Mensagem de esperança

Estou prestes a partir para Portugal para ir passar o Natal com a família. Dei de caras com esta música, que se insere perfeitamente no espírito desta quadra :)

Tenho um desafio para vos propor: Adivinhem a altura, o lugar, e quem dirige esta canção de natal (ouçam até ao fim).

Não se inibam de colocar as vossas respostas nos comentários, sendo que se reserva o direito ao autor deste blog de usar o lápis azul, em excecionais circunstâncias, que este considere que ultrapassam o limiar de dor (120 dB).

Bookcrossing

I got to know Bookcrossing from the newspaper "aCabra". It is a network of books traveling around the world, that people release in places where someone interested might find them. You can track in the website the books that were registered or passed by you, and you can see how different people reacted to them.

You can follow the book I released in Gatwick airport with the link

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/2289125/jmartins/book_Three-Men-on-the-Bummel-(Penguin-Popular-Classics)-Jerome-K.-Jerome




If you have the book "Cantors Dilemma" from Carl Djerassi, please be so kind to register it and release it next to me, as the nearest one seems to be in Maryland, USA.

Gostei!

A decisão do nosso Presidente merece ser qualificada com um adjectivo: "Gostei!"

Esperemos agora que a velha máxima "É preciso que tudo mude para que tudo fique como está", não venha a sair reforçada depois das próximas eleições de Fevereiro. Por muito utópico que pareça, acho que vai sendo tempo da esquerda provar que se consegue entender para criar um projecto de desenvolvimento sustentável para Portugal.

O que mais me espanta é verificar que ainda há gente que se dá ao trabalho de incomodar o Professor Cavaco Silva, pedindo-lhe que venha a governar outra vez Portugal.
Estamos lembrados do grave conflito instucional com o poeta Luís de Camões, sendo que o segundo ganha com larga vantagem em domínios com sensibilidade e, pasme-se, actualidade.

Antes de ser eleito diziam que Durão Barroso era o D. Sebastião do PSD, e o que aconteceu? A metáfora veio a revelar-se acertada, foi para a Comissão Europeia e nuuuunca mais ninguém o viu. E se, finalmente, uma maioria absolutíssima de portugueses, chegar à conclusão de o Professor Cavaco Silva afinal nunca deveria ter voltado dos confins de África, onde agora repousa, que figura mítica do passado gostariam eles de desencantar?

Sou um medidor de sons

Com os cumprimentos de um mestre da ironia




Erik Satie: Memories of an Amnesic (Fragments) (1912-13)Translated from the French by R. Motherwell.First published in S.I.M. (Journal of the Société Musicale Indépendent), Paris, 15 April 1912, and 15 February 1913.

1. What I Am

Everyone will tell you that I am not a musician.1 It's true.
From the beginning of my career I classed myself among phonometrographers. My works are pure phonometry. If one takes the "Son of the Stars" or the "Pieces in the Form of a Pear," the "In Riding Habit"2 or the "Sarabands," one can see that no musical idea presided at the creation of these works. They are dominated by scientific thought.
Besides, I get more pleasure from measuring a sound than I do from hearing it. With phonometer in hand, I work surely and joyfully.
What haven't I weighed or measured? All of Beethoven, all of Verdi, etc. It's very curious.
The first time I used a phonoscope, I examined a B flat of average size. I have, I assure you, never seen anything more disgusting. I had to call my servant in to show it to him.
On my phono-weigher an ordinary F sharp, of a very common type, registered 93 kilograms. It came out of a very fat tenor whose weight I also took.
Do you know how to clean sounds? It's a dirty business. Cataloguing them is neater; to know how to classify them is a meticulous affair and demands good eyesight. Here, we are in phonotechnics.
In regard to sonorous explosions, often so disagreeable, cotton placed in the ears attenuates them quite comfortably. Here, we are in pyrophonics.
For writing my "Gold Pieces," I employed a caleidophone register. This took seven minutes. I had to call my servant in to listen to it.
I believe that I can say that phonology is superior to music. It is more varied. You get paid more for it. That's how I made all my money.
In any case, with a metodynamophone, a phonometry expert with practically no experience can easily note down more sounds than the most skilled musician, in the same time, with the same effort. It is thanks to it that I have been able to write so much.
The future therefore belongs to philophonics.

1 Cf. Séré's "Musiciens francais d'aujourd'hui."2 (Satie is referring to the horse, not the rider. trans.)

Day 1

Let there be sound!

In the beginning there was only white noise...