Hi everyone who is interested in this blog and its contents. First I must apologise that I have not made any posts since 2022 which is about 3 years ago. I have been engaged in a number of activities. One of the most interesting is the fact that I was asked by a Friend of mine if I would consider writing the programme notes for their orchestra which some of my colleagues at work play in. It is the Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra
Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra – Established 1963 Conducted by Gerard Doherty.
and I have been producing notes for them for about 4 years now, The next concert is on June 7th at Greyfriars Kirk. It is somewhat lighter than usual consisting mainly of Dance music. Two allegedly Scottish pieces by Malcom Arnold and Maxwell Davies. It is probably fair to say that the music reflects their idea of what Scottish Music should sound like rather than anything genuinely Scottish. Also two pieces in a Cuban Style one by Gershwin namely his Cuban Overture and another by Marquez a contemporary Mexican composer his Danzon No 2, The Danzon is a formal Cuban dance and Marquez has composed a number of these. Finally the centre piece of the concert is Prokofiev's 2nd Violin Concerto a piece he composed before preparing to settle back in Russia and in order to appease Stalin he moved away from his earlier Avant-Garde style. It is a theme common to this concert that composers who were considered Avant Garde wrote more popular style of music. Unfortunately these pieces seem to have eclipsed their more serious work so whilst almost every Scot will have heard Maxwell Davies's Orkney Wedding with Sunrise, they wont be familiar with his complex Symphonies or String Quartets. Anyway I shall post the program notes for this concert quite soon and also the previous notes.
As far as physics goes I have more or less completed my notes on Deep Inelastic Neutrino Nucleon Scattering part of the problem is struggling with Word and its really awkward way of numbering equations, So that instead of physics I end up farting around trying to make sure that the equation numbering is consistent with each other. Anyway on the last lap now and hope to finish by end of July.
Finally for now as times winged chariot is pressing on I have decided to concentrate on important things. One of these is trying to read the essential classics of literature. In the 1950's the Encyclopedia Britannica published a series entitled 'Great Books of the Western World'
Great Books of the Western World - Wikipedia it is possible to access these via the Internet Archive library
There is also a shortened reading list available
The 10 Year Reading Plan for the Great Books of the Western World - ThinkingWest
I intend to use this as a guide but not necessarily in the same order. I am currently interested in reading the classics of political philosophy and I have started with Machiavelli and I shall share my thoughts on him on this blog.
Anyway sorry to those who have missed me I will try and post more regularly in future
Nice to see you back. Always interesting reading
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