Life Update

Good morning,

You've probably decided I gave up on posting. I suppose I did have to give up regular posting, more because of a lack of capacity for additional writing that was not focused on Masters study, but I have had getting update out on my to-do list for awhile.
It feels a bit silly to just say I have been busy, because it seems a single constant in everybody's life is they are "busy." I suppose I may as well tell you what I have been busy with though!

School is ticking along, but continues to take up quite a lot of time, which is really my biggest excuse for neglecting other things. However, the end is finally in sight with things, I have completed all of the required research and over the last few weeks have been writing and revising and formatting and otherwise trying to polish up the long essay. A current challenge is how to structure everything and say what I want to say without exceeding my word-count limit. At the moment I am in danger of that, but there is still work to be done that will hopefully allow me to cut out bits and pieces here and there so I am sure it will all come together. Anyway, two months from now I will submit things for review, so not far to go :)

Amidst all this, there has not been space for too much excitement but a couple of things are worth sharing.
Dad came to visit in September, so we enjoyed getting to show him around Taranaki. Since we decided to stay local I got to be a tourist in Taranaki, which I had not done for about 5 years! It means I got to tick a few things off the Taranaki sight-seeing list that I had not done yet.
Highlights were the Tawhiti Museum in Hawera, which I highly recommend. No photos allowed so I cannot post any, but I can say it is an impressive artistic display of local and Maori history.
We also did a tour around the sugar loaf islands on Chaddy's Charters, where we got to see a baby shark! They reckon the young fella was about 21 years old and just oh so cuddly.
We also explored the Blacksmith Museum in Pio Pio (which is technically not Taranaki but it is a good day trip so close enough, ha!). We had to get a key from the local convenience and let ourselves in with an honesty box donation and had the luxury of being the only visitors that day, so we were able to take our time exploring the old tools and houses, etc.

Labour Day here is end of October, the first holiday since early June when the Queen's birthday is celebrated. Since I hit the big 3-0 the week before Labour Day (we had a pie potluck to celebrate which I highly recommend as an at-home social event!), we decided to enjoy a weekend away for the holiday weekend. We headed over to the sunny Hawke's Bay town of Napier. They have beautiful palm trees, we went to a wine tasting at New Zealand's oldest winery, enjoyed exploring the art deco downtown and had lots of sunshine and relaxation. If only it could have lasted a bit longer, ha!

Hope all is well in your world. We are looking forward to our Christmas trip home (Troway's first winter Christmas!) and then exploring Japan for two weeks so I will keep track of good things to share :)

Happy Thanksgiving a bit early!

Seal Colony around here

Baby...Shark..do do, do do do do :)

Blacksmith Museum

Pie potluck!

East Coast at Napier downtown

Napier rose garden

Mission Estate Winery

Historic Pianos

One of the perks of going back to school is you get access to university resources. When I was deciding whether to choose Auckland, one big point in their favor was a significant collection of historic keyboard instruments. I was recently granted access to spend some time playing keyboards that are relevant to the period I am studying.

An important component of my research is a phenomenological approach, which is essentially a fancy word for an immersion experience. By playing and studying specific four-hand piano scores, I am attempting to understand what it was like to be an amateur pianist in the first half of the nineteenth century. The ability to play the music on the pianos that these players would have owned was necessary for understanding aspects such as space, sound, and feel. Of course, in addition to the  academic benefits for my research, it was a thrilling experience from the perspective of being a pianist.

The piano that was most relevant for my area of study was a replication of an 1826 Congrad Graf grand from Vienna. Viennese pianos were known for their lightweight action. I have a 1914 Broadwood upright from London at home (came over to NZ on a boat!) and the difference was immediately noticeable. The keyboard on the Graf replica I played had 6 and a half octaves, making it about 18 keys shorter than a modern keyboard. This means there was enough space for two people to play duets (my area of research), although I reckon hoop skirts might have made it a tighter squeeze!

The keyboard on this might have been shorter than modern ones but this was balanced by the fact that the piano had six pedals. Modern options have either two or three pedals, depending on whether they are American or European model based.
Working left to right, the pedals are:

1.  a soft pedal (which reduces the number of strings struck by the hammers, standard on modern pianos)
2.  second from the left is unknown but appeared to be another option for reducing overall volume
3.  a bassoon pedal (which produces a buzzing sound to emulate the double reed instrument on the lower half of the keyboard)
4. a lute pedal (which makes the sound rather thin and wispy sounding)
5. a damper pedal (keeps the dampers off the string so the sound continues until the key is released or the strings stop vibrating, also standard on modern pianos)
6.  and my favorite......what is called a Janissary pedal, for producing percussive sounds! This became popular when a particular trend in 19th Century pop music was to play military and Turkish music, which obviously requires something more exciting than mere piano sounds :)

I had quite a fun time experimenting with the different sounds you could produce. I discovered that early 20th Century novelty piano music sounds great with the Janissary pedal, haha!

I also got to play a Clavichord for the first time in my keyboarding life. The Clavichord was a small, quiet pre-cursor to the piano. It became a popular alternative to the harpsichord because it allowed the player to produce a [small] range of dynamic contrast. They were small enough to be portable, with some models built to be contained within a carry case.

Pictures below are all photos of keyboards in the University of Auckland historic keyboard collection. I know details of some of the keyboards but not all. 

The Graf replica 

Brief excerpt of Dizzy Fingers by Zez Confrey with

Janissary pedal

Replica of a late 18th Century piano
Knee levers under the keyboard rather than pedals

Original grand from late 19th Century (Brahms era)

The clavichord I played

Beautifully decorated harpsichords: 

Quick Update

Hi Readers,

I promise I have not been intentionally ignoring you. There just has not been a lot of excitement that I felt was worth sharing. My daily routine is pretty standard right now, with up early on weekdays for work, study in the afternoon/evening. Weekends are mostly study time as well, although I've allowed myself the occasional respite for other things, partly for some much needed mental time-out!

The good news is my study is going well. I am almost a full 6 months in to the program, so a lot of work is behind me, but of course there is a lot more to come. I am unsure how many books/articles/essays I have read to date, but at last count I only have about 30 left to read, which feels pretty exciting! This of course means the long hours of writing, revising said writing, formatting etc are yet to come, but I have already drafted a lot, so getting the reading done will mean I have more consistent work to fine-tune the writing parts.

My recent claim to fame and bit of excitement was participation in the 20 July concert with the Taranaki Symphony Orchestra. They put together a wonderful evening to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. As part of this, I was asked to solo, playing Debussy's Clair de Lune. I was honored to be a part of the concert and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to perform, something that has taken a backseat while I'm studying. Of course knowing I would get to play the big concert Steinway was just a bonus! The concert went off without a hitch though, to a nearly full theater and the review in the paper was brilliant.

Now that the concert is past, my excitement is the occasional trip to Auckland to refresh my library stash and the weekend time I have allowed for work on a baby quilt for a friend that is expecting. I'll share a picture when it's done, it is a new pattern.

The mountain has its winter hat on :)

Final rehearsal before the concert

Old printing press I stumbled on in my last visit
to Auckland University library

Cool trees in Albert Park, Auckland

Old meets new

Obligatory visit to a donut shop while in
Auckland (because New Plymouth does not have any)

Winter has come

Winter in my part of New Zealand is pretty mild, at least compared to winters I remember from growing up in Missouri. It snows but only on the mountain. There is lots of wind and lots of rain and an annoyingly on-going feeling of dampness. My biggest complaint tends to be that jeans and towels take a long time to dry since having a dryer at home is not generally affordable here. I suppose a second complaint is having to get out of bed on cold mornings since central heating is also not a thing here, but it does mean I move quickly and therefore get out of the house on time, ha!

Thanks to winter weather, I got to have a new experience while driving down to a little township called Rahotu for one of Troway's rugby games (they won, first time beating this team in several years woot woot!). When I left town it was sunny, but started raining not far outside of town. Since some form of rain (which could precipitation, rain, drizzle, general wetness, showers, any other synonym the weather people can think of) was predicted for the day this was not terribly surprising. After I got past the next town the rain stopped and the sun came back out. But don't get too excited, because all of a sudden it got terribly windy, started absolutely pouring rain (but sideways rain due to the wind) all while the sun was still shining brightly. SO - I have officially driven through a rainstorm with the need for sunglasses. Thank you Taranaki. Troway reckons it was actually only raining at the mountain but it was so windy it blew the rain to the highway :)

In other news, school is going well. I have officially finished phase 1, which was analyzing a rather long and mentally painful list of scores for a comparison of how the music was arranged for piano. My poor neighbors have had to suffer through me playing the scores. One commented the other day that he has been able to hear me playing a lot lately and fortunately he thought this was a good thing!
Being a pianist has come with its share of interesting neighbor interactions. When I lived in Vienna, there was a city policy that outrageous activities such as practicing the piano were not allow between the hours of 10pm and 7am, so I was pretty safe there. When I was living in Kansas City there was a fella who lived in the apartment below mine who would bang on the ceiling if he had reached his capacity for classical music (even though I have always tried to be respectful of what hours I play as I understand not everyone has my taste in music). But the winner of non-musical neighbors is the lady who once knocked on my door to let me know that there was some noise coming from my apartment. I was practicing something by Beethoven at this point. I was unsure how to respond to her designation of his music as "noise."

I hope you have a good week. I will seek out adventure so I can write again soon :)
Some highlights from recent daily life below.

Autumn in the park

A nice benefit to rainy days

Winter sunset (not to brag, but this view is walking distance
from home) :)

One-day Auckland Adventure

I made my monthly visit to Auckland this week, to refresh my library stash and meet with my graduate advisor. We spent an hour discussing the ins and outs of deciphering the lives and opinions and thoughts of nineteenth century males....Hmmmm... still much work to be done there :) But since my library visit did not take too long I ended up with a bit of time to kill so I opted to stroll through part of downtown Auckland to take in the sights. Despite numerous trips there now, and living there for awhile, there is plenty that has not yet been explored.

The self-inflicted busy-ness of this year has meant my schedule is a bit scant on adventures, so the time to wander felt like a bit of a get-away. The bus ride to and from the airport was on a different route from what I normally take, so I was treated to seeing new areas, which included passing by restaurants with such appetizing names as 'Love-A-Duck Chinese BBQ,' and 'Love Exposure Chinese.' An intriguing take on fusion was the food-truck advertising 'Authentic Chinese-Maori Hangi,' which I hope to be able to try sometime. (Hangi is a traditional Maori meal of meat and vegetables steamed underground. Think YUM. However, unsure how this fuses with Chinese...).

A particularly nice find was an Asian bakery, tucked in between some restaurants. They had an incredible selection of goodies, everything beautifully created and presented (and affordable!). Some favorites were the cake that had dogs on top, seemingly constructed out of icing, and the melon bread that looked like slices of watermelon. I bought some Japanese cheesecake for Troway to try since cheesecake ranks high on his list of favorite desserts.
I also found a little shop called No. 1 Pancake, where you can get pancakes stuff with yummy options such as chocolate and cream, or ham and cheese, or various other sweet or savory options. It is officially on the list of places to try when I have time :)

Campus building

University Clocktower

Autumn in the city

SkyTower from Albert Park

Yum?

Relaxation to the max...

Mt. Ruapehu on the flight home

Tidbits from daily life

I discovered some time ago that I was not particularly fond of the flavor of New Zealand marshmallows. Fortunately I can occasionally find American ones, which makes s'mores much tastier. Troway had always found it amusing that I only wanted marshmallows that "taste like home" but over the weekend he finally understood why. One of our American guests that came for the wedding left a bag of gummy candies here and we cracked them open when we put a movie on. They tasted American! Which meant they did not taste Kiwi-ish, and therefore after stating they were not going to be his new favorite, made the connection that I feel the same about NZ marshmallows :)

Troway is playing rugby this year, which has been a fun addition to the weekly routine. At least while the weather is good, I enjoy going to watch him play (if there are any really cold and rainy days I will probably chicken out...). I was pleased to realize I have figured out enough about the game to mostly  keep track of what is going on. And he reckons my opinion on how well they played is indicative of whether they really need to get themselves together, since my lack of experience makes it pretty clear if they were not working as a team!

We had a lovely sunny fall weekend just gone so a friend and I took to the back trails of Pukekura Park in town. We stumbled on some we had not walked before, and a nice bonus were some lovely fall colors. We finished the walk off with a stroll the fernery, which has beautiful flowers year round.

My self-prescribed current lifestyle of balancing work and graduate study is busy that it does not allow for a lot of recreational time. But an Escape Room recently opened up in town so a group of us from work went to check it out. We were terribly sure of ourselves at first but quickly found it to be quite a challenge. We did manage to get out though, whew! The musician in me appreciated that an old piano had to be used to unlock something, and we were quite impressed with the set-up.

Happy belated Easter and have a good week!

Grad Student for Real

I wrote last year of my adventures pursuing higher education in New Zealand, at the University of Auckland. It came about as the result of a decision made 3ish years ago that I wanted to pursue a Masters degree in music. I do occasionally question why, as does Troway I'm sure, but I am glad that I have persevered, and ever grateful of the support I have in this endeavour, particularly from Troway (who more and more gets stuck with cooking dinner and cleaning the house, yayteam effort for Denise's sanity!).

Last years' move to Auckland, and subsequent research projects in the second half of the year, resulted in a Post-graduate Certificate in Musicology, as well as introducing me to the ways of university life in NZ (probably still figuring much of that out...). This year I am officially a Masters student, working through a 12-month research project for a degree in Musicology.
It was pretty cool to log in to my account this year and see student level marked as "Graduate." :)

What does this mean for my daily routine now?
I have fortunately been able to arrange my schedule so that I can work in the mornings/early afternoon and then head home to study as needed/able for the rest of the day.

What am I studying?
Nineteenth-century four-hand piano transcriptions by Carl Czerny. One of my projects last year highlighted his transcriptions of other music such as symphonies to be highly complex due to a seemingly intensive effort to not lose any of the original score when reducing it down to a piano version. I have been playing through the piano scores so I can do a comparison of the orchestral scores (or chamber music in the cases of something like a violin/cello/piano trio) and trying to quantify what his method and/or goal was in creating the piano version.

It turns out that in the first half of the nineteenth century the piano was a very popular thing. It had not yet reached its full development to the instrument we have now, which partly contributed to its popularity because each new and improved version was of interest to the musical public. But it also allowed people to socialize musically in the home, while also ensuring their daughters were learning cultivated husband-attracting skills.

In addition to the score playing and analysis, I have a self-mandated extensive reading list to get through over the next few months. It is all interesting to me in one way or another, but my favorite things thus far have been the books or manuals written in the nineteenth century, on a variety of topics.
I have learned that "dazzling gew-gaw" cannot cover up one's mistakes (Carl Czerny).
And that "death can end one's usefulness," no matter how influential one is during one's own lifetime (Alfred Dolge).
A favorite so far is the commentary on a rising opera star, whose figure "did not weary in contemplation" (Edward Holmes).

My program started on 1 March and is a 12-month challenge. By 28 February next year, the goal/assignment is to have thoroughly researched to prove or disprove my working hypothesis, in order to hopefully answer my primary research questions, and produce an approximately 30,000 page thesis explaining all this with, ideally, some useful conclusions.

I am nearly 2 months in and all seems to be going well so far. I will endeavor to give interesting updates along the way.

Happy Easter!

Maketawa Hut Circuit

At the risk of boring you with too many hiking stories, I am sharing my March hiking adventure with you. We always get a long weekend towards the start of March for Taranaki Anniversary so this year I used the day off to avoid research by trekking the Maketawa Hut Circuit.

In 3 hours my friend and I managed to complete the 6.5 kilometer track, and even timed things so that we were leaving the mountain just as it decided to rain!
From the main visitor center the track plunges straight into native forest. It was a rough but clearly visible track that steadily climbed, although it was not nearly as steep as I had expected (a welcome surprise). The majority of the climb to the hut was wooded, but the views when suddenly arriving at the hut were fantastic. It was cloudy over most of the mountain so we did not get to see the summit, but there was an impressive gorge visible on one side of the hut.

The hut itself was lovely, with 16 bunk beds, wood heating, space to prep food and a lovely wooded rustic feel. I have not yet stayed in any of the huts around the mountain but have mentally flagged this one as potentially the best option for a first hut-stay.

From the hut, the track continues up a rather serious number of stairs, definitely the steepest part of the hike. As we climbed higher there was a rather odd sensation of being almost entirely removed from the world due to the clouds, which by this point had descended far enough that there was visibility up and down the track but not off to the sides much. It must have been my day to be a hobbit wandering the NZ wilderness haha!
But the track soon merged with the summit climb, onto a 4WD track that was a quick way back down to the visitor center, something to be grateful of when it started raining.

Pictures below :)
Check back soon for a grad school update and have a good week!