Friday Miscellanea

 I guess one of the big stories in music this week is Bob Dylan's new book: ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song’ Review: Bob Dylan Plays DJ

“The Philosophy of Modern Song” is an annotated playlist of other people’s songs, an idiosyncratic jukebox of 66 A-sides. The imposing title is perhaps tongue-in-cheek, for the book doesn’t offer—as Bobcats worth their salt might have predicted—anything close to what its title promises. What it does offer is perhaps even more valuable: It’s a generous book—as forthright as anything Dylan has ever laid before his audience—that manages to stick its landing somewhere between the perfect bathroom read (short sections, handsomely illustrated, coincidentally just in time for Christmas) and “The Anatomy of Melancholy,” Robert Burton’s epic, eccentric and encyclopedic compendium of 1621.

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Here is a piece on the nature and function of art: On Not Drinking the Kool-Aid

I recently spoke at a gathering of artists and arts administrators. During the discussion, one of the administrators said, “Art enables us to have difficult conversations with each other.” That struck me as perfectly capturing the going understanding of the role of art these days. Art is now viewed as a pretext for collective discourse, raising “issues” that provide the raw material for op-eds, Twitter threads, college seminars, and conference panels, not to mention (dreaded word) post-performance “talkbacks.”

  But not just any kind of collective discourse. For we all know what “difficult conversations” means: what they are about, and on what terms they are meant to proceed. A “difficult conversation” is not a conversation about the tragic nature of choice or the inevitability of death. Nor is it one in which participants debate whether trans women are women or affirmative action is a good idea. When I hear the phrase “difficult conversations,” I think of something David Mamet said: “When people say, ‘we need to have a conversation about race,’ what they really mean is, ‘shut the fuck up.’”

  In the age of wokeness, aka political correctness, art must be political and art must be correct. The point is familiar, but a few examples might revivify it...

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This is interesting: What the Suzuki Method Really Taught

Apparently, the emotional content of Western concert or “classical” music—its ability to summon up feelings that literally surpass words, and give us that uniquely musical experience of being overwhelmed—could be as immediately manifest to non-Westerners as it was to those raised in the tradition. The Japanese appetite for the emotional intensity of much so-called classical music coincided with a Western appetite for Eastern art, the japonisme that, through the prints of Hiroshige in particular, swept European painting in the second half of the nineteenth century, wresting it from a blind faith in Renaissance one-point perspective. Van Gogh and Manet, Whistler and Degas—they were as much enthralled by Japanese art as Suzuki’s generation was by European music. And, generally speaking, both sides “got it” just about as well, in each case mastering and repurposing the beautiful surface of the form without necessarily grasping all the local purposes beneath. Suzuki knew Bach but not, it seems, his religious points or passions, in the same way that Whistler knew Hiroshige but not his religious points or passions.

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State sponsorship of music, while seemingly essential, is also hazardous: Contemporary music sliced by Arts Council England’s knife

Delayed for over a week, the release of Arts Council England’s latest funding round landed with a thud on Friday – with the headline announcement of the total reduction in National Portfolio funding to English National Opera.

But a series of serious reductions were also visited on contemporary music organisations, with some losing all of their portfolio funding.

This included a total reduction in funding to the Cambridge-based Britten Sinfonia. The group, founded in 1992, is Associate Ensemble at the Barbican.

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Odanak First Nation's Mali Obomsawin tells Indigenous stories through music

When Mali Obomsawin graduated from Dartmouth College in 2018, she quickly found success as one-third of the acclaimed folk rock band Lula Wiles. But Mali grew frustrated by the limitations of that success. She says fans in the Americana folk scene expected a white folk aesthetic. Mali is a citizen of the Odanak First Nation in Quebec, and she didn't fit that box, so she left. She's now released her first album as a solo artist, "Sweet Tooth." It represents a different kind of folk music. Wabanaki hand drums and jazz arrangements replace banjo twang. Mali calls it the first authentic statement in her creative journey.

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Here are some insights into why the English National Opera was defunded: Defunding ENO is devastating – but the writing was on the wall

When the leadership of an arts organisation gives the impression that it has no faith in the importance of the work it produces, it is hardly surprising that people come to negative conclusions about its identity and value. Thousands of opera lovers had the foresight at the time to recognise the longer-term consequences of the changes and signed a petition to save ENO. Those who took that stand are unlikely to be surprised by the decisions that Arts Council England published last week that meant ENO will lose its £12.6m core annual funding.

The fact that this outcome was predicted doesn’t make the reality of it any less heartbreaking, nor less dangerous for the cultural landscape of the country.

Opera is squeezed by those on the left who think it is elitist and those on the right who do not believe it should be supported by government at all. The notion that it is a glamorous and frivolous entertainment for the social and cultural elite may be a convenient stereotype, but for those who have experienced it, nothing could be further from the truth.

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I suppose this was inevitable: Extinction Rebellion activists halt Verdi Requiem at Concertgebouw, comparing to ‘sinking Titanic’

A performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem came to a halt on Wednesday evening at The Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam when a climate protester interrupted the performance.

In a video shared by the global environmental movement, ‘Extinction Rebellion’, a protester seated in the midst of the auditorium level of the concert hall stood up to shout across the venue, “We are in the middle of a climate crisis and we are like the orchestra on the Titanic that keeps playing quietly while the ship is already sinking.”

The protester, named by the protest group as Sebastian, was one of three who interrupted the performance at 8.30pm on 2 November and used their hijacked platform to call on the Dutch government to do everything they could to reach carbon-neutrality by 2025.

All three of the protesters were dragged out by booing audience members

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Let's listen to some music from the Mali Obomsawin album:

 I was listening to some music by American composer Roy Harris this week. Here is his Symphony No. 3 from 1941: