tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post8710318717215740046..comments2024-03-27T23:06:03.736-05:00Comments on The Music Salon: Genius and DysfunctionBryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-83797035717833019702017-09-04T11:22:54.918-05:002017-09-04T11:22:54.918-05:00I suspect that we all tend to use the word "g...I suspect that we all tend to use the word "genius" in two different senses. On the one hand, a singular person of remarkable gifts might do something so impressive that we would call him a genius. On the other hand, there can be "genius" in certain actions or ideas or things that we see. We might remark on their "ingenuity," which comes from the same root.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-17992238630970003182017-09-04T10:20:13.726-05:002017-09-04T10:20:13.726-05:00I once read a definition of genius that was someth...I once read a definition of genius that was something like "one who produces a genuinely original and useful idea." So much of what any of us do or think is mostly just a rearrangement of pre-existing ideas or devices. A truly original idea is indeed a rare and, if useful, very valuable thing. Overall I agree with Marc's summary above, the old understanding that most people have their small genius in something at which they excel and even show originality, and that genius in such cases is that spark of creativity rather than the person. Bryan you seem to want to reserve the label only for those who are great geniuses, those people head and shoulders above everyone else in originality and quality of creation, and certainly that would be the most supreme variety of genius. Will Wilkinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01997868915978439364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-32575969913552498182017-09-03T11:15:00.820-05:002017-09-03T11:15:00.820-05:00What a beautiful pair of comments, Marc. You bring...What a beautiful pair of comments, Marc. You bring out many subtle points. Yes, I think that we all have moments in which genius or creativity or inspiration strikes. Perhaps the difference between an ordinary person and one blessed with some amount of genius is that the latter is paying attention and will make use of the moment while the ordinary person may not recognize it as anything important at all. I agree with many of your comments about the artist's human failings. I was just reading that Sibelius had to be dragged out of bars and sobered up in order to finish the last movement of his Violin Concerto, but that has nothing to do with the final quality of the work.<br /><br />I have read Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, though it was too many years ago and I need to read it again!<br /><br />Yes, there are fashions in performance practice and it is the brilliant performers that tend to be the ones that change those fashions.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-69165224065364786582017-09-03T09:43:29.634-05:002017-09-03T09:43:29.634-05:00Just listened to the Kristian Zimerman performance...Just listened to the Kristian Zimerman performance of the Brahms First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic from 2015 and will now listen to Glenn Gould's here, to see if I can get the sense of 'genius struggling to be heard'. Me being me I will probably think, how wonderful, and not be up to articulating what differences I may or may not hear. Unfortunately, I read comments! late last night on the Gould/Bernstein video; what I seem to have taken away from them-- correctly or incorrectly-- is that Gould's preferences these days amount to the norm and that LB himself conformed to them later in his career. Marc in Eugenehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04331547981498637474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-5469554137071101272017-09-03T09:32:30.481-05:002017-09-03T09:32:30.481-05:00Fascinating. There's a weekly feature at the T...Fascinating. There's a weekly feature at the Times, appears Fridays, I think, in which critics briefly note this and that; Zachary Woolfe, I think, while discussing recent performances of Julius Eastman's work linked back to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/arts/music/minimalist-composer-julius-eastman-dead-for-26-years-crashes-the-canon.html" rel="nofollow">this essay</a>-- 'genius and dysfunction' indeed.<br /><br />But that points to a difference in the use of the term 'genius', doesn't it: on the one hand, it means the phenomenon that you and Anon. have been discussing, but on the other it refers to that spark of creativity or moment of achievement that even many of us lesser mortals experience, that excellence when we achieve something truly worthwhile (however one wants to define or describe what that might be), this sense depending on the Romans, ultimately, who imagined that each person and each state and city and place had a minor divinity guiding it or him, analogous to the Christian doctrine which teaches that we each have 'guardian angels'. In that sense, Eastman certain <i>had 'genius'</i>, however exaggerated the present Times-ean ascription to him of <i>the status 'genius'</i> may be (or may not be, for all I know; I'm taking a mild but certainly real pleasure in <i>Evil Nigger</i>-- that there is enough 'there' there to entitle him to 'genius' status, I'm not the one to judge).<br /><br />It seems to me self-evident that one can 'be a genius' or be 'struck by genius' (which two expressions seem to capture the distinction?) while at the same time failing to live up to the obligations of the moral law. I've never understood the fascination of 'art for art's sake' when that is taken to mean that the making of the artefact justifies even the immoral means which the artist may have used or the human failings he has succumbed to in the course of the acts of artistic creation, when it is so obvious that artists are not necessarily any more humane or more wise (and from my point of view, any less immune to the shadows of sin or sin itself) than other people because they are artists, because of their art. Salvador Dali made interesting art, in spite of his private nonsense; Daniel Barenboim is an outstanding pianist and conductor no matter what he did or failed to do to support Jacqueline du Pré as she lay moribund; even if Hans Pfitzner was 'ignorant' of the Nazi evils only by pretense and pleaded with the Nuremberg Court to spare Hans Frank's life not because human life is inviolably sacred but out of human friendship, his <i>Palestrina</i> is a beautiful opera. The beauties of the art that we may admire or revere, made by those three, lie in the artefacts themselves, not in their makers-- although of course one can distinguish via the modes of causality and attribute a certain aspect of beauty-- beauty <i>in potentia</i>-- to the artist himself (which sounds contradictory to our modern ears but really isn't).<br /><br />So, on the one hand, while I think I'm more free with the term 'genius' that some might want to be, I'm not inclined to 'worship' artists (except those who have been raised to the altars, sure, Romanus, Hildegard, Thomas, Giovanni da Fiesole, Robert Southwell <i>et alii</i>) because I'm well aware and from personal experience how they share in our common human lot of grace and 'dysfunction'. On the other hand, one has one's enthusiasms. May I recommend to you both Thomas Mann's <i>Doctor Faustus, the Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn</i>? Mann discusses these questions beautifully there, if at great length.Marc in Eugenehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04331547981498637474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-58575913789677262412017-09-01T11:22:27.773-05:002017-09-01T11:22:27.773-05:00Thanks, Anon, for teasing out the distinction and ...Thanks, Anon, for teasing out the distinction and making it clear. I agree entirely.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-7483584773758541172017-09-01T11:13:27.912-05:002017-09-01T11:13:27.912-05:00It's just terminology and maybe it's nitpi...It's just terminology and maybe it's nitpicking on my part. I am in awe of great performers. Listening to Sokolov, Gould, Perlman, etc., can be a transcendent, life-changing experience. I think the world of these people and if someone insists on calling them geniuses, then fine. The reason I don't do it is because a distinction needs to be made. Listen to Perlman play the Chaconne (bbc concert -- on youtube). No doubt in my mind I am watching a superior, heroic being. Perlman's mastery is a joy to behold! But then I am reminded of an angry Karajan quip to one of his singers: "Who is the genius here: you or Mozart?" <br /><br />When it's all said and done, Gould, Perlman, and Karajan will be forgotten. Other, better pianists, violinists, and conductors will come along, but Bach and Mozart never will be forgotten. Gielgud will be forgotten but Shakespeare never will. It's not just a difference: immortality is a huge difference.<br /><br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-41245493318367040892017-09-01T10:33:22.415-05:002017-09-01T10:33:22.415-05:00Darn you for pointing out my inconsistencies! I do...Darn you for pointing out my inconsistencies! I do tend to agree with you about the overuse of the term "genius." But there are occasionally performers who do live up to the standard. I think Glenn Gould might be one. Grigory Sokolov, Sviatoslav Richter, a couple of others. I have heard concerts by Nigel Rogers that seemed to me to fit and there is a recording of Scarlatti sonatas on guitar by Leo Brouwer that I would rate that highly. Typically performers are not what we would call geniuses. But very occasionally a performer achieves something rather transcendent.<br /><br />Do you exclude performers from the genius category because their role is essentially secondary? This is something I wonder about. For example, I am writing a piece right now for violin and guitar and we were reading through some bits on the weekend. It seemed to me that the first problem was performance practice. How is this music to be played, as there are no models? (It uses a bottleneck slide on the guitar combined with a lot of glissandi in the violin, so it is rather unusual.)<br /><br />Yes, you are correct, after Gould's spectacular Goldbergs in the 50s Canadians fell over themselves adulating him. That is after he was anointed by the Americans, which is usually how it works.<br /><br />Yes, I too admire John Eliot Gardiner, and Trevor Pinnock.<br /><br />The only reason I chose this particular example of Gould and Bernstein, was because it was the only concrete illustration I could think of! But perhaps it was not felicitous.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-7182699408277126902017-09-01T10:02:33.471-05:002017-09-01T10:02:33.471-05:00Interesting observations. A teenage Proust wrote &...Interesting observations. A teenage Proust wrote "I'm better than Victor Hugo and I will prove it." He did. But one can only imagine how well that kind of cockiness went down with his teachers.<br /><br />I think the term "genius" is being overused and abused. Plato, Newton, Einstein, Bach, Beethoven, Proust, etc. All geniuses. If the word has any meaning, these people qualify.<br /><br />But it really makes no sense to me to call Gould a genius, or for that matter any performing artist. Don't get me wrong. I am a big fan of Gould. He was a brilliant virtuoso with an astonishing command of the musical literature. His interpretations were often fascinating. He was also seriously neurotic (maybe on the spectrum). But I don't see what could possibly make him a genius. I can name many pianists who are just as brilliant and play Bach at least as well. None of them is a genius. Also, it's striking that someone as musically talented as Gould couldn't compose to save his life. His attempts were truly embarrassing. (Bernstein at least could compose.)<br /><br />Final point: You probably know more on the subject than I do but I was not aware that Canada treated Gould badly. My impression was just the opposite: that he was treated as a national hero and indulged in all sorts of ways. <br /><br />Someone else I admire greatly is John Eliot Gardiner. He is not a genius either, but I mention him because he has a reputation as a pompous obnoxious jerk. Not sure what his excuse is.<br /><br />David Hume was a clearly a genius. Apparently he was also a very pleasant, considerate, charming, humble man. My kind of genius!<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com