Imprompt-what???

Impromptu in E. Specifically, Impromptu in E, Opus 90 by Franz Schubert. A sublime Brendel recording is posted below. I spent several months perfecting this piece to play in a competition (which I lost), but the the time spent with this work is very special to me. It's still one of my favorite piano pieces.

And, it just so happens that impromptu musings by one E(lizabeth) might make a nifty little hobby. So, here it is: thoughts, discussion, fashion, music, always coffee and hopefully a little fiction here and there.

I think I'll start things off with a little flash fiction in the coming days. And, the thought occurs to me that since I know so many delightful writers (uh-hum, Katherine, Mary, Virginia... the list continues...), wouldn't it be wonderful if other writers also posted?

In the meantime, I'd love to know your thoughts on a favorite writer and why you like that writer. Notice, I didn't say THE favorite (don't you hate those "choose only one" questions?!). Just a writer you love that jumps to mind - add a few lines of the author's work that exemplifies why you love this author, if you'd like.

I'll get things started... Willa Cather! Her short story "Paul's Case" is almost perfection, I think. It's descriptive, captivating, haunting, profound, beautiful and always inspires debate and discussion. Excellent stuff! An excerpt:

When he reached the dining room he sat down at a table near a window. The flowers, the white linen, the many-colored wineglasses, the gay toilettes of the women, the low popping of corks, the undulating repetitions of the Blue Danube from the orchestra, all flooded Paul's dream with bewildering radiance. When the roseate tinge of his champagne was added--that cold, precious, bubbling stuff that creamed and foamed in his glass-- Paul wondered that there were honest men in the world at all. This was what all the world was fighting for, he reflected; this was what all the struggle was about. He doubted the reality of his past. Had he ever known a place called Cordelia Street, a place where fagged-looking businessmen got on the early car; mere rivets in a machine they seemed to Paul,--sickening men, with combings of children's hair always hanging to their coats, and the smell of cooking in their clothes. Cordelia Street--Ah, that belonged to another time and country; had he not always been thus, had he not sat here night after night, from as far back as he could remember, looking pensively over just such shimmering textures and slowly twirling the stem of a glass like this one between his thumb and middle finger? He rather thought he had.


Alfred Brendel playing Schubert