Thems Flyting Words
Dubious newsflash: Rap Invented by 16th Century Scotsmen. I want to believe.
Summary: Medieval Scotsmen competitively dissed each other in verse, in a manner similar to the freestyle battles of today. This was called flyting. One of the earliest examples of this is The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie (full text here), which is over 600 lines of foul Scottish pentameter. Examples: “Ignorant fule! in to thy mowis and mokis/It may be verifyit that thy wit is thin”, “Cuntbittin crawdoun Kennedy, coward of kynd”, etc.
This professor is claiming that flyting was imported to America by Scottish slave owners, and then was picked up and extended by the slaves. Hmmm. It’s plausible, but the concept of “insulting each other in rhyme” seems like the kind of thing which could easily be independently invented every other fortnight. It seems like the inevitable lovechild of “being drunk and singing” and “being drunk and insulting people”.
Anyway, I don’t actually care that much if it’s true or not. What I do care about is seeing some modern day Scottish flyting throwdowns, in a thick highland accent. With subtitles. C’mon Scotland, do it for me.
Melody Resolvement
Do you think medieval peasants rolled off the straw mattress with last night’s lute tune playing in their head? When they did, what did they do? We’re so spoiled. We can have a dig through the CDs cluttering up our shelves, or click-click across the hard drive, and Bob’s yer uncle: melody resolvement. But before CDs; Mp3s; LPs — hell even wax cylinders — you would have had to actually go and find someone to play you whatever was stuck in you (or you could wait until it wears off, but that is unsatisfactory and boring)
Maybe that was a good way to become a popular neanderthal. You could come up with a totally awesome song (with particularly tuneful grunts and ugs and other stereotypical caveman noises) and infect everyone else in your local cave-system with the melody. In that way you carve out a nice little position at the top of the social heirarchy. All the hot cave-chicks hang around to hear you perform because they just can’t get your tune out of their heads. And we know what that leads to.
In general I find it completely fascinating how people’s methods of listening to stuff must’ve changed when they could buy recordings of stuff, as opposed to having to find someone to perform it. I know, I know, people played piano a lot more, blah blah. Practicing the piano transcription of a Brahms symphony for a month isn’t really the same as slapping a copy in the CD player and hitting play.
I would have found it pretty freakin’ hard to enjoy classical music in the same way as I do now without recordings. It takes so long to understand a piece. Twenty listenings is a pretty decent investment of time when listening to CDs, but with concerts it’d be an occupation. Of course, if you really did learn to play the piano transcription you’d probably understand it a hell of a lot more thoroughly. But it’d be a hell of lot harder to listen to the same breadth of material.
From The Real Portland
Oh dear. I once again have underestimated how much of a lazy bastard being on holiday makes me. It’s always the same. Preparing to leave: pack 10 journal articles, gym gear, 20 books, a bunch of CDs, and other diverse items. During visit: ignore 90% of the above items unless getting annoyed by them when rummaging through bags to find today’s pair of socks.
Time dissolves a lot on holiday. I cannot remember which day it is without a calculation.
This particular holiday/vacation (or holiday-vacation, if you like unnecessary duplication/punctuation combos) is divided into mornings by purchases of bread-based products. I love breadstuffs, and this vacation I discovered a fricking’ amazing bakery in downtown Portland (The Standard Bakery, for those of you in the area) So every morning, through the snow-caked streets I’ve trudged, for delicious starchy treats.
Yum.
However, all the bread has NOT made me writey. Or music listeney. Particularly. Hence the sort of hiatus. Actually I doubt that has anything to do with the bread.
Pre-X-Mas-Ing
This is a busy and non-bloggy week. I’ve been preoccupied with the end of the semester — and extra importantly — the return of G. from Manhattan. Tomorrow we have the departmental machine-shop party (which is infinitely better than the regular departmental party), and a crapload of snow. Then on Saturday I am sneaking up through the wintery weather into darkest Maine.
I have managed to find a bit of time to listen to music, mostly during the brief jaunts between home and lab. I’ll have tonnes more time over the next week. Here’s what’s been on the menu:
- Nielsen – I’ve been going through one of those rediscovery periods with Nielsen recently, where you listen to all these pieces that once got a lot of headphone time, and wonder why on earth you stopped listening to them. This time around I’ve been back to the last three symphonies, but also added two string quartets. The biggest rediscovery is probably the slow movements from the 4th symphony — I had either not noticed, or totally forgotten, how they have this deliciously slightly-broken Romantic sound. Like the little off-key chirrups in the 2nd movement, and the ominous timpani in the 3rd.
- Mahler – Yep, still working on him! The 9th symphony is working out really well, I’ve listened to the kick-arse 2nd movement infinity more times than I can count, and am starting to properly branch into the other movements. The rather awesome Ben Zander sent me a bunch of CDs this week (with his performances of the 1st, 5th and 9th) all of which also include a CD with him discussing the pieces. I am looking forward to listening to those while lounging around the living room in Maine.
- CPE Bach – The 5th symphony (sinfonia, whatever) totally rocks.
Hot Friday Linkage
It’s Friday. It’s snowy (Shush. It is here.) It’s nearly Christmas break. Time to wind down the workday clock with bits and pieces from teh internets:
- This guy has put together a wonderful selection of modern classical music on YouTube. It ranges from recognizable names (Carter, Cage, Boulez) to people entirely new to me (Saariaho? Scelsi?). Even better, he has added real-time descriptions to some of the videos, describing the history and structure of the piece. It’s one of the best uses of the (frequently annoying) video annotation feature on YouTube that I have seen.
- Got restless legs? This device will turn your spasmodic limbs into… errr… “music”. I think I’ll stick to tapping awfully synchronized drumming patterns, thanks.
- Finally, one for these challenging economic times: Thank goodness FDR didn’t bail out the US piano industry