After over 7 weeks of denial, I decided to come out of the closet...
or should I say study closet..
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I have decided to be true to myself.
I have evolved into a
mugger.
My Lord, what have I done...
Sigh...
While the common Singaporean blogger would be raving about spanking new shopping centres such as Vivocity, my deviant sense of thrill stems from the discovery of a hidden gem. Lying dormant within the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music...
Fellow muggers, hold your breath as I present you
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The latest LIBRARY in NUS...
BEHOLD!
THE MUSIC LIBRARY
Being one of the smallest of the 6 libraries, this surprisingly spartan looking library occupies two storeys and boasts of "over 14,000 music scores, 6,300 CD and DVD titles, over 5,900 book titles and 150 journal titles in the western art music tradition."
Unfortunately, as a mugging connoisseur, I find this freezing enclave not conducive to study. Tables are sorely limited in numbers, the view from window seats reveals only concrete walls and the modest size exudes a sense of claustrophobia.
As a music library, I was half expecting the tinkering of ivory keys (no Pachabel's Canon or Richard Clayderman please...) but all I heard was the ventilation fans of Dell workstations which you usually use to search for library books, buzzing in harmony with the deafening silence.
This experience was further exacerbated by my blephemous act of webcasting my Fluid Mechanics lecture beside shelves of music scores. It's no wonder that even my lecturer Ti Hwei Chen is puzzled...
As a music library, I also found the arrangement of the music scores disorganized and not favorable for browsing. But that did not prevent me from uncovering a notorious score by an American avant-garde composer, John Cage.
In a nutshell, 4′33″ is contempory piano piece consisting of 3 movements (self-contained segments of a larger music work). The controversy lies in that the movements comprised of silence from the performer with the sounds of the performance venue being defined as music.
Yes, imagine paying to watch a pianist sit, open and close a keyboard lid. Period.
Tacet means "to be silent" in italian.
I could almost imagine the standing ovation the audience gave as they muttered with tears welling up in their eyes, "What wonderful silence..."
Quite predictably, this music score which is made up of 3 printed pages, would probably qualify as the thinnest book in NUS libraries.
However, my greatest question that came my mind was...
Why does NUS need to purchase such scores?!
It's not as if you need to read the action of doing nothing, even your baby brother or great grandmother can do an excellent job performing this work
For more background information of 4'33'' >>
And just when I thought that Silentkimbly couldn't be lamer (pun intended) than that...
