Alex Ross has announced that his current ringtone is John Adams’ Harmonielehre. Excellent choice.
As of a few days ago, mine is an old favorite: Steve Reich’s Music for a Large Ensemble. Before that, and I’ll probably go back soon, it was the announcement jingle heard constantly on Budapest trams and buses.
Check it out:
Now that I think about it… maybe Six Marimbas.
Here’s a pathetic case of inertia combined with bad planning.
I managed to live in Budapest for three years without ever visiting the Bartók Museum, which is housed in the composer’s final residence before leaving Hungary for the U.S. When I was back in 2005 for the Letter To Hungary performance, there simply wasn’t time. This time it was an important agenda item, but I still managed to put it off until the second-to-last day.
Well, lunch with an old, long-lost friend got away from me that day and I got to the gate of the house at exactly 5:00. Guess what time the museum closes.
Not that I can report first-hand, but many of the rooms in the house are restored to the way Bartók left them, including his study, where he wrote the last two string quartets, Mikrokosmos and 27 Choruses, as well as many other favorites. I’d still love to get in there sometime.
As if this weren’t bad enough, I also found out that Kodály’s apartment, coincindentally in the neighborhood where I was staying, had also been turned into a museum in 1990 (exactly when I was living in Budapest). No one told me at the time. Didn’t manage to get there either.
How lame. Szégyelem magam!
Here’s a lovely excerpt from today’s weather forecast for Budapest:
Today: Abundant sunshine. High 103F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph.
Tomorrow: Generally sunny. High 103F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
Saturday: Sunny. Highs 99 to 103F and lows in the upper 60s.
So, basically, it’s hot. Too hot to enjoy anything. Right now it’s unbearable in the shade, and torture in the sun. Most people here seem to be taking it in their stride, but I live in San Francisco, where I’m very happy because it rarely goes above 75 degrees.
We’re going to Slovenia for a few days to visit this guy. It’s also hot there, but there’s more natural splendor.
We were supposed to go yesterday, but we missed the train. It’s so embarrassing I thought it would be a good thing to blog about. I’m hard-wired to think like a 25-year-old when I’m here, I guess, so I thought it would be nothing to take a bus and two Metro lines. The combination of traveling with a 4-year-old and the Hadean weather made that a really stupid idea.
They have taxis here.
Fortunately, Budapest has a number of places like this, where we spent yesterday afternoon, after the whole, you know, “train” thing.
It’s been a while since I’ve had anything to blog about, so I thought I’d just check in, in case anyone’s still reading this.
Later today I’m shlepping my family to Budapest for three weeks of fun, cake and eccentric conveyances. Someone recently asked if this trip has anything to do with my turning 40. I hadn’t made the connection, but since then my explanation as to why we’re going has been “mid-life crisis”. I can’t afford a motorcycle. And they scare me.
As of yesterday, a new draft of the libretto for Eros at Breakfast is complete. As lyricist, I’ve been the one holding it up. Contact me privately if you’re a theater person and would like to read it. It’s been interesting: I’ve discovered that one of the nice things about doing my own lyrics is that a big part of the composing takes place at the same time. I get rhythms in my head, and can sort of already hear the music in most cases. So I hope that will mean that the composing part will go quickly. (Yeah, right.)
The new CD containing my clarinet/piano piece American Standard has been out in the U.K. for a while and is inching toward release in the U.S. Amazon says it will by July 24th. Meanwhile, it’s now showing up (at a better price) for order direct from the distributor Qualiton. Also, I’m trying something new and have made the score and part of the piece available through the nifty distribution service from Subito Music.
Maybe I’ll do some blogging from Budapest. We’ll see.
Well, all the Budapest bloggers are sharing this little YouTube item, so I figured what the heck….
Despite the truly terrible music heard here, this video combines my two favorite things: Budapest and weird languages. It’s a Mongolian music video shot for some reason in Budapest. I can make out enough Cyrillic to tell that the title has the word “Budapest” in it.
Who knew Mongolia was turning out music videos? Anyway, there are some lovely shots of Budapest (and some not so lovely), and the language is certainly interesting to listen to, if you can stomach the music.
P.S. - Yes! The payphones in Budapest are all pink, since Deutche Telekom a.k.a T-Mobile owns a big stake in the former state telephone company.
P.P.S. - Stick with it, because it get’s really silly in the last ten seconds. (OK, not fair: If I understood the lyrics it might make perfect sense.)
So, immediately after completing my last post, I went on to do my usual cursory scan of current news, and discovered that my last post was the wrong post.
As I was writing, throngs of thickheaded people were in the middle of making a mockery of the 1956 uprising by disrupting the day’s events, chanting inane nationalistic slogans and provoking the police to resort to teargas, rubber bullets and water cannons.
So much for national unity.
Just in case you happened to read about this in the American press, I must clear up a few things, because the reporting has been fairly shallow and misleading.
You might say I have a point of view on this, I guess.
Thanks to Scott for use of the photo above.
Today, October 23rd is the 50th anniversary of the 1956 uprising. Ordinary citizens took to the streets, temporarily forcing Soviet tanks out of the capital, Budapest. For a two-week period, Hungary was free. Of course, the Soviets returned on November 4th with reinforcements, and that was that.
I lived in Budapest in 1989, when the uprising began to be discussed freely for the first time since it happened, and I’ve been fascinated with the topic ever since. Over the past summer, I helped out a bit with some translation-related work on the upcoming documentary film Torn From the Flag and had the priviledge of seeing some unbelievable archival footage. You can view some similar footage, as well as photos and other information, on the 1956 Portal.
Hey buddy, siddown, will ya? You’re blocking the view!
President Bush’s attempt to draw a parallel between the Hungarian freedom fighters of 1956 and the Iraqis of today struck me as a bit freakish.
The 1956 uprising was largely about ejecting the military occupation of an invading foreign power, namely the Soviet Union, who invaded Hungary toward the end of World War II and flushed out the oppressive Nazi-installed regime.
Now, in Bush’s analogy who are the Hungarians and who are the Soviets? Weird, huh.
Making things worse was the 800-pound gorilla there on Gell�rt Hill with the President: Bush was completely silent about this country’s failure to act in any way on the Hungarians’ behalf during the 1956 uprising, despite hints that they might. But then, I suppose if any U.S. President is going to apologize for that, it’s not going to be this one.
(Sorry for the off-topic post. I just had to share.)
OK, I exaggerate, but I thought I’d show you some pictures of the Danube at its highest point, like, ever.
It strikes me as a little odd that I would never have known about this if it weren’t for my “Budapest” feed on Flickr. True, it looks like no one’s life is in danger, but sheesh!
Some more great pictures here, here, and here.
Oh, parenthetically, speaking of things the American press isn’t really addressing, what’s going on in Belarus is more interesting and important than CNN would have you believe. For detail and depth, please visit my friend Garth.
(Thanks to Mark Richards in Budapest for the use of the photo above.)
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