Lux Apollo

People don't always get what they want when wronged by the police, so it will be interesting to see what direction this goes... I don't know, because I haven't written it yet!

April 17, 2022 I’m writing this a couple of days later since I’ve been unable to write due to more shitty circumstances beyond my control. What circumstances? Well, we’ll get there. Let’s just say that Easter with the Drakes did not go at all according to plan. The only question now is whether or not what happened will make Bobby’s parents respect me or be even more horrified of the man that I am. What’s important is that we’re fine. Bobby and Liam and I are fine. Well, not

Especially when it's been four years since the last time he was able to hug his father, and I have a feeling his father wasn't much of the hugging type at that.

April 13, 2022 At lunch today, Dani asked me to try and speak with Kevin Ford. Emma found him using Cerebro pretty quickly yesterday afternoon. I was worried he’d have hitchhiked for a ride and made it to New York or God only knows where else, but he hadn’t strayed too far, just made his way to the Mountain Lakes Park nearby. Dani drove out and picked him up since she was his guardian and supposedly they had some sort of a relationship now that both his parents were dead.

Sigh. Just sigh. Nicely done, sir.

April 12, 2022 Today was a weird day, but good. Very good. Mystique is still around, plotting with Emma and the X-men what the next moves would be against the Purifiers. Magneto has left, however, leaving Exodus to coordinate the Acolytes efforts. Thank God. I feel like the whole campus breathed a sigh of relief when that goddamned limo left the driveway, even if someone as critically dangerous as Exodus is still here. I had an appointment with Cecilia during

Me too! It was a little entertaining, albeit distracting!

Maria Szymanowska was one of the most famous pianists in the early decades of the 19th century, yet her compositional output has largely been forgotten. She's mostly stile brilliante and her writing presages the direction Chopin's compositional output would follow. Have a listen to this little gem.

I've had a lot of fun over the years playing Bach's keyboard arrangements of concerti, including this one. I also had the joy of performing continuo for this concerto when an oboist at my university won the concerto competition with this and it was to be played on a feature concert. It's a wonderful movement.

Well done, good sir! I really enjoyed these little erotic delights. Made me crave a little something that will have to wait until the workday is over!

Thanks for reading, Albert! It was an interesting piece to write - I can't remember anymore what possessed me to put it in this style, specifically, but when I started writing it just flowed out of me very quickly. My life has progressed a lot since I wrote this, to a much better and more stable place. Still very interesting, though.

April 10, 2022 Magneto came to the School today. No, it wasn’t an attack. Thank God it wasn’t that, not over fucking Dominik Petrakis. No, this was something else entirely. At about 10 am a black limo pulled into the driveway and it was as if time seemed to stop for a moment at the School. Magneto got out, as grandiose and self-important as ever, accompanied by his right-hand man, Exodus. Some of the students seemed a little afraid, all of them were at least a little

I was thinking about learning one of Bach's Toccatas and came across this interesting interpretation of BWV914 in e minor by the inimitable Clara Haskil: I'm not sure whether I like it or not. It's very understated - not nearly as dramatic as it could be. What does everyone else think?

Bobby's father was someone who needed a swift kick in the pants in the comics, so I felt obliged to keep him that way. We'll see what happens over Easter.

April 7, 2022 Today fucking sucked. Not that it’s a fucking surprise, of course. I mean, what the fucking hell else would you expect the day after one is telepathically violated? Well, I did it. I went to each of my three classes and talked through what happened with my students, even the ones outside of Quentin’s class. They had all heard about what happened by now, and I needed to address it. Emma supervised, as much because she was worried about me as because

I was in a C.P.E. Bach sort of mood tonight, and I came across this little gem performance of one of his symphonies, the Symphony in E flat Wq.179, composed in 1760. This is one of the nine so-called 'Berlin Symphonies' composed while in the employ of Frederick the Great, who neglected Bach as no more than just a household function. These symphonies were not composed for presentation at court, but rather for the intimate circle of the composer's appreciative friends and colleagues. Listen for the unstable tonality and unstable emotional tenor of the opening movement. It's all jagged edges and sudden shifts, with a frenetic energy that even comes through in the more introspective, quiet moments. It sinks right into the slow movement, which seems more intent on being an uncertain calm rather than a soothing balm following all that instability. The last movement that follows has a jubilant hunting type motif and has a lot of thematic variety while maintaining that triplet hunting feel. This symphony also shows the level of increased variety in orchestration that would develop as the Classical era wore on with Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and their contemporaries - it shows early use of 'classical style' winds, though not the most creative use of their abilities here. This was the influence of the French opera orchestra of Lully, Charpentier, Rameau, and later Gluck, and to a lesser extent developments in Italy.

I don't think John would want the solution to be artificial, like a mind wipe of all the students. I think he's identified that being real with them about what happened will earn him more respect than just ignoring it. Besides, if Emma hadn't already acted the cat will be out of the bag and the whole school will know. News and gossip like that travels fast. It takes bravery to be vulnerable, but speaking your truth can be an affirming and positive way of processing the emotions and consequences. We shall see. Oh, Quentin will be spending a while locked up in a power dampening cell, no worries there. But what happens after they let him out again?

April 1, 2022 It’s my birthday today. Yes, I’m a fucking April Fool’s baby. I’ve never been able to figure out who the joke was on, though. My parents? Me? Whatever. My horoscope in the paper this morning said that a long-seated problem will come to a resolution this year. Given my life, it’s a crapshoot to think of what problem that could be. Will Dom finally be out of my life? Bobby and I had already patched things up and embarked on a new adventure togethe

March 30, 2021 So we did end up going to New York, after all. We explained to Liam that we wanted to do something fun to get to spend time together and get to know one another better, so we were going to go on a vacation to New York City. Liam was excited to take his first real vacation. He had no idea what New York was like, other than what he’d seen in a couple of kids’ movies that his mother had allowed him to watch. But he really wanted to see Central Park and the Sta

April 6, 2022 Today was a fucking nightmare. A complete and utter disaster. I am not sure what the fallout will be for my mental health yet, but once again here I am feeling utterly violated and full of despair. I am angry, too. Angry at Emma for putting me in a position where this could happen, after all of the shit I’d gone through with Dom. So Quentin Quire has been a problem since day one of my return to teaching, right? But I thought I mostly had him and his

Haydn wrote over a hundred trios for viola, cello and baryton, a member of the viol family with a set of sympathetic resonating strings. These trios represent one of the most explored and highly developed genres of his early career, and many were designed for performance for amateurs with shorter and less technically demanding movements than his later symphonies and string quartets. They are a delight for the ear.

Friedrich Kuhlau (1786-1832) was a Danish composer and pianist, a figure in the 'Danish Golden Age'. He introduced many of Beethoven's works to Danish audiences in Copenhagen. He had a considerable output of compositions, but sadly the true extent of his oeuvre is lost - everything unpublished was lost in a house fire, and thought to be a much larger output than the 200 published works he left behind for us to enjoy. He composed in many genres, including opera, but it is his piano sonatinas and sonatas that I know him best for - his music is fun, humourous and a joy to play for late intermediate and early advanced students.

This was really touching. Thanks so much for sharing it.

Ugh, I love it. Thanks so much for this story.

Mood.