There once was a man named Picard
Who was fond of quoting the bard
He flew to the the skies
On the Enterprise
And we hold him in high regard.
On board was an android called Data
A pretty darn good debater
He was really in
to playing the violin
Or so said a spectator.
Will Riker was Number One
He really had lots of fun
He played the trombone
With wonderful tone
To Picard he was like a son.
They explored every star
Checked them out from afar
They had a great trip
In the best ever ship
And will always be remembered.
Saturday, 23 May 2020
Wednesday, 20 May 2020
Opera trivia
OK, so who wrote the most operas? Which is the longest opera? What is my favourite opera?
There are many who believe that opera is the supreme musical and theatrical art form - gesamptkunstwerk, as the Germans say. Wagner was certainly of the opinion that opera should be more than just the "monstrosities" of Grand Opera and Bel Canto, with its emphasis on bravura singing and "meaningless plots". Take that, Guiseppe Verdi! Although for meaningless plots try watching Richard's final opera, Parsifal.
Wagner was certainly a competitor for the longest opera, Die Meistersinger von Nűrnberg coming in at over 5 hours. Of course, some might consider his Ring cycle (18 hours) of four operas as really one gigantic work.
But Wagner was a mere novice in comparison with 20th century composers. Karlheinz Stockhausen composed his Licht cycle of 7 operas, subtitled Die sieben Tage der Woche (The Seven Days of the Week), totalling 29 hours. Suffice to say, not many performances have occurred. But the winner is...
Robert Wilson's The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin, listed by Guinness World Records as the longest single opera ever performed, at 15 hours and 15 minutes. My guess is that, at this very moment, there is an American composer trapped in a White House basement, tapping away at his keyboard and writing "Trump - the Opera", coming in at 15 hours and 16 minutes, enabling our hero to say "I am the longest. The very longest. So long." (and I think we can all echo those last two words)
Who composed the most operas? Many would cite Donizetti at 75. But the Austrian Wenzel Müller (1767-1835) apparently wrote 166. There's one for the pub quiz.
Verdi's La Traviata, definitely not on Wagner's Spotify playlist, was cited by OperaBase in 2016 as being the most performed opera, with 4,190 to that point. A distant second was the opera most people would guess at for the title was Mozart's Magic Flute, with a mere 3,310. Karlheinz, you have no chance...
My favourite opera? It has to be Wagner. I enjoy the pre-Ring and post-Ring operas (to be fair, they are a bit intermingled so don't pick me up on chronology) more than the Ring itself. I absolutely love the music of Parsifal but the plot is drivel. So it has to be Tristan und Isolde.
Thanks for reading; feel free to share your favourites in the Comments.
There are many who believe that opera is the supreme musical and theatrical art form - gesamptkunstwerk, as the Germans say. Wagner was certainly of the opinion that opera should be more than just the "monstrosities" of Grand Opera and Bel Canto, with its emphasis on bravura singing and "meaningless plots". Take that, Guiseppe Verdi! Although for meaningless plots try watching Richard's final opera, Parsifal.
Wagner was certainly a competitor for the longest opera, Die Meistersinger von Nűrnberg coming in at over 5 hours. Of course, some might consider his Ring cycle (18 hours) of four operas as really one gigantic work.
But Wagner was a mere novice in comparison with 20th century composers. Karlheinz Stockhausen composed his Licht cycle of 7 operas, subtitled Die sieben Tage der Woche (The Seven Days of the Week), totalling 29 hours. Suffice to say, not many performances have occurred. But the winner is...
Robert Wilson's The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin, listed by Guinness World Records as the longest single opera ever performed, at 15 hours and 15 minutes. My guess is that, at this very moment, there is an American composer trapped in a White House basement, tapping away at his keyboard and writing "Trump - the Opera", coming in at 15 hours and 16 minutes, enabling our hero to say "I am the longest. The very longest. So long." (and I think we can all echo those last two words)
Who composed the most operas? Many would cite Donizetti at 75. But the Austrian Wenzel Müller (1767-1835) apparently wrote 166. There's one for the pub quiz.
Verdi's La Traviata, definitely not on Wagner's Spotify playlist, was cited by OperaBase in 2016 as being the most performed opera, with 4,190 to that point. A distant second was the opera most people would guess at for the title was Mozart's Magic Flute, with a mere 3,310. Karlheinz, you have no chance...
My favourite opera? It has to be Wagner. I enjoy the pre-Ring and post-Ring operas (to be fair, they are a bit intermingled so don't pick me up on chronology) more than the Ring itself. I absolutely love the music of Parsifal but the plot is drivel. So it has to be Tristan und Isolde.
Thanks for reading; feel free to share your favourites in the Comments.
Monday, 18 May 2020
Symphony trivia
Ever since Beethoven write 9 symphonies, that has been the benchmark for many later composers.
Of course, before then symphonies were two a penny - Haydn wrote 104 (or so; some say 106, but there are 104 numbered ones); that's 3 a year between 1759 (no. 1) and 1795 (no. 104). One can only imagine Beethoven in 1824, after finishing his 9th, thinking "only another 95 to go..."
Plenty of 9ers then followed - Dvorak, Bruckner, Mahler, Vaughan Williams come to mind easily. Schubert completed 7, numbered 1-6 and 9, with an unfinished no. 8. No. 7 exists in draft and part orchestration. There are various unfinished symphonies, which well-meaning musicians "finished". Nice work if you can get it.
There is (or probably was) the "Curse of the Ninth" superstition, that a composer would die after writing nine symphonies. It didn't stop Dmitri Shostakovitch powering through to 15.
Wagner wrote one symphony and then gave up; writing operas was easier. If you switch off the vocals they sound like symphonies.
People like Brahms (4), Mendelssohn (5), Tchaikovsky (6), Elgar (2), Copland (3) and Sibelius (7) were a little more discerning - or maybe scared of the curse.
Berlioz wrote 4 but gave them names rather than numbers.
Schoenberg wrote 2 chamber symphonies but then decided he only needed 12 notes for the rest of his output.
Of course, before then symphonies were two a penny - Haydn wrote 104 (or so; some say 106, but there are 104 numbered ones); that's 3 a year between 1759 (no. 1) and 1795 (no. 104). One can only imagine Beethoven in 1824, after finishing his 9th, thinking "only another 95 to go..."
Plenty of 9ers then followed - Dvorak, Bruckner, Mahler, Vaughan Williams come to mind easily. Schubert completed 7, numbered 1-6 and 9, with an unfinished no. 8. No. 7 exists in draft and part orchestration. There are various unfinished symphonies, which well-meaning musicians "finished". Nice work if you can get it.
There is (or probably was) the "Curse of the Ninth" superstition, that a composer would die after writing nine symphonies. It didn't stop Dmitri Shostakovitch powering through to 15.
Wagner wrote one symphony and then gave up; writing operas was easier. If you switch off the vocals they sound like symphonies.
People like Brahms (4), Mendelssohn (5), Tchaikovsky (6), Elgar (2), Copland (3) and Sibelius (7) were a little more discerning - or maybe scared of the curse.
Berlioz wrote 4 but gave them names rather than numbers.
Schoenberg wrote 2 chamber symphonies but then decided he only needed 12 notes for the rest of his output.
Sunday, 17 May 2020
R
If I have 2 children, they each have 2, those 2 have 2 and so on, how many generations of Grants will there be before the Grant population reaches one million? I believe the answer is 20; 2 to the power 20 = 1,048,576. So that's about 600 years.
If I have 3 children, they each have 3, those 3 have 3 and so on, how many generations of Grants will there be before the Grant population reaches one million? Now it's only 13 generations; 400 years.
So I've been slacking, and my grandkids need to sharpen up if we are to get there any time soon.
Obviously this assumes we are all still around to enjoy our millionth family member. So maybe a bit flawed.
But if ten people re-tweet one of Donald Trump's tweets, and so on, how long would it take for everyone in the USA to have read the tweet? There are just under 400 million people in the US, so just 9 iterations of the power of ten are needed; that could be just 9 days! Add one more day and the whole world has seen it! Such is the power of social media that attracts the attention of demagogues and advertising executives.
Now, if 2 people read my blog and only one of them recommends it to someone else and so on, how long will it take for there to be no readers? Given that there is no such thing as half a person, very quickly. However, if I publish a second post and the original readers (so enthralled by the original post) each recommend it to one different person, then the readership expands at...some rate or other (my A Level Maths is pretty rusty now). In my case, quality is paramount; in Trump's case, quantity is everything.
The reproduction rate (R) matters in the case of COVID-19 and other viruses. The PM told us last Sunday that R was estimated at that time to be between 0.5 and 0.9. This in itself is not very helpful, given that 0.5 (my pessimistic blog R above) would eradicate the virus in the UK in 16 months, statistically, whereas a rate of 0.9 would take over 8 years.
Note the word "estimate". How do you know that one person with the virus will infect, on average, say 0.75 people? In short, "know" is the wrong word. You would only "know" if you tested every person in the country every day. However, mathematicians will use sample data to give estimates for the whole population so contact tracing, which has apparently been very successful in some Asian countries, can give good quality data. If you identify 1,000 people who have the virus and trace all of their recent contacts and test those, you will in fact have a good idea of the reproduction rate.
There are, of course, many problems with this. For us in the UK, the lack of effective contact tracing is undoubtedly problematic; perhaps the imminent use of a contact tracing app will help, perhaps it won't. I'll certainly give it a try. One of the most significant problems may be that R may be higher in highly dense city populations, e.g. New York, than in isolated rural communities. So the government has talked about the possibility of different rates of relieving the lockdown in, say, Cornwall and in London.
But at the moment there are pressures for easing the lockdown protocols for such as schools and businesses - for different reasons. Evidence is presented to politicians regarding the effects of this easing but no-one will really know what will happen until it happens. I would be more comfortable about schools resuming if there were widespread tests for both teachers and pupils. As the head of the World Health organisation said back in March, 'Our key message is: test, test, test'. I'm not sure we listened soon enough.
If we are doing 100,000 tests a day on average, how long before the whole population of the UK has been tested? Nearly two years. And the test results will be out of date after a day, so the only answer would be test everyone every day. Is that practicable? Why not? In any case, start with schoolkids.
If I have 3 children, they each have 3, those 3 have 3 and so on, how many generations of Grants will there be before the Grant population reaches one million? Now it's only 13 generations; 400 years.
So I've been slacking, and my grandkids need to sharpen up if we are to get there any time soon.
Obviously this assumes we are all still around to enjoy our millionth family member. So maybe a bit flawed.
But if ten people re-tweet one of Donald Trump's tweets, and so on, how long would it take for everyone in the USA to have read the tweet? There are just under 400 million people in the US, so just 9 iterations of the power of ten are needed; that could be just 9 days! Add one more day and the whole world has seen it! Such is the power of social media that attracts the attention of demagogues and advertising executives.
Now, if 2 people read my blog and only one of them recommends it to someone else and so on, how long will it take for there to be no readers? Given that there is no such thing as half a person, very quickly. However, if I publish a second post and the original readers (so enthralled by the original post) each recommend it to one different person, then the readership expands at...some rate or other (my A Level Maths is pretty rusty now). In my case, quality is paramount; in Trump's case, quantity is everything.
The reproduction rate (R) matters in the case of COVID-19 and other viruses. The PM told us last Sunday that R was estimated at that time to be between 0.5 and 0.9. This in itself is not very helpful, given that 0.5 (my pessimistic blog R above) would eradicate the virus in the UK in 16 months, statistically, whereas a rate of 0.9 would take over 8 years.
Note the word "estimate". How do you know that one person with the virus will infect, on average, say 0.75 people? In short, "know" is the wrong word. You would only "know" if you tested every person in the country every day. However, mathematicians will use sample data to give estimates for the whole population so contact tracing, which has apparently been very successful in some Asian countries, can give good quality data. If you identify 1,000 people who have the virus and trace all of their recent contacts and test those, you will in fact have a good idea of the reproduction rate.
There are, of course, many problems with this. For us in the UK, the lack of effective contact tracing is undoubtedly problematic; perhaps the imminent use of a contact tracing app will help, perhaps it won't. I'll certainly give it a try. One of the most significant problems may be that R may be higher in highly dense city populations, e.g. New York, than in isolated rural communities. So the government has talked about the possibility of different rates of relieving the lockdown in, say, Cornwall and in London.
But at the moment there are pressures for easing the lockdown protocols for such as schools and businesses - for different reasons. Evidence is presented to politicians regarding the effects of this easing but no-one will really know what will happen until it happens. I would be more comfortable about schools resuming if there were widespread tests for both teachers and pupils. As the head of the World Health organisation said back in March, 'Our key message is: test, test, test'. I'm not sure we listened soon enough.
If we are doing 100,000 tests a day on average, how long before the whole population of the UK has been tested? Nearly two years. And the test results will be out of date after a day, so the only answer would be test everyone every day. Is that practicable? Why not? In any case, start with schoolkids.
Friday, 15 May 2020
Singalong to Brexit
Where has all the Brexit gone, long time passing?
Where has all the Brexit gone, long time ago?
Where has all the Brexit gone?
Old white men have chosen it
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the young hopes gone, long time passing?
Where have all the young hopes gone, long time ago?
Where have all the young hopes gone?
Gone for young guys everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the Germans gone, long time passing?
Where have all the Spanish gone, long time ago?
Where have all the Polish gone?
Gone with Belgians everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the Blairites gone, long time passing?
Where have all the Cam'rons gone, long time ago?
Where have all the LibDems gone?
Gone to Europe, everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where has Nigel Farage gone, long time passing?
Where has Boris Johnson gone, long time ago?
Where has Dom'nic Cummings gone?
Celebrating, everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Acknowledgements to Dan, who reminded me Brexit still exists, and apologies to the late Pete Seeger. And not wishing to demean the spirit of the original.
Where has all the Brexit gone, long time ago?
Where has all the Brexit gone?
Old white men have chosen it
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the young hopes gone, long time passing?
Where have all the young hopes gone, long time ago?
Where have all the young hopes gone?
Gone for young guys everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the Germans gone, long time passing?
Where have all the Spanish gone, long time ago?
Where have all the Polish gone?
Gone with Belgians everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the Blairites gone, long time passing?
Where have all the Cam'rons gone, long time ago?
Where have all the LibDems gone?
Gone to Europe, everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where has Nigel Farage gone, long time passing?
Where has Boris Johnson gone, long time ago?
Where has Dom'nic Cummings gone?
Celebrating, everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Acknowledgements to Dan, who reminded me Brexit still exists, and apologies to the late Pete Seeger. And not wishing to demean the spirit of the original.
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