Berlioz and Saint-Saëns

The Philadelphia Orchestra is starting up again after the summer break, and once again I’m glad to be part of the eZseatU program ($25 for a full year of free concerts). My first experience with Berlioz was to see Faust, which was good but I hadn’t been so enthralled that I went out and got a recording.

Charles Dutoit conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra and Chorus. The lineup was:

• BERLIOZ – Resurrexit
• SAINT-SAËNS – Symphony No. 3 (“Organ”)
• BERLIOZ – Te Deum

The Resurrexit completely astounded me. It’s really a wonderful piece, and I think one of Charles Dutoit’s favorites. I found an earlier recording from Montreal, conducted by Dutoit. If you haven’t heard this piece, check it out here. Although it was part of a mass (now lost, as Berlioz felt it not up to par), you can really hear Berlioz’s Romantic side – the piece is loud and passionate.

Thursday is Bartok and Brahms, two of my favorites!

Really Big Manuscripts

Probably not going to be a reality show at any point, but there are a lot of Really Big Manuscripts out there which one normally doesn’t get to see. One notorious breed of super huge manuscripts are what my coworker refers to as “Filzas,” or large books of Italian accounts and legal documents from the Renaissance. She works on the majority in our collection, which are Italian, but sometimes Latin ones pop up and then I get put to work. Here’s one from the Gondi, Medici, and Machiavelli families:

Gondi and Machiavelli family Filza of huge proportions

To show an idea of the scale, I used an Official Measurement Tool:

Chapstick vs. Machiavelli

While most of this was just a collection of wills, inheritances, and family accounts, one page had a decoration by a bored scribe on it:

Machiavelli face

Vernon, NJ

I took a vacation for about 10 days in northern New Jersey, in a small town called Vernon.
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I was charged with caring for: two rats, three cats, a small pond of fish, a deer and her two fauns, two squirrels, and two finches. Located in the middle of the mountains, it rained once a day but was incredibly green and lovely.

Gambit

Grendel

Kimmie, Trini, and Spaulding are fed

Chipmunk eating a piece of waterelon I tossed over the fence

Spaulding Disapproves of whatever you’re doing

Spiro the Squirrel (or possibly Aristotle, I couldn’t tell them apart)

Trini and Spaudling watch Spiro with great interest

The local papers had interesting articles…

Favorite napping spot of every cat

Corn and apples for the deer

Seated Spaulding

Macabre Manuscripts

One of my projects this summer was to examine some “hybrid books” (a printed book with some manuscript – handwritten – sections) and describe the manuscript portions. Most/all of these can’t even be found in any kind of online catalog, only in the card catalog in the Rare Book room, and even they will only make passing mention of the manuscripts within the hybrid books.

The first one I dealt with was especially interesting – the printed book was the Speculum Perfectionis by Henricius de Herpf (1524), but bound around it was a collection of poetry by Denis Faucher (Dionysius Faucherius) from ca. 1530-50. Here’s what makes this manuscript more interesting than an ordinary manuscript (click for larger versions):

Vigilance in Virtue

And two pages later….

Inevitability of Death

Fun stuff! Here are some more pictures from these hybrid books, with descriptions in the individual pages:

Vigilance in Virtue

Inevitability of Death

Step 1

Man in Initial

Mary

Speculum Perfectionis

Historica pericunda sanctissima matris Anne, by Rudolf Agricola, Leipzig, 1507

Litterae Graecorum

Grecismus Cornutus

Philipp Melanchthon portrait, by Dürer

A closeup of the incipit of the Grecismus

New semester

I see that I have inadvertently taken a summer vacation from the blog. My apologies, classes got the best of me and then I moved to a new place around Society Hill and have spent the rest of the summer reading and catsitting in exotic locales (like New Jersey).

I did, however, get to deal with some very interesting manuscripts, which I’ll write about in their own post. Classes start in a couple of weeks, and it looks like I’ll be taking Digital Preservation, Resources in Social Sciences [I'm a humanities girl, the social sciences are mostly a mystery to me], and Metadata & Resources Description. I nearly took Digital Libraries but decided there was too much overlap with Digital Preservation.

Last quarter was probably my favorite so far – my Content Representation class was by far my best class at Drexel, both useful and challenging (also the only class I didn’t feel I’d get an automatic A in), and my web design class was really fun, as well. I liked coming from these classes with something constructive I’d actually made – in these cases, a thesaurus and website, respectively.

Two more quarters, and then I’ll have my degree. So soon…

Four Concerts & New Classes

Back in Philadelphia, which is quickly vaulting itself into Spring (with some crazy thunderstorms – hail!), and classes have started once more. This quarter looks promising – I was unsure at first whether or not Cataloging would be for me, but the kind of cataloging I do is so different from normal cataloging that I think the overlap will be minimal.

I’m in a web design class, called “Internet Information Resource Design” (why that instead of “web design,” I’ve no idea), which is fairly fun so far, although we haven’t done much except for create blogs for class.

However, I’m most excited about my Content Representation class. This is really the first class that has felt like graduate school. My readings for the first two weeks fill a binder completely (memo to self: buy much larger binder), and are really quite interesting – a lot of broadening of definitions of things like “information” (ie, a train can be a document), learning about metadata, reading about Dublin Core, and so on.

I’m excited to learn how to catalog and classify things like images, or music. We also have to create a thesaurus (not a Roget-esque thesaurus – for an explanation of the kind of thesaurus I’m talking about, click here), and that’s where I’m currently running problems – no idea what I would want to create a controlled vocabulary for. Regardless, this class will keep me on my toes, but I think I will get quite a bit out of it.

I’ve been managing to see at least a concert a week, even while in San Francisco. (See explanations of the concerts below the cut)

In Which I Eat Pastries & Drink Tea

Currently in San Francisco, making everyone jealous. Managed to sleep a good 11 hours last night – I woke up at 3 am yesterday to catch a 6 am flight here, and woke up at 7. Walked down to the Thorough Bread & Pastry bakery, which has really, really, quality pastries. Not overly yuppified, just normal muffins that are absolutely delicious. I got a sticky bun to eat there, with some tea (see pictures below).

So far have just enjoyed walking about in the 65°F and sunny weather, wearing tshirts and sandals, and occasionally snuggling cats. Oh, and drinking a lot of tea (click pictures for larger versions):

With snow!

So green

Skyline!

From Thorough Bread & Pastry

Nice atmosphere

Cranberry muffin from Thorough, a cara cara, and tea

where the teatime is occurring

Dvorák and Friends

This afternoon I attended my second concert using the EzSeatU program (see previous post). Due to the lack of people at the last concert, I did not hurry to get to the concert far ahead of time. And so I was surprised to see at least 40 students waiting to be seated with the program. However, I ended up with a really wonderful Orchestra-level seat (more towards the back, but in the middle) despite the crowd. I later realized that maybe people just like Dvorák much more than Berg and Mahler (though no clue why, as there was no giant hammer at all in the program).

The program was:

• Milhaud – The Creation of the World
• Walker – Lilacs, for voice and orchestra
• Mahler – Songs of a Wayfarer
• Dvorák – Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”)

Walker himself attended, and sat in the row ahead of me. I had never heard Milhaud, and really enjoyed this piece – a small ensemble, but really jazzy at times.

I reserved my tickets for the April performances, so in the next couple of months I’ll be seeing:

• Gil Shaham Performs on March 29th, (Debussy Printemps, Khachaturin’s Violin Concerto, and Dvorák’s Symphony no. 8)
• Prévin Plays and Conducts on April 3rd, (Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 24 and Strauss’ Symphonia Domestica)
• Masur Conducts on April 18th, (Brahms Symphony No. 2, Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1, Strauss Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks)
• Access: Gotcha! on April 21st, (Strauss’s Merry Pranks again, but this time with a different performer and a lecture by a Temple professor)
• Denève Conducts on April 24th, (Connesson Une Lueur dans l’age sombre, Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3, and Mendelssohn Symphony No. 5 “Reformation”)
• The Damnation of Faust on April 29th, (Berlioz, with Thomas Quasthoff, Magdalena Kozená, Giuseppe Sabbatini, and Eric Owens as soloists)

Feeling really cultured!

Philadelphia Orchestra

Yesterday was my first concert using the Philadelphia Orchestra’s new EzSeatU program. Basically how it goes is that I pay $25 up-front, and then get into (nearly) every concert for free for one year. The only drawback is that you don’t get to choose where you are seated. 5 minutes before the performance starts, the ushers take the poor university students in and fill empty seats in the orchestra level.

So at 2 P.M. yesterday, I ended up with an amazing seat for the “Jurowski Conducts Mahler” concert, which was pretty amazing. First Berg’s “Three Pieces for Orchestra,” and then Mahler’s “Das klagende Lied.” I mostly went for the Mahler (and because the concert was cheap-as-free), but surprisingly liked the Berg. Maybe because there was a GIANT HAMMER smashing in one drum. Or the 100+ member orchestra.

Speaking of large orchestras, did not realize how insane Mahler was until I counted up the 130+ choral members, 100+ orchestra, oh and secondary orchestra playing OUTSIDE the concert hall. To supplement this one. Fantastic.

Next week is Dvorak’s New World Symphony!

ALA Convention

With one more day to register for the early bird special ($95 for the full convention), I’m wondering if I really ought to go to the big ALA convention in Chicago this summer. I do get a discount (a normal person, reserving in advance but not before 3/6, would pay $215), but it’s still a bit expensive for a grad student. I was hoping I could volunteer, but I can’t seem to find any options for that.

Is this conference worth the effort? Will it be what the ALA promises? Or is this one of those things you only go to if your employer tells you to?