Friday Miscellanea

I have mentioned before that one of the biggest problems confronting classical music is the decline of the audiences. Here is an interesting read on that topic titled: "Anti-Intellectualism and the 'Dumbing Down' of America." I hate to break it to the folks at Psychology Today, but it ain't just America! Sample quote:

There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It’s the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.

In many cultures, not just the US, there seems to be a trend away from the substantial to the trivial.

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Now here is a project that I just can't get behind: "Creativity and the Brain: What We Still Don't Know." Here's what they propose:

It is time for a large-scale, multidisciplinary study into the nature of creativity—one that would integrate the insights of neurobiologists, psychologists, artists, and educators.

What's wrong with this? First of all, why? What benefit could possibly come from this sort of study? I profoundly doubt that neurobiologists, psychologists or educators have any insights into creativity and I think that artists would better spend their time creating than trying to "study" creativity. The argument seems to be:

"Imagine the potential for our nation's health, education, culture, and productivity if we were able to truly understand the anatomy of our 'aha' moments, and how they can be nurtured, optimized, and deployed"

 I think that you always have to deconstruct the passive constructions in statements like these. Who, for example, is going to do all this nurturing, optimising and deploying? Well, government, of course. Just between you and me I think that all too many of our current problems come from exactly that: government going around willy-nilly nurturing, optimising and deploying, or pretending to do so while in actuality simply paying off their constituencies. All that is really needed is for there be incentives for creativity and, in most areas, they are already there. Just ask Mark Zukerberg. In some areas, like music for example, there seem to be perverse incentives and we might want to look into that. Is there any way of discouraging people from creating formulaic, derivative, generic pop music?

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Here is a pretty good review of Philip Glass' recent autobiography. Sample quote:

Glass is either oblivious to conventions or fond of ignoring them. He mentions a few times that he was born with an “I-don’t-care-what-you-think” gene. There’s often reason to distrust these proclamations, but I did enjoying cataloguing his contrarianism. Other performers may look down on amplifiers, but he adapted them no less to the opera house. Other musicians may revere figures like Aaron Copland and Nadia Boulanger, but he rebelled and talked back to them. Other composers may scoff off film soundtrack commissions, but he tried them out and with success. Other music students may spend their Juilliard prize monies to practice and compose, but he bought a motorcycle so that he can ride around the country. When people made fun of him for appearing in a whiskey ad, he retorted: “It seemed to me that people who didn’t have to sell out… must have had rich parents.”

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Here is an interesting little article with photos of experimental women musicians called by Maggie Shannon, who photographed them, "Noise Girls." Somehow, I doubt you really want to live in the apartment below. Here is Camilla Padgitt-Coles:

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Here is some awfully good news: a Stradivarius violin, stolen in 1980, has been recovered and will be returned to the family of the owner. The Ames Stradivarius was recovered by the FBI in June:

Here's a tip for prospective violin thieves: don't steal famous violins. Sure, they are easy to run away with, but you won't be able to sell it. As soon as you take it to anyone with any connection to the classical music world, if there is no credible provenance, they will call the cops. These are famous instruments.

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The Guardian has a nice essay by John Eliot Gardiner on Monteverdi's Orfeo, the origin of opera (if not the very first one written, certainly the first one that remains in the repertoire).

The Orpheus legend is utterly central to how opera emerged at the close of the Italian Renaissance and to the way its first pioneers tried to justify its existence as a revival of ancient Greek sung drama (a slightly spurious claim). Orpheus, its first definitive hero, is present at every intersection in opera’s 400-year story as it continued to evolve and then, after a few wrong turnings, attempted to reform itself thanks largely to Gluck.

When Claudio Monteverdi came to compose L’Orfeo in 1607 he seems to have had a particular empathy with Orpheus. As a court musician working in claustrophobic, mosquito-ridden Mantua, Monteverdi was in effect a feudal vassal of the Gonzaga dukes. There his moods seesawed between elation and dejection: intense bouts of audacious creativity were followed by moments of self-doubt - very much like the Orpheus of Greek mythology (as transmitted by Ovid and Virgil), who suffers, loves, exults, mourns, goes on a heroic rescue mission, stumbles at the last hurdle and finally reaches a new and deeper understanding of himself.

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From Leonard Slatkin comes this list of ten forgotten American masterpieces. I would quibble with a few. Ruggles' Sun-Treader is not so forgotten and neither is Crumb's Echoes of Time and the River.

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Now here is a great idea that didn't quite come off: take details from some great paintings featuring musicians and give them funny captions. That was the idea at Sinfini Music. But whoever wrote the captions just. didn't. quite. manage. it... Could I suggest:

(I swear, next time we are going to pick a composer who knows the range of the soprano voice...)

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Which brings us to our envoi for today. What else but the Possente spirto aria from Orfeo by Monteverdi. This is Anthony Rolfe Johnson singing Orfeo with John Eliot Gardiner conducting the English Baroque Soloists, Monteverdi Choir: