Yet again, it's near freezing here, and there is frost...

In places, or was, two or three hours ago. Quite splendid, out walking in the night before Dawn and in the morning light. It is again a feria, a day without a saint's feast appointed in the Calendar, although on such days a priest would have the option of celebrating what is called a 'votive Mass' i.e. one using the formulary of a feast of Our Lord, Our Lady etc. There is no such option in the recitation of the Office (although today I added the officium defunctorum, the Office of the Dead, as on most Fridays). The sanctoral offices tend to be rather more brief than the ferial ones, ahem; the Friday ferial office at Matins is e.g. 12 Psalms and three lessons (from the first book of Maccabees at this time of year) with their responsoria.

The Eugene Symphony Orchestra people have decided to make available recordings of past concerts, which is welcome. They will be free to watch and listen to on the announced date (the first is Sunday, November 29, at 1500) and then will thereafter be accessible by subscription ($25 each month or ~$300 upfront). 

Will make only the one observation now: for ~$17 per month, one can access the season's concerts via livestreams and everything in the library (going back even to the period 1966-1979 with the conductor Herbert van Karajan, with complete seasons from 2008) at the Berlin Philharmonic. 

Well, a second observation. This streaming availability seems to be the 2020-2021 season. I hope not.

Later on, am going to try to catch Rossini's Petite messe solennelle from Olomouc, I think, performed by the Philharmonic Choir Brno, recorded on my birthday last month, if I can successfully navigate to it and if the audio is available; sometimes I have to fuss with the VPN, not that I recall what I had to do the last time I listened to a concert from the Czech Republic. There it is: Malá slavnostní mše at 2000 their time. Am getting access to the audio of specific programs but not to what looks like it ought to be the current stream of 'on air' material. Maybe at 1100 tapping the 'Koncert klassika' button will work to get me to the Rossini-- it is a recording, after all, not a livestream.

The stream from the Vltava re-broadcast of Rossini's Petite messe solennelle is working perfectly. Of course I forgot to turn it on until it had reached the Glorificamus Te; had been listening to the Berlin Philharmonic's performance of Paul Hindemith's Der Schwanendreher from the 10th. No, I hadn't any idea what the German dreher means; the first part means 'of swans'. What is a swan turner?

The Wikipedia article on the Hindemith work says that a 'swan turner' is exactly what it says: in mediaeval days, a servant who turned swans on the roasting spit. But in the Hindemittian 'program', it (evidently; I didn't read the entire page) refers to a wandering minstrel, e.g. a hurdy-gurdy player.

 

The Dictionary supplies this citation, although nothing specifically for the phrase 'swan turner', not that I see, anyway. The screenshot is legible if one clicks it; not sure how the miniature happened. Am using the Brave browser ad experimentum, but have to go back to Firefox for the screenshot app. Hmm. 

It seems that there are more intelligent and less intelligent squirrels; I might be observing the effects of experience, however. The peanut skid across the surface between its front legs, under its body, between its back legs, and off the edge of the lid (it is an old cooler that sits beneath the deck). It looked up, it looked to its left, and to its right, and then turned around and looked behind it, eventually peering over the edge. I ended its puzzlement by tossing out another nut. There are bright squirrels out there that better understand this phenomenon of the moving peanut, however imprecise their grasp of the actual succession of causes. 

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