tone or technique

My mother has just written an e-mail in response to Hassan's description of the concert by Lortie, which I sent her in an e-mail some time ago. She is preparing to move into a house at a place called Leisure World, which somehow conjures up a combination of The Stepford Wives and Westworld (my mother will either be turned into a robot or killed by one) but I believe is perfectly pleasant.

... the long piece you sent by Hassan about his reaction to the recital by Louis Lortie was simply enchanting. I am having anxiety attacks about being so out of touch with you in the midst of this chaotic move, so am shoving everything aside for the moment to respond to this amazing account of his response to this performance. What is particularly interesting to me is the perennial issue of describing a physical action using language. The conversation he had with the man he eventually sat next to was fascinating. He quoted that guy's saying that good tone is the key to proper piano technique, when it seems to me that only through proper technique do you arrive at good tone. Mrs. Gunn was a fanatic about good tone, and looking back at it, I feel a very beautiful tone resulted from her emphasis, but that it was achieved by much tension and forcing. Am pretty sure that was why Ann's master teacher, Mistislav Munch, had her do months of nothing but the double thirds etude with emphasis on different members of the groups of four sixteenth notes. It was a way to trick the body into producing the tone without forcing.

[Ann is the pianist Ann Schein, with whom my mother shared lessons for many years.]

Fix your mom's computer for Mother's Day

This Sunday is Mother's Day. Why not fix your mom's computer?

Fog Creek is offering a Mother's Day special on Copilot, a free one-day pass on Sunday, 13 May enabling you to take over your mother's computer from a remote site and bring the machine up to a Martha Stewart standard of computer housekeeping. More about the deal here.

If you'd like to take over someone else's computer Fog Creek will probably not be taking DNA samples ("No questions asked," is the key phrase), so you do not need to send Joel a heartrending account of your days in the orphanage ("I never knew my mother, Joel. Never knew my father. I'm alone in the world.") -- you can bring joy to someone else whose computer is infested with adware, spyware and who knows what other vermin. A similar offer will be available on Father's Day (17 June); again, DNA samples are unlikely to be required, so you will not need to explain that Scott is more than just a typesetter, he's the only family you have, or that your real father never loved you, your doctoral supervisor was the first person to take an interest in what you were like as a human being --

If your mother's computer has been driving her (or you) crazy, this is a good chance to fix it. If she likes it just the way it is, but you want to have fun with Copilot on somebody else's pc, well, how often has your mother said: I just want you to be happy? If playing with Copilot will make you happy, isn't that the best present you can give her? (If I were Ilya's mother, having extremely fabulous Mr Ilya fix somebody else's computer with the extremely fabulous Copilot would be the best present he could give me short of a world cruise on the QEII.)

Happy Mother's Day.