'Nir'

The first daffodil of the season has opened, and thus begins the 2017 Daffodil Journal series on this blog.

Narcissus 'Nir' is one of the commercial paperwhite cultivars. I wasn't aware that paperwhites are hardy in zone 8 until I read more about them this fall. So far, they have survived temperatures in the mid-twenties. Of all the daffodils I planted in mid-November, the paperwhites sent up foliage immediately and are now flowering some six weeks later. I wonder how well they will perennialize.

In any case, a bulb that flowers the day after Christmas and fills the yard with its bright, fragrant presence - as well as attracting winter pollinators - is very welcome here.

Cindy was tired of all the picture-taking and wanted the focus back on her.

Next up in the daffodil journal: another paperwhite called 'Wintersun'. It's a bicolor paperwhite and should open in the next few days.

"Aphoristic Madrigal"

Last week I wrote about 1/3-comma meantone tuning and its near equivalent 19-tone equal temperament. There is another Renaissance tuning, 1/4-comma meantone, which dominated Western music for several centuries. While 1/3-comma meantone has pure 6:5 ratio minor thirds, 1/4-comma meantone has pure 5:4 ratio major thirds. 1/4-comma meantone has a near equivalent also, 31-tone equal temperament.

I found a nice piece for voices and Fokker organ, an organ tuned to 31-tone equal temperament. It's very modern; I think of a sci-fi setting for it. The harmonies are interesting.

Pepper

Our cat Sacci actually got better and is very lively, so we did not put him down. Unfortunately, our other cat Pepper got violently ill on Friday and stayed in a poor state all weekend. My mom took him today and the vet decided it would be best to put him to sleep.

He reached the ripe old age of 19, which is surely 100 in cat years. His favorite activity in his grumpy old age, after he got arthritis, was to lie down in doorways and growl and swat at people who walked by. Actually, he was the most affectionate cat I've had. Whenever you picked him up he'd go completely limp and let you cradle him like a baby. Sometimes he would crawl on people and try to nurse from them, purring and drooling while working his paws. He was a huge, muscular cat in his prime. He dominated the cats on our street.

My nickname for him was Peahopper.

Pepper as a kitten, wrestling with our old cat Tiger.

Harpsichord and Temperaments

I recently moved my harpsichord to my apartment. It has been about ten years since I had it on hand to play daily. I have spent much of the time tuning it. With the changing season and the alternating dry/wet and hot/cold, it goes out of tune almost every day.

In my most recent tunings, I've tuned it to 1/3 comma meantone, which is a tuning that goes back to the Renaissance. Its defining characteristic is minor thirds at the pure 6:5 ratio, which makes music in minor keys sound startlingly sweet and serene. As one goes around to more distant keys, though, there are some very sour intervals, and then there's a "wolf" interval that sounds absolutely horrendous. I can't even find an example of how it sounds on harpsichord, but on Sound Cloud I found a synthesized version of 19-tone equal temperament, which is more or less 1/3 comma meantone extended to 19 keys per octave (hard to describe in non-technical terms; just listen).

"Seigneur Dieu ta pitié" by Guillaume Costeley. I found this piece while looking for information on 1/3 comma meantone and 19-tone equal temperament. Costeley, who lived in the 16th Century, apparently was the first to theorize this tuning. I wish I could find a recording of this piece sung by a choir.

Poor Little Saccmeister

Our cat Sacci has become very sick and will probably be put to sleep soon. We've never done that with one of our pets before, but in his case he's very miserable and fifteen years old.

I just wanted to remember Sacci. He's a Himalayan cat; he has long white, silky hair with red "flame" tips on his ears, nose, and tail. When you give him a bath, he is skinny as bones, but his hair makes him look large. His eyes are icy blue. His meow is very quiet. Sometimes you only see his mouth open with no noise, other times you hear only a faint "ow." He's shy, finicky, and withdrawn normally, though sometimes at night you'd hear him run back and forth down the hall in a frenzy.

He spent most of his life inside and was afraid to go outside, though in the past few years I started letting him out and he came to enjoy sunbathing.

My sister named him Versacci (how she thought Versace was spelled) because he was a fancy cat. Most of the time I call him Saccmeister ("sotch-meister") or Saccminster Abbey.

Poor little Saccmeister.