Friday Miscellanea

Tradition is not something a man can learn; not a thread he can pick up when he feels like it; any more than a man can choose his own ancestors. Someone lacking a tradition who would like to have one is like a man unhappily in love.

Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 76e

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Some really good news for students of antiquity: a method has been created to read those carbonized scrolls from Herculaneum. This might mean that down the road a lot of the lost literature of Classical Greece and Rome might become available. In ancient Rome the villa of a wealthy nobleman would have a philosopher in residence. Hmm, maybe we are not as advanced as we think we are...

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How one composer assured the longevity of his music: ‘There’s a certain madness to it’ … fans await new chord in John Cage gig with 616 years left to run

Playing nonstop since September 2001, the performance of John Cage’s composition Organ²/ASLSP As Slow as Possible in an unassuming town at the feet of the Harz mountains is one of the longest-running concerts in the world. Scheduled to last for 639 years, it isn’t due to finish until 2640. (The only musical performance that is forecast to last longer, Jem Finer’s Longplayer piece for singing bowls inside the lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London, has a head start of almost two years and is scheduled to wind up in 2999.)

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More and more I find I am less and less interested in the "business of music" though I am very much interested in music itself. But amidst a host of articles on the "biz" this one stood out: Candlelight Concerts Tackles the Job of Expanding Classical Audiences

Since 2019, Fever has been taking on classical music, too. Its Candlelight Concerts series, now presented in over 150 cities, takes “connecting with a wider audience [and] reaching beyond the core demographic of classical music enthusiasts” as its most urgent priority.

Audrey Reedy, team lead for Candlelight Concerts, West Coast, explains: “We realized these audiences were keen for closer and more intimate experiences. We reimagined the traditional concert format, implementing changes that proved highly successful. We condensed the duration from the typical 90 minutes to a more approachable 60 minutes, moved performances from formal concert halls to more accessible venues, and diversified the repertoire to encompass a broad spectrum of themes and genres … all alongside the timeless compositions of classical masters.”

On Feb. 2, Candlelight will bring this approach back to a traditional concert space, presenting a “neo-soul” tribute (featuring the music of Sade, SZA, and more) in Colburn’s Zipper Hall. The event will likely draw audience members who have never been to Colburn before. But is Candlelight Concerts really poised to drive new, long-lasting interest in classical music?

So they are "taking on classical music" by avoiding it?

There are no composers from the classical canon, as commonly defined, represented in Friday’s installment at Colburn — the program, at least, can’t claim to expose new audiences to any works of antiquity. This is not to say there aren’t works here deserving of serious consideration, though the program makes no substantive attempt to encourage or signal this reframing.

But there sure are a lot of candles, so there's that...

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I have this sinking feeling that we will have to have a Taylor Swift item in every Friday Miscellanea to the end of time: ‘Swiftonomics’ Course Brings Taylor Craze to College Classrooms

Solomon Namala, an economics professor at California-based Cerritos College, began teaching Krugman’s course last year. He taught students about the concept of supply and demand using the legions of Swift fans who bought beads to make friendship bracelets as examples—the bracelets became a hallmark of the Eras Tour—thus raising prices.

“Bringing in popular culture topics resonates with students’ lived experiences and makes them more comfortable,” Namala said. “If the learning environment is not comfortable, no matter how great a teacher you are, you can’t connect with the students.”

And references to Swift will “long live,” according to Krugman.

“A lot of students come into it thinking it’s just going to be business and profit and supply-and-demand diagrams,” he said. “And we have this great gift now.”

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Here are Thirteen Ways of Looking at Art.

Art, I have preached, is for bildung, self-development, especially within the context of an undergraduate education. Art helps you to become a deeper, freer version of yourself, etc., etc., blah blah blah, you’ve heard the song a thousand times. So what’s the difference between that and “art is good for us”? If there is one, it is this. The whole modern idea—the liberal idea—is that the group isn’t all. The state, the clan, the tribe: that within these we carve out space for the individual (think of the Bill of Rights, as it dwells within the Constitution); that carving out space for the individual (“to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men”) is indeed the whole point of the thing. But that space is always under siege, mainly by people who think they know what’s good for us: by the church ladies or, now, the progressive commissars, who are really just militant church ladies. The point of art-for-bildung, as I understand it, is to help you to become an individual—a cussed, wayward, stubborn individual, with your own ideas and purposes—not to fit you to the group. Is it contradictory to try to use the setting of an institution, a university, to teach young people to be individuals? It is. It would be better not to have to. But that is what we have.

I'm almost inclined to agree with Wittgenstein that aesthetics and ethics are inherently about values and therefore beyond the region in which we can say meaningful things.

 7. Of what one cannot speak, about that one must be silent. 

--Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

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I'm still learning the Chaconne from the D minor violin partita by Bach. At the speed I work it is a long project! But I am over halfway and just starting the section in major which starts at measure 132. The whole piece is 256 measures consisting of an eight-measure theme and thirty-one variations. Even though it is not usually described this way, I think it is one of the greatest sets of variations. Despite its formidable unity, based on a single harmonic progression, it also has an astonishing variety with moments of sublime calm as well as ones of sheer agony. The large arpeggio section is a masterpiece of musical texture that compares favorably with ones by Steve Reich. There are also sections of joyful abandon and confident direction. Sometimes it is a lament and sometimes a festival. A remarkable piece from every aspect and one that you really cannot get to the bottom of. I first tried to learn the piece as a young student in the early 1970s but soon set it aside. I made another run at it in the late 70s, but again set it aside. I finally took it on as a serious project over a year ago and it is a wonderful way to begin the day. I decided to prepare my own edition. Here is that opening theme (at a later date I will put up more of my edition with fingerings):

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Just for fun here is a quick version of the Cage piece Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible):

And one of a million performances of the Chaconne, here is Hopkinson Smith on lute:

 Finally, here is Virna Kljaković with a Chopin Nocturne: