I am feeling fragile today: admittedly, not so uncommon a problem for me nowadays, but probably brought on by recent emotional and physical stress, coupled with lack of sleep and a somewhat irregular and insubstantial diet over the last few days. As if to underline the depths of my pitiful condition, I was thinking of washing the car this afternoon. But then decided it would keep another week without risk of too much public outrage, and had a cup of tea instead.
All this has clearly been brought about by taking part in a concert with the choir yesterday evening. Although it is generally a rewarding and enjoyable experience, it is inevitably demanding to stand before an eager audience of countless dozens of people and perform a challenging piece: in this case, the sometimes delicate and exquisite but mainly loud and boisterous Carmina Burana. It was not a work I knew at all, apart from one or two particularly famous sections, but it does grow on you over time; although having rehearsed it for the last four months, I was on the verge of tipping over the edge and starting to get sick of it, particularly the bits I could never get right. I am sure it will still be buzzing around my head for weeks to come. Once you overdose on these things, it takes a while to wean yourself off.
The central theme of the work is the mediaeval image of the wheel of fortune. It does not quite resonate, perhaps, with modern audiences, who, if they are like me, tend to be reminded of a popular television game show, involving a wheel. And presumably a fortune, if you got the answers right. In mediaeval times they apparently took all this far more seriously, with the wheel, whisked by the capricious goddess herself, raising hapless mortals to the dizzy heights of success before plunging them down into the depths of failure. I think there is a lesson there for us all. And it might have made for a more entertaining game show.
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