Lux Apollo

Some harpsichord music by a man tempermental enough to insult the king.

It's a fun little recording, but sorry AC, that's not a clavichord. It is a square piano after all. If you look closely at the action you can see the hammers and dampers. The action of the clavichord isn't nearly so complex the dead giveaway is the fact that the hammers drop back down after striking, even while the key is held. On a clavichord, the tangent remains pressed against up to the string as long as the key is held.

I love it!

Such a delightful piece, and a wonderful performance.

Thanks for reading, gentlemen. All will be revealed in time. 🙂

Thanks for reading, gentlemen. All will be revealed in time. 🙂

I've always loved Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in e minor, especially the slow movement!

Pires and Mozart - a match made in heaven! Also, Mozart in a minor key - always a treat. He so rarely wrote in the minor, but when he does he really makes it matter!

May 14, 2022 They let Quentin out of the brig yesterday. Can’t say that I feel completely comfortable with that. Not on your life. He won’t be in my class for the rest of the year, no, he’s going to be getting independent tutoring for a while to try and monitor his behaviour and see if the work they have been doing on rehabilitating him has had a measurable effect. They are giving him the weekend to get reacquainted with life upstairs before classroom life resumes.

Thanks, and thanks for reading. I struggled a bit putting this one together. I knew I needed to mix in some denouement from the last couple chapters with a bit of build into the next... I guess John is reaching a stage where he is seeing himself for who he truly is, knows what he needs to work on, and knows what he wants going forward. It isn't just about surviving anymore.

May 10, 2022 Christ, I can’t go away for one goddamned weekend to reunite with my father and have a happy family moment for once in my life, already more shit’s gone down. I mean, fuck, what would my life be without drama, right? But it would have been fucking nice to be able to come back home to the School and just fucking relax into work for a week, or something. Fuck. Waking up at my father’s house in Bobby’s arms was nice. Too nice. I felt so refreshed

Yeah, I thought about that, whether their might be some friction there, but in the end I came down to wanting to focus in particular on the conversation with Uncle Mike in this chapter. Friction with Bobby might have detracted from the importance of that. The rest of the chapter is mostly fluff, ha ha ha. Of course, Isaac would be on his best behaviour for this meeting - unlike Bobby's parents who feel (perhaps misguidedly) secure in their relationship with their son, Isaac is grasping at something that could very quickly and very easily slip between his fingers. I also came to the conclusion that St. John gravitated more towards his father when he was younger, so it would be more meaningful and helpful for him on his journey to recovery as a human if this went well. That's not to say there will be no challenges in the future, but I'm not sure if his father will be one of them.

Me too. I'm glad the way the past two chapters panned out changed from my original intention. I don't think you would have liked the alternate universe encounter with his father.

Oh, believe me I love me some Cavalli. He took what Monteverdi taught him and ran with it, and arguably did so much more for opera than his teacher. We put on a performance of Egisto with the opera program at Laurier when I was in the Baroque Ensemble back in my first year of undergrad; it was a big challenge to learn figured bass and continuo practice in the short timeframe we had, but it was so much fun!

Welp... I'm not sure why it's displaying that last video as blocked... but regardless, you can just click through to watch on YouTube.