Mahler Umlaut Issues
Today is Sunday, and significant parts of it were spent geeking out in a serious fashion. I cashed in five hours worth of precious non-work time installing a new distro of Linux on my desktop (gentoo -> arch, for those who care). This rash action was brought on by me getting insanely frustrated that all the umlauts in my Mahler recordings looked like question marks. I do not care to listen to “gem?chlichen l?nders”. For those reading this who aren’t Linux geeks (probably about 98% of you) this involved about four hours of typing into terminal windows, restarting, swearing, etc.
(Note: it isn’t this painful if you use one of the pretty graphical installers, but that takes all the fun out of it)
Well anyway, it turns out that I could have fixed my little umlaut problem in about five seconds, but I like my new system better anyway. We are all happy: me, Mahler, and my computer.
Yes Mahler. I tried listening to the 9th symphony today. The second movement rocks! There are weird wobbly bits of sarcasm and uncomfortable tonalities, all wrapped up in a snidely cheerful 3/4ish rhythm. I love all that. And since it’s Mahler it lasts about ten years. That bit is more difficult to love. It’s really freakin’ intimidating when a single piece lasts over an hour. *cough* Bruckner *cough*
