Friday Miscellanea

The Wall Street Journal has a review of an interesting new book: ‘The Liberating Arts’ Review: The Price of Flourishing.

As dean of an honors college explicitly dedicated to liberal learning through the study of classic texts, I find myself mostly in agreement with the vision of higher education put forward here. I agree with David Henreckson that the liberal arts are not mere skills or techniques but a way of life that allows human beings to flourish. I find myself nodding along when Zena Hitz argues that liberal learning has fundamentally to do with leisure, the cultivation of habits of contemplation and reflection that allow us to pursue the highest human activities. And I could not be more thrilled to read Brandon McCoy’s argument that “the goal of education should be to create liberated persons who seek to examine life in its fullness, to enjoy friendships with others, and to foster the health of their communities.”

Reading this, one name comes inevitably to mind: Aristotle. He argued that human flourishing (eudaemonia) depends on the exercise of virtue. This is the basic argument of his Nichomachean Ethics, a book that was core reading for educated people in the West for, oh, a couple of millennia. I tend to see our current crises as often related to the failure to exercise virtue and other human capacities like curiosity and kindness--as moral failure in other words.

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Danish artist who submitted empty frames as artwork told to repay funding. Plus, don't previous artists like Rauschenberg, who have displayed canvases that consisted of only white paint, have a plagiarism case? This has been done many times.

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Here is something unusual: economist Tyler Cowan is prepping for an interview with the outstanding Japanese Bach specialist Masaaki Suzuki: What should I ask Masaaki Suzuki? In a previous post he categorizes Suzuki as: Masaaki Suzuki, a great achiever of our time. This comment caused a lot of pushback in the comments:

He has recorded the complete cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, in pretty much perfect recordings. They are widely acknowledged to be the best Bach cantata recordings ever.  That amounts to 70 CDs of work.

For example:

Doubtful and I don't think a majority of experts claims his cantatas are the best even sans blind trials. Some of Suzuki's soloists are dubious; a common view about his Bach cantatas is that they're technically perfect but soulless and superficial at times; other that they're too fast.

This is a very strange post. I've seen MS live (during the East Frisian "Organ Spring"), and he was OK but did not blow me away as some others have. I listed to his complete Bach cantatas all the way through while working out (great workout music!), and I thought they were well done, but not more than that. Incidentally, the quality of a Bach cantata depends crucially on the solo vocalist(s), around whom the instrumental music is written.

Overall, I'd say that being a Bach completist is as much about focus and financing as it is achievement as such. MS, with very occasional forays into Beethoven and Stravinsky, is a Baroque guy. He is highly regarded, but I doubt many, if any, professional musicians would place him in a separate category. Indeed, there is so much fabulous music-making around that even the most exceptional performers are seen as distinctive individuals within a somewhat larger group. And to be honest, what separates a superstar on an average day from a lesser-known but highly skilled musician on an inspired day is nothing or even less.

Chosen from a wide range of views. But this raises an interesting question: it has never occurred to me to try and do a comparative evaluation of different recordings of the Bach Cantatas. Just getting to know them to any degree is a significant challenge. What would you think if I chose a couple of cantatas and did some comparative criticism? Without an assistant I can't do "blind" evaluations, but I have fairly objective ears. In any case, it might be interesting. And I'm not at all familiar with the Suzuki recordings...

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When someone asks me for the name of an important Canadian composer I usually mention Claude Vivier. But I may have a new candidate. Cassandra Miller, who was born in Victoria, British Columbia, my old stamping grounds, in 1976, has been doing some interesting stuff. Alex Ross is a fan which is where I found this piece.

That's pretty terrific.

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The never-ending tale of musicians, their instruments and malevolent airlines: SOLOIST IS REFUSED BOARDING BY RYANAIR:

Furious message from violinist Mihaela Martin:

Denied boarding by Ryanair after having booked musical instrument as cabin baggage , being told that the violin is too big to take onboard and I should have checked it in.

I explained that violins are never checked in and offered to buy 1 more ticket but the moron of the moron airline said that violins are never taken onboard.I asked him if he knows what a violin is , he said yes, and that they are never allowed in the cabin and that he’ll be sacked if he doesn’t go by the book .

So one more night in Bucharest where luckily they kept my room at the hotel .

Now I have to search internet for a flight tomorrow.

Never ever again the stupid Ryanair with their stupid employees.

Yes, it is a constant struggle. In the old days I actually used to smuggle my guitar onboard and figure out a way to stow it. But they were far more relaxed in those days. I have to say that the one time I flew Ryanair--without an instrument--I found it an unpleasant experience. I flew Aeromexico to Toronto to do a recording and they are happy to welcome guitars on board without buying an extra ticket. They do fit in the overhead. Mind you, just to be sure, I flew business class which, just before Covid, was quite reasonable. Not any more, alas.

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 From the Royal Philharmonic website: Orchestral audiences call for modernising changes to draw more people to the concert hall this season

Shorter concerts (27%), more matinee performances (24%), conductors speaking to the audience (20%) and being encouraged to keep phones on during a performance (11%) – these were just some of the things people would like to see at orchestral concerts, according to a new study commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Alongside this, we might mention the Society for Private Musical Performances founded in Vienna in 1918 by Arnold Schoenberg.

The players at these events were chosen from among the most gifted young musicians available, and each work was rehearsed intensively, either under Schoenberg himself or by a Vortragsmeister (performance director) specifically appointed by him. (The list of Vortragsmeister included Berg, Webern, Benno Sachs, Rudolf Kolisch, Erwin Stein and Eduard Steuermann). Clarity and comprehensibility of the musical presentation was the over-riding aim, with audiences sometimes being permitted to hear open rehearsals, and complex works sometimes being played more than once in the same concert (and as many as five or six times in total).[5]

Only those who had joined the organisation were admitted to the events: the intention was to prevent casual attendance by "sensation-seeking" members of the Viennese public (who would often attend concerts with the express intention of causing disruption, whistling derisively at modern works by whistling on their house-keys) as well as exclude hostile critics who would attack such music in their newspaper columns: a sign displayed on the door – in the manner of a police notice – would state that Kritikern ist der Eintritt verboten (Critics are forbidden entry). Such was the didactic seriousness of the Society that an event's programme was not revealed in advance; nor was applause (or any demonstration of disapproval) permitted after the performance of a work.[6]

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Sometimes I feel like a participant in a contest where you have to try and stand on two chairs while drinking vodka. Is this an actual contest? Anyway, a news article like this one makes me think of it: Heading Upstairs With Roy Lichtenstein.

the mural is owned by Michael Ovitz, the co-founder and former chairman of CAA and a leading collector of contemporary art. “A new tenant came in and they didn’t want it,” Ovitz said when we talked by phone, referring to the work that Lichtenstein painted in situ over a period of five weeks. The tenant, which arrived in 2021, is Alo Yoga, a company specializing in leggings, cropped tops and other clothing designed for what it calls “mindful movement.”  

Why would a company choose to reject a work of art commissioned specifically for its building? 

When I posed the question to Alo, a spokesperson declined to comment. By what calculus would a company choose to furnish their quarters with a poster of a guy modeling a windbreaker rather than a museum-quality painting by Lichtenstein? Granted, companies need to promote their brands. But a generation ago, corporations turned to art to burnish their reputations and acquire a patina of class. Art sponsorship was seen as good business, a mark of prestige, a win-win, not something that took up too much space in the lobby or was too elitist to appeal to customers.

It is proof, not that we need any, that art is the opposite of branding. Branding seeks to deliver a product to the widest possible audience, while art is about one person alone in a room

Yep, and now young artists are told that they must "brand" themselves. Those two chairs? On the one hand I think that free markets are the best way to deliver pretty much any desired good or service. But on the other hand, I believe that art and artists pretty much have to not be commercialized. Alas, it seems that those two principles cannot be reconciled.

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I think I will stop there as most of the other news items seem to be about orchestral financing. So right to the envois. Let's start with a Suzuki Bach cantata. Here is BWV 29 with its lovely sinfonia that Bach reused in the E major Violin Partita and 4th Lute Suite. The second movement is a re-working of the Dona nobis pace from the B minor Mass.

Schoenberg did not allow programming any of his own music in the first two years of the Society (which only lasted three years), so let's have something from him here. This is Pelleas und Melisande, an early symphonic poem composed in 1905 before his 12-tone period.

Finally, the Lute Suite No. 4 by Bach, on lute: