Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Breakfast Tune: 17 Greensky Bluegrass 2013-03-09 Where The Streets Have No Name
Today in History
A golden spike completes America’s first transcontinental railroad; Nazis burn books in Germany; Rudolf Hess parachutes into Scotland; Nelson Mandela takes office in S. Africa; U2’s frontman Bono born. (May 10)
I actually have a cousin (of some sort, it’s not a close relationship and it’s a branch of the family we don’t have much communication with) who played in Carnegie Hall and as the dedicated East Coasters (practically everyone else lives in the mid or farther West) we received invitations to be part of the rooting section.
Well, this was interesting. I don’t recall much about my first visit (there must have been, we didn’t skimp on the cultural stuff), so when we went to the city (there is onlyone) and met with the immediate relatives at their hotel room that was not just tiny but very, very expensive, it was a novelty.
Soon enough it was time to unpack the sardines and head to the big show where we spent a very informative interlude at the museum which was already quite high enough for me. Oh, have I mentioned I suffer from severe acrophobia? It’s not that I can’t, it’s that it is very disturbing and difficult. Anyway, as the designated ‘country cousins’ we got the extra tickets which happened to be in the uttermost nosebleed section next to the rail. And the chairs were canted forward so you could get a good view of the stage.
So I can fairly describe the overall sensation for me as being dangled off the precipice of a bottomless pit, except of course for that well lit stop at the end.
After courageously assessing the situation I informed my family I would be watching from the aisle and I went to the nosebleed lobby and told the usher of my decision to which she repiled, in a very sympathetic way mind you, “Yeah, we get a lot of that. Do you need to sit down? A paper bag?” So I, at various points, got as close as I dared and stared at the ants of whom I would hardly have recognized my cousin with binoculars because, as I said, our families weren’t that close and I barely knew him.
After that we went out with my Aunt (again not a blood relative) for my first experience of Thai where I was not really able to tell what dishes contained Bell Peppers (I’m EpiPen allergic). Thank goodness peanuts are ok. Ah, I could go on and on, this Aunt told my Dad not to mention his brother’s death days before at her Marathon party because it would ruin the vibe. Her daughter (not at all the same cousin) has been on The New York Times Best Seller list twice and I’m terribly jealous…
I have issues, but everyone is damaged in some way and what you strive for is high functioning. So you want to play in Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.
Études are an artifact of the late Romantic period which are deliberately designed to be difficult to perform to showcase the virtuosity of the performers so musicians use them to practice. Since many of the great composers were also outstanding performers, they would write Études for warm up pieces before their concerts. They were frequently written for piano which is the most complete instrument and the easiest to orchestrate and transpose for other instruments.
The Debussy ones are particularly interesting and often performed together as a part of a concert program. Liner notes–
Book One
I. Pour les cinq doigts (after Czerny)
II. Pour les tierces (2:52)
III. Pour les quartes (6:28)
IV. Pour les sixtes (12:06)
V. Pour les octaves (16:23)
VI. Pour les huit doigts (19:35)
Book Two
VII. Pour les degrés chromatiques (21:08)
VIII. Pour les agréments (23:15)
IX. Pour les notes répétées (28:13)
X. Pour les sonorites opposées (31:35)
XI. Pour les arpèges composés 2 (36:57)
XII. Pour les accords (41:48)
Early in 1915, disheartened by the menace of World War I and gravely ill with cancer, Claude Debussy (1862-1918) nevertheless managed to compose. The fruits of his labors, 12 Etudes (study pieces or exercises), would be his last important works for solo piano, and would represent a distillation of the composer’s musical legacy. It was appropriate for Debussy — the most original composer for the piano since Franz Liszt — to join the ranks of etude composers. Equally fitting was his dedication of his two volumes to Frederick Chopin, noting that the serious nature of the exercises was offset by a charm reminiscent of the earlier master.
The etudes are divided into two books, each different in conception. Book I is devoted to exploring the technical problems and musical possibilities inherent in different intervals (thirds, sixths, etc.), while Book II engages in the exploration of musical syntax and style. In all, the etudes are witty, challenging, and inspired. Though academic in nature — and perhaps less easily digested than other of Debussy’s works — they fall closely on the heels of his popular Préludes and Images, and reflect the same aesthetic concerns: complex harmonies, fragmented melodic lines, and colorful textures.
The first etude of Book I, “Pour les ‘cinq doigts’-d’apres Monsieur Czerny” (For Five Fingers-after Mr. Czerny), is inspired by the five-finger exercises of Carl Czerny. Debussy pantomimes the pedantic works by placing figurations in grotesque juxtaposition and introducing bizarre modulations. “Pour les Tierces” (For Thirds) presents an extraordinary variety of patterns in parallel thirds, excepting those already encountered in “Tièrces alternées” from the second book of Préludes. “Pour les Quartes” (For Fourths) exercises the pianists ability in parallel fourths. Almost needless to say, quartal harmony abounds, making this etude more tonally adventurous than many of the others. “Pour les Sixtes” (For Sixths) is a slow and meditative work with two fast interludes, and one forte interruption. “Pour les Octaves” (For Octaves) combines chromaticism, whole-tone harmonies and complex syncopation. Probably the most brilliant etude of both books, it is equally difficult to play. “Pour les huit doigts” (For Eight Fingers) is meant to be performed (the composer’s suggestion) without the use of the thumbs, due to the division of the figuration into four-note scale patterns. It finds humor in its rigid insistence on four-note groupings and sudden ending.
Book II begins with “Pour les degrés chromatiques” (For Chromatic Intervals), an essay in the use of the chromatic scale, both compositionally and technically. “Pour les agréments” (For Ornaments) is one of the most fiendishly difficult works in the repertoire. The entire fabric of the music is created by juxtaposing musical embellishments, arpeggiations, and miniature cadenza-like passages. “Pour les notes répétées” (For Repeated Notes) requires a performer able to execute repeated tones with great rapidity while still maintaining the piece’s humorous, scherzando atmosphere. One wry melodic fragment balances the otherwise relentlessly staccato texture. “Pour les sonorités opposées” (For Opposing Sonorities) emphasizes the kind of multiple-layered textures found earlier in the second set of Images and many of the préludes. “Pour les arpéges composés” (For Composed, or Written-out, Arpeggios), easily the best-known of all the etudes, redefines the arpeggio to include a variety of non-harmonic tones (such as the added second or the added ninth). “Pour les accords” (For Chords), is probably the nearest thing to a Romantic virtuoso piece that Debussy ever produced. Mammoth in conception and brutally difficult, this etude juxtaposes relentless perpetual motion with an almost uncomfortably still middle section. A truncated reprise precedes a driving conclusion that puts even the most skilled performer to a grueling test, both technically and interpretively.
I think I should make it clear up front that I’m not a big fan of self driving anything and part of it is because I’m a programmer. The wonder of computers is not that they screw up (Blue Screen of Death anyone?), it’s that they work at all.
In many respects I’ve had an advantage in the applications I’ve created because I’ve rolled my own from User Interface to Processing Input to Formating Reports and I intimately know each of the variables and the transformations they’ve been subjected to.
Mistakes are easy to make at each stage of the process producing unexpected results that must always be tested to make sure they conform with reality.
There are at least 3 primary points of failure (the examples I provide are just that, examples, nor is this list intended to be comprehensive).
Unexpected Input- If I ask you for a number and you type in ‘Strawberry’ what do I do?
Unintended Consequences- I accept unlimited input (High Frequency Trading) and I overflow the limitations of my infrastructure or reporting capabilities (Flash Crash).
Cloning of Errors- Every copy of a program is exactly the same, so a single error is duplicated in every installation.
This is why, though modern planes are theoretically capable of landing themselves and have (under test conditions), we insist that they have not only a pilot, but a co-pilot and flight engineer. Now this is no safeguard against a crazy pilot locking everyone else out of the system and doing something suicidal (I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my Grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passengers) but it does mitigate against computer failure with the exception that the control systems must function as expected.
You read a lot of stories about pilots attempting emergency interventions that computers decide the airframe is not capable of. How safe is that? The human response is to try harder and most reports blame the pilot. The aircraft crashes just the same, usually killing everyone on board.
Now extend the limited universe of planes to the wider universe of cars and trucks. 295,900 trucks in 2009 were involved in accidents. Now I’m sure most of those may be blamed on intoxication or exhaustion and computers never get drunk or tired but while computer assisted flight controls have been extensively tested and refined but are still flawed, vehicle controls are in their infancy.
This is not a technology that is ready for prime time however much big trucking desires to fire all their drivers and send double trailer semis careening down our highways.
Hell, even trains have engineers and they run on rails.
Are you ready to get side swiped by a driverless truck into the guard rail and who will you blame?
Drone trucks could soon be plying US highways after Nevada authorities on Wednesday granted a license to test self-driving trucks on public roads.
While companies such as Google and luxury brands like Lexus have dominated the headlines with advances in driverless cars, Daimler board member Wolfgang Bernhard told reporters autonomous trucks were likely to hit the roads first.
Daimler’s 18-wheel Inspiration has now been certified for use on public roads in the state, and yesterday the non-human (well, less-human) big rig rolled out across the Hoover Dam, negotiating some (but not all) turns and twists all by itself. For the tougher curves, it had some help from a driver inside the cab.
…
The licensing process was a lengthy one, said a Nevada department of motor vehicles spokesman, David Sierro. “I’m just getting out of the truck now,” he told the Guardian. “You’re talking about a series of different technologies; crash avoidance, blindsight, camera technology,” he said. “Rather than being a single autonomous [device] it’s a series of technologies they’re developing. They’re building it in an incremental way.”
Sierro said Daimler tested the truck on areas like the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where the trucks could read pavement markings without endangering other drivers or pedestrians. “It’s fascinating to see how it’s reading the lines,” Sierro said. “When there’s something [too complex for the autopilot] coming up, there’s a warning that lets the driver know he’s going to have to take over.”
Tony Illia, of the Nevada department of transportation, said the state gave Daimler the option to start out simply. “There are huge stretches of empty, government-owned land [in Nevada],” he said. “Our population is centered in the Reno area and the Las Vegas area”, so trucks going between the two mostly have to navigate long straightaways. Daimler had a request of the Nevada government, too: “The one thing [Daimler] did ask was to brighten up the lane-striping and the buttons, to make sure they were clean and bright,” Illia said. “I think that helps the cameras on the truck.”
…
Companies like Lowell, Arkansas-based JB Hunt have reported a driver shortage across the country and are looking at consolidation in order to meet demand. The company is also worried about changing emissions standards for Class 8 trucks (that’s the class of truck demoed today, which Daimler says is more efficient), so a vehicle with a driver who has to do less work, or requires no driver at all, could provide companies like Hunt with a cost savings on labor.
“Could provide companies like Hunt with a cost savings on labor.”
There you go.
Science Oriented Video
The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
The Lusitania sunk in World War I; Nazi Germany signs surrender in World War II; Vietnam’s Battle of Dien Bien Phu; Composer Peter Illych Tchaikovsky born; Glenn Miller records ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo.’
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
The hydrogen-filled airship Hindenburg explodes and crashes; Psychologist Sigmund Freud and actor-director Orson Welles born; Roger Bannister is the first athlete to run a mile in fewer than four minutes.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.
The ambassadors of denial are nervous that the tone of our cultural conversation is about to shift. Their worst fear is that Francis might successfully disabuse religious conservatives of a longstanding and pernicious myth: that climate change should be thought of as a splinter issue, and that belief in climate science and support for environmental action signify membership in the “enemy camp.” So long as climate deniers can maintain the charade of Us vs. Them, their well-funded dissembling machine keeps on rolling. But if the Pope actually manages to bring people together-and so far his track record on that front is pretty good-the whole thing could fall apart.
Shortly before she became the youngest top prosecutor in any major American city, Marilyn J. Mosby, a daughter and granddaughter of police officers, had tough words about how the nation’s criminal justice system had handled mistreatment of black men by the police.
“It’s been 78 days since Michael Brown was shot in the street by a police officer,” Ms. Mosby said in October at her alma mater, Tuskegee University in Alabama. “It’s been 101 days since Eric Garner was choked to death in New York by a police officer, and 54 days since the New York City medical examiner ruled that incident a homicide. Neither has resulted in an indictment.”
Friday morning, Ms. Mosby made clear that she intends to proceed at a different pace. Her stunning announcement that she would prosecute six officers in the death of Freddie Gray landed her squarely in the national spotlight, making her a heroine to those demanding better police treatment of black men, but drawing sharp criticism from critics who accuse her of pursuing a political agenda and who say she moved too quickly.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Breakfast Tune: Pete Seeger – Where have all the flowers gone?
Today in History
Highlights: Philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli born; The U.S. Supreme Court rules racial covenants in real estate are unenforceable; Joe DiMaggio makes his baseball debut; Singers Pete Seeger and James Brown born. (May 3)
The thing about Shubert is that he actually completed 7 Symphonies and a large body of other compositions and didn’t really leave very much unfinished in comparison with other composers who often labored longer than his entire lifetime of 31 years on one singular work they considered their magnum opus.
Schubert was remarkably prolific, writing over 1,500 works in his short career. The largest number of these are songs for solo voice and piano (over 600). He also composed a considerable number of secular works for two or more voices, namely part songs, choruses and cantatas. He completed eight orchestral overtures and seven complete symphonies, in addition to fragments of six others. While he composed no concertos, he did write three concertante works for violin and orchestra. There is a large body of music for solo piano, including fourteen complete sonatas, numerous miscellaneous works and many short dances. There is also a relatively large set of works for piano duet. There are over fifty chamber works, including some fragmentary works. His sacred output includes seven masses, one oratorio and one requiem, among other mass movements and numerous smaller compositions. He completed only eleven of his twenty stage works.
On the other hand he did die relatively young, some say due to complications of syphilis or Mercury (which was commonly used to cure it) poisoning.
So he was a James Dean type character that people could impose their own interpretations on after his death and he soon rose to great heights of popularity in the Art Music crowd in particular because of this supposedly “great” unfinished work that was merely #8 of 9 (or 10 depending on who you believe). Among his admirers were maybe Beethoven (because serious musical historians, doubt the veracity of that story) but certainly Listz, Schumann and Dvořák. He is beloved by a certain type of Art Music fan not just because he led an appropriately Byronic (said descriptively and without a trace of byrony which is a pun and not a misspelling) existence, but because his music was considered a bridge between the late Classical style of Mozart and the early Romanticism of Beethoven.
Compared to his contemporaries he was a tunesmith, putting together new melodies, rather that a technician stealing folk songs and orchestrating them so I think he deserves a little recognition for that. I just feel that the adoration lavished on the “unfinished” Symphony by virtue of its unfinishedness is mostly projection. It isn’t even his only unfinished one, he laid out the sketches for a Symphony in D minor mere weeks before his death. He also wrote other symphonies you know, including today’s 9th Symphony which is nicknamed “Great” since it mostly is.
It’s hell on the Woodwinds and String Section though and is performed less frequently than it might be due to the difficulty (lazy musicians).
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
The Beatles release their ‘Sgt. Pepper’ album; Actress Marilyn Monroe born; CNN hits the airwaves; Mormon leader Brigham Young born; Blind and deaf author and activist Helen Keller dies.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
I actually have a cousin (of some sort, it’s not a close relationship and it’s a branch of the family we don’t have much communication with) who played in Carnegie Hall and as the dedicated East Coasters (practically everyone else lives in the mid or farther West) we received invitations to be part of the rooting section.
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