La Messe De Notre Dame

I am gobsmacked.

It really can't be.

And yet it seems it is.

Tonight, you see, I am going to buy Guillame de Machaut's Notre Dame Mass, which holds an important place in music history for being the first known mass in which all the movements are (a) polyphonic and (b) contain the same thematic material, so it's one mass instead of several movements.

Enough with the music history lecture already - the point is, I don't own this piece of music yet. And although I find it quite weird (it's so early it doesn't sound very much like western music at all) it is nevertheless interesting. And I've found a cheap and nice copy of it, so: yay! But the *real* thing to note is that suddenly, my music library is Complete. There's actually nothing else I know of that exists in a recording I can actually purchase that I covet at the moment.

Don't expect it to stay that way for long, I mean, I am the person who has no real furniture of his own but a vast collection of pretty, interesting and exciting tunes. Thanks to my many Lovely Friends who gave me generous amounts of Musica vouchers for my birthday, I now own all the things I probably wouldn't have splurged on if I was paying for them myself - and am at a loss as to what to buy next.

Oh. Now that I think of it, I don't have Fuer Elise. But I don't feel I must own it.

There's lots of opera I'd like to experience, but since it should be all about the Whole Experience (set, costumes, sex appeal of singers, oh - and the singing) I'd rather go watch operas in London (Universe, listen up) than buy recordings of them.

So, It Is Done. Complete. All 7000-plus works. Man, I love iTunes.

Edit: It took two days, but my state of completion has come undone. I have discovered obscure avant-garde Scandinavian chamber music. Must have!

Look, you didn't *really* think I was going to stop my lifelong accumulation of tjoonz, did you?

You've got mail

Now, although I have in fact been to a musical event this afternoon and even had an argument with a music exec about the recording industry versus live performance and Joburg audiences' apathy (eg. Arguer: 'There's no classical music in this town.' Me: 'Uh, how about that event at City Hall?' Arguer: 'Oh no, it's FAR too dangerous to go into the centre of town.' N.L.: 'Mini Cooper just had a launch in the CBD that was something like 60 BLOCKS WIDE attended by thousands of people. I know lots of people who went.' Me: 'And there's always the JPO at the Linder.' Arguer: 'You can get shot waiting at traffic lights at night.' Arguer 2: 'Why don't musicians come and play at schools. I'd go if they came to my kid's school.' Me + N.L. look at each other.) this is not about that.

I apologise, let's make this one of the few posts not supposedly actually pretending to be about music.

At the moment I may be Meg Ryan or Tom Hanks, I'm not sure which character is more fitting. And you'd think I would steer clear of such activities when I tried for two weeks to dissuade H.E. from going to Oxfordshire to meet the (as it turned out) spongey, sexist pig who she thought was her boyfriend. THAT didn't work, and now I'm doing the same thing.

I know it's not love to chat via email, but at the moment I wait with great anticipation for any word from M.L. Luckily, his words are many, and entertaining. He's in Manchester, I'm in Johannesburg. Though Vivaldi keeps trying to move his violin case to London, that's not Manchester. That's another town, far oop north, and coincidentally right next to where I spent my formative years growing up. So I'm well disposed to the place. But I'm not planning to move there, am I?

And yet I cannot tear myself away from my laptop, for there is an email from M.L. coming in...