Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037

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Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037. This was interesting, but not a must-see. You get to know the multi-national cast of employees that put them together up in the Steinway factory in Astoria, Queens, NYC. There are also some scenes from the public showrooms and artist relations (patient employees help sensitive musicians searching for an ineffable something). The scope of the actual construction is impressively broad–there are giant chunks of wood that just get absolutely manhandled, and there are tiny little fiddly bits that get tweaked and retweaked over a span of weeks. I used to work with my Grandpa in his workshop, and if you spend any time with smart carpenters, you catch on to the clever devices or tricks they invent to make the job easier. There’s some cool custom-made-for-the-job timesavers in the movie if you look for them. The downside to all the behind-the-scenes stuff is that while you see a lot, they don’t explain a lot. E.g. you see a foreman selecting wood, but you don’t know what kind of wood it is or what kind makes it better than other chunks. I don’t know that I wanted a narrator intoning facts over all the footage, but it’s a shame that so much is kept at arm’s length. Maybe a more probing interviewer could have helped. If you’re really interested in the details, I think you’re better off reading something like the A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano.

Being foreign: The others | The Economist

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An American child psychologist, Alison Gopnik, when reaching for an analogy to illuminate the world as experienced by a baby, compared it to Paris as experienced for the first time by an adult American: a pageant of novelty, colour, excitement. Reverse the analogy and you see that living in a foreign country can evoke many of the emotions of childhood: novelty, surprise, anxiety, relief, powerlessness, frustration, irresponsibility. It may be this sense of a return to childhood, consciously or not, that gives the pleasure of foreignness its edge of embarrassment.

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Being foreign: The others | The Economist

The Cranes Are Flying

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Летят журавли (The Cranes Are Flying). Here’s a good Criterion essay. It’s odd watching something like this the night after I watched Die Hard–which is a great movie, sure, but the camerawork is a bit more… utilitarian. This one is a treat for the eyes. It was directed by Mikhail Kalatozov and shot by Sergei Urusevsky, who is supposed to be a genius cinematographer. I think this is probably correct. Here are some more brilliant photos that don’t do it justice, because they’re not moving. There’s several dramatic long shots outdoors that are awesome, and many of the indoor takes have some clever tracking and repositioning. All in rich, purposefully-lit black and white. Looks like someone has put The Cranes Are Flying on YouTube so you can investigate. As for the story, it’s lovers-separated-by-war stuff. But if you’re going to get stuck watching a WWII romance that’s not Casablanca, it’s probably best take charge and pick something that’s visually awesome. And I should mention that the actors are great.

Why you've never really heard the "Moonlight" Sonata. - By Jan Swafford - Slate Magazine

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The audio examples are really fascinating. (via).

When composers wrote for these instruments they sometimes loved them and sometimes chafed at their limitations, but in any case they wrote for those sounds, that touch, those bells and whistles. From old instruments, performers on modern pianos can get important insights into the sound image that Mozart, Schubert, et al., were aiming for. But music from the 18th and 19th centuries doesn’t just sound different now than on the original instruments; some of it can’t even be played as written on modern pianos.

Why you've never really heard the "Moonlight" Sonata. - By Jan Swafford - Slate Magazine

For a Few Dollars More

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For a Few Dollars More. I’ve finally finished the Dollars Trilogy. This one is great. I found it much better than A Fistful of Dollars and almost up there with The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. The first duel in this movie is either the first or second best in the whole trilogy. I love the way Leone builds from silence to melodramatic swells of music and back to silence and only then gives you resolution. And nice little details like in the delightful hat duel where every time Eastwood shoots the hat it lands in a pool of light. And the repeated appearance of the safe during the bank robbery scene. You know something is going to happen with/to/near/around it, but you gotta wait for the moment. Sweet, sweet suspense.