I played the Barber Sonata fourth movement (Fuga) today for the first time at full speed! That was very exciting. I never thought I'd be able to pull it off. It especially feels good after butchering the Berg Sonata in masterclass on Thursday.

Sorry, by the way, for the far-too-slowness of the second linked recording. For what it's worth, I've started really liking altavista's music search, which, though full of bad results, finds an amazing amount of free recordings of music I like. In other free music news, the Philadelphia Orchestra is being pleasantly digital and has an online music store of its own, where you can actually download their recording of Beethoven's 5th (in mp3) for free (!). I think it's a very clever idea: I suspect lots of people who would like to download that recording would also like to buy other Philly Orchestra recordings. Though on the other hand, classical music lovers do tend to like liner notes and things. (Though on the other other hand, they do have pretty good notes available for download: it's just not in an obvious location and is of course a digital file, which is less fun to read.)

In the meantime, I find it interesting to think sometimes about the different perspectives people hold on life in general. One of the readings in church this morning decried people who decide that life is short and therefore should just be enjoyed - of course, largely because this leads to "persecution of the righteous." Thinking of this compared to Ecclesiastes, another old testament text but which urges simple enjoyment of life (in an extremely fatalistic way), made me think of a story passed on by my Southeast Asian Religions teacher Vernon Schubel. It's a bit long, but here's a paraphrase:

An unhappy man sets off for another country. He gets lost in a forest, and as he gets thirsty and hungry, is charged by a mad elephant and an evil demoness. He sees a high tree, but can't climb it, so jumps into a nearby well, clinging to some reeds to keep from falling to the bottom, where he sees enraged snakes. Unfortunately, two mice, one white and one black, start chewing at the reed clump he was holding, and meanwhile the enraged elephant charges into the nearby tree several times, causing a honeycomb to fall into the well, the bees stinging the man all over. By chance, a drop of honey reaches his head, and rolls down his face to his lips. Tasting the honey, the man thinks of none of the horrible things going on around and simply longs for more honey.

Prof. Shubel said he heard this story for the first time from some "hippy Sufis" (Sufism is mystical Islam) who explained that this story showed how even in the midst of misery, the human spirit and love of beauty prevails. But it turns out the story is actually from The Story of Samaraditya, a Jain source (though the story is also told by Hindus), which attempts to prove how horrible life is. The elephant is death, the demoness old age, the tree is salvation (unattainable by sensual man), the snakes are the passions, the reeds are the man's allotted lifespan, the mice are days and nights passing, the bees are diseases, a particularly large python at the bottom of the well is hell, and the drops of honey are "trivial pleasures, terrible at the last. How can a wise man want them, in the midst of such peril and hardship?"