Today a rude, brief, recitative...

It's been a very busy day juggling a lot of competing responsibilities... for example, I finished up with office work around 4:30, took Malcolm around the corner to order some pizzas, then met Maggie at 5:00, just to rush off to a rehearsal for Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony, and Elgar's Coronation Ode (with Jurgen Petrenko and the Toronto Classical Singers/Talisker Players) that went on until 10:00 or so this evening. Then some final office work for tomorrow, then to bed. I wonder what the people who try to have only one career, and no family, do in their spare time!

The Vaughan Williams and the Elgar are very interesting for me, in the sense that they were written within ten years of each other, but are completely different in their feeling. To me, the Elgar has aged to become a deeply ironic work; its lyrics speak of the glory of the British Empire, and the crowning of Britain's mighty victory with peace. Given the events of the 20th century that would follow its 1902 premiere, it loudly celebrates a star that we realize now was, at the time of its writing, already very much on the wane.

In contrast, Vaughan Williams' music isn't centred textually in any era, which - with all due respect to Elgar's genius - makes it a piece of truer art, to my taste: like the sea itself, being of no fixed time, it is timeless.