In the bleak midwinter -- Jacob Collier (and Andrew McGregor)

. 

 And here is what Andrew McGregor has to say about this (scroll down for the lyrics):

Musical notes are a really, really, really complicated subject:

The base standard of western music, now, is A=440 Hz, and equal temperament, that is that there are 12 other tones related by powers of the 12th root of two, meaning 12 distinct tones in each octave.

That is a convenient approximation to a set of tones you can make out of the harmonic series, which was known to the ancient Greeks… except that if you actually try that, you discover as your music gets more harmonically complex that things sound pretty bad in some combinations, and musicians start wanting to correct them so they sound ‘right’ despite being wrong.

If you tune by ear with voices, or instruments that are not entirely fixed in their tuning, you end up using something called just intonation, and as you change key the frequencies you use for certain notes change slightly. That can mean that you can change key several times, change back to the key you started on, and end up at a different pitch (shifted by an interval called a comma).

Yeah, it’s complicated all right.

Around about the 16th century several people worked out that you could do what we now call equal temperament, it seems to have been simultaneously invented in China and Holland. It became standard in the 18th century in Europe.

But… lots of contemporary music uses tuning based on guitars, and they don’t play in exact equal temperament.

Not only that, lots of contemporary music is based on blues scales, which contain a note that isn’t one of the regular set.

Arab, Japanese and Indian music each use a different set of intonation schemes… except when they don’t because they’re incorporating Western instruments (or guitars)… except when they do something like just intonation around what the equal-tempered instruments or guitars are doing to make it sound right in their heads… yeah. Complicated.

So, any attempt to define the exact frequencies of musical notes is just the start of a long, complicated journey. People have written books on the subject, and there have been several published on this subject every year for at least four hundred years. It’s that complicated.

Using different intonation schemes can be astonishingly beautiful.

Check this out… there’s an impossible modulation in this arrangement:

At one point he smoothly modulates into a key a quarter tone sharp (in exact quarter-tone equal temperament)… by stepping through something like the just intonation commas on the way there. By ear, multitracking with himself.

Lyrics

In the bleak midwinter

Frosty wind made moan

Earth stood hard as iron

Water like a stone

Snow had fallen

Snow on snow on snow

In the bleak midwinter

Long, long ago

Angels and Arc Angels

May have traveled there

Cherubim and Seraphim

Thronged the air

But only his Mother

In her maiden bliss

Worshiped the beloved

With a kiss

What can I give him?

Poor as I am

If I were a shepherd

I would give a lamb

If I were a wise man

I would do my part

But what I can I give him

Give him my heart

Give him my heart

Christmas eve...

 

This afternoon

We were on our habitual afternoon walk which gets us downtown and back in an hour.

Note the December flowers on the right. The white Lego House atop the hill got recently repainted; before it looked like Dr. No's residence. There's a dog kept in a cage next to the house (extreme left of the picture), and he barks less since the paint job was done.

From the trenches -- Wole Soyinka

Yes, we are still bedridden -- did we fail to mention that Michael and his partner Chang caught Covid (?) -- so we are cutting our way through the verbal jungle of a book by Wole Soyinka, titled "Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth" about Soyinka's home country, Nigeria -- Soyinka, world's first black Nobel Award of Literature -- Soyinka (who's compared in rave reviews to Vladimir Nabokov's).  

And so, while we are still wielding our verbal machete in Soyinka's verbal  jungle (well-written, somehow, but much too redundant, and confusing, and repetitive...), we swear this holy pledge: in the future, we'll only read books by the man himself: Vladimir Nabokov.

Yesterday -- wave alert

We've had a wave alert for the Praia do Norte yesterday, with estimated breakers of 10 meters. The sheep were characteristically unimpressed, though:

 

Art is art is art is art

 

Alcobaça yesterday

Alcobaça holds a weekly market on Saturday. It's in walking distance, so we walked the pitoresco walk to the venue along the Alcoa, the river. To the left, the blue structure houses the catholic kindergarden.

The market. We bought eggs, flowers, and parsley.

The Alcoa again, on the way back.

The monastery (which is huge) (as you possibly know). This corner is being transformed into a FIVE STARS, (or BOUTIQUE) hotel. Come and visit.

(Nice here, isn't it. Another gorgeous day.)

Yesterday's barbecue --

(Clip by our friend Charlie:)


There were raindrops, that's why everybody huddles under the pergola. The evening became very cosy and congenial, though, and no political incorrectness occurred.

Yesterday on the beach

September was a bit rainy, but the summer is back.

October is the season for big waves...

...which has started now (the season).

Forte de São Miguel Arcanjo (Fortress of Saint Michael the Archangel) the locus vivendi for surfing championships.

The street view of our house this (Sunday) morning

 

Note the bamboo on the deck to the left of the gate (click on the pic for enlargement)

Last week

The newly acquired Tesla MODEL Y (one of the first delivered to Europe) in front of the Alcobaça monastery.

Lunch at "Meat", the hamburgeria around the corner from the monastery.

Around 9:00 in the morning.

Antique market on the square of the monastery.

A morning around 7:30.

Our Model Y again, now paired with Tesla's Model 3 which belongs to the vet of our neighbors.

Praia do Norte in the afternoon.

(Pictures, as usual, by Chang Man Yoon)

Behold this poor pool

Lava from the active volcano dripping into an irrigation pool on La Palma 

 

There is always hope...

 

...at the end of the rainbow.

 

Our garden a few days ago.

Critical voices

 

Beckett 2.0

 (Our friend Glenn sends this:)

Hold the presses

 

Sponsored

 

Available at any church service near you

Greetings from the Taliban

 

Hold the presses

 

Hannah & Andreas

 (Click on any picture for a slideshow with larger images; it's worth it:)

We had been invited by our new friends Hannah and Andreas for lunch.

Hannah is an artist, a writer, and many other things. 

She also ran an antique shop, which shows in the interior.

Andreas had been a professional software designer in the olden days (Cobol), then became a professional cook, and finally build a seagoing vessel which took the pair from Germany to Portugal, where they settled 14 years ago. They even speak Portuguese.

So, Andreas cooked for us. This is the main dish, beef filet with a true sauce Béarnaise over an intricate heap of rice.

Michael drank too much, which was wonderful...

...as wonderful as the views of this olive grove across the street*        

Hannah & Andreas, thank you so much!

(*)which looked exactly like the olive grove across the street from the hospital in St. Rémy de Province, immortalized in countless paintings by its patient Vincent van Gogh, who also drank too much.**

(**) Namely this one: