up in a dictionary, or that they should have a richer vocabulary to begin with, but there is something to be said for accessibility and clarity.

Upon reflection, however, I find that the need for accessibility and clarity is outweighed after all. As long as words like "adumbrate" and "ubiety" are used according to their meaning, and not merely because of their obscurity, they add colour and richness to texts and speeches. They also act as gateways to a better understanding of language, history, and culture. Ultimately, in matters of vocabulary as in other matters, it is better to pull everyone up to the same level than to push everyone down.

Anyway, as a little encore, I present "mellifluous" -- a pretty word for a pretty concept:

mellifluous adj. (of a voice or words) pleasing, musical, flowing. [ME f. OF melliflue or LL mellifluus f. mel honey + fluere flow]

By the way, "ubiety," "adumbrate," and "mellifluous" are all of Latin origin. Pardon my bias. I'm sure that there are perfectly nice words of Germanic origin as well (ho ho ho). :o)

A Tribute to Mackerel

My two past tributes have both involved cheese -- rather unfair to other food groups, which are surely at least as entitled as cheese to respect and attention. In an effort to correct my injustice, I offer the following tribute, dedicated to my mackerel friends.

Mackerel, as you may or may not know, is a sort of fish. Not a very big fish -- generally smaller than salmon and bigger than sardines, I'd say. In my experience, a mackerel's skin is a leathery black and gold, and its meat is pleasantly tender, juicy, and flavourful, especially compared to the aforementioned sardines. Of course the saltiness and juiciness depend to some degree on the way the mackerel is prepared (e.g. whether it is smoked whole or canned).

The smoked variety can be eaten by itself. I tend to unwrap the mackerel (which may or may not come with head and tail attached), split it neatly in two along the belly, remove the backbone and accompanying "Gräten" (fish bones), and lift the meat off the skin. All that remains is to put the meat on a plate and eat it. It is entirely possible and acceptable, of course, to make some boiled potatoes and Quark or sour cream mixed with chives/dill/etc. to accompany the fish. Other accompaniments are doubtless equally agreeable.

As for the canned variety of mackerel -- which may be preserved in its own juices, in oil (e.g. rapeseed oil), in tomato sauce, etc. -- I tend to eat it with bread. For example, I sometimes heat some buns in the oven, cut them in half, and spread them with canned mackerel. Another alternative, which I have preferred of late, is as follows:

Take some slices of French bread or baguette and place them on a baking sheet. Open a can of mackerel, and place some of the fish on each piece of bread. Cut up a tomato, and put some slices over the fish. Top each piece of bread with a slice of Gouda, and pop the ensemble in the oven at 210°C or so. When the cheese is as you like it (e.g. just melted, bubbling, or browned), you can take the breads out of the oven and eat them. A warning: the tomato juices (like the pineapple juices in Hawaiian toast) can become surprisingly hot.

Mind you, I use buns (cut in half) instead of French bread. The type of bread doesn't matter too much anyway, although I would advise against easily mushed white bread (a sworn enemy of mine in any case). As for healthier bread, I suppose it would work, but I prefer not to have conflicting flavours.

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Note: Cheese has insinuated itself into this tribute as well. How sneaky!

Another Note: My apologies to my mackerel friends if there are any outright lies in the above post, and my apologies to my non-mackerel friends if the above post has been unappetizing or distasteful. Although, if any non-mackerel friends read this far despite finding the post distasteful, perhaps it's not entirely fair to blame me. :o)