Home on Monday
From now on I live in Leiden. I enjoyed my 11 years in Delft, but it was time for a different place.
Leiden was inhabited (at least) from 300 BC (actually the Romans lived in Katwijk, but this sounds better ;-)). In 900 AC, where the Oude rijn, the Nieuwe Rijn and the Mare come together, a tower was built, which began urbanization and in 1266 the city received city rights.
Leiden also housed the first dutch university and was home of the Nobel price winner Kamerlingh Onnes.
[Permalink]-- Filed under: [personal]
Nine million bicycles
While the
music industry is having their holy war against downloaders to disguise the bringing of yet another
clone (this time Norah Jones II: Katie Melua); it is time for someone to show the music industries
hypocrisy, with their blatant copying of classical music.
Just kidding of course ;), I actually like the Melua cd's. Especially Mike Bright Eyes Batt's songwriting is very smooth. Time to find out where Mike got his ideas and start with some analysis for my (not yet in shape) coverlist, this time with the megahit Nine million bicycles.
The chord sequence is something like:
Verse: | I iii | ii IV | ii I | Refrain: | iv I | iv vi | iv I | ii V |
The verse is a disguised form of the I-IV-I, the tonic-subdominant progression. The mediant (iii) is there to provide some color, the ii is very much linked with the IV (the relative minor of IV). A similar progression can be found in preludes by Bach (for example the prelude from cello suite 6 in D).
In the refrain the subdominant is taken and the key is referred to minor. This is an early romantic period trick (A. Pollack calls this barbershop harmony) for example used in Schubert's songs. I will look for a specific example, but I don't have a CD with this music. Actually I am not so sure where the vi comes from??
So in my (probably wrong) view Nine million bicycles is a mix of a Bach prelude and a Schubert-style song.
[Permalink]-- Filed under: [music]
Ensembles
In the beginning I played at various flute ensembles at my music school. From 2000-2002 I played early music with the Consort of Muesli. This consort existed of- Dorothea Schulz, recorders, flutes and bass flutes
- Margje Bekkering, various recorders
- Jitske Kuiper, various recorders
- Jochem van der Vorm, renaissance and baroque traverso
[Permalink]-- Filed under: [music]
Promise(d) me
As promised here, I wrote a better version of the quickviewer for the vim calendar plugin. It now properly wraps around year ends.
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use Date::Calc;
$dir = "~/diary";
for ($i = 0; $i < 90; $i++) {
$fn = "$dir/$y/$m/$d.cal"
if(($y,$m,$d)=Add_Delta_Days(Today(),$i));
if (-f $fn) {
printf "%2d %s", $d, substr(Month_to_Text($m),0,3);
open IN, $fn; while (<IN>) {print "\t$_" if (! /^\s*$/);}
close IN;
}
}
Compared to last year's entry you could say I was far more efficient in 2005 than in 2004, but also a lot lazier. I leave it to you to assess the correctness of this statement.
Happy 2006 everyone!
[Permalink]-- Filed under: [linux] [web]
Copycat
Today I added a new page to this site, containing
a list of pop songs borrowing certain elements of famous
classical music. You can find this list of classical
covers by clicking on the link or in the menu on the right.
This page is by no means in the shape I intended, but perhaps I will try harder if others can look over my shoulders.
Pop and rock songs often borrow some parts of melody, rhythm or harmony of classical songs. When listening to (pop) music I sometimes notice, but later almost always forget the connection between the song and a classical piece. Since knowing useless facts can be fun, I have decided to write these "classical covers" down.
It is very difficult to exactly pinpoint when a song is a "cover". Therefore I decided not to maintain a bare list, but also write a few words about the connection between the songs, ranging from a small theme or chord progression to a literary transcription in the same key. I try to mention the oldest occurrence in written music, which is very often from the Renaissance or Baroque, simply because mankind started most annotating around this time.
Hopefully I will find some time in the future to accomplish part of these goals.
[Permalink]-- Filed under: [music]