Friday, September 25, 2020

Friday Miscellanea

 This week will be as crazy as ever and we kick off with this: As critics slam UChicago for black studies-only commitment, campus spokesman defends it.

The University of Chicago has come under heavy criticism for its recent announcement that it will only accept graduate student applicants to its English Department who are interested in Black Studies for the 2020-21 school year.

I can just see Juilliard announcing that they will only accept candidates who not only pass the rigorous audition, but commit to playing at least 50% Black composers on their recitals. No? Let's not be too sure. A few years ago the above policy would have seemed absurd to the extreme. And at the University of Chicago? Where I thought a modicum of sanity prevailed?

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Here is some Mongolian mountain music for you:

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Here is a bit more on that vocal technique:


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Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris holds a special place in musicians' hearts because it was there that the notated polyphonic tradition of Western music was born, or mostly so. When it burned down this past February I wrote a piece in response. Well, the damage was not as bad as was feared early on and efforts to rebuild are successfully going forward: Notre Dame cathedral update: Carpenters wow public with medieval techniques. Follow the link for a photo.

With precision and boundless energy, a team of carpenters used medieval techniques to raise up — by hand — a three-ton oak truss Saturday in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, a replica of the wooden structures that were consumed in the landmark's devastating April 2019 fire that also toppled its spire.

The demonstration to mark European Heritage Days gave the hundreds of people a first-hand look at the rustic methods used 800 years ago to build the triangular frames in the nave of Notre Dame de Paris.

Wouldn't you know it that the French would have a few Medieval carpenters on hand.

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Musical life continues to revive in Europe with free foyer concerts at the Barbican in London.

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Also from Slipped Disc the unwelcome news that the Metropolitan Opera in New York will be closed for the coming season.

After being furloughed without pay for six months, we are concerned for our members and their families as they navigate what will now be over a year without economic support from the Met. Furthermore, we are devastated that the Met has not found ways to engage the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra during this closure – especially when the Met Stars series shows that there is a possibility for collaboration.

I think it is safe to say that any member of the orchestra who has the possibility of work elsewhere will simply leave. Does the Met still exist? Just the building...

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WQXR radio has an editorial on how music schools are adapting to the challenges of the pandemic:

 The music world has been devastated by the effects of the global pandemic. But for all of the challenges facing professional musicians during this time, an equally herculean obstacle has been facing another part of the music industry: our conservatories. When the pandemic reached the United States just over six months ago, students were in the middle of their spring semesters. Many of these schools had to suddenly pivot as they reluctantly embraced a fully online format. Voice lessons had to happen over Zoom with inconsistent audio and shoddy microphones; students without personal access to instruments like pianos, harps, and organs were left without anything to play; and international students who had returned home were up at 2 am for classes with their peers back in the United States. Conservatories were doing all they could to provide the highest level of education, but the change had come so swiftly that most were knocked off their feet, stumbling to regain their balance. 

In New York City, three conservatories — the Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School, and The College of Performing Arts at The New School — decided upon three distinct plans. For The New School’s College of Performing Arts, which includes the Mannes School of Music, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the School of Drama, the decision was made in the spring: all instruction would be fully remote. But the Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard opted instead for hybrid models, including remote academic instruction and a degree of in-person performance work. As Richard Kessler, Dean of Mannes, told me in a Zoom interview, “We had some level of anxiety over the number of schools and universities that were stating they were going to be hybrid or in-person. And we received a lot of criticism from students about that over the summer.”

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The New York Post tells us that Canceling Beethoven is the latest woke madness for the classical-music world.

If there’s anything we should have learned from months of “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter street protests, statue toppling and online mobs seeking to silence anyone who dissents against leftist narratives about “racism,” it’s that no one, living or dead, is safe from the attentions of woke fascists. Even Ludwig van Beethoven.

Remember years ago when there was all this talk about how playing Mozart for your unborn child or your infant was the sure way to start them off right, smarter, happier and alerter (more alert?)? My response was always, "Why Mozart, why not Bach?" This was because I recognized that "Mozart" was not really Mozart, but merely a placeholder for "some famous composer you have heard of." Similarly, all this critical theory aimed at Beethoven isn't really aimed at Beethoven, but "Beethoven," i.e. "some famous composer highly revered by Western Civilization and therefore now a target." I think it is time we drew a line in the sand, don't you? Let's start striking back at all the bogus intellectual horseshit that underlies this Maoist critical theory. You know who we mean.

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Time for some truculent envois, wouldn't you say? Something worth cancelling! Here is Daniel Barenboim conducting the Sixth Symphony by Beethoven at the 2012 Proms:


And here is Grigory Sokolov playing the Piano Sonata no. 9 by Beethoven:


And here are the Alban Berg Quartet playing the String Quartet no. 14, op. 131 by Beethoven.


You can cancel Beethoven over my dead body.

10 comments:

Dex Quire said...

True observation Bryan; Beethoven to this mob is just another old bronze statue that needs to come down because ... well because we're angry ... and he was white and .... well because we have to apply our Maoist horseshit critical theory (well-chosen words) somewhere ....

Civilization is built upon achievement and creation (VS Naipaul & others) ... we must defend this - stand up for this ...

Anonymous said...

There is some precedent for maintaining or reviving traditional building practices in France -- take a look at Guédelon Castle: https://www.guedelon.fr/en/.

(Is this the architectural equivalent of historical performance?)

Bryan Townsend said...

Yes, yes and yes. Thanks, Dex.

Anonymous, yes France is particularly good at respecting and preserving their past.

David said...

Perhaps the Cancel Beethoven crowd could find 60 minutes to consume and consider the dialogue between four black orchestra conductors that can be found here: https://slippedisc.com/2020/06/four-afro-american-conductors-review-the-situation/

This piece was a feature at Slipped Disc on June 8. Of particular interest is the comment by Thomas Wilkins early in the interview (at 3:10) where he quotes Beethoven "Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend." How can you cancel that?

Perhaps I take too simple a view, but it seems to me that Beethoven made a gift of inestimable value to all humankind of his music. It is not owned by any single race, culture or creed. The composer's sound world is the same and has the same redeeming value regardless of the colour, age or sex of the musicians devoted to making it available to those willing to hear it.

Now back to listening to another of the Big B's - Brahms Second Symphony to erase the Cancel Craziness from my mind.

Harrrold said...

One key thing here is that when the woke speak of cancelling Beethoven over white supremacy and something or other, terms like "white supremacy," "racism," "diversity," "tolerance," and so on take on very different, sometimes contradictory meanings from how you or I use them, and this confusion is exploited. If you really wish to respond to them, to understand their demands and statements as understood by themselves and their peers, knowing how their worldview redefines existing words will put you on a more even footing with these people.
Some people involved with the grievance studies affair from several years ago (if you don't remember, they submitted farcical papers to some big academic journals to expose the low academic standards of fields particularly influenced by critical theory, and through them published gems such as portions of Mein Kampf rewritten in feminist language and an account of the authors jerking off dogs in the park to study dog rape culture) are working on a sort of plain-language encyclopedia of social justice terminology, using the literature and websites of critical race theorists as a reference. If you ever have a little time to spare someday, I suggest looking at some definitions such as https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-white-supremacy/ or https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-diversity/ , reading through them, then clicking links for any words which catch your eye. From what I've seen it's fairly accurate and helpful if you want some grasp of the worldview making so much headway in the west today.

Speaking of the grievance studies fellows, one of them upset the mob recently by publicly stating that 2+2=4 and not 5. This was followed by a flock of rustled Twitter academics claiming that mathematics is a white supremacist social construct which holds us back from other ways of knowing in which 2 plus 2 could actually equal 5. Following them were useful idiots who tried demonstrating that 2+2=5 using linguistic trickery which always involved creating a new, nonstandard definition for at least one of the equation's symbols, and finally your lowest common denominator social justice twitter person would see the smart academic people saying 2+2=5 and celebrate the death of oppressive white math.

Harrrold said...

Dear me, if that last comment of mine was a person his doctor would say he's life-threateningly obese. I guess anything gets flabby if you don't use it often.

Wenatchee the Hatchet said...

With extended technique singing showing up so prominently for this Friday's post I might as well through in the Dies Irae from Toby Twining's Chrysalid Requiem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBJCEBRbrRs

Bryan Townsend said...

It is nice to see such zealous rage in the comments. I don't think anyone is going to cancel Beethoven any time soon. Thanks Harrrold for the disquisition on the meaning of words. Both Orwell and Confucius noted the problem of the corruption of language.

Dex Quire said...

I hate the ignorance of the mob. They've devised a category of White Privilege. Well how far back does this privilege go? There was a time in the middle ages where grand old European Western Civilization was a water wheel on a creek, a cold castle nearby and a cold monastery next to that. The Master was probably in his castle counting up his rents from the local peasantry. The monastery probably housed a few monks copying out Plato and Cicero - and for fun Apuleius and Petronius. The peasants worked all day and lived in fear of marauders from the next castle over. Time off for a few religious festivals.

The band of the southern Mediterranean that included Spain going through north Africa (and even Saharan Africa as in Timbuktu), the near East and Arabia featured more fun, more travel, more scholarship more building than did medieval Europe.

Next, we come to the end of the middle ages, circa 1492. Except they didn't know they were at the end of the middle ages. Read the captain's journals of that arch-imperialist white guy (he was probably olive to light brown as are most Italians) Columbus during his first voyage from Europe to the new world. He and his crew half insane with fear. Hundreds of years of myth and fables crowd their minds as they head westward towards present-day Caribbean. All the sailors are on the lookout for land birds. Every log-entry includes observations of seaweed (a telltale sign of shoreline). And on and on. These are not Renaissance men; these are deeply medieval men with incredible courage to face down those centuries of wild tales of sea monsters swallowing vessels that drifted too far out into the Atlantic. About two weeks into the voyage the sailor in the crow's nest screams out: Land Ho! Everyone falls to their knees in gratitude; a number of sailors go up into the crows nest to see for themselves. Yes they all cry - Land ho! It turns out to be a mirage. Back to examining birds and looking for seaweed. At the end of the first week of October the crew surrounds Columbus and sez: You've got three days. If we don't see landfall we're going back to Spain. As you know, they didn't go back to Spain just then; Columbus bumped into the outer islands of India or China ....

Where were we ... O yeah ... white privilege .... ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzZZZZzzzzz...

Bryan Townsend said...

We can reassure ourselves that people this stunningly ignorant of history will, sooner or later, pay a price. But one wishes that accounting were a bit more prompt!