Just attended my first faculty meeting

To say it was a bizarre experience is putting it mildly. Three hours of technical (administrative) conversations and discussions. And did I mention it was all “auf Deutsch?” To say that I only got a fraction of it is puting it mildly. I seemed to get a sense of the major theme of the discussion, but to say I got all the ins and outs would be a flat-out lie. I recognized many words in isolation, but absorbing whole sentences in context? Not so much.

I suspect that this will be what I will need to use as my yardstick for determining my progress with the German language. The more of that meeting I understand, the better off I’ll be. (No real surprise there, I suppose.)

It's not every day

That you get to take part in a workshop held in a fortress. I recently attended a workshop in a town called Würzburg; the workshop was held in the Festung Marianberg. The facility is the site of what used to be a fortress; the outsides of the buildings--as well as the cobblestone paving--clearly have the well-worn look of structures that have been around for centuries; on the other hand, the insides look like they’ve been recently renovated, and the furniture thankfully was a far cry from that of medieval times.

Euros and cents

One of the more mind-boggling aspects of life in Germany is the banking system--and how relatively open everything is. It’s rather surprising, actually, given how closely guarded privacy is, how liberal people are with respect to giving away financial information. Pretty much all payments are handled using wire transfers, which means you have to provide your account and routing number. It’s not that you don’t do this in the US as well (after all, it’s on every check that you write), but it’s not quite as blatantly obvious that you’re doing so.

In addition, there’s something odd about not needing to use PIN numbers at an ATM machine--it’s very disturbing, at least to someone who has become used to typing ever-longer PINs and passphrases.

But again, given how much German law is geared toward privacy, it’s surprising how much life is actually getting in the way of keeping things private.

The pause between movements

I attended my second concert in Aachen tonight. (My first was during one of my two interviews for the position I’ve just taken.) It was an up-and-coming quartet, one of those quartets invariably named after the first violinist.

A lot of thoughts ran through my head as I watched them perform the fifteenth quartets by both Beethoven and Schubert. Some observations were purely musical, as the quartet struggled mightily with the Beethoven but flew nearly effortlessly through the Schubert. My take on this is that the late quartets and sonatas are to Beethoven what the late song cycles (Winterreise and Schwanengesang) are to Schubert: impossibly personal works that have become universally beloved. However, because there is so much of their composers in them–their struggles and fears, loves and hopes, faith and frustration–that it requires that the performers have lived the works.

There is so much more to this music that is completely lost simply by playing it through. It’s one of the reasons why I resisted doing Winterreise for a recital I gave as a graduate student. I knew I could handle the tongue-trippingly large amount of German, and the range really wouldn’t have been a problem. However, my lack of experience in the world–having only been a child and living in the ivory tower for the better part of a decade–was significant enough that I didn’t think I could connect with the piece in a way that would allow me to do it justice. While for the audience it might have been a great recital to hear, I don’t believe that I would want to have just gone out their to sing the notes. I wouldn’t have done justice to Schubert’s legacy if I had.

Other thoughts were somewhat more random and fleeting:

• This might have been the first time I’ve ever heard a string quartet in which the violist was the most naturally expressive member of the quartet. The violinists and cellist were too busy emoting, and I think to an extent this came across in the performance, as things got rather ragged. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the fast movement of the Beethoven, where I think things nearly got completely unglued.
• I’ve never heard more collective throat-clearing after a movement than I did in this concert. Practically every movement, and especially the long opening movement of the Schubert, was followed by a rather spectacular bout of expectoration. It got to the point where it was downright funny. I was certainly laughing, and I know the people sitting around me were laughing, too. (Even though I don’t speak that much German yet, I can still recognize ein lachenden Mann when I hear one.)
• Whoever said that classical music was dying out is probably mistaken. A good chunk of the respectable audience (for 6:00 on a Sunday evening) were students and young adults.
• Has no one attempted to arrange the slow movement of the Beethoven for a cappella chorus, like Barber’s “Agnus Dei?” (Perhaps it’s just a matter of finding the right words.)

But getting back to the title of this post–what of “the pause between movements.” As I mentioned above, at this particular concert, it was quite disruptive. In a way, that is being mirrored in my real life, with a very turbulent transition between the last movement (my life in New Mexico) and the next (my life here in Germany). I hope that it is just a momentary thing, and that I–like a good musician–can put that behind me, and just move on without letting it get to me.