I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
On Saturday I performed Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with the SSC and SSO.
Missa Solemnis is a challenging piece of work. Besides being regarded as one of the greatest choral compositions, it is infamous for the technically difficult singing required in the third movement, Credo. I spent a long time wrestling my tongue around the fugue at bar 375 with moderate albeit not complete success.
Free Advice Worth Every Penny
In Missa, the bulk of the choir's work is over at the end of Credo but, as a singer, it is a mistake to breath a sigh of relief once this is done. On Saturday, we managed to pull through the first three movements with relative success (unless, of course, your relatives are the Chicago Symphony Chorus in which case we would have been judged a less favourably... but I digress...). Even Sanctus was handled fairly well. But our undoing was "the easy part."
In my yoga class, the instructor is always reminding us that lying on our back doing nothing is "the easiest position for the body, the hardest for the mind." Indeed the last movement, Agnus Dei, presented the same challenge. There is not much to sing and yet getting it right requires a mental focus we seemed incapable of producing on the evening. The choir has a number of entry points between long passages of instrumental bits and soloist parts. By the time one arrives at Agnus Dei, they've been on their feet for the better part of an hour, are fairly tired vocally, mentally, physically and... well perhaps not as on the ball as the movement requires.
We would have probably benefited from more time with the orchestra for this movement in order to get used to our cues... which we were quite used to coming from a piano but not necessarily so from the string section. Not that it was a train wreck - it wasn't. But it was not world class. The only consolation is that the whole piece is so complicated that few audience members, at this point, would have realised that this is NOT what it's supposed to sound like!
So my free advice is that if you plan to sing Missa Solemnis, don't assume that mastering the fugues is all that it takes. It takes a huge amount of concentration and a thorough understanding of how your part fits in with all the other parts, including orchestra and solos. Of course this is always true but factor in your general fatigue at the end of an hour of singing and you will realise that if you lie on your back, unless you keep your eyes open, you will fall asleep.
Labels: music
If you haven't got Mad Cow yet, it's likely that you'll get away with all those Big Macs you ate in the 80's.
Deaths from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
BSE was initially recognized in cattle in the UK in 1986. It is estimated that up to 400,000 cattle infected with BSE entered the human food chain in the 1980s. The epidemic in cattle in Britain reached incredible proportions: by 1993 more than 1,000 cases per week were being reported.
Initially, it was assumed that humans could not contract a spongiform encephalopathy from infected cattle. While cows could theoretically get BSE from consuming sheep infected with scrapie, due to genetic differences between humans and cattle, people were considered safe (humans have never been affected by contaminated sheep). Although scientists were questioning this logic as early as 1990, it wasn't until 1996, when 10 people contracted the human form of BSE (vCJD) that the authorities woke up to the risks.
The number of cases grew year on year until peaking in 2000, about 8 years after the peak of the epidemic in cattle. However, per the chart above, the number of deaths from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) look well into decline.
A cumulative total of 159 cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease had been reported in the UK by the end of December 2005, of whom 153 had died. Outside the UK, the numbers remain small with 15 cases in France, four in the Republic of Ireland, two in the United States, and one each in Canada, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, and Spain (1).
CDR Weekly 26 Jan 06 PDF
So my question is, will the Singapore Health Authorities reconsider accepting my O-negative despite that I lived in the UK from '88-92. Answer: probably not.
In 2004 a new report published in the Lancet medical journal showed that vCJD can be transmitted by blood transfusions (Peden, 2004). The finding alarmed healthcare officials because a large epidemic of the disease might arise in the near future. There is no test to determine if a blood donor is infected and is in the latent phase of vCJD. In reaction to this report, the British government banned anyone who had received a blood transfusion since January 1980 from donating blood.
On May 28, 2002, the United States Food and Drug Administration instituted a policy that excludes from donation anyone who lived in high-risk areas of Europe from 1980 to the mid-1990s. A similar policy applies to potential donors to the Australian Red Cross' Blood Service, procluding people who have spent a cumulative time of six months or more in the United Kingdom between 1980 and 1996.
Wikipedia
It turns out that, while I was practically a strict vegetarian while living in the UK, I may yet suffer from Mad Cow disease:
A "significant level" of the population could be unknowingly infected with variant CJD, according to scientists whose study reveals the disease to be more easily transmitted than previously thought. The debate about the number of people infected by vCJD - the human form of BSE - has ranged from estimates of a few hundred to hundreds of thousands. Some people are understood to be more genetically susceptible to the disease but the study published today by Lancet Neurology shows that mice with all variations of the gene involved were susceptible to different degrees to vCJD passed on through infected blood transfusions.
The Guradian - 27 March 2006
More | Rant | BSE Stats | More Stats
Age of victim:
Labels: medicine
There is metabolic variance within the human species which means that there is no one diet that will suit everyone.
- Andrew P
A very pragmatic rebuttal of Stephen Byrnes' Myths of Vegetarianism is offered by mystery man Andrew P. Although I am definitely an omnivore, I found AP's article valuable. Instead of getting into the usual unsubstantiatedarguments offered by many vegetarians (and more adamantly by vegans) - like "human's aren't designed to eat meat" - he sticks to facts and highlights some of the pitfalls of an unhealthy vegetarian diet which are often overlooked.
While AP appears to be a mainstream vegetarian, Byrnes comes from a school of nutrition which can best be described as "New is Old." He and other members of the Weston A Price Foundation are doing what they can to roll back to a time before major campaigns by dairy, soy and vegetable oil companies scared people off from what was healthy in our traditional diet. The damage caused by big industry includes:
- Increased consumption of highly processed polyunsaturated oils and thus trans fatty acids. People were encouraged to consume unstable oils high in transfatty acids because "saturated fat and cholesterol leads to heart disease." Ironically, the transfatty acids people were encouraged to consume are much worse culprits. The result being a steady increase in cardiovascular disease ever since. In case you hadn't heard, blaming heart disease on cholesterol is like blaming fires on firemen. If this is news, read more.
- Fresh milk was pasteurised and raw milk became illegal. No doubt this was motivated by a desire to overcome some serious problems which emerged with modern dairy farming however it is a practice with potential hazards. More
- As for soy, it's not the health food it is touted to be and is increasingly linked to a number of health issues. More
Like any movement, the WAP Foundation has it's detractors and they have been called, amongst other things, a cabal of cranks, crackpots and thieves. What's interesting is they have succeeded in not only pissing off the vegetarians but the mainstream meat eaters as well. This probably means they are on to something.
So who is right? Ask me again in 100 years. In the meantime, educate yourself and choose wisely. But if you do choose to go the vegan route, read this carefully. And while you're at it, you should think about going mostly or all raw.
For Your Entertainment:
The Meatrix | 
The Meatrix II | 
Town of Allopath |
Labels: diet, food, health
