Constructing vacation

We've just begun our two weeks off between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the summer season (we have a week of outdoor concerts - Symphony for the Cities - before a month of Sommerfest). Sam's spending his vacation playing and coaching at Apple Hill. Mine was going to be a working vacation as well, but the set of concerts I was scheduled to guest conduct this week were scrubbed because the hosting orchestra very unfortunately had to cancel its summer season.

So, I find myself with an unscheduled week (unheard of!), which I guess I could spend sleeping in, eating takeout and playing XBox...or maybe learning Ariadne auf Naxos...but I'm really trying to get away from working/studying all the time - the brain needs to be stimulated in different ways, after all...

So, I've undertaken a construction project; begun yesterday and to continue through the next several days - I'm building a new shower in our master bathroom (and not by myself, fortunately; my husband Paul actually built said master bathroom from scratch 2 years ago, from wiring to plumbing to construction to toilet installation, so you could say he's pretty handy!). Here's the progress from yesterday:



The framing is done and the first few bits of cementboard are up. It's pretty time intensive work in close quarters, and a very long 10-hour day. What helps us while away the time (besides arguing whether the studs are plumb or not) is listening to our iPods on shuffle; we started yesterday with Paul's machine and its 3207 tracks.

I'm always curious what music people listen to, and the shuffle option on an iPod is perhaps the best way to get a cross section of someone's musical choices. So, here is the first in a series of musical musings on select iPod tracks (to accompany my construction photos.)

Day 1: Mahler 4, 3rd movement (which, incidentally, was preceded by Public Enemy's "Burn, Hollywood, burn")

Let me begin by saying I'm one of those people who love Mahler. Sam's written about people of my ilk and those who wouldn't think of sitting through a Mahler Symphony.

So, let me set the scene; we are drilling in cement board, and Mahler comes on. It's a quiet opening, barely audible over the screeching of the electric drill, but the tune was unmistakeable, the long-spinning string melody, and I had to stop construction and listen to the whole thing (it clocks in around 20 minutes - my husband was none too happy to be left alone with the cement board for so long). I remember how in college I would put on recordings of Mahler symphonies and absolutely wallow in them, in the true sense of the word - there is something immediately visceral about Mahler which compels me to emotionally wade into his music and which precludes participation in any other activity.

I have a theory that there are Mahler people and Bruckner people. I am absolutely not a Bruckner person (in fact, he's probably one of the few composers I really cannot conduct.) Both composer tend to be long-winded and grandiose. But for me, Bruckner, with his "cathedral of sound" and four-square phrasing, is too above earthly concerns, inhabiting an elevated spiritual space which seems utterly removed from the complexities of real life. Mahler, in contrast, seems obsessed (and often, manically depressed) by temporal matters in a way that speaks directly to my sense of our impenetrable and untidy existence. Bruckner gives us the metaphysical uplift; Mahler gives us the physical world, but in such a transcendent way.

My husband, the horn player, admits to enjoy playing Bruckner - but given a choice, he would listen to Mahler. I wonder if there are others who make this distinction?