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0 thoughts on “Happy Friday – open thread”

  4. Dave K

    No fast-forwarding allowed:
    [media url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pwbQvJDFzQ&hl=en_GB&fs=1&]

  5. Tim V-B

    The OK Go video is excellent. And completely real, by the way. It wasn't the first take, but what you see actually happened, real time.

  8. Otepoti

    It can be a disadvantage to be over here in NZ, surfing the edge of the day.

    I'm either early or late to EVERY party.

    Your contributions are all terrific, and I think visual humour trumps verbal every time.

    But perhaps the following deserves a shout-out for being home-grown. The backstory is that RCNZ is preparing a new denominational psalter-hymnal, but no-one likes the results very much. As yet.

    So I guess some-one decided to point out how much worse things could be.

    The following notice appears in our church bulletin for this coming Sunday:

    Visiting Academic Speaker

    Distinguished Reformed musicologist and composer, A. Priscilla Fürst, D.Mus. (Kampen), is due to visit Dunedin this week to promote her “new perspective on hymn-tune selection”.

    Noted for her modernist views on liturgical music, Dr Fürst is no stranger to controversy. Quoting from a recent interview, “For too long the church has clung to the bygone aesthetics of beauty and melody. We need a new paradigm if we are to engage with our postmodern society in a culturally relevant way.”

    Dr Fürst is known to advocate the serial music techniques pioneered by the early twentieth-century Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg. “The bleak atonal Schoenbergian soundscapes speak to the disembowelled humanity of today as no other music can,” says Dr Fürst. “No longer will the worn-out tunes of yesteryear be a cause of tension between accompanist and singer, and between one singer and another; in future all congregants will join unitedly in a struggle against the will of the composer.”

    A. Priscilla Fürst will present an open lecture at Marama Hall on Thursday 1 April at 10am after which she will hold a workshop to teach the principles of serial composition. Put simply, a serial tune involves arranging twelve contiguous notes in a new sequence, which is then extended by a reversal, inversion and re-versed inversion of the original sequence.

    Participants will be expected to compose three original hymn tunes. Dr Fürst has kindly agreed to identify any tunes which are remotely singable and to send the remainder to the denominational hymnal committee for their consideration."

    Oh, the fun we do have...

  9. Heather

    Finally! a hymnal for the musically impaired among us who must simply be content in this life with making a joyful "noise" unto the Lord.

    You have no idea how I've longed for this day.....

    :)

  10. Otepoti

    :-) Heather.

    And I particularly liked the gentle implication of the last para, that if you don't like what the committee came up with, you should try for yourself...

    I e-mailed that I was submitting a meditation on The Reprobation of the Lost, based on a subdominant and a rest, followed by another subdominant.

    Was going to be called

    "404 Not Found."

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