I can talk about these topics forever... anyways, many people want to hear beautiful music. Does art have to express only beauty? People can easily accept avant-garde paintings, movies, novels, but why not music. Let's see what W. H. Auden had to say:

"The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition. Thus, average listener prefers concerts confined to works by old masters and it is only the highbrow who is willing to listen to new works, but the average reader wants the latest book and it is the classics of the past which are left to the highbrow."                     ----- W. H. Auden

It's the laziness. How often do you really listen to a piece of music? Really, I think commercial music has corrupted our sense of listening. Nowadays music lacks harmonic content, dynamic (due to the invention of the compressor, which shall go into my future blog post about mixing/mastering...), rhythmic variety, timbre/color, etc... Many people look for only a nice and loud melody so that they can sing along, and call it expression... When they listen to a Mahler symphony, get overwhelmed, and thus they shut off their ears. Remember, art is about expression and communication...

Everyone in this world with a pair of ears can understand classical music.

I love conducting --- it just fulfills many things that the piano can't give me. I love all the orchestral colors, and enjoy interacting with and reacting to my fellow musicians. Conducting to me is a more music-engaging activity than playing the piano because it involves much more interaction and communication! I have to give up my ego sometimes; unlike playing the piano, which is most of the time self-centering (I can argue against myself, but to say less here...). Don't take me wrong, I love playing the piano too. They are simply different. Some people say that conducting is just like playing a huge instrument, but it is far more than that.

I just wrote about a 3000-words bold post, and boom (!!), it disappeared.

I am gonna summarize it here: Music.

I bought a universal laptop adapter today; it's kinda expensive... I think it's the third replacement adapters I bought for this laptop. I like my laptop, but it is probably time to get a new one...

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I saw Bernstein's complete Mahler DVD today and almost bought it. It's cheap! I have all the CDs, but I'd love to watch it. Bernstein always has some very interesting things to say. His conducting is famine, and utterly exaggerating. I like his passion, his spontaneity.

My desktop's hard disk died yesterday; now my laptop's AC adapter is dead... I will have no access to computer, again... I am just really bad luck with computer...

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I conducted Viola Yip's White tonight; it was fun. I think at one point, I almost threw my baton.

I often hear about people's negative opinions on photoshop-ing art-photos. However, post production - photoshop-ing, is indeed an essential part of photography, just like mixing/mastering is to music production (maybe I will write something about it in the future - auto-tune is a great topic - identies of a singer and a photographer? - the ethnomusicology seminar topics shall never vanish... LOL).

You know how much they could do back in the "film" day? ---- you can adjust exposure, filtering, cropping... Photoshop-ing is just like developing films - the proccess and techniques are different, but the basic concepts are the same, except that we can do more ----- we can make more artistic choices! There is absolutely NO shame to photoshop-ing, unless you think there is. (wait... does this sentence make sense?)

Photography has advanced to a digital era. Altough few still prefer the grains in films, most of us use digital. It is the same with audio recording. Who still uses a tape recorder? It is interesting to compare the evolution of tape-digital recording versus the evolution of film-digital photography (maybe I will write about that later).

Photoshop-ing or film developing are both layouts of interpretations, just like we performers, music critics, listeners... An artistic end-product is filtered through many layers of interpretations, and that's what gives life to art ----- the communication, the expression... Art is not art if it is not interpreted by a human (argue with me that a cat composes music).

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Okay... I really need to continue on reading the materials for my summer class.

After a rehearsal tomorrow, I will head up to Guangzhou (廣州) and then Zhangjiajie (張家界) in the Hunan (湖南) Province. Supposingly, the movie "Avatar" took the scene from Zhangjiajie. I am bringing my camera!

It will be a six-day trip, coming back next week on the 26th.

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Check out a photographer's view on composition! He quoted Edward Weston, "Composition is the strongest way of seeing." This is interesting.

I finally finished my "Five Songs of the Von Seggerns"!!! It has taken me exactly four months to write this huge piece with approximately 20 minutes of music; plus, it is almost through-composed because of the nature of the poems. Thanks to Amanda DeBoer who gave me this opportunity!

Now I can finally go into "revising" mode, which is much more relaxing...

I think that... I start to sound like Ken Rockwell when I make all these links, hahaha... If you are a photographer and you don't know who he is, you should check him out. He writes about anything he has in mind, and certainly doesn't care what other people think...

Carlos Kleiber, one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, is really my favorite conductor. Note how he shapes the sound with his baton and his whole body. He doesn't simply beat time; indeed, none of the great conductors beat time. The orchestra reflects every movement Mr. Kleiber does on stage, and vice versa ----- it's a two-way communication thing. A conductor is the spiritual leader of an orchestra or ensemble; at times, he needs to be an educator, "traffic police" (as Ozawa puts it...) and technician, but most of the time, he is a musician who makes music.

By the way, can you count how many circles Mr. kleiber has drawn? Every music teacher tells you that circular motion is the most natural movement you can draw with your body, but it is not the only way to conduct, of course. Try drawing squares and see what kind of sound you get! (okay, it's awkward...) Conducting teachers tell you to move smoothly and gradually like feeling the resistance in water for a legato, bounce at the top of the beats for a staccato, raise or lower your left hand for crescendo and decrescendo... let me tell you, it doesn't matter as long as you can convince the musicians and communicate with them clearly with your gestures. Every conductor is different, just like every pianist is, in their movements, musicality, personalities, relationships to the orchestras ------ every little thing in them affects the SOUND. It is what makes conducting so fun for me. I like to find out what kind of sound I get from interacting with different musicians.

One thing though, Carlos Kleiber always seems to lack eye contact. Maybe I am wrong because I never played for him obviously, but he does seem a little zoomed out. He doesn't correspond his eye contact with his baton and his phrasings. In Mr. Kleiber's conducting, the sound of the full orchestra is shaped simultanously, while some other conductors cue and pick on every little details. So, which conductor lacks eye contact? Check out Karajan, who closes his eyes all the time, even in rehearsals. If you want to see what real eye contact is, check out Fritz Reiner; he stares at you mostly...

This is the best recording I could find of Brahms' fourth symphony ---- I prefer it than the one he did with the Vienna Phil. To some extents it's because of the video. I think music can be seen. That's why we go to performances!