Reading a lot lately, almost too much to blog about: (1) On the bus, to and from work, I've been reading Le Livre d'Or de la Poe'sie Francaise (A-H) edited by one Seghers (whose first name I forget. Great stuff in it, from profoundly unsettling to perfectly charming; the biggest revelation for me, so far, being Jean Cocteau, whose poetry is subtle, clear, and amazingly (despite his avant-gardist reputation) literate. Who knew? (2) I've been reading the scores along with the Haydn quartets Opus 54, Nos. 1 & 2, and the Mozart quartets K. 461, 469, 499, and 575--both the latters (the 2nd, "Tost" Haydn quartet, and K.575) proving really not totally comprehensible without the scores in front of me. Gotta say the C Major "Tost" quartet is as close as Haydn ever came to writing ugly (brainiac) music; not, of course that it is ugly--but close to ugly it certainly is. The second movement, for example, is damn-it-all Gypsy "music," much more realistic than, say, Bizet's, only just barely rescued from nauseous verisimiltude and self-negation by Haydn's impeccable metric; and only just barely providing necessary preparation for the astounding, and not entirely pleasant, slow-fast-slow last movement. This is, of course, the anti-form that Beethoven grabbed and ran with, turning his last quartets into wretched, unmusical, unlistenable orchestral scraping. Muss es sein? Wahrlich nicht.