Vivaldi Quotes

And you listen to some of that meticulous Mozart stuff and Vivaldi and you realize that they knew that too. They knew when to leave one note just hanging up there where it illegally belongs and let it dangle in the wind and turn a dead body into a living beauty.

That's how it is, Rocamadour: in Paris we're like fungus, we grow on the railings of staircases, in dark rooms with greasy smells, where people make love all the time and then fry some eggs and put on Vivaldi records, light cigarettes... and outside there are all sorts of things, the windows open onto the air and it all begins with a sparrow or a gutter, it rains a lot here, rocamadour, much more than in the country, and things get rusty... we don't have many clothes, we get along with so few, a good overcoat, some shoes to keep the rain out, we're very dirty, everybody is dirty and good-looking in Paris, Rocamadour, the beds smell of night and deep sleep, dust and books underneath.

Breakfast! My favorite meal- and you can be so creative. I think of bowls of sparkling berries and fresh cream, baskets of Popovers and freshly squeezed orange juice, thick country bacon, hot maple syrup, panckes and French toast - even the nutty flavor of Irish oatmeal with brown sugar and cream. Breaksfast is the place I splurge with calories, then I spend the rest of the day getting them off! I love to use my prettiest table settings - crocheted placemats with lace-edged napkins and old hammered silver. And whether you are inside in front of a fire, candles burning brightly on a wintery day - or outside on a patio enjoying the morning sun - whether you are having a group of friends and family, a quiet little brunch for two, or an even quieter little brunch just for yourself, breakfast can set the mood and pace of the whole day. And Sunday is my day. Sometimes I think we get caught up in the hectic happenings of the weeks and months and we forget to take time out to relax. So one Sunday morning I decided to do things differently - now it's gotten to be a sort of ritual! This is what I do: at around 8:30 am I pull myself from my warm cocoon, fluff up the pillows and blankets and put some classical music on the stereo. Then I'm off to the kitchen, where I very calmly (so as not to wake myself up too much!) prepare my breakfast, seomthing extra nice - last week I had fresh pineapple slices wrapped in bacon and broiled, a warm croissant, hot chocolate with marshmallows and orange juice. I put it all on a tray with a cloth napkin, my book-of-the-moment and the "Travel" section of the Boston Globe and take it back to bed with me. There I spend the next two hours reading, eating and dreaming while the snowflakes swirl through the treetops outside my bedroom window. The inspiring music of Back or Vivaldi adds an exquisite elegance to the otherwise unruly scene, and I am in heaven. I found time to get in touch with myself and my life and i think this just might be a necessity! Please try it for yourself, and someone you love.

Oh don’t concern yourself about that,” Cassandra said earnestly. “Pandora’s not going to marry at all. And I certainly wouldn’t want a man who would scorn me just because my sister was a strumpet.” “I like that word,” Pandora mused. “Strumpet. It sounds like a saucy musical instrument.” “It would liven up an orchestra,” Cassandra said. “Wouldn’t you like to hear the Vivaldi Double Strumpet Concerto in C?

All their lovers' talk began with the phrase "After the war". After the war, when we're married, shall we live in Italy? There are nice places. My father thinks I wouldn't like it, but I would. As long as I'm with you. After the war, if we have a girl, can we call her Lemoni? After the war, if we've a son, we've got to call him Iannis. After the war, I'll speak to the children in Greek, and you can seak to them in Italian, and that way they'll grow bilingual. After the war, I'm going to write a concerto, and I'll dedicate it to you. After the war, I'm going to train to be a doctor, and I don't care if they don't let women in, I'm still going to do it. After the war I'll get a job in a convent, like Vivaldi, teaching music, and all the little girls will fall in love with me, and you'll be jealous. After the war, let's go to America, I've got relatives in Chicago. After the war we won't bring our children with any religion, they can make their own minds up when they're older. After the war, we'll get our own motorbike, and we'll go all over Europe, and you can give concerts in hotels, and that's how we'll live, and I'll start writing poems. After the war I'll get a mandola so that I can play viola music. After the war I'll love you, after the war, I'll love you, I'll love you forever, after the war.

The sky on a clear night is a living, pulsating thing. The stars are like musical notes turned to light, and, like notes, they shimmer and swell and fade and fall. The painters have never captured it—but they never will until some painter teaches his colors to dance.

Desire gives pain to the heart from which springs both hope and worry. Out of suspicion I make mistakes that grow into lasting ills. And from my stubborn delusions come a thousand deceits, which later I accept as damage I’ve done.

I gauge the closeness of my friends even now by how helplessly they can make me laugh.

Evening Concert, Sainte-Chapelle" The celebrated windows flamed with light directly pouring north across the Seine; we rustled into place. Then violins vaunting Vivaldi's strident strength, then Brahms, seemed to suck with their passionate sweetness, bit by bit, the vigor from the red, the blazing blue, so that the listening eye saw suddenly the thick black lines, in shapes of shield and cross and strut and brace, that held the holy glowing fantasy together. The music surged; the glow became a milk, a whisper to the eye, a glimmer ebbed until our beating hearts, our violins were cased in thin but solid sheets of lead.

Visur mes ieškome savęs. Mums patinka tik tos knygos, kuriose randame užfiksuotą savo pačių pasaulio viziją arba išgyvenimą, pasaulį, kurį mes patys būtumėm norėję sukurti ir jame gyventi, tai, ką mes būtumėm norėję pasakyti, dalintis su kitais. Mums patinka tik tokie paveikslai, kuriuos mes norėtumėm būti nutapę, tik tokia muzika, kurią mes norėtumėm būti sukomponavę. Dėl to dabar aš „norėčiau“ būti parašęs Stendhalio La Chartreuse de Varme, Tolstojaus Anna Karenina, Prousto A la recherche du temps perdu, Th. Manno Der Tod in Venedig ir Der Zauberberg; sukomponavęs Vivaldi I quattro staggioni, Mozarto Koncertą klarnetui A-Dur (K. 622), Kvintetus G-Moll ir D-Dur (K. 516, 593), nebaigtas Mišias C-Moll (K. 427), Ravelio Le Tombeau de Couperin; nutapęs Watteau L’Enseigne de Geisaint, G. de la Tour (de la Tur) La nativité, kai kuriuos Chardino natiurmortus, Renoiro Le Sentier a travers les champs, Soutine’o Jour de vent à Auxerre. Bet nenorėčiau būti niekieno poezijos autorius.

I found a brief piece of by Antonio Vivaldi around this time which became my ‘Pinhead Mood Music’. Called Al Santo Sepolcro (At The Holy Sepulchre), it opens more like a piece of modern orchestral music, and although it it moves toward Vivaldi’s familiar harmonies, there is always the threat that it will fall back into dissonance. The piece progresses in an exquisite agony, poised on a knife edge between beauty and disfigurement, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. Perfect.

The legends on the tombstones are eventually worn away as the stone is eroded by rain and wind and centuries. Better to slip away quietly after having lived as fully as one can, doing the very best one can with the gifts one has been given.

Many students go through "imposter syndrome" as they try to assimilate into a professional culture.

But she hasn’t done us a favour, because it is Classic FM, and they are playing fucking Vivaldi.

Then, just at the peak of complacency, when it was assumed that the climate of the world had changed forever, when the conductor of the philharmonic played Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and left out an entire movement, and when to children of a young age stories of winter were told as if they were fairy tales, New York was hit by a cataclysmic freeze, and, once again, people huddled together to talk fearfully of the millennium.

That night at eleven she was able to get undressed by being careful. She had found a pair of pajamas earlier and she managed to get them on and to pile her clothes on a chair before getting into bed and passing out. No one had come back by morning. She made scrambled eggs and ate them with two pieces of toast before having her first glass of wine. It was another sunny day. In the living room she found Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” She put it on. Then she began drinking in earnest.

No one had come back by morning. She made scrambled eggs and ate them with two pieces of toast before having her first glass of wine. It was another sunny day. In the living room she found Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” She put it on. Then she began drinking in earnest.

The problem is that the pressure to disprove a stereotype changes what you are about in a situation. It gives you an additional task. In addition to learning new skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking in a schooling situation, or in addition to trying to perform well in a workplace like the women in the high-tech firms, you are also trying to slay a ghost in the room, the negative stereotype and its allegation about you and your group. You are multitasking, and because the stakes involved are high--survival and success versus failure in an area that is important to you--this multitasking is stressful and distracting. ...And when you realize that this stressful experience is probably a chronic feature of the stetting for you, it can be difficult for you to stay in the setting, to sustain your motivation to succeed there. Disproving a stereotype is a Sisyphean task; something you have to do over and over again as long as your are in the domain where the stereotype applies. Jeff seemed to feel this way about Berkeley, that he couldn't find a place there where he could be seen as belonging. When men drop out of quantitative majors in college, it is usually because they have bad grades. But when women drop out of quantitative majors in college it usually has nothing to do with their grades. The culprit, in their case, is not their quantitative skills but, more likely, the prospect of living a significant portion of their lives in a domain where they may forever have to prove themselves--and with the chronic stress that goes with that. This is not an argument against trying hard, or against choosing the stressful path. There is no development without effort; and there is seldom great achievement, or boundary breaking, without stress. And to the benefit of us all, many people have stood up to these pressures...The focus here, instead, is on what has to be gotten out of he way to make these playing fields mere level. People experiencing stereotype threat are already trying hard. They're identified with their performance. They have motivation. It's the extra ghost slaying that is in their way.

If you want to change the behaviors and outcomes associated with social identity—say, too few women in computer science—don’t focus on changing the internal manifestations of the identity, such as values, and attitudes. Focus instead on changing the contingencies to which all of that internal stuff is an adaptation.

I tune the radio to a classical station playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, music I used to run to, a good omen, as I am running to a new life. I once heard that Olympic coaches play baroque music in the locker room before big meets to quell their athletes’ anxiety. I take a deep breath and wish for such a calm to overtake me. Still,

To eat nothing at all is more human than to take a little of what cries out for the appetite of a giant. One servingspoonful of spaetzle is like the opening measures of Vivaldi's Four Seasons: Any man who walks out on either proves he doesn't understand the genre-and he misses the repose of the end. To eat without eating greatly is only to eat by halves. While God gives me meat in due season and the sensibilities with which to relish the gift, I refuse to sit down to eat and rise up only to have picked and fussed my way through the goodness of the earth. My vow, therefore, was beautifully simple: If I ate, I would eat without stint; and of I stinted, I would not eat at all.

You measure life by how much you can laugh.

Hi, looking for a number in Weston, Florida. Is there anything for Magruder?” “How are you spelling that, sir?” “Magruder. M-A-G-R-U-D-E-R.” “Hold the line, sir.” Vivaldi’s Four Seasons started playing for what seemed like an eternity. It was probably only a couple of seconds. Eventually, the woman came back on the line. “Yes, sir, I’ve got one in the town of Weston, Florida.

What pleasure it will give me to see the soul of my soul, The heart of my heart filled with happiness. And if I must be parted from the one I love, I shall spend every moment in sighing and suffering.

I am warned of evils that await me,” continued Vivaldi, musing; “of events that are regularly fulfilled; the being who warns me, crosses my path perpetually, yet, with the cunning of a demon, as constantly eludes my grasp, and baffles my pursuit! It is incomprehensible, by what means he glides thus away from my eye, and fades, as if into air, at my approach! He is repeatedly in my presence, yet is never to be found!

I became an expert in the language of fear. Couples locked arms or reached for each others' hands when they saw me. Some crossed to the other side of the street. People who were on conversations went mute and stared straight ahead, as though avoiding my eyes would save them .. I'd been walking the streets grinning good evening at people who were frightened to death of me. I did violence to them by just being - Brent Staples

by imposing on us certain conditions of life, our social identities can strongly affect things as important as our performances in the classroom and on standardized tests, our memory capacity, our athletic performance, the pressure we feel to prove ourselves, even the comfort level we have with people of different groups—all things we typically think of as being determined by individual talents, motivations, and preferences.

–I'll just play the notes inside my skull alone in the dark where they roam around loose. 'Cause playing like a slave, I'd just step myself straight into a hangman's noose." On Sissieretta Jones, Jess writes: "See, Sissie would know how to let folks into one mask and out through another. She'd even raise a toast to the mask, jokin about whether folk–black and white–really believed that the opera was wearing her as a mask, or if it just tickled them to see her puttin on that white mask of Vivaldi. Was it her voice or someone else's? they'd seem to ask. Well, it was all her. Every note, in whiteface or blackface or in just plain old American, went straight down to her bones. That's what I heard when I truly listened, anyway. She'd pour those opera songs all over her body and then dress herself in the church frock of hymns. She told me one time, that in order to hear her true voice, she'd had to ask herself about her own masks. What kind of mask might I have on? she said. Because let me tell you, most don't even know they're wearing a mask. You've got to know which masks, how many masks you're wearing before you can put it down and see your true self. Those that do, they know just how to slide in and out of it, how to make the world spin inside it and out of it. How to spread their song all over that mask and make it one with the world, no matter how thick or thin the truth in that song might be.

La Paris suntem precum ciupercile, crestem pe balustradele scarilor, prin incaperi intunecoase unde miroase a untura, unde oamenii fac tot timpul dragoste si apoi prajesc niste oua si pun discuri de Vivaldi, isi aprind tigarile si vorbesc ca Horacio si Gregorovios si Wong...iar afara e totul, ferestrele dau spre spatii libere si se incepe cu o vrabie sau o infiltratie, ploua tare mult pe-aici,Rocamadour, si totul rugineste, canalele, picioarele porumbeilor, firele de sarma cu care Horacio face sculpturi.

Jayden’s brain stalled. He just called you fit! the voice shrieked. It was beside itself. He just called you fit! That settles it, he’s gay, gay as a christening robe, now get your head out of the sink and kiss him! “Um,” he said instead. “You get brain freeze under there?

Brent Staples wrote a brilliant essay on this topic called “Just Walk On By: Black Men and Public Space.”50 For years, as Staples walked down city sidewalks and white bodies approached and noticed him, he watched those bodies stiffen, constrict, reposition purses, cross the street, and sometimes run away to avoid him. Eventually Staples developed a strategy of whistling Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” as white people walked near him. This quickly and effectively soothed white bodies. On hearing a Vivaldi melody, they would routinely relax; some people would even start whistling the melody with him.

Faking violin stardom ultimately allowed me to return to what captivated me at four years old when I first heard Vivaldi's "Winter." It wasn't the desire to be seen as talented, or a ticket to the big city, or worldly success, or respect. It wasn't The Money. It was simply this: I loved a song. Playing the role of a famous, world-class violinist allowed me to return to the feeling that playing the violin doesn't require anything more than loving a song. Or anything less. As Mr. Rogers says at the end of the trumpet factory episode, right after he explains that as a kid he pretended he was a songwriter on TV, right before he begins to sing on TV: 'It helps to play about things. It helps you to know how it really feels.

Some years ago, two social psychologists, Edward Jones and Richard Nisbett, argued that when it comes to explaining people's behavior-something like achievement problems, for example there is a big difference between the "observer's perspective"-the perspective of a person observing the behavior-and the "actor's perspective"-the perspective of a person doing the behavior. As observers, Jones and Nisbett said, we're looking at the actor, the person doing the behavior we are trying to explain. Thus the actor dominates our literal and mental visual field, which makes the circumstances to which he is responding less visible to us. In the resulting picture in our minds, the actor sticks out like a sore thumb and the circumstances to which he is responding are obscured from view. Jones and Nisbett held that this picture causes a bias when we try to explain the actor's behavior. We emphasize the things we can see. We emphasize things about the actor-characteristics, traits, and so on-that seem like plausible explanations for her behavior. And we deemphasize, as causes of her behavior, the things we can't see very well, namely, the circumstances to which she is adapting.

And now?[...]The printed word? The book trade, that old carcass tossed here and there by its ravenous jackals? Greedy authors, greedy agents, brainless book chains with their Vivaldi-riddled espresso bars, publishers owned by metallurgy conglomerates[...]And meanwhile language, the human languages we all must use, no longer degraded by the barking murderous coinages of Goebbels and the numskull doublespeak of bureaucratic Communism, is becoming the mellifluous happy-talk of Microsoft and Honda, corporate conspiracies that would turn the world into one big pinball game for child-brained consumers. Is the gorgeous, fork-tongued, edgy English of Shakespeare and Gerard Manley Hopkins, of Charles Dickens and Saul Bellow becoming the binary code for a gray-suited empire directed by men walking along the streets of Manhattan and Hong Kong jabbering into cell phones?

The effective, identity-safe practices "avoid cues that might instantiate a sense of stereotype threat in students and are, instead, aimed at making everyone in the class feel...as valued and contributive...regardless of their ethnic group or gender." [Dorothy Steele] ...The cohering principle is straightforward: they foster a threat-mitigating narrative about one's susceptibility to being stereotyped in the schooling context. And though no single, one-size-fits-all strategy has evolved, the research offers an expanding set of strategies for doing this: establishing trust through demanding but supportive relationships, fostering hopeful narratives about belonging in the setting, arranging informal cross-group conversations to reveal that one's identity is not the sole cause of one's negative experiences in the setting, representing critical abilities as learnable, and using child-centered teaching techniques. More will be known in the years ahead. But what we know now can make a life-affecting difference for many people in many important places.

As graduate programs are supposed to do, this one stressed excellence: the values that defined it, the quality of work that embodied it. They were inspiring to me. But they came in a package—from my vantage point as a solo black, the package of an all-white program. Thus some of the incidental features of being white academics—the preference for dressing down, the love of seemingly all things European, a preference for dry wines, little knowledge of black life or popular culture—got implicitly associated with excellence. Excellence seemed to have an identity, which I didn’t entirely have and worried that I couldn’t get.

Seventeen years ago, wading aimlessly through one campo after another, a pair of green boots brought me to the threshold of a smallish pink edifice. On its wall I saw a plaque saying that Antonio Vivaldi, prematurely born, was baptized in this church. In those days I was still reasonably red-haired; I felt sentimental about bumping into the place of baptism of that “red cleric” who has given me so much joy on so many occasions and in so many godforsaken parts of the world. And I seemed to recall that it was Olga Rudge who had organized the first-ever Vivaldi settimana in this city - as it happened, just a few days before World War II broke out. It took place, somebody told me, in the palazzo of the Countess Polignac, and Miss Rudge was playing the violin. As she proceeded with the piece, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that a gentleman had entered the salone and stood by the door, since all the seats were taken. The piece was long, and now she felt somewhat worried, because she was approaching a passage where she had to turn the page without interrupting her play. The man in the corner of her eye started to move and soon disappeared from her field of vision. The passage grew closer, and her nervousness grew, too. Then, at exactly the point where she had to turn the page, a hand emerged from the left, stretched to the music stand, and slowly turned the sheet. She kept playing and, when the difficult passage was over, lifted her eyes to the left to acknowledge her gratitude. “And that,” Olga Rudge told a friend of mine, “is how I first met Stravinsky.

Stereotype threat, then, is one way our national history seeps into our daily lives. That history leaves us with stereotypes about groups in our society that can be used to judge us as individuals when we’re in situations where those stereotypes apply—in the seat next to a black person on an airplane or interacting with minority students, for example. The white person in that situation will not want to be seen in terms of the stereotype of whites as racially insensitive. And the black person, for his or her part, will not want to be seen in terms of the stereotypes about blacks as aggressive, or as too easily seeing prejudice, and so on. Fighting off these possible perceptions on a long airline flight—or more famously, perhaps, in a school cafeteria—could be more than either party wants to take on. They just want to have lunch or get to Cleveland. Avoidance becomes the simplest solution.

Reducing identity threat is not sufficient to overcome real skill and knowledge deficits in school. To do that, students have to have the opportunity to acquire the relevant skills and knowledge. They need good instruction and the chance to apply themselves to critical material, sometimes for long periods of time. But it’s equally true that for ability-stereotyped students, reducing identity threat is just as important as skill and knowledge instruction. It may not be sufficient, but it is necessary. That is, no amount of instruction, no matter how good it is, can reduce these deficits if it doesn’t also keep identity threat low. Without that, threat will always have first claim on students’ attention and mental resources. So neither approach—providing instructional opportunities or reducing identity threat—is sufficient, by itself, to improve academic performance, especially for ability-stereotyped students. Both are necessary.

As I hope this list of “integration concerns” illustrates, not every identity threat comes from prejudiced people. Think about O’Connor on the Supreme Court before Ginsburg. Many of the contingencies she dealt with had little to do with prejudice among her fellow justices or her staff. Some of them may have been prejudiced, but her problems went beyond that: a Court that was dominated by male sensibilities and referents and that was less sensitive, in its functioning, to the perspectives of women; no critical mass of women with which to give her a sense of belonging on the Court; negative stereotypes about women in the larger society and in the legal world that were available for use in judging her work; the fact that her being the only woman on the Court made her the sole representative of her sex in each Court decision; and so on. O’Connor would have had to deal with these things even if there hadn’t been an iota of sexism in any of the people she worked with.

Negative stereotypes about our identities hover in the air around us. When we are in situations to which these stereotypes are relevant, we understand that we could be judged or treated in terms of them. If we are invested in what we’re doing, we get worried; we try to disprove the stereotype or avoid confirming it. We present ourselves in counter-stereotypical ways. We avoid situations where we have to contend with this pressure. It’s not all-determining, but it persistently, often beneath our awareness, organizes our actions and choices, our lives—like how far we walk down the aisle of an airplane to find a seat, or how well we do on a round of golf, or on an IQ test. We think of ourselves as autonomous individuals. After all, we make choices. But we often forget that we make choices within contexts, always. And pressure tied to our social identities is a component of these contexts. This is difficult to appreciate by reflecting on our experience. And yet, as I’ve have urged throughout this book, it is precisely these pressures that make a social identity real for us. Stereotype threat is a broad fact of life.

But we have, if not our understanding, our own experience, and it feels to me sealed, inviolable, ours. We have a last, deep week together, because Wally is not on morphine yet, because he has just enough awareness, just enough ability to communicate with me. I’m with him almost all day and night- little breaks, for swimming, for walking the dogs. Outside it snows and snows, deeper and deeper; we seem to live in a circle of lamplight. I rub his feet, make him hot cider. All week I feel like we’re taking one another in, looking and looking. I tell him I love him and he says I love you, babe, and then when it’s too hard for him to speak he smiles back at me with the little crooked smile he can manage now, and I know what it means. I play music for him, the most encompassing and quiet I can find: Couperin, Vivaldi, the British soprano Lesley Garret singing arias he loved, especially the duet from Lakme: music of freedom, diving, floating. How can this be written? Shouldn’t these sentences simply be smithereened apart, broken in a hurricane? All that afternoon he looks out at us though a little space in his eyes, but I know he sees and registers: I know that he’s loving us, actively; if I know nothing else about this man, after nearly thirteen years, I know that. I bring all the animals, and then I sit there myself, all afternoon, the lamps on. The afternoon’s so quiet and deep it seems almost to ring, like chimes, a cold, struck bell. I sit into the evening, when he closes his eyes. There is an inaudible roaring, a rush beneath the surface of things, beneath the surface of Wally, who has now almost no surface- as if I could see into him, into the great hurrying current, that energy, that forward motion which is life going on. I was never this close to anyone in my life. His living’s so deep and absolute that it pulls me close to that interior current, so far inside his life. And my own. I know I am going to be more afraid than I have ever been, but right now I am not afraid. I am face to face with the deepest movement in the world, the point of my love’s deepest reality- where he is most himself, even if that self empties out into no one, swift river hurrying into the tumble of rivers, out of individuality, into the great rushing whirlwind of currents. All the love in the world goes with you.

They were linked by the usual shared enthusiasms to which lovers give exaggerated importance: a fondness for Vivaldi and the Beatles;

I don't have any words to describe the sensations that keep me from sleep. Demons, perhaps. A sense of unworthiness so staggering that I could not keep myself upright under its weight. And yet I could not sleep.

Whoever says that girls are kind has never lived among them.

You can find him by following the leaping shadows along the walls of the school corridor, for Father Vivaldi often paces there and waves his arms about.

...quando penso em quais serão minhas companhias no inferno, sinto-me razoavelmente satisfeita de ir pra lá. Estará cheio de pessoas que amei de verdade.

Desconfio que é tão fácil ser infeliz num lugar grande quanto num pequeno, ou sentir-se acorrentada quando se tem a bênção de mil liberdades. Para uma criatura de asas, sentir-se presa à terra; para um pássaro, não perceber que a porta da gaiola está aberta.

É revigorante ser lembrado, de vez em quando, de que, no mundo, não somos mais que partículas que podem ser varridas com a maior facilidade.

...quando em quais serão minhas companhias no inferno, sinto-me razoavelmente satisfeita de ir pra lá. Estará cheio de pessoas que amei de verdade.

As crianças são incapazes de acreditar que um dia, inevitavelmente, se tornarão velhas. Elas têm a característica que eu adoraria saber como recuperar. Mas os velhos - pelo que tenho observado aqui à minha volta em pessoas ainda mais velhas que eu -, os velhos vivem somente de passado. Acho que estou mostrando a minha idade ao escrever estas linhas. O passado! Ou estamos vivendo nele ou nos enganando ao acreditar que ainda somos jovens como éramos então. Envelhecer ainda me parece algo que acontece aos outros, mas nunca vai acontecer comigo.

We sit in the ruin, each reading a book, or three of us read out of four. Three different voices speak to us. We have taught the children to read again this week. Here, where there is no voice, apart from ours, they are desperate for any other. They will even sing to themselves, sometimes. The boy whistles. He makes his voice croak. He sings the same thing again, but breathing in. A bird echoes the first notes of Vivaldi.

How brave, then, were the Vivaldi brothers and their men when they sailed their galleys past the pillars of Hercules and out of recorded history! We do not know in what form disaster finally struck. What we can guess, however, is that the galleys, emergent objects constituted by a heterogeneous engineer, were dissociated into their component parts. The

The experiments that my colleagues and I were doing showed that something generally thought to emanate from an internal capacity associated with social identity - as the level of women's math performance might emanate from women's math ability - could be changed dramatically by changing contingencies of that identity, by changing, in this research, the degree to which test takers were at risk of confirming bad stereotypes about their group. And the phenomena of identity change - "passing" and expatriation - suggested that what we were seeing in the lab was the tip of an iceberg...They suggested that the degree to which a given social identity had any presence in a person's life depended on contingencies, realities down on the ground that the person had to deal with because they had the identity. Take these contingencies away by allowing the person to "pass," or change these contingencies by allowing the person to expatriate out of them, and the whole identity could fall to irrelevance. What did this say about social identity?...Two conclusions seemed unavoidable. First, our social identities are adaptations to the particular situations of our lives, what I am calling identity contingencies. If we didn't need them to help us cope with these circumstances, the perspectives, emotional tendencies, values, ambitions, and habits that make up the dispositional side of our social identities would just gradually leak out of our psyches and be gone. The second conclusion...If you want to change the behavior and outcomes associated with social identity...don't focus on changing the internal manifestations of the identity, such as values, and attitudes. Focus instead on changing the contingencies to which all of that internal stuff is an adaptation.

Will you live with Charity at Eversby Priory?” Cassandra asked. “No,” Helen said quietly. “It will be better for all of us if Charity and I live far away, where no one knows us. Among other things, it will lessen the chance that my disgrace might harm your marriage prospects.” “Oh don’t concern yourself about that,” Cassandra said earnestly. “Pandora’s not going to marry at all. And I certainly wouldn’t want a man who would scorn me just because my sister was a strumpet.” “I like that word,” Pandora mused. “Strumpet. It sounds like a saucy musical instrument.” “It would liven up an orchestra,” Cassandra said. “Wouldn’t you like to hear the Vivaldi Double Strumpet Concerto in C?” “No,” Helen said, smiling reluctantly at her sisters’ irreverence. “Stop it, both of you—I’m trying to be morose and tragic, and you’re making it difficult.

When people began singing again, instead of trying to see the woman, Chiaretta looked at the air in front of the voice, trying to understand how something invisible could be so beautiful.

She daydreamed and made up stories in her head, and the cloister and solitude of the pieta suited her.

The music whirled and flirted with the air, spinning like snowflakes in an alley.

She shut her eyes, her head full of music yearning to be played.

Each note floated over the listeners like a feather held aloft by the breath of angels.

I saw then in her face the spirit of an angel, truthfully

–calling out to the world to forget everything except the sublime.

I understand you, Marco Antonio Guerra said to him. I mean, if I’m right, I think I understand you. You’re like me and I’m like you. We aren’t happy. The atmosphere around us is stifling. We pretend there’s nothing wrong, but there is. What’s wrong? We’re being fucking stifled. You let off steam your own way. I beat the shit out of people or let them beat the shit out of me. But the fights I get into aren’t just any fights, they’re fucking apocalyptic mayhem. I’m going to tell you a secret. Sometimes I go out at night, to bars you can’t even imagine. And I pretend to be a faggot. But not just any kind of faggot: smooth, stuck-up, sarcastic, a daisy in the filthiest pigsty in Sonora. Of course, I don’t have a gay bone in me, I can swear that on the grave of my dead mother. But I pretend that’s what I am. An arrogant little faggot with money who looks down on everyone. And then the inevitable happens. Two or three vultures ask me to step outside. And then the shit kicking begins. I know it and I don’t care. Sometimes they’re the ones who get the worst of it, especially when I have my gun. Other times it’s me. I don’t give a fuck. I need the fucking release. Sometimes my friends, the few friends I have, guys my age who are lawyers now, tell me I should be careful, I’m a time bomb, I’m a masochist. One of them, someone I was really close to, told me that only somebody like me could get away with what I did because I had my father to bail me out. Pure coincidence, that’s all. I’ve never asked my father for a thing. The truth is, I don’t have friends. I don’t want any. At least, I’d rather not have friends who’re Mexicans. Mexicans are rotten inside, did you know? Every last one of them. No one escapes. From the president of the republic to that clown Subcomandante Marcos. If I were Subcomandante Marcos, you know what I’d do? I’d launch an attack with my whole army on any city in Chiapas, so long as it had a strong military garrison. And there I’d sacrifice my poor Indians. And then I’d probably go live in Miami. What kind of music do you like? asked Amalfitano. Classical music, Professor, Vivaldi, Cimarosa, Bach. And what books do you read? I used to read everything, Professor, I read all the time. Now all I read is poetry. Poetry is the one thing that isn’t contaminated, the one thing that isn’t part of the game. I don’t know if you follow me, Professor. Only poetry—and let me be clear, only some of it—is good for you, only poetry isn’t shit.

While Nero had become inured to the sight of traders getting rich (and trying too hard to become sophisticated by turning into wine collectors and opera lovers), his wife had rarely encountered repressed new wealth—the type of people who have felt the sting of indigence at some point in their lives and want to get even by exhibiting their wares. The only dark side of being a trader, Nero often says, is the sight of money being showered on unprepared people who are suddenly taught that Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is “refined” music.

You don't know what to do with the jam jar, the chicken stink, the sinister mountain fog that is everywhere, but the adults pretend to ignore when you are in the room. It seems the only thing you can do is listen for it. You hear it in the four measures of Vivaldi's "Winter" that you can still remember from Sarah and the Squirrel, and once you make the connection between the music and mountain fog you play the notes over and over again inside your head. You paw up the trash-strewn ravine. The sky is low and gray, the color of the cinder blocks the men in your town manufacture from ash and dust. The dirt-filled strawberry jam jar is in your denim coat pocket. Vivaldi is in your head. The music you hear is like the blaze-orange clothing the men wear on the mountainsides while deer hunting in autumn. The music is like a bulletproof vest, a coiled copperhead, a rabies shot. The music is both a warning and a talisman. The music tells you things: You're not imagining this. Better children than you die in the snow for no reason. The music says: What's hidden beneath this picture of strawberry jam? The music says: This isn't a Disney movie. Death doesn't just take the wicked villain. Look at that dirt in the jar. It will take you. It will take everyone, and everyone, and everyone. The music says: What you feel is real. Follow me. Run.

Look, I’m just saying…This,” Darren waved a hand between them, “isn’t going to be fun. I’m not going to be fun. Maybe every now and then I’ll be in the right place in my head to have silly dates out and go to parties with you, but there’s going to be days when I don’t want to know either of us exist, and there’s going to be days when I’m too tired to play because I’ve been up all night destroying my room, and…and I can’t promise…I can’t promise that I won’t. You know. Stop.” Jayden’s breath caught. “Stop, as in…” “As in, chapel, Friday morning, flowers to Granelli and Sons.

By changing the way you give critical feedback, you can dramatically improve minority students' motivation and receptiveness. By improving a group's critical mass in a setting, you can improve its members' trust, comfort, and performance in the setting. By simply fostering intergroup conversations among students from different backgrounds, you can improve minority students' comforts and grades in a setting. By allowing students, especially minority students, to affirm their most valued sense of self, you can improve their grades, even for a long time. By helping students develop a narrative about the setting that explains their frustrations while projecting positive engagement and success in the setting, you can greatly improve their sense of belonging and achievement--which if done at a critical time could redirect the course of their lives.

Vivaldi, as he said this, took his station within the thickest gloom of the arch, which was of considerable depth, and near a flight of steps that was cut in the rock, and ascended to the fortress. His friend stepped close to his side. After a pause of silence, during which Bonarmo was meditating, and Vivaldi was impatiently watching, “Do you really believe,” said the former, “that any effort to detain him would be effectual? He glided past me with a strange facility, it was surely more than human!” “What is it you mean? enquired Vivaldi. “Why, I mean that I could be superstitious. This place, perhaps, infests my mind with congenial gloom, for I find that, at this moment, there is scarcely a superstition too dark for my credulity.

Is power then,” said Vivaldi, “the infallible test of justice? Is it morality to obey where the command is criminal? The whole world have a claim upon the fortitude, the active fortitude of those who are placed as you are, between the alternative of confirming a wrong by your consent, or preventing it by your resistance. Would that your heart expanded towards that world, reverend father!

There can be no degradation, my Lord, where there is no vice,” replied Vivaldi; “and there are instances, pardon me, my Lord, there are some few instances in which it is virtuous to disobey.

No words were exchanged between him and the guard; but on perceiving who were without, he opened the iron gate, and the prisoners, having alighted, passed with the two officials beneath the arch, the guard following with a torch. They descended a flight of broad steps, at the foot of which another iron gate admitted them to a kind of hall; such, however, it at first appeared to Vivaldi, as his eyes glanced through its gloomy extent, imperfectly ascertaining it by the lamp, which hung from the centre of the roof. No person appeared, and a death-like silence prevailed; for neither the officials nor the guard yet spoke; nor did any distant sound contradict the notion, that they were traversing the chambers of the dead. To Vivaldi it occurred, that this was one of the burial vaults of the victims, who suffered in the Inquisition, and his whole frame thrilled with horror.

At some distance from the tribunal stood a large iron frame, which Vivaldi conjectured to be the rack, and near it another, resembling, in shape, a coffin, but, happily, he could not distinguish through the remote obscurity, any person undergoing actual suffering. In the vaults beyond, however, the diabolical decrees of the inquisitors seemed to be fulfilling; for, whenever a distant door opened for a moment, sounds of lamentation issued forth, and men, whom he judged to be familiars, habited like those who stood beside him, were seen passing to and fro within.

That any human being should willingly afflict a fellow being who had never injured, or even offended him; that, unswayed by passion, he should deliberately become the means of torturing him, appeared to Vivaldi nearly incredible!

Here are some musical selections you can play quietly for the fetus. Since these pieces may calm the baby after birth, it’s good to have a small but well-rehearsed repertoire. These are recommended by Dr. F. Rene Van de Carr and musician and retired professor Dr. Donald Shetler. Music for the Royal Fireworks, Handel “Spring,” from The Four Seasons, Vivaldi Air on the G String,J. S. Bach The Brandenburg Concertos, J. S. Bach Canon in D Major, Pachelbel Pictures at an Exhibition, Mussorgsky Slow steady pieces by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, or Vivaldi Popular music by Tom Paxton, Burl Ives, Tom Chapin, and Raffi

Through the rest of the afternoon, through her trip to the market in downtown Kinneret-Among-The-Pines to buy ricotta and listen to the Muzak (today she came through the bead-curtained entrance around bar 4 of the Fort Wayne Settecento Ensemble’s variorum recording of the Vivaldi Kazoo Concerto, Boyd Beaver, soloist);

I can’t believe you’ve never been to a concert before,” Alane says. “Well, I mean, I’ve been to a few orchestral concerts. You know, Bach. Vivaldi. Oh, and Franz Liszt who, as we all know, was quite the heartbreaker back in his day. But as far as contemporary music goes, no. I’ve never been to a concert.

It’s sad, but true: identity threat is not the threat of prejudice alone; it’s the threat of contingencies.

El amor era la más sublime de las sensacoines que podía percibir el ser humano

Tell me Mr. Holmes, Did you play Vivaldi because you did not know how to produce the lies so that I would believe it or because you had a problem lying to me?

Vivaldi’nin eserlerinin çoğu bir hikâyeyi anlatan, bir duyguyu çağrıştıran veya genelde doğal döngüdeki gerçek hayattan olayların bir izlenimini veren bir program niteliğindeydi. Konçertolar çoğunlukla üç bölümden oluşuyordu: bir allegro (canlı tempo) bölüm, aynı veya benzer bir tonda yavaş bir bölüm ve ilkinden bile daha canlı olabilen son bir allegro bölüm.

Vivaldi’nin eserlerinin çoğu bir hikâyeyi anlatan, bir duyguyu çağrıştıran veya genelde doğal döngüdeki gerçek hayattan olayların bir izlenimini veren bir program niteliğindeydi. Konçertolar çoğunlukla üç bölümden oluşuyordu: bir allegro (canlı tempo) bölüm, aynı veya benzer bir tonda yavaş bir bölüm ve ilkinden bile daha canlı olabilen son bir allegro bölüm.

There is, then, a clear set of facts on the ground. We know that stereotype threat has real effects on people. It causes a racing mind and a full complement of physiological and behavioral effects. We know that people aren’t much aware of all this as it’s happening, or at least they don’t want to acknowledge it. We also know that these threats and their effects are identity threats and effects, which go with particular social identities in particular situations: women in advanced math, white males very likely in the last 10 meters of the 100-meter dash, blacks in the vanguard of their class, and so on.

…this is what the years can do. One day they’re playing Vivaldi and releasing doves outside the cathedral for you, and the next day they’re hiding behind barrels in the dusty center of town, watching the two lone gunslingers squaring off in the road.

In sala professori Vivaldi continua. «A volte» dice, «quando sono di cattivo umore, penso che non sono mai uscito dalle foto scolastiche. La mia vita - mi sembra - è un fotomontaggio: la faccia di adesso sopra il grembiule col fiocco azzurro o sopra i pantaloni alla zuava». «Ma no» dico io, «siamo vivi e vegeti». «Tu credi - seguita Vivaldi «di essere vivo e vegeto, in mezzo ai tuoi allieve di oggi». Invece lui ritiene: sei in posa coi tuoi compagni di una volta che sono rimasti gelati nella loro adolescenza, sempre gli stessi scherzi, di anno in anno irrimediabilmente giovani: forse fans di altri cantanti o altri scrittori, eppure: identici. «Tu invece cambi» mi incalza Vivaldi, «diventi vecchio. Ma vecchio col grembiule. O vecchio coi pantaloni alla zuava. È sempre nello stesso cortile della prima fotografia: che intanto ne ha generate altre tutte uguali. Foto che non stanno ferme, circolano, l'unico vero viaggio che fai: prima nelle case dei tuoi compagni e poi per le case dei tuoi alunni e poi per le case dei figli dei tuoi alunni: la sola traccia di te che disgraziatamente resterà».

In sala professori Vivaldi continua. «A volte» dice, «quando sono di cattivo umore, penso che non sono mai uscito dalle foto scolastiche. La mia vita - mi sembra - è un fotomontaggio: la faccia di adesso sopra il grembiule col fiocco azzurro o sopra i pantaloni alla zuava». «Ma no» dico io, «siamo vivi e vegeti». «Tu credi - seguita Vivaldi «di essere vivo e vegeto, in mezzo ai tuoi allievi di oggi». Invece lui ritiene: sei in posa coi tuoi compagni di una volta che sono rimasti gelati nella loro adolescenza, sempre gli stessi scherzi, di anno in anno irrimediabilmente giovani: forse fans di altri cantanti o altri scrittori, eppure: identici. «Tu invece cambi» mi incalza Vivaldi, «diventi vecchio. Ma vecchio col grembiule. O vecchio coi pantaloni alla zuava. E sempre nello stesso cortile della prima fotografia: che intanto ne ha generate altre tutte uguali. Foto che non stanno ferme, circolano, l'unico vero viaggio che fai: prima nelle case dei tuoi compagni e poi per le case dei tuoi alunni e poi per le case dei figli dei tuoi alunni: la sola traccia di te che disgraziatamente resterà».

He fell in love with the instrument, and by thirty-one was so adept that he was chosen as the soloist to play a concerto by none other than Vivaldi accompanied by an orchestra for a crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park. The next day, the Chicago Tribune’s music critic began his review: “Despite the ever-increasing number of enthusiasts who untiringly promote the resurrection of the guitar as a classical instrument, there are but few men who possess the talent and patience to master what remains one of the most beautiful but obstinately difficult of all instruments.” Cecchini, he continued, “proved to be one of those few.

I just find music to be one of the great creations of humankind. It breaks boundaries, it brings people together, and it seems to transcend differences. It bonds us to each other. It does all of that without regard for whether it’s jazz, or rocka- billy, or blues, or rock, or folk, or R&B, or soul, or gospel, or country, or classical, or whatever your genre of choice might be. It does all of that, whether it’s Vivaldi’s violins, or Paul Desmond’s haunting alto sax, or James Burton’s twangy guitar. It’s important stuff to us humans, and it’s important stuff to me.

2014 Andy’s Email   My dearest Young,               How are you, kid? Thanks for the password to Turpitude. It brought smiles to my face when I saw the photos you posted with each chapter. We were so young. I barely recognize myself. I remember the hippie commune and a couple of key events from our week at this out-of-nowhere place.               To be honest, I was thrilled to spend a couple of nights at that charming Barcelona hotel (I can’t remember its name) after Lorenzo loaned us his car. As much as I love the beauty of Andorra, I’m not one for communal living. I prefer my privacy when on vacation.               As much as I enjoyed the company of the residents in the commune, I didn’t care for a couple of the guys, especially the Swede. He kept writhing into your pants the entire time. I loathed his arrogance and the way he lusted after you. I knew he was up to no good the first time we met.               The highlight of our holiday was the Vivaldi concert at the Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Holy Family. That afternoon, when you had a bout of your external detachment, I was in a state of panic. During those early years, I couldn’t understand your ‘out-of-body’ experiences. I wasn’t sure if you feigned your fainting spells or if you actually lost consciousness. The only thing I was sure of was that I needed to be there for you when you awoke. There were times I thought you would never wake, and I would never be able to forgive myself. That, Young, was how enamored I was with you. Boy oh boy, you were a handful. Need I say more…?☺ Love, Andy.

The heavens closed, and the people began to spill out into the October twilight.

vestiges

Ce doreşte domnişoara pentru refacerea moralului: Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi? Când ni se-ntunecă sufletul trebuie să-i aprindem o lumină. Milioane de ani, miliarde s-a zbătut natura să ne dea lumini: Bach, Beethoven, Michelangelo, Eminescu, Luchian. Natura a scos din beznă aceste stele de mărimea-ntâi pentru-a reabilita oricând ideea de om. Şi Atila şi Hitler - şi alţii ca ei - au aparţinut şi aparţin speciei umane, zonei de umbră a speciei. Când te simţi lovit, apăsat de viaţă, trebuie - mai ales atunci - să-ţi îndrepţi ochii spre zona solară a speciei: să asculţi muzică, să reciteşti o poezie, să te uiţi la un tablou. Dintr-odată, simţi cum, de la nivelul râmei, fiinţa ta se ridică pe verticala piscului.

It's terrible to be born to do something you will never be permitted to do. Especially while you watch yourself go through life doing something else.

Safe again, Helen thought, wandering aimlessly through the upstairs rooms at Ravenel House. After the conversation she’d had that morning with Kathleen, she knew that she should be relieved that she was no longer betrothed to Rhys Winterborne. Instead, she felt stunned and disoriented. It didn’t seem to have occurred to either Kathleen or Devon that the decision about her relationship with Rhys Winterborne should have been hers to make. She understood that they had done it out of love and concern. But still… It made Helen feel every bit as smothered as her fiancé had. “When I said that I felt like never seeing Mr. Winterborne again,” she had said to Kathleen unhappily, “that was how I felt at the moment. My head was splitting, and I was very distressed. But I didn’t mean that I never ever wanted to see him again.” Kathleen had been in such glowing good spirits that she hadn’t seemed to appreciate the distinction. “Well, it’s done, and everything is back to the way it should be. You can take off that hateful ring, and we’ll have it sent back immediately.” Helen hadn’t removed the ring yet, however. She glanced down at her left hand, watching the massive rose-cut diamond catch the light from the parlor windows. She truly hated the large, vulgar thing. It was top-heavy and it constantly slid from side to side, making simple tasks difficult. One might as well tie a doorknob to one’s finger. Oh, for a piano, she thought, longing to pound on the keys and make noise. Beethoven, or Vivaldi. Her betrothal was over, with no one having asked what she wanted. Not even Winterborne.

the band plays an upbeat theme song I immediately recognize. I nudge Theo. “Hey, that’s from—” “How to Train Your Dragon.” He grins at my surprise. “What, you think I only know Vivaldi and Mozart?” I’m in love.

Mozart? Hardly the outdoor type, that fellow—much too elegant, symmetrical, formally perfect. Vivaldi, Corelli, Monteverdi? —cathedral interiors only—fluid architecture. Jazz? The best of jazz for all its virtues cannot escape the limitations of its origin: it is indoor music, city music, distilled from the melancholy nightclubs and the marijuana smoke of dim, sad, nighttime rooms: a joyless sound, for all its nervous energy.