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Scrooging Out with Carmina Burana
Dec. 9th, 2007 | 08:42 pm
This time of year I love the weather, truth be told. The sky's a sheet of steel, and the ground looks little different. I find it soothing. I could do without the snow, but I like the necessity to wear a coat; I enjoy the multiplicity of pockets, which makes it far easier to lug around my array of personal technology items (and a few paperback books). And I enjoy that fact that the sun isn't stabbing into my eyes during the trip to and from work. Or that if you step outside, you don't feel the sun baking the inside of your skull like a potato in a microwave.
The downside, of course, is the necessity to go Christmas shopping.
The crowds. The noise, the endless unrelenting noise. Do any of these people know how to drive at all? Or how to park? And I just want to make it perfectly clear that I have enormous sympathy for retail employees. I used to be one, after all, and dealing with the greed-crazed holiday mobs will drive anyone to madness.* On the other hand, as I watched yet another sixteen-year-old staring slack-jawed at a register consisting entirely of pictographic characters, I had to wonder; are there any smart and competent teenagers left? Has society fallen apart to that degree?
Then I answered my own question: if a teenager is smart and competent, he or she is probably smart enough not to work at the blasted mall during December. And, dear God, I'm turning into one of those cantankerous blowhards who has naught better to do than to grouse about cashiers. All I need is an SUV, a Beatles CD, and a Fight Global Warming! bumper sticker. So let's forget this topic.
On the plus side, I turned up Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos's recording of Carmina Burana on sale for five bucks. I already had the Carmina Burana, of course, but the Berlin Radio Philharmonik version, and I like this new one better. Of course, that lead me to wonder; is there truly a definitive version of a song? After all, it's not like a book, because books are read, not performed, and every last performance will be different. Different director, different singers, different instruments, tiny variations in tempo. So is there ever a one definitive version, the Platonic ideal, of a song?
-JM
*Guess that explains a lot!
The downside, of course, is the necessity to go Christmas shopping.
The crowds. The noise, the endless unrelenting noise. Do any of these people know how to drive at all? Or how to park? And I just want to make it perfectly clear that I have enormous sympathy for retail employees. I used to be one, after all, and dealing with the greed-crazed holiday mobs will drive anyone to madness.* On the other hand, as I watched yet another sixteen-year-old staring slack-jawed at a register consisting entirely of pictographic characters, I had to wonder; are there any smart and competent teenagers left? Has society fallen apart to that degree?
Then I answered my own question: if a teenager is smart and competent, he or she is probably smart enough not to work at the blasted mall during December. And, dear God, I'm turning into one of those cantankerous blowhards who has naught better to do than to grouse about cashiers. All I need is an SUV, a Beatles CD, and a Fight Global Warming! bumper sticker. So let's forget this topic.
On the plus side, I turned up Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos's recording of Carmina Burana on sale for five bucks. I already had the Carmina Burana, of course, but the Berlin Radio Philharmonik version, and I like this new one better. Of course, that lead me to wonder; is there truly a definitive version of a song? After all, it's not like a book, because books are read, not performed, and every last performance will be different. Different director, different singers, different instruments, tiny variations in tempo. So is there ever a one definitive version, the Platonic ideal, of a song?
-JM
*Guess that explains a lot!