Over the last few decades, popular songs have switched from major to minor keys: In the 1960s, 85 percent of the songs were written in a major key, compared with only about 40 percent of them now. Broadly speaking, the sound has shifted from bright and happy to something more complicated. It’s important to note, though, that although older songs were frequently in a major key, this didn’t necessarily mean the lyrics were cheerful (e.g., The Fifth Dimension’s 1969 “Wedding Bell Blues” tells the tale of a woman longing for her wedding day, despite being in major key). Similarly, Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” hit from 2006 is in minor key, but it relates the tension and fiery lust between two potential lovers.
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About the Nazi's "cultural" concentration camp: Amid the Horrors of the Holocaust, Jewish Musicians Composed Songs of Survival
In 1988, Mark Ludwig, a tenured violist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was between events at New York City’s Carnegie Hall when he wandered into his favorite used bookshop. He picked up a biography of Leo Baeck, the 20th-century German rabbi and scholar. Baeck had been imprisoned during World War II at the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. He’d survived, settled in London and become one of the foremost theologians of his day. Something in the book caught Ludwig’s attention—Baeck’s observation that despite the hardship and cruelty of the camp, inmates produced an impressive output of high-quality classical music.
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Something I have often puzzled over is why certain places at certain times produce an astonishing amount of intellectural creativity: Athens in the 4th century BC, Florence in the early Renaissance, London in the 16th century and so on. Apparently in philosophy in the 20th century, it was the University of Oxford (and Cambridge as well): Chariots of Philosophical Fire.
In 1963, the philosophers Gilbert Ryle and Isaiah Berlin had lunch with the composer Igor Stravinsky. Ryle, the least famous of the bunch, was the most scathing in his survey of the philosophical landscape. He dubbed the celebrated American pragmatists William James and John Dewey the “Great American Bores.” He condemned the work of French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, with its speculation about an emerging world consciousness, as “old teleological pancake.” Then he summed it up in a sweeping crossfire that could serve as the most Oxonian of putdowns: “Every generation or so philosophical progress is set back by the appearance of a ‘genius.’”
What did Ryle have against such geniuses? And is progress in philosophy even possible?
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In a career in music, it is often the logistics that get you down. For example: MUNICH PHILHARMONIC LASHES OUT AT HOPELESS GERMAN RAIL.
We should have started in the morning at 9.30 am at the Cologne main station. After three failed ICE and no information on how, when and if we would move on at all, we finally started three hours late. Thanks to further delays we arrived in Berlin 4.5 hours late and completely exhausted after 10 hours on the go. The concert was 25 minutes late, a radio broadcast from the Berlin Philharmonic had to be cancelled – the Berlin audience responded wonderfully, we gave everything, they thanked us.
Dear Deutsche Bahn Personenverkehr: we absolutely want to protect our climate! We were happy to rely on you, trusting you. Despite repeated negative experiences, we have defended and protected you, time and again. Yet you stab us in the back, you fail us. We can’t count on you. We can’t take it any more.
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Canada has several different musical cultures, but a lot of them cross paths in Montreal. One nexus of contemporary music for several decades as been the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec. Here is an upcoming concert: SMCQ présents : Amitiés et étrangeté.
On September 24, 2023, the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) will present the fourth concert in their Hommage 2023-2024 series, dedicated to composer Sandeep Bhagwati. Organized in collaboration with the Vietnamese Cultural Centre of Canada, the multimedia event will involve music, text and images, centered around such themes as proximity, distance, estrangement and familiarity.
Titled Amitiés et étrangeté, the program focuses on a single work by Bhagwati, Exercices d’étrangeté 1, inspired by a verse by Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Duy, about Vietnamese diasporic communities. The idea of encountering the unknown is embodied by the musical collaboration that will bring this music to life: the meeting of seven musicians from a variety of musical traditions and geographical regions. Bhagwati’s imaginative musical world will invite each participating musician to rediscover their instrument, in dialogue with the artistic traditions of others.
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I'm on vacation in Mexico City for a few days so I haven't had a lot of time to prepare the Friday Miscellanea. Here is the view from my hotel window:
No, I didn't find any musical events to attend but here are a few envoi to enjoy. Weinberg's Symphony No. 12 was written in memory of Shostakovich:
Viktor Ullmann was one of the Jewish composers interned at the Therezin camp where he composed his String Quartet No. 3:
And finally, to cheer everyone up, a performance of a Vivaldi Gloria from Japan:
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