St. John's College, founded in 1696 in the Maryland colony, has a great reading list. Divided up into four lists for each year from freshman to senior, it not only contains reading, but also listening with Bach, Mozart, Monteverdi, Haydn and others. I recall reading someone's opinion that a truly educated person should be as familiar with the Haydn string quartets as with Dante's Divine Comedy. Well, yes, of course!
Wow, I haven't done one of these for a long time. First up, this is what I am currently reading:
This is something I have wanted to read for a long, long time. Marcus Aurelius was the fifth of the "Five Good Emperors" of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty of the Roman Empire. The shocking thing one finds, even after reading just the first book, is that the Roman Empire during this period, 96 to 192 AD, was far better run than our contemporary democracies. As Winston Churchill averred, democracy is the worst of all systems, except for all the others. Nice quip, but, as we can see from this era of the Roman Empire, not actually true. As a philosopher manqué I have always had my misgivings about democracy. After all, it was 501 good Athenian citizens that voted to condemn Socrates to death in 399 BC, causing Aristotle to depart Athens so it would not "commit a second crime against philosophy."
Why was this era of the Roman Empire so well run? Let's let Marcus Aurelius explain with his list of things he is grateful for:
From Severus: love of family, love of truth, love of justice; ... to have conceived the idea of a balanced constitution, a commonwealth based on equality and freedom of speech, and of a monarchy which values above all the liberty of the subject...
If only we had governments that adhered to those virtues! Instead, the incentives that drive our politicians are all bad: they are constantly pressured to lie, to curry favor with financial contributors, to form partisan tribes for mutual support--and all in order to win elections. Policies are not chosen for their economic virtues, but so as to buy the votes of the citizens. There are a thousand ways this drives us towards the kind of dysfunctional politics we have today. The interesting thing about this succession of emperors is that they typically did not follow the usual rules of succession: the eldest male heir inherits the throne, but instead adopted as heir the person they felt would make the best ruler. This ended with Commodus, the natural son of Marcus Aurelius, who was a horrible ruler.
Singers of all backgrounds come here every year: fresh out of the conservatory or with five-figure fees per performance, mainly from the world of opera, but also from pop and jazz. “Our three basic principles are spontaneity, beauty, and freedom,” Paglin sums up. “These days, the voice is highly planned; natural singing isn’t cultivated, and there’s an unhealthy obsession with power and volume that generates great muscular tension.” For Brilla, the key lies in breathing: “You only need a thimbleful of air, but it must be well managed, as babies do intuitively. That was baritone Gino Bechi’s best-kept secret…”
The two sopranos behind this school made a thorough study of vocal production:
Almost simultaneously, they decided to put their singing careers on hold to retrain their voices. “We studied historical recordings, consulted specialists like Maria Carbone, and read treatises by the great masters in search of our own method,” continues Brilla, who, after consulting 27 teachers, applied for a Fulbright scholarship that allowed her to research the roots of bel canto in their place of origin, Italy. “We lived in Rome, Florence, Milan…” adds Paglin. “But it was in Osimo that we set up our own studio.” Almost three decades later, the locals of this historic hill overlooking the Adriatic Sea describe the former palazzo the pair acquired at the time as a “sanctuary of voices.”
Voice is probably the most difficult "instrument" to teach as it is part of your body and invisible to the eye.
In the Great Festival Hall was a concert by Utopia, the orchestra founded in 2022 by Teodor Currentzis. Utopia is composed of players from some thirty countries. Currentzis is a Greek Russian conductor, wizardly and individualistic (and not to everyone’s taste). He was duly on the podium for this concert. The first item on the program was a Shostakovich piano concerto—No. 2, in F.
This is less popular, or less frequently programmed, than the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1. Why, I don’t know. A great recording of No. 2 was made by Yefim Bronfman, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen. Bronfman once told me that orchestras seldom request the second concerto. If they want Shostakovich, they want the first.
The soloist with Utopia and Currentzis was Alexander Melnikov, a Soviet-born pianist who studied in Moscow with a legendary teacher: Lev Naumov. Shostakovich’s second concerto ought to have a number of characteristics, including military precision, melting lyricism, and electricity. Melnikov was never less than competent—but I could have used more of what makes this concerto lovable.
He played an encore, a piece introduced to many of us by Vladimir Horowitz: Scriabin’s Poème, Op. 32, No. 1. Melnikov rendered it expertly.
After intermission, Maestro Currentzis conducted the Utopians in a Mahler symphony: No. 4 in G, sometimes known as Mahler’s “Mozart symphony,” for it has an air of the Classical. Under the baton of Currentzis—or rather, under his hands, because he goes without a baton—every part was clear. All parts were in balance. Moreover, Currentzis communed with Mahler, reflecting his spirit. (Mahler was “wizardly and individualistic” himself—also “not to everyone’s taste.”) Currentzis is a shape-shifter, conforming his body to the music, able to represent it physically, somehow. His orchestras respond.
Members of his orchestras stand while playing—excepting cellists and a few others. Does this make a difference? Well, here’s a difference, possibly: I think I hear the woodwind solos better. These players sing or pipe more directly to you.
I heard Currentzis and his orchestra in an all-Rameau program a couple of years ago and it was magical. The only time I have seen the Salzburg audience actually give a standing ovation.
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Let's end with the suitable envoi of the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2. This is Anna Tsybuleva with Risto Joost conducting the Wuppertal Symphony.
Yesterday, Sept. 11, was Arvo Pärt's 90th birthday and the New York Times has a fine article on him, except for the headline.
THERE IS ALWAYS an element of mystery to fame, but Pärt seems to have tapped into a kind of ur-expression in music that has a profound effect on people regardless of how much they know about it. (The effect of that has been double-edged; his works have been embraced by a New Age audience, then criticized by some cynical specialists as New Age or “holy Minimalist.”) Its spirituality is broad, recalling elements of multiple religions. Its harmonic language would be as at home in the 15th century as the 21st. This is a sound, Michael Pärt said, “without boundaries.”
The music isn’t cloyingly populist, either. If anything it is personal, devotional, a product of composing, what he called his way of “breathing in and out.” He has also been guided by the belief that “art should concern itself with the eternal and not just the current,” perhaps another source of his mass appeal.
For all its accessibility, though, Pärt’s music is difficult to perform. He has said that “it is enough when a single note is beautifully played,” but in works so stripped down and fragile, that can be a challenge to sustain, whether over a few minutes or an hour.
Interpreters have described it requiring a kind of selflessness. His works, in their clean construction and economy, resist over-expression. “We don’t want to hear the performer perform,” Hillier said. “Just doing the music is enough.”
Describing someone like Arvo Pärt as having a kind of pop star status is a typical aberration of our current culture. No, he has nothing like pop star status though a few well-known popular musicians love his music. Taylor Swift sells millions of tickets and makes billions of dollars. Arvo Pärt has a centre in Estonia devoted to him and there is a focus on his music at Carnegie Hall this season. See the difference?
Things are looking pretty bad. Just listen to Rick Beato:
Well, yes, it sounds pretty bad, but just don't listen to that AI crap. Instead I play Bach every morning. I'm just memorizing the Siciliano from the First Violin Sonata. Gorgeous!
And then there is the Wall Street Journal which I used to rely on. But these days they are just predicting doom like everyone else. Some headlines today: Lumber Prices Are Flashing a Warning Sign for the U.S. Economy, Is the U.K. a Canary in the Coal Mine for a Heavily Indebted World?, Trump’s Risky Game With the Fed. Gosh, you would hardly suspect that the markets are hitting new all-time highs.
Cassandra, by the way, was a princess of Troy, daughter to King Priam and sister to Hector. She made a deal with Apollo to gain the ability to predict the future, promising him her favors. When she went back on the promise he cursed her by ensuring that no-one would believe her prophecies. Ouch!
I just want to point out that while Rick Beato hits the nail on the head, most of what we see and hear every day is crafted to make us fearful, anxious in order to sell us newspapers, magazines, jeans and makeup. We can simply ignore all of it. And no, the oceans aren't rising.
So, really, there is no need to feel anxious or fearful or just glum. Hell, we have the antidote in Vivaldi:
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced that Salonen would be its first creative director, starting in fall 2026. Simultaneously, the Philharmonie de Paris announced that he would hold its inaugural creativity and innovation chair starting in 2027, while also taking on the role of principal conductor of the Orchestre de Paris.
“One morning, I realized that I had been a music director or something to that effect for 40 years,” Salonen said in an interview. “And I thought, maybe that’s not the only option.”
Now there's a serious commute: Paris to LA every few weeks. Mind you, less grueling in First Class.
When pop groups and rock bands practice or perform, they rely on their guitars, keyboards and drumsticks to make music. Oliver McCann, a British AI music creator who goes by the stage name imoliver, fires up his chatbot.
McCann’s songs span a range of genres, from indie-pop to electro-soul to country-rap. There’s just one crucial difference between McCann and traditional musicians.
“I have no musical talent at all,” he said. “I can’t sing, I can’t play instruments, and I have no musical background at all.”
McCann, 37, who has a background as a visual designer, started experimenting with AI to see if it could boost his creativity and “bring some of my lyrics to life.” Last month, he signed with independent record label Hallwood Media after one of his tracks racked up 3 million streams, in what’s billed as the first time a music label has inked a contract with an AI music creator.
For those who think that this is the future of music, all I want to say is, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha and refer you to the Saint-Exupéry quote.
There is something a bit funny, at any rate, about pop-music criticism, which purports to offer serious analysis of a form that is often considered (by other people, who are also, in a sense, critics) rather silly. In 1969, Robert Christgau, the self-proclaimed Dean of American Rock Critics, began writing a Village Voice column called “Consumer Guide,” in which he assigned letter grades to new albums. He took pleasure in irritating the kinds of rock-loving hipsters who “considered consumption counterrevolutionary and didn’t like grades either.” He described the music of Donny Hathaway as “supper-club melodrama and homogenized jazz” (self-titled album, 1971: D-), and referred to George Harrison as a “hoarse dork” (“Dark Horse,” 1974: C-). In 1970, in Rolling Stone, Greil Marcus, another pioneering rock critic, began his review of Bob Dylan’s “Self Portrait” by asking, “What is this shit?”
Music criticism lost its way in my view, when it became no longer possible to offer reasons why something was good, bad or simply ridiculous and when the idea of aesthetics was lost.
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How about some music? I mean, the real stuff, not artificially generated and autotuned. Here is some Archangelo Corelli.
Like most composers and composers manqué, I am very sensitive to sound. Reading this New York Times article was like a vision of hell.
Block parties are how many New Yorkers escape the drudgery of the city in the summer. On a Saturday in August, music and the scent of barbecue lured people out of their brownstones onto a street in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, where kids pranced in the path of a bubble machine. Behind them, a dancers circle opened in a thicket of jubilant adults.
Ping-ponging around the makeshift dance floor was a bearded man in flamingo pink joggers carrying a laptop. Karl Scholz, 41, was using the computer to tune the sounds coming out of each of the six hulking stacks of speakers along the street, each painted the same bold pink as his pants.
Watching what is going on in Europe, particularly the UK, and Australia, I reflect on my own personal history. My family were from Nottingham, England. In the 1740s one branch was caught poaching the King's deer and transported to Canada, an alternative destination for convicts other than Australia. We lived in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta (where I was born), and British Columbia for some fourteen generations until I moved to Mexico.
Mexico, certainly in comparison to Canada, Australia and the UK, is quite a patriotic country. Every September the whole country is festooned with the Mexican flag:
Something Mexico has in common with the US is the use of an eagle as a national symbol. The American eagle on the national seal is depicted clutching, in one taloned fist, an olive branch, symbolizing peace and in the other, thirteen arrows, symbolizing war. The eagle on the Mexican flag is perched on a cactus clutching a rattlesnake. Come September the flag is seen everywhere, even flying from every taxi.
In Canada the rather insipid national flag is rarely seen except on government buildings. Patriotism is very much suppressed in Canada.
But in England and to a lesser extent in Australia, there has been a recent upwelling of displays of St. George's Cross, the national flag of England:
So as I sit, musing on the history of my family, I munch on the food of my people, English Breakfast Tea and an English muffin with marmalade, and observe with interest the upwelling of patriotism in England called "Operation Raise the Colours":
I suppose the underlying truth here is that who you are and where you are from flows as a subtext underneath the surface of your life, no matter where you are now.
