I'll say right at the start that the main purpose of this entry is to make sure that the one directly below doesn't catch the eye of anyone idly passing through this blog without the intention of reading anything on it, though I should like to think that the likelihood of that happening is diminished by my severe restrictions on the kind of content visible to search engines. On the other hand, it isn't terribly difficult to randomly type in the URL. (Who knows how many people with far more nefarious intentions than mine are cursing me for having unjustly stymied them in their quest for a suitable URL for their blogs?) I must also confess that I have never undergone so great an internal debate in my entire life as when I was writing this particular story. The personage featured in it may be odious to some and ridiculous to others, but my time away from that ghastly institution has calmed my passions somewhat. I no longer look upon the experience with the deep loathing and revulsion that I once had for it; and with certain new facts in mind about the personage alluded to above that came to light in recent months, it strikes me as quite a bit more unjust to burlesque him in the manner that I did than it might have been when the wounds were still fresh. I can nevertheless console myself with the knowledge that I have only caricatured the worst of his qualities - some real, some imagined - and not the person as a whole. Glancing over this paragraph, I see that it is quite long; but I suppose one can never be too careful. People with larger screens and higher resolutions might end up seeing precisely that which I want to hide from their eyes. More words must be written.
I'm learning, against all reason, the Bach-Busoni Chaconne. Now is as good a time as any to give its full name: a transcription for piano by Ferruccio Busoni of the fifth movement (Ciaconna) of J. S. Bach's second partita for solo violin in D Minor, BWV 1004. Busoni's transcription is faithful to the original composition in spirit, but it isn't too difficult to see that it employs many of the techniques developed in the Romantic era, and that it is for the piano rather than the harpsichord. It's no doubt too ambitious a work for a mere dilettante like me to even consider learning, not to mention difficult both technically and musically in a degree that should discourage even Asian kids; but I've been having fun trying to work out different sections from the piece, and observing the progress that I make, however slight, between practice sessions. It's also perhaps a good opportunity for me to develop techniques that I haven't had occasion to practice a whole lot, and to learn new ones. Michelangeli's many performances of it throughout his career are, of course, the yardsticks for this composition, but one always has to be careful to avoid imitating other artists, and to be oneself only, however underwhelming that may be.
My quantum mechanics course is proving to be more than I bargained for. I don't know that the professor has not been teaching for a long time, but there are many things he does that a good instructor would do differently. For one, I wish he wouldn't make numerous corrections on the homework after releasing it. Some of the mistakes have been so obvious that it's a wonder they didn't jump out at him when he was making the homework. In addition, I wish he would send out an email when he does make corrections, so that people don't have to come across them in unobtrusive bullet points on the website - sometimes long after the due date. And finally, I wish he wouldn't be so sloppy with some of the homework questions. Like on the last homework, where we had to take the matrix exponential of a 6x6 matrix, which just so happens to be the smallest size of a matrix of this kind on which WolframAlpha, with characteristic unapologeticness (shamelessness on Pro), exceeds computation time. So at the last minute I used NumPy and SciPy for that question (which greatly increased my respect for Python as a means of doing physics homework), and realized that WolframAlpha is just stupid. The Lord is a shoving leopard...
0 comments :
Post a Comment