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In which I ramble, Very much.
Feb. 15th, 2006 09:04 pmSo, I've been singing line three or four of the Aeneid, in Latin, to the tune of 'La Donna è moblile'. Too much Verdi!
Speaking of Verdi, I don't like him as much as I do Mozart. I think that as the centuries progressed, the musical style got larger. In Don Giovanni, there is much more diversity of melody and more individual lines for instruments. Verdi tends to use the entire orchestra. Also, on a purely textual basis, the characters in Don Giovanni aren't stupid. Melodramatic, but not stupid. Manrico, on the other hand, is stupid. He obviously failed basic Italian. I don't even know the language (unfortunately) and I can figure out that when his mother says "Mi vendica" she wants revenge. He, on the other hand, says "that mysterious phrase, always the same." (On a similar note, I learned lots of Italian from opera. I can say that I'm dying and want revenge, call someone a vile criminal, weep, and tell people what a good vintage this is. I cannot, however, tell them that I'm going to the store for some milk.)
I've been reading Fowler's Modern English Usage. Considering that 'modern' is 1911, it's surprisingly up to date. Unless this is an American thing, that 'close' is more formal that 'shut' is certainly old-fashioned. If someone said 'shut,' they would be deliberately quaint. There are some French words that have become completely Anglicized - châssis, for example, has lost its circumflex, and débris its accent. I wonder what he would say about essay-writing - most of his comments are directed, rather disparagingly, towards newspaper men. I suppose he would have the same disdain for needless elegance.
As a consequence, he would hate my English teacher. She had the nerve to give us a sample of her writing as an example, in which she misspelled Tolkien twice and used the phrase 'a seaworthy propostion.' To be smug and self-satisfied, she finshed with a quotation from Shakespeare. However, this is how she did it: "... a work with a strong undertow of sorrow, a work, as another writer later put it, that ends a sad story involving the deaths of kings." She is an English teacher. She should know better than that. I'd love to give it back to her, corrected, but I am a junior, and a bad report would be unfortunate.
Speaking of Verdi, I don't like him as much as I do Mozart. I think that as the centuries progressed, the musical style got larger. In Don Giovanni, there is much more diversity of melody and more individual lines for instruments. Verdi tends to use the entire orchestra. Also, on a purely textual basis, the characters in Don Giovanni aren't stupid. Melodramatic, but not stupid. Manrico, on the other hand, is stupid. He obviously failed basic Italian. I don't even know the language (unfortunately) and I can figure out that when his mother says "Mi vendica" she wants revenge. He, on the other hand, says "that mysterious phrase, always the same." (On a similar note, I learned lots of Italian from opera. I can say that I'm dying and want revenge, call someone a vile criminal, weep, and tell people what a good vintage this is. I cannot, however, tell them that I'm going to the store for some milk.)
I've been reading Fowler's Modern English Usage. Considering that 'modern' is 1911, it's surprisingly up to date. Unless this is an American thing, that 'close' is more formal that 'shut' is certainly old-fashioned. If someone said 'shut,' they would be deliberately quaint. There are some French words that have become completely Anglicized - châssis, for example, has lost its circumflex, and débris its accent. I wonder what he would say about essay-writing - most of his comments are directed, rather disparagingly, towards newspaper men. I suppose he would have the same disdain for needless elegance.
As a consequence, he would hate my English teacher. She had the nerve to give us a sample of her writing as an example, in which she misspelled Tolkien twice and used the phrase 'a seaworthy propostion.' To be smug and self-satisfied, she finshed with a quotation from Shakespeare. However, this is how she did it: "... a work with a strong undertow of sorrow, a work, as another writer later put it, that ends a sad story involving the deaths of kings." She is an English teacher. She should know better than that. I'd love to give it back to her, corrected, but I am a junior, and a bad report would be unfortunate.
