The Uninteresting Life and Times of an Antisocial Violinist: October 25, 2015

Last Monday was open classroom day, which was stressful. All these strangers walking around and watching classes. We had seven people sit in on our literature class, which is more than the number of students. Also we had to set up the orchestra in the most awkward way ever, with extra chairs scattered throughout the orchestra so that donors could sit amongst us if they wished to. They did not seem to wish to and most of the chairs went unused (there was one tenacious old lady who stuck next to the cello section for the entire rehearsal). Sigh...

Partial map of the orchestra setup - the green chairs are extra donor chairs

I went to opening night of the Magic Flute. It was in English, which was a shock, and the sets and costumes were very modern and abstract-looking (the sets consisted of floating circles or coloured stripes or squares projected onto film). Lots of bright colours, primary colours. It looked like Alice in Wonderland; a fantastical crayon world. I liked it. Very imaginative.

On Saturday I was presented with two highly interesting but just as highly suspect tales from the music world. One was that Shostakovich was shot in the head while serving in WWII and had a piece of metal lodged in his brain for the rest of his life. According to the yarn, Shosty didn't want the shrapnel removed because it enabled him to hear melodies when he tilted his head, which he then used in composition. However there is zero evidence to support this story.

The other fascinating article I read was about how A-440 is Nazi tuning and A-432 promotes world peace. Lots of evidence for this one, but much of it seemed somewhat circumstantial. I have my doubts, but it would be cool if it were true.

This morning I played in a handbell piece in a Presbyterian service. So cool, and the organist has mad skillz (he's the director of ABS).