in search of the music
Oct. 14th, 2008 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI wandered down to Santa Cruz on Saturday, first going to the university library, where the parking situation has changed again, to get its contributions to tracking down some of the more elusive names on a composer project I'm working on. Frederick W. Warnke (1892-1938), how's that for an obscure composer? He was a Bay Area native whose work "A New Symphony in Olden Style" was played by the San Francisco Symphony in 1927.
Meandering down Pacific Avenue in search of dinner, I stopped at a restaurant storefront labeled simply "Chocolate" and was intrigued enough to venture in. Sure enough, most of the dishes on its menu incorporate chocolate. I had the chicken mole, more yuppie cuisine than Mexican. Interesting sauce, more bitter than most.
Then walked up the hill to take in this concert. Funny thing, I knew that Holy Cross Church, the venue, was the successor to the Spanish mission (after all, it and the city bear the same name), but though I spend much time in Santa Cruz, it had been so many years since I'd visited the replica mission next door that, despite the presence of a major street called Mission Street, which should have offered a clue, I'd had no idea where in town it was until I looked it up.
I'd jumped at the chance to review this one because it had a work by Peteris Vasks, a composer who's impressed the heck out of me on all previous encounters. This was not one of his more profound works, but the sound was wonderful, even when it got the weentsiest bit out of tune. After it was over, I heard someone behind me say, "It reminds me of that Czech composer." Oh really?, I wondered. What Czech composer might that be? The speaker continued, "The one who wrote the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs." Oh, I thought. Him. I turned around and said, "You're thinking of Henryk Górecki. He's Polish." Glad to have the casual ear's confirmation that Górecki (or at least some of Górecki - not all his work sounds like what you'd think) and Vasks are in the same ballpark - it's obvious to me, but it might seem different to other people - we had a little conversation about Eastern European mystic composers.
Now, if only I'd seen my pocket appointment/address book since I got home that evening, all would be well.
Meandering down Pacific Avenue in search of dinner, I stopped at a restaurant storefront labeled simply "Chocolate" and was intrigued enough to venture in. Sure enough, most of the dishes on its menu incorporate chocolate. I had the chicken mole, more yuppie cuisine than Mexican. Interesting sauce, more bitter than most.
Then walked up the hill to take in this concert. Funny thing, I knew that Holy Cross Church, the venue, was the successor to the Spanish mission (after all, it and the city bear the same name), but though I spend much time in Santa Cruz, it had been so many years since I'd visited the replica mission next door that, despite the presence of a major street called Mission Street, which should have offered a clue, I'd had no idea where in town it was until I looked it up.
I'd jumped at the chance to review this one because it had a work by Peteris Vasks, a composer who's impressed the heck out of me on all previous encounters. This was not one of his more profound works, but the sound was wonderful, even when it got the weentsiest bit out of tune. After it was over, I heard someone behind me say, "It reminds me of that Czech composer." Oh really?, I wondered. What Czech composer might that be? The speaker continued, "The one who wrote the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs." Oh, I thought. Him. I turned around and said, "You're thinking of Henryk Górecki. He's Polish." Glad to have the casual ear's confirmation that Górecki (or at least some of Górecki - not all his work sounds like what you'd think) and Vasks are in the same ballpark - it's obvious to me, but it might seem different to other people - we had a little conversation about Eastern European mystic composers.
Now, if only I'd seen my pocket appointment/address book since I got home that evening, all would be well.
