A Fountain of Knowledge Where People Go to Drink

You missed out the last word!

I like this one! Did it vanish off the board before anyone had a chance to see it? 

Probably, it was a hectic creation time!

Now we have to have a long conversation here to get it on the mosaic... 

I'm with you on that. I did Chemistry at university (ah, nostalgia...). It struck me recently that its study must have radically changed since I graduated, because of the rise of the computer and the internet.

The university had a DEC 10 computer, I remember... I just tried to look that up on google, but it thinks it's 'December 10th.' My mobile phone's probably got more computing power by comparison.

Yeah, God it must have changed incredibly! And keep doing so, who knows what they'll be like in 20 years or so!

 As for the Dec 10 computer, I've never heard of it! Was it one the size of a room? It's great that mobile phones have more power than that now - my mobile phone's so advanced that it crashes...

More the size of a small flat... and we dealt with it in BASIC. I found some printouts from it recently. It was the bee's knees then.

Ah, BASIC... I can remember lusting after a BBC Micro, with its 32K of RAM...

Heady days, they were. I can remember actually making a profit on my student grant in the first term.

BASIC. Wow. Now that was a programming language.

I remember writing many programmes with it. And spending many many hours typing in things like:

SOUND 34,5,7,23

just to see what it sounded like. (Invariably it was mmaaaaaaaarrrrrrrp.)

Good old Amstrad CPC6128. With a green screen no less. Would've been fine, but one of the games we got with it was Traffic - a game that required you to change the colour of traffic lights to keep jams to a minimum. Tricky!

Bill Gates was hardly even shaving then. Amstrad... ah, I remember working with one of those. It had 5¼in disks, too! Such a huge advance over the cassette tapes we used to buy previously...

We all had stupid ideas about learning to program computers. That lasted a year or two... maybe five. Then Microsoft emerged like the shark in Jaws (which was known as Bruce, apparently) and vanquished nearly all the opposition.

Ahhh, a happy time when floppy disks were entirely floppy! Good ol' BBC Micro had it down. Cassette loading, however, is an entirely ludicrous method if you look at it now. How did it ever happen? It should have been Chock-a-Block type cartridges, surely. They would've made much more sense!

 I'm not entirely sure Bill Gates is shaving now...

Yeah, it was a pretty big gear shift for the world, wasn't it? Changed everything.

BBC & ArchImedes. Never thought I'd hear those two together again. What a blast from the past!

It was blindingly fast...and I remember getting a PC emulator for it. Not long before that, I was throwing out a load of stuff and came across adverts for build-your-own computers. Remember them? One advertised itself as having a 'massive' 3K of RAM (!)

  The best personal computers were invariably owned by the Hong Kong students at the school. When I visited there some time later, I found that everything electronic was superior to what was available in the UK, by about six to twelve months. I got myself a real smart talking Chinese dictionary while I was there (I use internet sites now).

I can remember the first time I saw someone carrying a (brick-sized) mobile phone, around the same time. I personally managed to hold back from their onslaught until three years ago. I must admit now it was worth getting it - because I had to use it to summon an ambulance six months back.

I haven't spotted us on the collage yet! 

3K of RAM. Unstoppable! I dread to think what these tiny computer brains were in charge of at the time. Governmental types trying to keep them working in case nuclear war broke out. I can see it now:

"War? Crap! Programme the computer!"

"Err... okay."

10 Drop bomb

20 Goto 10 

...

Syntax error

"What the hell is that?"

As for the brick phones - I remember my dad being one of the first to get one as he had to go on call alot. It was massive, not unlike the ones in early war films that required another person to wind them up. I recall a time he left it on the roof of his car and it flew off at about 70. Bounced too. We stopped and went back and it was still on! Imagine what that'd do to a phone today! Smitherines! 

*Laughing*   My god, they built them to last in those days!

As for computers, I myself had a 64K one which was relatively massive. I used to play text-based adventures on it for hours. Loved them. Children today wouldn't go near that sort of thing. Come to think of it, they'd probably be too busy texting.

Hahaha! How can two things be so similar and yet worlds apart at the same time? Madness! Text-based games were great. Kids just don't have the patience they used to. Shame really. Now now now culture has taken over. I remember seeing a documentary on the difference between kids now and in the fifties/sixties. It was pretty interesting. Looking at things like the start of 'Watch with Mother' where it took nearly 30 seconds for the flower to open up and how no children would put up with that now. Too dull; change the channel. You'd think the next generation ('Generation Y'. Euuurgh) would get more done than any preceeding generation, but they just seem to save time only to waste it loitering in bus-stops drinking cider...

Still, they're probably more productive than me, spending much time ranting about them. At least they keep the aged off the streets...! 

You hit the nail on the head there - it's the TV remote control which has changed the world most. Do you remember the time when the TV would stay on the same channel all evening because nobody could be bothered to actually get up, go over to the set and change the channel?

And I maintain that people channel-hop because they can't find anything worth watching . Don't ask me to define 'worth' there; I've seen MTV, and still can't believe that there exist people who actually watch it. And I once took a verbal potshot in a classroom at one of what I call the Whore channels - the ones that continually flog their goods, morning till night (but I didn't use that word, of course) - to be upbraided by one of the pupils: "'Ere! That's good, that is!"

And who could have accused Blue Peter of anything when Valerie Singleton was there? I was highly amused recently when they found themselves having to grovel their way out of that phone quiz scandal. Nowadays, they even let unmarried mothers on the show.

What would Lord Reith say? If he were alive today, he'd be spinning in his... no, that can't be right!

Ahh, Valerie was the embodiment of the British attitude!

You'll enjoy this: two Vals going for a walk.

"Close the door behind you."

Brilliant. Time for her own page, me thinks! 

Ah! So it was me that started the Valerie S. business in the first place!

How weird! I'd quite forgotten I'd written that yesterday...

Just finished downloading the video.

"Close the door behind you." The way she gets yanked after the lion, just after that, is priceless...

How did the BBC come up with this stuff? Was the lion under sedation? Had its claws and teeth been filed down? I won't go on, but I was shaking my head in disbelief remembering seeing the first two clips (I think I'd stopped watching by the time of the third). When did Health and Safety come in?

Do you remember how they made Advent crowns every December? Coat hangars, nicely flammable tinsel, and lit candles...

We were a simple folk back then.

Yeah, Valerie was all your doing - sorry, I should've let you create that one - credit where credit's due an' all!

Madness isn't it? And she's so matter-of-fact about it all! When it tries to club her 'round the head in the shop... She's amazing!

As for Health and Safety, who knows? Used to be that we were all responsible for our own, but we can't be trusted now! It started creeping up sometime in the eighties, I reckon, gradually morphing into the ludicrous blame culture that rules over us all now. Of course, it would be too easy to blame it all on McDonalds making their coffee too hot...

And people wonder why kids go out 'happy slapping' - it's obvious to me that they're so wrapped in cotton-wool in every other aspect of their life that they just long for some risk and danger. I mean, no conkers in playgrounds? Come on! I know someone who graduated not long ago and they weren't allowed to throw their mortar-boards in the air because of Health and bloody Safety.

Oh well, let's all gather 'round and pay homage to another killed tradition.

Twenty-odd years ago, I said in jest to my Head of Department that it would soon be the time when it was too 'dangerous' to teach science in schools...

I'm presently truly and utterly appalled at the way it has turned out to be true. Children presently don't seem to be allowed to be exposed to anything that involves exploration of the world around them.

The latest educational trend which arouses my contempt is called '21st Century Science.'

Pah! I'll shut up.

i think I'll go take my medication now...

He he. Shouldn't laugh, really. It's funny because it's true, in some perverted way...

It's like a joke from Futurama, where everyone would be living in The Village (from The Prisoner, not the awful film) and the Professor is saying something like "No, Fry, science was outlawed in 2020 due to excessive eye brow loss. Now people sit in cubicles watching light-hearted sit-coms from 9 to 5, and they behave. BEHAVE, DAMN YOU!!" as he whips a square-eyed fool with a stick of celery.

We'll presume at this juncture that the stick of celery has been brought forward from a previous scene or gag.

Medication, you say? After you!

"Excessive eyebrow loss!" That's true satire, that!

That scene also has more than a little 'Brave New World' in it...

 I'm racking my brains... but, which 'awful film'?

M. Night Shyamalan's 'The Village'. Avoid it!

Rightly so, in my opinion!

 Multiplex? I hate that word, horrible modernism! It's a cinema, or, properly, the pictures. And always will be to me! I remember having two little independant cinemas that I used to visit as a kid, one in my home town and one where my grandparents lived. Both got stomped on by a large shiny boot and turned into blocks of flats. Multiplexes (if that's the right plural form - you'll know!) are so impersonal, but it's all there is.

Necessary evil, grumble mumble... I seem to be having a bit of a moanfest in this string, I do apologise! 

No, I think it's doing us both the world of good to reminisce and have a good moan simultaneously...

The plural of apex is apices (or apexes) and the derived adj. is apical, so you could make out a case for multiplices, but why bother? Everyone (me included) says multiplexes, and it doesn't look or sound odd.

Years ago, I bought my mother a VHS video of Gone With the Wind, and I can remember her saying "I would never have thought that one day I would own my own copy of this film!" That's the essence of the difference between then and now. The composer Berlioz heard one performance (one!) of this in his lifetime. Now anyone can get hold of their own copy of a piece of music, a book, a TV series on DVD... soon everything will be available digitally through the Web (or its successor). Another example: I recently discovered sources of out-of-copyright classical music scores on the Web, available free (!) to download as PDF files. I have several dozen on my computer and will make room for several hundred more, because you've no idea of the lengths I used to have to go to to run some scores to ground. The hunt for the more elusive usually involved a visit to Banks Music of York. Now Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Holst... they're all available for free. If I'd been able to predict that, I would have saved myself thousands of pounds over the last couple of decades.

No, the old cinemas - and I know what you mean; they've all vanished from my area, too - were a product of their time, when audiences were at the mercy of the people in charge of making copies of movies to push through a projector, and you had to go along to sit in front of where the projector was to see the finished product. I suspect even the multiplexes' days are numbered.

PS I'd prefer to use neologism (to mean a newly-coined word) to modernism (which has a different usage most of the time).

Neologism it is then, but you knew what I meant!

That's really sweet re: your mother! We recently got my mum a stupidly big hi-def tv and what-not and her face just lit up when Wimbledon came on - it's so easy to see, bless her, and pressing the red button for a different match just blew her away! It's really nice to see our elders surprised at new technology, isn't it?!

I think I know the scores site to which you refer. I know it's well handy and good for the wallet, but it takes some of the romance out of it, don't you think? I don't know if you're at all like me, but I love the hunt! Record shopping is one of my all time favourite (top 5 ) passtimes and it just isn't the same electronically! Thankfully my favourite independant record store has not been squished by the aforementioned big shiny boot! Oooh get this - a lady that works at the same company as I said that her son had to take a record - a vinyl record - into school as part of a(n?) history lesson. "This is how music used to be played." Jesus I felt old. I digress, it's the same with comics (yeah, yeah, I know); trying to find one issue that you need just leads you to find so many other things that you'd never have found otherwise! I'll bet that you had great experiences hunting for scores - it seems gone are the days when we could say "This? Oh yeah, I bought this off a one-eyed man in Budapest for a King's ransom."

Another problem with buying things off the internet (I'm slowly moving away from getting scores for free), particularly recorded music, more specifically classical, is that you're never sure what it's gonna be like - I hunted everywhere for a decent recording of Bach's Musical Offering (I was reading Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid at the time - I'll be surprised if you haven't read it - fantastic book) and couldn't find one anywhere. In the end I went to a store and asked someone for a good version and I got the Jordi Savall one, which I'd recommend.

Although, saying that, I bought one of those 40cd classical boxsets off ebay, and the cd of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto 3 was phenomenal. I've yet to find better - and I'm always on the lookout!

I'm not that familiar with Te Deum, but I'll give it a go... incidentally you left a full stop off the end of your description. Like I can talk...

I did WHAT?! Sod it, so I did... just fixed it. Thanks for spotting it. It just goes to show the difficulty of editing your own stuff on screen. Personally, I find it much easier to print a hard copy and scan that visually; but I don't bother with that on here - it'd take too long.

Yes, I can remember when I explained Freeview to my mother and subsequently went out and bought and installed the hardware for her, she was amazed. Wimbledon? your mother's obviously similar to mine. I used to hate coming home from school during Wimbledon when I was little, because all the children's BBC went over to BBC2 to make way for it.

We could only get BBC1 and ITV (1) then, you see...

You're quite right about the thrill of the chase; but the days when you could pick up second-hand sheet music for a few pence - well, few pounds, maybe - are long gone. All the shops I used to frequent - in Carnforth, Southport, Harrogate, Leeds and others -have either disintegrated under the shiny boot or just don't stock anything interesting any more.

I used to collect comics, too!  And yes, I've read Hofstadter's book (but not recently). I rarely buy music now... my latest whim is to download free performances from classiccat and assess them. I've already put one on here.

Rakhy 3 is indeed stunning if played right. I think the first recording I came across was by a pianist named Gavrilov (Andrei?) and the cadenza in the 1st movement blew me away... Incidentally, I've learnt to keep away from playing Rakhmaninov's piano music. It's not that my hands are too small, but the fact that his were like medium-sized shovels (he was once memorably described as 'six foot six of Russian gloom').

Fair enough. Any idea if the description was about the man or his music? It may well fit both. Any one with shovels for hands can be excused for being a bit gloomy.

Did I once hear that Mozart composed a piece that required 11 piano notes to be played simultaneously? It means you have to use your nose. Hmm. Unfortunately I can't name the source and it could be someone pulling my leg, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Well... Rakhy did suffer from depression, so I'm fairly sure the description was of him rather than the music, but I'm not certain. He could span an octave and a fifth with each hand, if I remember correctly. I can manage an octave and a second.

I doubt that even Mozart could have contrived 11 out of the 12 possible notes simultaneously. I've never heard that myself. Alban Berg managed to achieve something like it in his atonal and not-very-pleasant-sounding opera Wozzeck... which reminds me of a Beecham story: somebody asked Beecham what he was playing at the piano, knowing that he had recently been studying said opera. Beecham replied: "Puccini. I am trying to wash Wozzeck from my mind and psyche."

The most dissonant chord in Mozart that I can think of offhand is at the end of the Quam olim Abrahae fugue from the Domine Jesu Christe section of the Requiem (a cracking piece of choral/orchestral writing! Words fail me in describing the skill with which it's put together). It's in the tenor part, in the very last cadence.

Late Mozart's more of an exercise in unexpected harmony than dissonance... hmmm. I'll have a think about what you say.

My word. Trying to wash something from your psyche's gonna take some scrubbing - I shall avoid Wozzeck at all costs! I shall listen to Requiem when I get home, however. I'm sure I have it somewhere...

As for the Mozart piece, I've been doing a little digging (very little actually; google being my only spade) and have found this (second paragraph from the bottom), this (in which it takes the form of a correct quiz answer) and this, which we won't linger on as it's a bit gaudy and not the kind of place I'd put my full faith in...!

However, nobody seems willing to name the piece, which is the information I seek!

I shall continue, hopeful... 

Hmmm... this reminds me of the 'word' epithernia; Boomstam claimed it was a Classical Greek word for love. To cut a long story short, it only occurs on one Dutch site (where he had found the other, legitimate words) and I don't believe a word of it. So to speak.

I've been on the trail of Classical music for thirty years or more and I've never heard this story - and I think I would have if it were pre-internet. Mozart had a highly developed sense of humour (example: the horn trills -next to impossible as written (for the instrument of his time) - in A Musical Joke.

Still, you live and learn - as the Devil said when he took a job at a church school - and if you get any further with this*, let me know.

*You won't. I betcha!

You do indeed live and learn - everyday's a school day! Poor you!

I think you're probably right - I have more faith in your knowledge than the faceless few who write the internet!

I won't make it a lifelong search or anything, but I will keep an open ear for anything else on it - it does intrigue me! 

I've just thought of something as I read your post. (Pause) Sorry to keep you waiting. You'll be pleased to know you weren't waiting long. I just had to examine one of my free scores.

 I've cracked it. The number 'eleven' should have set off alarm bells in my head, but it must be decades since I read about this:

 There is a sequence in the Finale of the Symphony in G minor (K.550) where Mozart temporarily moves almost keylessly (it's bars 126 - 132). The sequence of notes is D flat-C-E-A flat-B-D-E flat-F#-B flat-C#-F-G#.

Remembering that C# = D flat, count how many different notes are used there.

But - and this is what fooled me before - they're played sequentially, not simultaneously. 

Excellent! Excellent!

That'll be it! Good work, you truly are a master! I'd just assumed they would be simultaneous, foolish foolish me!

I'm now gonna try and dig up a copy.

Found my Requiem, by the way - stirling stuff. Haven't heard it for a good while. I cranked it up particularly loud for Dies Irae. Wonderful! 

*Polite cough*

That's sterling, purp. Stirling is some dump on the sterner side of the Tweed.

You can get it here as a 6.6MB PDF file.

The funny thing is that when the 2nd Viennese School (when somebody asked Sir Thomas Beecham if he knew any Schönberg, he replied: "No, but I once stepped in some.") try that sort of thing over 100 years later and call it 'atonalism' or 'pantonalism' the results are absolute sh***. When Mozart does it, it has to be pointed out to you. That's how damn good the man was.

Damnit! I knew one was a currency and one a driver, but when in the midst of typing I came to write it, I just let my fingers do the talking and pick whichever they felt was correct. Stupid fingers, what do they know? Why I oughta...

As for Mozart, well, I doubt there's anything I can say that hasn't already been said. The man was a genius (by the time he was about 5) and my hat is firmly off to him. So great was he, in fact, that I may never wear headgear again...

Thanks for the link, by the way. God I'm so rude sometimes!

Link.

Beecham once quoted someone else (I know, I know...) as having worked out that Mozart must have sat down and written out his music for at least eight hours a day.

So, Beecham proposed, the question arises, when did the fellow think?  Presumably (continued Beecham) he ate and drank; and slept from time to time...

 My own favourite 'soundbite' (inadequate word!) is the section of Don Giovanni in the graveyard, next to the statue of the dead Commendatore... after the statue is heard to respond Si! to the Don's invitation to supper, the orchestral wind section pauses on a chord of B major... and then the strings continue quite blithely in C major. You try doing that without sounding like someone who knows a few guitar chords.

I can see I'm gonna have to do some homework on this Beecham fellow...! I've placed Don Giovanni on my 'to listen' list (it's a whopping great list) though I expect I'll recognise it when I hear it. Incidentely, the picture you uploaded for it - where is that from?

As for Mozart thinking, he probably employed some sort of ritual to avoid doing so - like Einstein. Sure I read somewhere that Einstein had several outfits that were all the same, so that he didn't have to waste time thinking about trivial things and get on with thinking about things of more import. Or what he thought was more important thinking...

Still, however, despite Mozart's obvious genius, I still think of Bach as the overall best music thought processor - it's his improvisation of fuges that can only impress... 

You can apparently get a copy of A Mingled Chime (his autobiography) here. I've also put him on Bestuff here.

I'd start Don Giovanni by listening to Donna Elvira's aria Mi tradita quell'alma ingrata (which was slotted in after the opening night), but it's one of those rare operas which make some sort of sense and are shot through with quality music. The overture, by the way, opens the film Amadeus. Oh, I said that on the Don G. page, didn't I...

Einstein kept his thinking cards very close to his chest; I know very few stories about his thought processes beyond What would the world look like if I rode on a beam of light? - which sparked off Special Relativity.

J.S. Bach was indeed a phenomenon. The Fred Astaire of the pedal board. And the way he weaves tunes together is staggering.

(I'm getting a bit freaked out by the way my words keep popping up on the first page on Google - or even at the very top of the first page - when I include the word Bestuff in the search!)

 It's been nearly a fortnight and I've still not managed to watch any version of Don Giovanni. It has become evident by the mounds of notes gradually taking over my room that since I started looking, I've found a lot of things that interest me and require further investigation. It would seem that I need at least another 8 hours in every day, and a more sizeable blackboard/pinboard area...

Anyway, getting back to topic: "The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any university can teach." Oscar Wilde.

How are you today? 

Greetings, PO. I'm fine, thanks; I trust you are too.

I long ago realised that I simply would not live long enough to do all the things that I wanted to do. Once I got used to that, I carried on as before.

You might prefer to consider a CD version of Don G. I usually study an opera by starting the CD player and sitting down with the libretto (and translation). Rather like listening to the radio, come to think of it...

I don't know if there is any opera material on the Web, either; I'll give it a look now.

I am well, thanks - your trust is well placed!

 I know what you mean about not living long enough - I'm a fan of anime and a friend has an encyclopaedia on the subject and it states in the introduction that there is now more anime around than any one person can watch in a whole lifetime if he or she abandoned sleep altogether in favour of viewing the stuff.

Arse.

On another note, I may take your advice on listening before viewing said opera, and, indeed, future operas. It probably equates to reading books before viewing films - a habit I try to maintain.

Now, where did I put that elixir of life?

(Looks around frantically for his own bottle)

If you don't know an opera - and I don't know many, because most are worth half an episode (at most) of... let's see... let's be really cutting and say Hollyoaks - then probably the worst thing to do is watch a production where some political or visual or other slant is put on the basic material - i.e. the words and the music, in no particular order.

Wagner's operas suffer particularly in this regard, but whole books have been written on the subject.

Far too much emphasis is placed these days on the visual aspect of a piece of music. Whatever that may be. I'll be succinct and cite one example: the last 'video' that I know Victoria Beckham (= Thin Spice, I believe) made. The musical content was negligible; the visual content was toe-curlingly embarrassing, as this mother of at least two children (at the time) cavorted in front of the camera in a supposedly 'erotic' manner. Ecch!

On the subject of books and films, remember that both do the same job (tell stories) but that one has only been around for just over 100 years. I leave you to draw the fairly obvious general conclusion.

Ooooh Hollyoaks! That's pretty bad! Mind you, bad opera is possibly one of the worst things to be subjected to. Torture indeed. I now have horrific thoughts running through my mind of Victoria Beckham performing Hollyoaks: The Opera, so thanks for that!

However, the visual side of music can be extremely glorious. It is exceptionally rare, but when done well, it's something to behold. The majority of music videos are just an absolute waste of everyone's money and time, but (oh so rarely) you get someone who actually knows what they're doing and the end result can floor you. Unfortunately (as with the (very few) decent advertising sharks) they move onto bigger things (movies) far too quickly, leaving a gaping whole which no-one can fill. I pertain to people like Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and the like.

It's a shame, but what can you do?! If they hadn't moved on we'd never have had 'Being John Malkovich' or 'Eternal Sunshine...' respectively.  Fantastic films born of the music video. However it is entirely understandable that these people take the widest possible berth away from 'Thin Spice'...

The visual side of music - or the musical side of vision - can indeed be quite awesome (a word which is almost as often misused as 'cool', 'major', or 'ultimate'). I'm thinking of something like this for the former and the sequence depicting the lighting of the beacons in The Return of the King for the latter, which to my mind is grandeur of the first rank - especially when you notice that its main theme is the one that was quietly introduced on a single horn in Boromir's speech at the Council of Elrond in The Fellowship of the Ring.

So, what's the picture I posted about? While Wagner is known for long operas, the best bits of them are truly great music, and the Grail scenes at the end of Acts I and III of Parsifal are tremendous. But I'll shut up now.

On a general note, let's agree never to mention Victoria Beckham (who once said: "I only ever wanted to be famous." Thank God she never wanted to be talented!) again.

I know exactly what you mean about 'awesome'! Do you know the Eddie Izzard routine on it? It's hilarious - about Americans using it to describe hot-dogs, yet being the only one's who'll need it when they visit other worlds. "It's... It's... It's awesome!" "What, like a hot-dog?" Funny stuff, probably entirely ruined by me.

I've always kind of tried to ignore Wagner. Well, not ignore really. More avoid. Not intentionally, you understand - he always seemed really hardcore and I think I probably sub-consciously thought that I should hear everything else first, so making sure that I got him when I did listen to him, and then I never got round to it. Or something. Perhaps now I'm ready! I'll give him go...!

P.S. Re V.B.: Okay.

If you're going to have a go at Wagner, be prepared to be drawn into a world. It's no more ridiculous than animé, or Thunderbirds, and in places is utterly overwhelming. Not to mention unstageable. I've often thought (since seeing The Lord of the Rings brought to a new lease of life through cinematic genius) that it's about time that someone had a go at The Ring of the Nibelung. Then I do a reality check and tell myself "Don't be silly! Would you put money on it?"

Incidentally, Tolkien used to get quite irritated at comparisons between the two - he once wrote, entirely correctly if you know both stories: "Both rings were round. There the resemblance ended."

The Ring moves between gods and humans and... others, and betrays little sign of its extended span of composition (there's a gap of 12 years between Acts II and III of Siegfried, during which time he was busy with Tristan und Isolde and the Wesendonck Lieder). But at its best (oh... what shall I pick out? Act III of Die Walküre, the tremendous orchestral lament for Siegfried in Götterdämmerung, Brünnhilde's final monologue in the same opera before she throws herself (and her horse!) on Siegfried's funeral pyre, from which the flames rise up to engulf Valhalla) it's... it's... well, awesome.

I know what you need. You need The Ring without words. ("Wagner without the shouting.") Lorin Maazel and the Berlin Philharmonic on a Telarc disc. You can't get much better than that.

Except maybe an awesome hotdog.

P.S. Anyone with the initials V.B. will naturally have to be referred to by some other nickname!

Okay, I am preparing to be drawn into a world! I have ordered the one you recommended, so I should have it by the end of the week! I imagine that it would be better if I knew more about the story, so I'm gonna look into that. And to be honest I'm quite excited about it! I think my sub-conscious knows what it's doing as Wagner probably would've been wasted on me earlier, if this goes as deep as it seems to!

After I've heard the version without the 'shouting', and providing I like it and want a fuller picture, I could then download these: 1, 2, 3; as I have nearly enough downloads saved up for them, but first I'd be foolish if I didn't ask you for your opinion on them.... if you can form an opinion on a 30 second trials!