Friday Miscellanea

The urge to always "make it new" undeniably leads to some interesting innovation. But, at times, it also leads to stuff we could do without hearing. Imagine if you took the horsehair of a cello bow and wrapped it around the wood of the bow several times and then played with it. You will get a rather random alternation of clicky col legno sounds interspersed with brief bowed bits. Liza Lim's piece Invisibility (2009) uses this effect for the first half:

https://vimeo.com/98817622

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There have a been a lot of criticisms (some more appropriate than others) of the new music streaming services and how they present classical music. But this one is perhaps the most entertaining. Plus, lots of illustrations.

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Prince criticizes the standard record contract as "slavery" in a talk for journalists given in his studio in Minneapolis.

His pitch to the group was simple: Typical record company contracts turn artists into indentured servants with little control over how their music is used, particularly when it comes to revenue from streaming services playing their music online — and he wants to change that.

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There was a time when classical artists could mature gracefully without having to pander to the crossover crowd, or, as it is termed in this release, the "club" crowd.

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I suspect that Bill Whittle's Afterburner series will not be to everyone's taste. I remember back in the early days of the blogosphere when he would post the occasional lengthy essay also titled "Afterburner". He makes a lot of good points in this one which dovetails with some of my observations about why classical music is losing its audience.

The allusion, by the way, is to The Great Learning, one of the "Four Books" in Confucianism.

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Another item that might seem rather peripheral to music is this one from a philosopher professor. Quassim Cassam proposes that the reason some people believe things that are obviously false is not that they don't have enough information or the right information, it is that there is something wrong with the way they think. Read "Bad Thinkers" for the whole argument. Here is a core part:

Gullibility, carelessness and closed-mindedness are examples of what the US philosopher Linda Zagzebski, in her book Virtues of the Mind (1996), has called ‘intellectual vices’. Others include negligence, idleness, rigidity, obtuseness, prejudice, lack of thoroughness, and insensitivity to detail. Intellectual character traits are habits or styles of thinking. To describe Oliver as gullible or careless is to say something about his intellectual style or mind-set – for example, about how he goes about trying to find out things about events such as 9/11. Intellectual character traits that aid effective and responsible enquiry are intellectual virtues, whereas intellectual vices are intellectual character traits that impede effective and responsible inquiry. Humility, caution and carefulness are among the intellectual virtues Oliver plainly lacks, and that is why his attempts to get to the bottom of 9/11 are so flawed.

I think the relevance to us is that while the discussion in that essay focuses on intellectual virtues, much the same applies in the world of music with what we might call musical virtues. A lot of how we train to be musicians is by developing the right kind of work habits and listening habits. Not so surprising, the same virtues that apply in the intellectual realm also apply in our realm: humility, caution and carefulness are pretty important when you are learning a piece of music. But I'm sure that there are virtues particular to what we do as well. We don't usually think of things in this way, but aren't things like the ability or willingness to follow an idea to wherever it leads, to work out the implications of a certain form, to seek out the unity in diverse motifs or textures the kinds of virtues that a composer needs?

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As the theme for the day seems to be "slouching towards idiocy", let me link to a review of a new book by Mario Vargas Llosa titled "Notes on the Death of Culture."

We may not be living in the worst of times, although a case might very well be made for it, but anyone with a thought in their head would be entitled to say that we’re living in the stupidest. Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, certainly believes we are. In this series of coruscating and passionate essays on the state of culture he argues that we have, en masse, capitulated to idiocy. And it is leading us to melancholy and despair.

Want some more?

 On some aspects, such as the art business, Vargas Llosa practically foams at the mouth. The art world is “rotten to the core”, a world in which artists cynically contrive “cheap stunts”. Stars like Damien Hirst are purveyors of “con-tricks”, and their “boring, farcical and bleak” productions are aided by “half-witted critics”. 

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I think that I have made clear my views on identity politics and quota systems in general, so I will put up this link without comment: "Chineke! Europe's first black professional orchestra."

I will just pose this question: do they expect to be judged by objective aesthetic standards? Or should other factors come into play?

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Hmm, what would be an appropriate envoi for today's oddly mixed-up miscellanea? Aha, I have it! How about a heavy metal "cover" of the last movement of the Symphony No. 5 of Dmitri Shostakovich? You got it: