23 III 2002 - 23:03 - centum4

So! It is entry number 200 and I have a new layout. Sure, the layout doesn't work on most browsers, but why worry about that? If your browser can't load my page then you don't love me. It's as simple as that. Note, twenty minutes later, that the layout has changed; it should now work on all browsers. It's my "long and skinny" version, unless you're on Netscape, in which case it's just long. My apologies. I'll figure out something else some other time.

Today was rather uneventful. My chamber music group wasn't there (again), so I got to go home early. I of course used the time I gained to be productive and experiment with CSS on the other diary. (This of course merely goes to show that one shouldn't invest too much time in making changes; I forgot that CSS doesn't show up on some browsers and so I need to have it set up in a way that the text will be visible even if everything else gets screwed up, which isn't currently the case.)

But: meet Wolfi, the music catalog from Hell! Today, my analysis teacher sent me out to get a CD of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Now, those of you who want to go out and spend some time on that diabolical excuse for a library catalog (whatever happened to the card catalog? *sigh*) will no doubt have more success than I did in finding a CD. For whatever reason, the thing was giving me no CDs for results, and I ended up having to bring back an LP. I'm telling you, devil-people put that thing together.

Then: orchestra. We played Hindemith and Liszt today. Hindemith went pretty well; the section sounded good today, even without its first stand (they're both in Los Angeles). Liszt did not. I can't think of any reason it went as badly as it did - we spent all of our sectional on it and so by rights it should have been the better piece. It wasn't so. Blake, in case you're reading this, the word I gave you in Hangman was "purfling" - that's the word used to describe the two thin black lines that go all the way around the front and back of your cello.

After that, I went to hear my sister play a concert with NCCO - they did arrangements of all the songs from Abbey Road. I might have enjoyed it more had I actually been familiar with the songs; as it was, I kept nodding off, only to be awakened by shrill ponticello dissonances. I didn't understand some of those arrangements at all.

It's getting late, so I should go to bed. The Latin phrase at right is from the passage I had to memorize for class (Aeneid IV.68-79):

Uritur infelix Dido totaque vagatur
urbe furens, qualis coniecta cerva sagitta,
quam procul incautam nemora inter Cresia fixit
pastor agens telis liquitque volatile ferrum,
nescius: illa fuga silvas saltusque peragrat
Dictaeos: haeret lateri letalis harundo.
Nunc media Aenean secum per moenia ducit
Sidoniasque ostentat opes urbemque paratam.
Incipit effari mediaque in voce resistit.
Nunc eadem labente die convivia quaerit
Iliacosque iterum demens audire labores
exposcit pendetque iterum narrantis ab ore.

Allen Mandelbaum's translation follows; after this, I really will go to sleep.

Unhappy Dido burns. Across the city
she wanders in her frenzy - even as
a heedless hind hit by an arrow when
a shepherd drives for game with darts among
the Cretan woods and, unawares, from far
leaves winging steel inside her flesh; she roams
the forests and the wooded slopes of Dicte,
the shaft of death still clinging to her side.
So Dido leads Aeneas around the ramparts,
displays the wealth of Sidon and the city
ready to hand; she starts to speak, then falters
and stops in midspeech. Now day glides away.
Again, insane, she seeks out that same banquet,
again she prays to hear the trials of Troy,
again she hangs upon the teller's lips.

(published by Bantam Books, 1981; ISBN 0-553-21041-6)

C. Day Lewis gives for that phrase:

the deadly shaft stuck deep in her flank.

(published by Doubleday, 1956; Anchor catalog number A-20)

And on that happy note, I will leave you. Take care.