Trivial Pursuits

After I had made lunch again (this time, turkey schnitzel, broccoli, a salad with oak leaf lettuce and eggs, cranberry sauce, and apple sauce) I went off to the second masterclass. I was late again -- about ten minutes -- and the singer on the stage was the dark-haired one again. The order was different, but the repertoire was similar: Hugo Wolff and Richard Strauss and Schubert. Quite honestly, the songs all sound more or less the same to me, except that I am occasionally vaguely aware of a Viennese touch in Strauss. The students were more confident this time around, I think; their voices were fuller and their diction considerably better, and the accompaniments were better synchronized with the singing. On the other hand, today the faintest note of irritation did creep into Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's voice now and then, when a student persisted in certain errors that should have been easy to correct. The student whose singing I liked the most did not sing today (unless I came too late for it), but I also liked the voices of three others very much.

My other activities today included very, very slowly reading about France before the Revolution while simultaneously picking out songs on the ukulele. Perhaps the stimulation of the left(?) side of the brain does have a beneficial effect on learning after all, because I absorbed the information easily. And, while I was cooking, I listened to Gi. and Ge. discussing school, particularly the adverse effects of their difficulties with German on their tests, and the pendulum experiments they have been doing in Physics. J. complained about three tests that will, I think, take place tomorrow; Ge. comforted him by means of making absurd suggestions, for example that J. should quickly get a degree in medicine so that he can write doctors' notes to excuse himself. And then the others discussed certain animé series, for example "Death Note," which sounds most interesting, but whose premise they had pretty much picked apart by the end.