Friday Miscellanea

A really interesting interview with literary agent Andrew Wylie in the New York Times: When Ruthless Cultural Elitism Is Exactly the Job.

Over the years, the Wylie Agency’s clients have included Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Martin Amis and John Updike. (All of whose estates, along with those of other luminaries like Borges and Calvino, are now represented by the agency.) Wylie’s roster of contemporary authors includes Sally Rooney, Salman Rushdie and Karl Ove Knausgaard among its blue-chip multitude. (Several New York Times journalists are also represented by Wylie.) Such voracious acquisition of clients at one point led to Wylie’s being called the Jackal, presumably for his ruthless pursuit of other agents’ authors. That fearsome reputation, along with actual paradigm-shifting changes in his approach to agenting (namely his focus on exploiting the value of authors’ backlists and his determination that publishers pay fat advances for work of high literary quality — even if it might not sell in the short term), have also been factors in making Wylie, who is 76 and a famously forthright speaker, a legendary figure in the publishing world. “I thought, Well, I wonder if you can build a business based exclusively on what you want to read,” he says, understatedly. “That led me to understand, I think correctly, that best sellers were overvalued and works that endured forever were undervalued.”

Read the whole thing. I just want to comment that all too often lately I get the impression that there are very few willing to speak out and say that yes, classical music has a limited audience, but it is a profoundly engaged one and an enduring one and the last thing on earth you want to do is drive them away by adopting the fashion and mannerisms of pop music. Great classical composers and musicians represent and express a quality that popular music and jazz just don't. I expect to get some disagreement on this, but hey, lovers of hip-hop say it is the greatest music ever, and they don't waver, so I suspect I can withstand the pushback.

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A headline with a grain of truth: For Joan Armatrading, Classical Music Is Just Another Genre

Last year, Chi-chi Nwanoku, the founder and artistic director of the Chineke! Orchestra, received an email out of the blue from the singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading. She, the message said, had finished composing her first classical composition.

They exchanged a few more emails about the piece, Symphony No. 1, and Nwanoku called to verify that she was talking with the real Armatrading, known for hits like “Love and Affection,” “Down to Zero,” and “Drop the Pilot.” She wanted to hear the music, with the idea of having Chineke! premiere it — which the ensemble will do on Nov. 24 in London. 

Armatrading has experimented with playing all of the instruments on her albums; first mooted then eventually scrapped on “Walk Under Ladders” (1981), she returned to that impulse with “Lovers Speak” (2003). Then, a trilogy of albums — “Into the Blues” (2007), “This Charming Life” (2010) and “Starlight” (2012) — were designed as deep dives into specific styles: blues, rock and jazz. To her, classical is “just one of the other genres,” she said with a laugh. “And because I like all music, I try and write all music.”

A lover of classical music since childhood, Armatrading had long expected to take up the art form. “One day, I was in the studio, and I thought: It’s today,” she said. There was never any doubt that her first piece wasn’t going to be a symphony.

We can't review the piece, of course, as it hasn't been premiered yet, but we can wonder what symphonic influences might turn up...

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Drifting slightly away from our main focus: Understanding Consciousness Goes Beyond Exploring Brain Chemistry

Over the summer, the neuroscientist Christof Koch conceded defeat on his 25-year bet with the philosopher David Chalmers, a lost wager that the science of consciousness would be all wrapped up by now. In September, over 100 consciousness researchers signed a public letter condemning one of the most popular theories of consciousness—the integrated information theory—as pseudoscience. This in turn prompted strong responses from other researchers in the field. Despite decades of research, there’s little sign of consensus on consciousness, with several rival theories still in contention.

This was a pretty easy bet to win. Philosophers have been explaining for a long time why consciousness is not a feasible object for scientific study, but because it involves a philosophical understanding of the nature of science, scientists just don't get it. How do we observe consciousness? By looking inward. Consciousness is not an object or an event or a process in the external world, therefore, it cannot be studied by science. Consciousness is a point of view and while scientists can have a point of view, Science cannot as the whole purpose of Science is to be objective, i.e. not to have a point of view. Scruton outlines the argument in Modern Philosophy:

Suppose I possess a complete description of the physical world, according to the true scientific theory of all that is contained in it. In this description are identified not only the animals, but also the people which the world contains. One of these people is called Roger Scruton, and has all the attributes that I have. Still, there is a fact that is not mentioned in the description, namely, the fact that this person is me. Similarly, there is the fact that this pain is my pain, this joy my joy. My ability to situate myself in my world is of a piece with my first-person view of things; and what is revealed to me in that first-person view does not feature in the scientific inventory of the really real.

Scruton, Roger. Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey (p. 225). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

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Creativity and artistry are popular projects that hardly anyone can disagree with: Activating Artistry

Engaging in the arts benefits just about anyone, and opens a range of possibilities, from better educational outcomes for underserved youth to a deeper experience of a symphony. An excerpt from Eric Booth’s Making Change: Teaching Artists and their Role in Making a Better World shows how—and why—teaching artists strive to help activate people’s innate artistry, with positive impacts for individuals and communities. 

There is an entire profession dedicated to activating people’s artistry. These professionals know how to awaken artistry. They know how to develop it. They know how to guide it toward positive results, results that matter. In this book, we call them teaching artists.

This is both laudable and necessary, but it might also be pointed out that "artistry" in the sense of pursuing the arts in and for themselves, is in truth, rather problematic. Most people are neither artistic nor creative and even if you are, monetizing creativity is shockingly difficult. But as a device or strategy to promote cultural assimilation, this kind of program is likely hugely beneficial.

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Another week of fairly slim pickings, but here are some excellent envois for your listening pleasure. First up, the Symphony No. 7 by Vagn Holmboe, recommended by Richard Taruskin as the last of the traditional Scandinavian symphonists:

A theorbo and baroque guitar duo playing Gaspar Sanz:

I'm sure we have had this before, but not lately and not by these guys as it was just posted. Shunske Sato is soloist in the Netherlands Bach Society recording of the Bach Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042:

And while we are all strung out, here is Sara Kim, viola and Andrés Atala-Quezada, piano with the Sonata for Viola and Piano by Shostakovich: