Dragons were in one of my dreams.
Not the relatively unambiguous treasure-hoarding kind of some fables, but the wiser and older species preferred by some of my favourite writers, like Ursula K. Le Guin (blogrolled).
What mattered was to learn their language.
 It was a short night, like most these days. I went to sleep around one in the morning (after such trouble trying to upload copy to servers the far side of the Atlantic that I gave up -- apologies to anybody who saw the mess I left here before cleaning up when the "lines" were clear).
Then I was up two hours and more before the alarm was set to go off, and took a fresh look at the cover of the Donington book on Wagner's 'Ring' cycle I mentioned being so pleased at finding again back in May, when I began writing about archetypes ... and stereotypes.
I'm not always an observant creature; it was only then that the picture registered consciously. Siegfried, confronting the giant turned dragon Fafner (here in one of those sparingly staged Bayreuth productions of the 1950s) is up against something Donington intriguingly -- and not absurdly in his gripping musico-psychological detective story -- sometimes sees as a parent-image.
That dream comes as no surprise, since my Fourth of July was quietly occupied wearing my fingers out with storing music on the Mac and finding short cuts to label every single item properly.
A lot of music. Including the 'Ring of the Nibelung'! All of it. In Karajan's recording, oddly described by some as the "chamber music" reading, for all its power.
Back then, at the start of the '70s, such critics were contrasting this monumental Deutsche Grammaphon achievement, with its unmatched attention to orchestral detail, with the cycle Sir Georg Solti had committed to vinyl for Decca in a 1960s landmark for the whole recording industry.
When, in my late teens, I eventually opted for Karajan's version and not Solti's, I saved up for it for three months! What different days those were, before the advent of the CD.
Yesterday, the computer also swallowed up several other landmarks, including Otto Klemperer's wonderfully spacious recording of Bach's 'St Matthew Passion', one of the miracles of the "classical" music world in 1962.
Along with the complete Monterverdi 'Vespro della beata Vergine'. And more...
There's a lot to be said for this new AAC format. I'm not technician enough to be sure of Dolby's claim that "AAC compressed audio at 128 kbps (stereo) has been judged by expert listeners to be 'indistinguishable' from the original uncompressed audio source."
My ears say "yes" and once I passed for an 'expert listener', in my previous incarnation at the Beeb. Even pushing up the quality rate from 128 kpbs to 192 kpbs in AAC, the nigh on 15 hours of Karajan's 'Ring' take up "only" 1.21 GB of hard disk space.
So it may have been a very quiet day yesterday, since I opted not to play while recording and slow down a process which took many hours as it was. Now, though, perhaps I ought to clear the way with the neighbours before this lot gets unleashed...
When I "blogrolled" 'osxAudio' a good while ago, I might also have mentioned MacMusic as another first-rate resource base -- and one with a home page which is easier to read.
Since 1997, this France-based community has grown, getting ever better, and has made sterling efforts to get an English-language version of the site online and packed with good stuff.
10:59:19 AM link 
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