tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88270400615630659222024-03-19T08:35:14.702-05:00The Music SalonTHE MUSIC SALON: classical music, popular culture, philosophy and anything else that catches my fancy...Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comBlogger3785125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-71136916382931519922024-03-17T12:31:00.000-05:002024-03-17T12:31:31.534-05:00Big Bodies of Work<p>As someone who has never had the slightest capacity to create one, I am fascinated with what I call "big bodies of work." That is, a substantial number of works all in the same genre or form where the composer confronts that same challenges over and over and solves them differently each time. It is rather like variation form taken to an entirely higher level.</p><p>Some examples:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart (Mozart around fifty and Haydn over one hundred--Beethoven with only nine really doesn't count)</li><li>an extreme example, the 555 harpsichord sonatas of Scarlatti</li><li>just making the grade on the low side, the fifteen symphonies and fifteen string quartets of Shostakovich</li><li>the thirty-two piano sonatas of Beethoven</li><li>a special example, the preludes and fugues of Bach: 48 in all</li><li>actually, we could keep citing examples from Bach: the cantatas, about three hundred of which survive; the keyboard suites (six English Suites, six French suites and six Partitas for a total of eighteen)</li><li>I'm forgetting one of the best, the roughly eighty string quartets of Haydn</li></ul><div>Here's a fun project: buy a box of these (I recommend the Shostakovich string quartets by the Emerson Quartet) and listen to one or two every morning. Much better, not to mention cheaper, than psychotherapy.</div><div><br /></div><div>Or, alternatively, the Beethoven piano sonatas. There is a new complete set by Igor Levit and an older one I like by Friedrich Gulda. Let's hear one of those. This is No. 32, op. 111:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QcZrEeAhQMU" width="320" youtube-src-id="QcZrEeAhQMU"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><p></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-22492606976243333462024-03-17T08:43:00.000-05:002024-03-17T08:43:31.220-05:00Today's Listening<p> Here is Yuja Wang with the Lindberg Piano Concerto No. 3. I really like the opening where the orchestra emerges out of the piano resonance like an image from smoke.</p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-mK-i39DS1k" width="320" youtube-src-id="-mK-i39DS1k"></iframe></div><p>I wonder, though, how would it affect her career if she changed her concert garb?</p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-58833279270112629412024-03-15T10:57:00.001-05:002024-03-17T10:17:59.322-05:00Dark Academia<p>I haven't been part of academia for decades now, but it was where I spent close to half my life. I liked to brag (more like "humble-brag") that I entered university in 1971 but they didn't let me out until 1998. That's because, shortly after graduating with two degrees from McGill, I was hired by a conservatory and later another university to teach.</p><p>Since I left academia in 1998 I have heard more and more about "woke" academia and the Congressional Hearings with the presidents of MIT, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard were a pretty good indicator of what has been going on. "Woke" academia, at least from my perspective, has been infected with all sorts of ideological strains such as "settler-colonialism," "systematic racism," and just plain old antisemitism. I'm not going to bother dissecting any of these as it has been done elsewhere, plus I haven't heard any arguments that are worth responding to.</p><p>Recently I have heard a new phrase, "dark academia" which is, as far as I can tell, just the old academia before it got drive-byed by the woke. Here is a little clip about which fountain pen inks are suitable for dark academia pursuits:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s24AOGs3qqI" width="320" youtube-src-id="s24AOGs3qqI"></iframe></div><p>Mind you, I'm not sure he entirely understands what is going on with dark academia, but hey, let a hundred flowers bloom, I say. We also seem to have something called "Dark Classical Music"</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XGC80iRS7tw" width="320" youtube-src-id="XGC80iRS7tw"></iframe></div><p>Of course they are going to start with the Moonlight Sonata. Oh god, there is even a fashion aesthetic:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dKNgdZZkGXw" width="320" youtube-src-id="dKNgdZZkGXw"></iframe></div><p>But things are really going off the deep end:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/u1D7Q2EgVZ4" width="320" youtube-src-id="u1D7Q2EgVZ4"></iframe></div><p>Re the music, Erik Satie and Beethoven are NOT 18th century! But the mere fact that something called, however loosely, "Dark Academia" is trending seems, uh, interesting at least. So let me hasten to provide some real 18th century music to do whatever it is you are doing to:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mbe5Sgi1YdQ" width="320" youtube-src-id="Mbe5Sgi1YdQ"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WOjv1gBjCRw" width="320" youtube-src-id="WOjv1gBjCRw"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DzoFKG7ITRg" width="320" youtube-src-id="DzoFKG7ITRg"></iframe></div><br /><p>UPDATE: From the other side of the room: <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/paintings-british-countryside-evoke-dark-140508085.html">British countryside can evoke ‘dark nationalist’ feelings in paintings, warns museum</a>. </p><blockquote><p>A sign for the Nature gallery states: “Landscape paintings were also always entangled with national identity.</p><p>“The countryside was seen as a direct link to the past, and therefore a true reflection of the essence of a nation.</p><p>“Paintings showing rolling English hills or lush French fields reinforced loyalty and pride towards a homeland.</p><p>“The darker side of evoking this nationalist feeling is the implication that only those with a historical tie to the land have a right to belong.”</p></blockquote><p>That a country even has a history and traditions seems deeply threatening to the progressive intelligentsia. </p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-37788498442914758042024-03-15T07:14:00.000-05:002024-03-15T07:14:34.468-05:00Friday Miscellanea<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><i>"quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio."</i></b><br />("What, then, is time? If nobody asks me, I know well enough what it is; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.")<br />--Augustine, Confessions XI.14<br /><br />* * *<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrRksRgDPBGObGGtexfl_YBMRRpGgNPCeQaQ4GcMdR9dZ71EsO1IkB4itKo3D0Q6qr1MhC2Sn0csS88kaKDeamVGZ01fgO_qVrIN-9Om4ru8er23zKmyViiR1vy80jSFdWBpo-R3qw2MmY1YGyX1t-2N9V_fXanLyUgLAqQvoCiSy3jCAEx4Dv2dXh7Bg/s1200/Johnson%20Berkeley.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrRksRgDPBGObGGtexfl_YBMRRpGgNPCeQaQ4GcMdR9dZ71EsO1IkB4itKo3D0Q6qr1MhC2Sn0csS88kaKDeamVGZ01fgO_qVrIN-9Om4ru8er23zKmyViiR1vy80jSFdWBpo-R3qw2MmY1YGyX1t-2N9V_fXanLyUgLAqQvoCiSy3jCAEx4Dv2dXh7Bg/w400-h300/Johnson%20Berkeley.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Dr. Johnson refuting Bishop Berkeley’s philosophy of subjective<br />immaterialism by violently kicking a stone: “I refute it thus!”</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>You don't get many statues celebrating philosophical arguments, in fact this might the only one. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley">Bishop Berkeley</a> was an Anglo-Irish philosopher who put forth a theory that denied the existence of material substances, postulating instead that we don't have perceptions <i>of</i> anything, we just have perceptions. This is a surprisingly tricky position to refute and Dr. Johnson did so by simply kicking a stone.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p>I think of McGill University in Montreal as being a sober and respectable academic institution and not just because it is my alma mater. Pieces like this are one reason why: <a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/mozarts-music-doesnt-make-baby-geniuses">Mozart’s Music Doesn’t Make Baby Geniuses</a></p><blockquote><p>There is an alchemy to science. Sometimes, when the conditions are just right, the results of tiny, preliminary studies are transformed into truisms that spread the world over. For example, everyone knows that you’re either left-brained or right-brained… except that that is false. What is true is that some brain functions tend to involve one half of the brain more than the other, but the idea that scientists are left-brained while artists are right-brained is nonsense. Yet, the belief endures. When science goes public, it can become magic.</p><p>The Mozart effect is a scientific legend. It’s the idea that playing Mozart’s music to a baby will make them smart. We know it isn’t true. But it started with a nugget of science back in 1993. What happened next is a cautionary tale for how these legends spread. The media half-remembers the study and twists its findings, and the story starts morphing in the telling until it finds a shape the public views as desirable.</p><p>This is a story of scientists hounded by the media, trying to evade death threats. It is also about how scientific studies are portrayed as sacred rituals when they fail to replicate.</p></blockquote><p>And then the article gets really interesting! Yes, you have to read the whole thing if only to find out how minimalist composer Philip Glass’ music was unfairly demonized in an attempt to prove a theory. (The term "minimalist" is from the article and no, I don't really agree.) This is a brilliant piece of intellectual history.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;"> Here is how one UK student amuses himself: transcribing performances that do not already have a notation, like this cadenza to a Mozart piano concerto:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yQBBEWmrkks" width="320" youtube-src-id="yQBBEWmrkks"></iframe></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;">Hat tip to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/arts/music/george-collier-music-transcriber-youtube.html">New York Times</a>.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">While over at The Critic, Norman Lebrecht does a drive-by of the Chopin Competition: <a href="https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/march-2024/how-to-win-at-chopin/">How to win at Chopin</a></p><blockquote><p>Over three weeks, 40 contenders from around the world play Chopin all day and into the night for the benefit of a half-filled hall and large local television ratings. In the final, half a dozen survivors slug it out for the top slot, egged on by teachers, parents, bus drivers and their own damaged egos, trapped in a remorseless kind of Stockholm syndrome that makes them love their tormentors — the judges, and the contest itself.</p><p>One finalist, locked in a toilet with her teacher, is heard weeping hysterically and being ordered to stop if she wants to win. Another is watched over in sleep by his professor, herself a past contestant. A splendid Polish young man thinks he stands the best chance of winning if he has his hair done like Chopin’s; he winds up walking off stage in the middle of the second round, saying something like “I don’t want to do this any more.”</p><p>Three Italians maintain a modicum of sanity. One of them recommends, “I would say, whoever wins this competition should spend the €40,000 on a course of psychotherapy.”</p></blockquote><p>My personal take on competitions: they are psychologically brutal and tend to produce generations of robotic virtuosos. Oh, and the best musician never wins.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * </p><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://slippedisc.com/2024/03/a-canadian-university-scraps-music/">A CANADIAN UNIVERSITY SCRAPS MUSIC DEGREE</a></p><blockquote><p>McMaster University, a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, has abolished its music degrees.</p><p>The degree course began in 1965. The university administration underfunded Music programmes for 40 years, closing its MA program in 2006, according to Paul Rapoport, who taught there from 1977 to 2005 and was Chairman of the Music Department in 1994–95. Now the bachelor degree has also been abolished.</p></blockquote><p>Just between us, I barely knew that McMaster even had a music department...</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://nypost.com/2024/03/09/us-news/metropolitan-opera-puts-trigger-warning-on-puccini-masterpiece-turandot/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nypost">NYC’s Metropolitan Opera puts trigger warning on Puccini masterpiece ‘Turandot’ in bow to woke culture</a></p><blockquote><p>New York City’s famed Metropolitan Opera added a website trigger warning for prospective ticket buyers to Giacomo Puccini’s “Turandot,” informing audiences that the 1926 masterpiece set in ancient China could be offensive.</p><p>“It is rife with contradictions, distortions, and racial stereotypes,” reads a program note promising “a discussion of the opera’s cultural insensitivities.” </p></blockquote><blockquote><p>“It shouldn’t be surprising . . . that many audience members of Chinese descent find it difficult to watch as their own heritage is co-opted, fetishized, or painted as savage, bloodthirsty, or backward,” the note continues.</p></blockquote><p>Trigger warnings are themselves rife with contradictions, historical distortions and intellectual fetishes. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * </p><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://slippedisc.com/2024/03/at-last-the-la-phil-wakes-up-to-schoenberg/">AT LAST, LA WAKES UP TO SCHOENBERG</a></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Arnold Schoenberg’s inventive approach to harmony left a lasting influence on the 20th century. Marking the 150th anniversary of his birth, the LA Phil explores the work of the Austrian-turned-Angeleno composer throughout the season highlighted by two performances of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder conducted by LA Phil Conductor Emeritus Zubin Mehta featuring soprano Christin Goerke (Tove), mezzo Violeta Urmana (Waldtaube), tenors Brandon Jovanovich (Waldemar) and Gerhard Siegel (Klaus-Narr), and speaker Dietrich Henschel (December 13 and 15).</p></blockquote><p>I think it is safe to say that, despite the 150th anniversary of Schoenberg's birth, Los Angeles has not woken up very far. <i>Gurrelieder</i> is a lovely early work that resembles Wagner as much as anyone. Actually waking up to Schoenberg would probably involve programming some later works like the Piano and Violin Concertos, some string quartets, piano music and maybe his opera...</p><p style="text-align: center;"> * * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Alex Ross swoops in with a big piece on Schoenberg: <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/18/how-arnold-schoenberg-changed-hollywood">How Arnold Schoenberg Changed Hollywood</a></p><blockquote><p>Of the thousands of German-speaking Jews who fled from Nazi-occupied Europe to the comparative paradise of Los Angeles, Arnold Schoenberg seemed especially unlikely to make himself at home. He was, after all, the most implacable modernist composer of the day—the progenitor of atonality, the codifier of twelve-tone music, a Viennese firebrand who relished polemics as a sport. He once wrote, “If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.” The prevailing attitude in the Hollywood film industry, the dominant cultural concern in Schoenberg’s adopted city, was the opposite: if it’s not for all, it’s worthless.</p><p>Yet there he was, the composer of “Transfigured Night” and “Pierrot Lunaire,” living in Brentwood, across the street from Shirley Temple. He took a liking to Jackie Robinson, the Marx Brothers, and the radio quiz show “Information Please.” He played tennis with George Gershwin, who idolized him. He delighted in the American habits of his children, who, to the alarm of other émigrés, ran all over the house. (Thomas Mann, after a visit, wrote in his diary, “Impertinent kids. Excellent Viennese coffee.”) He taught at U.S.C., at U.C.L.A., and at home, counting John Cage, Lou Harrison, and Oscar Levant among his students. Although he faced a degree of indifference and hostility from audiences, he had experienced worse in Austria and Germany. He made modest concessions to popular taste, writing a harmonically lush adaptation of the Kol Nidre for Rabbi Jacob Sonderling, of the Fairfax Temple. He died in Los Angeles in 1951, an eccentric but proud American.</p></blockquote><p>Read the rest for more of Ross' charming and informative guide to Schoenberg and how his music is being celebrated this year.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">In honor of the refractory Austrian, let's have a whole set of <i>envois</i> dedicated to Schoenberg. First, the Piano Pieces op. 11 from that fertile transitional stage when he was experimenting with atonality but had not yet organized it in 12-tone serialism:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VeTFxbsVGrI" width="320" youtube-src-id="VeTFxbsVGrI"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">The String Quartet No. 2 is also from this time:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oaMFQfVq_rE" width="320" youtube-src-id="oaMFQfVq_rE"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">Two later works are the Piano Concerto op 42:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8Hae8dTC5iw" width="320" youtube-src-id="8Hae8dTC5iw"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">And the Violin Concerto op. 36:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_ukPsvh51hI" width="320" youtube-src-id="_ukPsvh51hI"></iframe></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-53461845050638293492024-03-13T14:32:00.000-05:002024-03-13T14:32:27.452-05:00Today's Listening<p>These days a lot of young guitarists frankly sound a bit robotic in their quest for technical perfection. After listening to them we like to go and listen to some Andrés Segovia as a palate cleanser, someone who was a great artist and a pretty good technician. But here, for your delectation, is a true virtuoso who has a spectacular technique but never sounds like a robot: Pepe Romero and the Etude No. 1 by Villa-Lobos.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WS6AzYO-gaw" width="320" youtube-src-id="WS6AzYO-gaw"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-71182943467746490092024-03-08T06:50:00.000-06:002024-03-08T06:50:17.184-06:00Friday Miscellanea<p>Here is a meaty piece from The New York Times: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/arts/music/composer-christian-wolff-90th-birthday.html">Composer, Uninterrupted: Christian Wolff at 90</a></p><blockquote><p><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">Wolff, who turns 90 on Friday, is associated with a different pantheon. He is the last living representative of what’s known as the New York School of composition, a group that included </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/13/us/john-cage-79-a-minimalist-enchanted-with-sound-dies.html" style="border: 0px; color: #326891; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="">John Cage</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">, </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/04/obituaries/morton-feldman-dies-at-61-an-experimental-composer.html" style="border: 0px; color: #326891; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="">Morton Feldman</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">, </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/08/arts/earle-brown-75-composer-known-for-innovation-dies.html" style="border: 0px; color: #326891; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="">Earle Brown</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-size: 20px;"> and </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/15/arts/david-tudor-70-electronic-composer-dies.html" style="border: 0px; color: #326891; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="">David Tudor</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">. Their tight-knit circle shifted midcentury American music away from classic European models. And it radiated out, intersecting with other arts and artists who were making New York a leading center of modernism: the choreographer Merce Cunningham, the poet John Ashbery, the painters Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and many others.</span></p></blockquote><blockquote><p>After an early period involving intense reduction of musical materials, like the proto-minimalist “Duo for Violins” (1950), Wolff sought to create structures that cultivated chance, and also required performers to pay close attention to one another, listening for aural cues to proceed. Or, conversely, to play similar material independently, in tandem. Increasingly, his goal was to allow players of differing abilities to work together.</p><p>Over the years, Wolff explored a variety of strategies: graphic scores, text pieces, geometric configurations in which clusters of standard notation hung suspended in expanses of white space. The results could be agitated, evanescent or surprisingly direct and tuneful.</p></blockquote><p>Over the years a perennial interest of mine has been notation and recently I have been combining that with an interest in Wittgenstein's "picture theory" in which thoughts and propositions are seen as pictures of reality. And, of course, graphic notation is a picture of a piece of music. I'm going to see if I can develop this idea.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * </p><p style="text-align: left;">I'm not surprised: <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-02-29/tiktok-instagram-algorithms-filterworld-kyle-chayka">Are TikTok and Instagram dulling your taste?</a></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">“Algorithmic recommendations are addictive because they are always subtly confirming your own cultural, political, and social biases, warping your surroundings into a mirror image of yourself while doing the same for everyone else,” Chayka writes. “This had made me anxious, the possibility that my view of my own life — lived through the Internet — was a fiction formed by the feeds.” So he went on an algorithm cleanse and quit social media...</p></blockquote><p>That's been my solution.</p><blockquote><p>If taste — aesthetic judgment — is a human skill cultivated by a lifetime of gazing, reading, listening and selecting, recommendation algorithms are like the new robots powering up to take over the assembly line of our intentionality. These mathematical helpers reduce selection time and boost the efficiency of seeing pictures, watching TV shows and hearing songs: more and faster.</p></blockquote><p>Just no. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">A history of new music in Los Angeles: <a href="https://www.sfcv.org/articles/feature/old-world-culture-meets-hollywood-monday-evening-concerts-and-development-las-new#">Old-World Culture Meets Hollywood: Monday Evening Concerts and the Development of L.A.’s New-Music Scene</a></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Yet if the LA Phil is the jewel in the crown, there is also a long-established, vibrant, but much less publicized contemporary music scene in Los Angeles led by the venerable Monday Evening Concerts series, which began in the late 1930s. Those roots have branched into a number of current organizations that grew from the same network of players. </p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">At the height of the Great Depression, when America was reeling in despair, Hollywood thrived, attracting a remarkable community of artists, composers, musicians, writers, and dancer/choreographers from famous artistic scenes, from Vienna to Paris, London, and New York. There was work in the movies, and suddenly Los Angeles was a hub of artists with international recognition.</p><p>“It was a completely transplanted community, with the Hollywood film and recording industry as its nexus,” observes Ara Guzelimian, artistic and executive director of the Ojai Music Festival. “Together they kick-started the idea of cultural Los Angeles and at the same time fostered a new audience. It was a cultural jolt.”</p></blockquote><p>In the 1930s Los Angeles was home to the two most important composers of the first half of the century: Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;"> Looking at this: <a href="https://musicologynow.org/welcome-to-the-sound-wellness-revolution-endels-ai-generated-soundscapes-and-the-commodification-of-passive-listening/">“Welcome to the Sound Wellness Revolution”: Endel’s AI-Generated Soundscapes and the Commodification of Passive Listening</a> I wonder why there are not any <i>positive</i> trends?</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Functional music is nothing new. From work songs to workout playlists, music is often used to influence listeners’ moods and behaviours. This is exemplified by the ubiquity of background music, which can be traced to the United States in the 1930s when the company Muzak first began piping easy-listening music into stores, workplaces, public transit, and other spaces. In the century since, recorded background music has spread throughout much of the world from Britain to Japan, designed to calm listeners, encourage customer spending, and increase worker efficiency. These effects reflect Anahid Kassabian’s concept of “ubiquitous listening,” which describes how even passive engagement with music can shape affect and subjectivity.</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;"> Our first <i>envoi</i> is by Christian Wolff, <i>Edges</i> from 1968.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gMvdVXnfV4g" width="320" youtube-src-id="gMvdVXnfV4g"></iframe></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;">I recently re-watched one of my favorite movies, <i>The Year of Living Dangerously</i> by Peter Weir with Linda Hunt, Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver. In one scene we see Gibson's character simply listening to this song. I think Peter Weir uses music more skillfully than any other director I can think of.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3XP2chJ6Ujc" width="320" youtube-src-id="3XP2chJ6Ujc"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">The movie's title, by the way, comes from a speech by Indonesian President Sukarno. I'm thinking of naming this year <i>The Year of Petulant Restraint</i>.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Finally the <i>Tombeau fait à Paris sur la mort de Monsieur Blancheroche</i> by Johann Jakob Froberger</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_6tZxQVgo0w" width="320" youtube-src-id="_6tZxQVgo0w"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-2379938599301069922024-03-03T10:07:00.001-06:002024-03-03T11:04:29.272-06:00Mumbling on Sunday<p>I see that the <i>Dune</i>, part 2 movie is out. I couldn't get through all of part 1 when it appeared on my streaming service last year. But I am tempted to have another go at the book which I read many decades ago. Like Benjamin Britten, who played through all the piano music of Brahms every year, just to remind himself how bad it was, I am tempted to re-read <i>Dune</i> for the same reason. However could such a loathsomely pretentious compendium of crap have become so popular? The earlier, extremely bad film of <i>Dune</i> was a quite accurate representation of how bad it is. Your milage may vary, of course...</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">There is an article in the Wall Street Journal titled: <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/cant-get-things-done-without-background-noise-youre-not-alone-c5a41773?mod=hp_featst_pos4">Can’t Get Things Done Without Background Noise? You’re Not Alone</a>.</p><blockquote><p>Music has long helped us focus while doing simple tasks. Now, though, listening to podcasts or watching TikTok, YouTube or other videos while we do other things—from cooking to working—is a reflex. Last year, Americans streamed 21 million years’ worth of video, up 21% from the previous year, according to Nielsen. </p><p>These distractions in the form of a podcast or video clip can speed a task and stave off boredom, especially during more monotonous moments.</p></blockquote><p>I guess I have to believe this is true, though it seems absurd on the face of it. Are the tasks most of us are engaged in so mindlessly repetitive that we can do them without actually thinking about them? That sounds like a huge problem in itself. I find I can't do any kind of mental work with background music of any kind, let alone video clips. Am I really in a minority? I find that my mind can wander off even without external distractions. I often have to read a sentence or paragraph over several times if it is conceptually difficult. I have always laughed at "speed-reading" courses. Good lord, the last thing on earth anyone needs is to read <i>faster</i>. But my hidden assumption there is, of course, that anything worth reading is worth reading slowly. Francis Bacon wrote in <i>The Essays</i>:</p><blockquote><p>Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.</p></blockquote><p>And, sad to say, much of what is written these days really needs to be hurled against the wall with great force! (Yes, someone already said a version of that, but who exactly seems unclear.)</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * </p><p style="text-align: left;">Economics Explained is a useful series of YouTube clips by an Australian economist. Here is the latest:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nK5atJjdf08" width="320" youtube-src-id="nK5atJjdf08"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">This actually leads into something I have noticed recently involving a hobby of mine: fountain pens. Many years ago in Canada I had a fountain pen that I quite enjoyed writing with, but it never made it to Mexico. Here fountain pens are very rare. I rediscovered them a few years ago and bought a few Chinese pens because they were very cheap. Once I grew more aware of quality differences I gravitated towards German and Japanese pens (and one Italian pen). It almost seems as if the path towards becoming a great source of fine fountain pens was to lose World War II! The thing is that these fine pens from Germany and Japan, often cost between $150 and $200. But in the last couple of months I have noticed reviews of some new Chinese pens and after trying them, I am very impressed. They are as good as the good German and Japanese pens but cost between $25 and $30. My favorite is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tigerwood-Refillable-Converter-Handcrafted-Collection/dp/B08VJJHLSX/ref=sr_1_3?crid=59MK6I8VIZAK&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.RGtoCeDxy_8eRni0TANOUmS0dvEeYzfWQ54Jewqos9w6Sm_k437vJMxvt_UyfDzwk-oSh4Lrh-J8zKde3FqCGAXbMqKl2yRLy5BBIlXErX28cbQGMJ4yG3rGChSVlqZeUzvpHwN26pBqawT8t765wHyjUSJIYDyWBxxORamDez4EVkRpnPTrrHblHNXErJAe77O6_y7NRGB5ehzOflLkRA.sh8dISXdicVwNTbR9fFKL5l9xlYln7kjXmLsCXvssAg&dib_tag=se&keywords=jinhao%2B9056&qid=1709478892&sprefix=jinhao%2B9056%2Caps%2C141&sr=8-3&th=1">this one from Jinhao</a> with a German steel nib (that is still something they excel at) and a handmade body of sandalwood (also available with tigerwood and ebony). Gorgeous pen.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoPRfzKq-YgR-e5NzA_lS3S2fhcCTFulL-2zcMXVeZQe725-AUkZYM-uixMmxQdTk3CqqvJNqYAv6LiCPXXqbtNMEl5eCHErLfM0Lf0qoUWLpZ3633fCdfHZFBxUsPxu1s3XXQGouFGD-HyO_U14HcFnAaGxQ83ghx98-0hxdLiGuQ2-oYfM-32a-FSH4/s972/Jinhao%209056.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="972" data-original-width="124" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoPRfzKq-YgR-e5NzA_lS3S2fhcCTFulL-2zcMXVeZQe725-AUkZYM-uixMmxQdTk3CqqvJNqYAv6LiCPXXqbtNMEl5eCHErLfM0Lf0qoUWLpZ3633fCdfHZFBxUsPxu1s3XXQGouFGD-HyO_U14HcFnAaGxQ83ghx98-0hxdLiGuQ2-oYfM-32a-FSH4/w53-h400/Jinhao%209056.jpeg" width="53" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Since we were mean to Brahms earlier on, let's listen to his Symphony No. 2:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qbcfuMlNRWg" width="320" youtube-src-id="qbcfuMlNRWg"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-56133872263585885442024-03-01T06:28:00.000-06:002024-03-01T06:28:12.928-06:00Friday Miscellanea<p><a href="https://www.honest-broker.com/p/20-things-they-dont-teach-in-music?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=296132&post_id=88812716&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=nbbt9&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email">Ted Gioia's latest</a> has one of the funniest charts I have ever seen:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif2dBgZnzET9uSKdTh9OFJpMqQnFjox5_KiW_HfSfiLb6YJmSVnvmZqFo8w4QxO-Ez-OrqcgPP-XfzelwKU5HVzeymWcVBzX4CeHnBTBHQJfYHnyIPOocINbEXRH_LpMZCu1ypEXlwWl1b7_tF3-xp3dlK9BYmSQ5EpyqYCJJY6F93bkZMGg4160k_ZJg/s1400/metal.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="865" data-original-width="1400" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif2dBgZnzET9uSKdTh9OFJpMqQnFjox5_KiW_HfSfiLb6YJmSVnvmZqFo8w4QxO-Ez-OrqcgPP-XfzelwKU5HVzeymWcVBzX4CeHnBTBHQJfYHnyIPOocINbEXRH_LpMZCu1ypEXlwWl1b7_tF3-xp3dlK9BYmSQ5EpyqYCJJY6F93bkZMGg4160k_ZJg/w400-h248/metal.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>As he says, this seems to be saying that "The more metal bands per capita, the happier the country." Sounds like a bad case of mistaking correlation for causation...<br /><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p>I have a passing interest in economics so I occasionally read the blog of Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok. Recently Tyler wrote about <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/02/how-i-listen-to-music.html">How I listen to music</a>. Lots of items on the list, but here are the interesting ones:</p><blockquote><p>4. I don’t listen to much jazz at home any more, though I am no less keen to see a good jazz concert live. Having already spent a lot of time with the great classics, at current margins I am disillusioned with most “jazz as recorded music.” </p></blockquote><blockquote><p>6. Bach gets the most listening time.</p></blockquote><p>Well, ok, not that many interesting ones. But go have a look for yourself.</p><p style="text-align: center;"> * * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">This piece from the New York Times on literary criticism applies, somewhat, to music: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/opinion/reissued-books-literature.html">Who’s Afraid of Reissued Books?</a></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">It is a truth universally acknowledged that literary critics are the most annoying people in the world. They’re elitist, or </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-40/the-intellectual-situation/critical-attrition/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; color: #326891; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">undignified</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">. They’re </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/merve-emre-book-literary-critic-new-yorker-wesleyan-2023-8" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; color: #326891; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">divisive</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">. They’re </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.michigandaily.com/arts/tragedy-snob/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; color: #326891; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">snobs</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">. Their profession is, in fact, </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/524988/criticism-is-dead-long-live-criticism/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; color: #326891; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">dead</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">, and has been for decades. And upon realizing that they are irrelevant, they take themselves </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/23/has-academia-ruined-literary-criticism-professing-criticism-john-guillory" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; color: #326891; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">way too seriously</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">.</span></p></blockquote><blockquote><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">The urgent need to slot historical works of literature into some sort of forced contemporary relevance, whether by insisting on their prophetic nature or wiping them from the collective memory in order to rescue them, seems to miss the idea that reissues may have inherent value because they have aged, or even simply because they are enjoyable. Perhaps Ms. Taubes has something different or more to offer without being reduced to an early example of autofiction. Perhaps a Marguerite Duras novel of rural French poverty and exhaustion does not need to be </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://granta.com/on-marguerite-duras-kate-zambreno/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; color: #326891; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">introduced</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-size: 20px;"> and contextualized within a story of being a tired mother in a white-collar home in the United States.</span></blockquote><p>And perhaps we can just enjoy historic opera for the simple joys it provides as well as allowing new productions the freedom to discover new joys (or sorrows and outrage, I suppose).</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">And what a truly horrific acronym: <a href="https://slippedisc.com/2024/02/anus-sacks-two-music-professors/">ANUS SACKS TWO MUSIC PROFESSORS</a>. Couldn't they have named their school the National University School of Music of Australia instead? NUSMA?</p><blockquote><p>The Australian National University School of Music in Canberra, no stranger to controversy, has outdone itself by dismissing two long-serving teachers, the violinist and violist Tor Fromyhr and the cellist David Pereira.</p><p>ANUS says they were appointed incorrectly. They are being offered re-employment as casual labour.</p></blockquote><p>And this sounds like just another way to convert good paying jobs with benefits to lower paying jobs with no benefits.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Hoping to find an article about, you know, music, I went to the Musicology Now site only to discover that there is no longer a Musicology Now site. This was a project of the American Musicological Society. Actual professors don't have the time, I guess and the students tend to produce politically correct drivel, am I right?</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;"> <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68419089">Cash-strapped councils target arts, parks and leisure cuts</a></p><blockquote><p>Councils in England are in a state of financial crisis with many facing effective bankruptcy in the next few years unless the funding system is reformed, according to a new report.</p><p>More than half the councils that responded to a survey said they were likely to be unable to balance their books in the next five years.</p><p>Two-thirds said they were cutting services.</p><p>Parks, leisure facilities, arts and culture are at the top of the list.</p></blockquote><p>Let me try and shed some factual light on this. But first we need to translate "funding system reform" into the reality. What they mean is "higher taxes." The truth is that all governments everywhere are chronically short of funds and the reason is simple. Their primary motivations for spending are:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>buying votes so they can be re-elected</li><li>social benefits (also buying votes so they can be re-elected)</li><li>ample salaries and benefits for government workers, i.e. themselves</li><li>the basic functions of government: security (i.e. the police), the administration of justice and defence</li><li>other services such as infrastructure (roads, etc.) and cultural subsidies</li></ul><div>Notice the order of priorities. Last on the list is things like cultural subsidies. As a matter of self-interest, for all governments everywhere the first three items will always command priority. However, in some societies cultural subsidies may be given a higher priority due to the choices of the voters. Germany, for example, finds the money to support eighty opera houses while in all of North America there are fewer than fifteen. That includes one in Mexico, two or three in Canada and ten or so in the US.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.sfcv.org/articles/artist-spotlight/pianist-tiffany-poon-being-21st-century-classical-musician">Pianist Tiffany Poon on Being a 21st-Century Classical Musician</a>. I ran into Tiffany Poon on YouTube years ago and I enjoyed her personal clips such as the one on her first visit to Salzburg.</div><p></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(52, 58, 64); color: #343a40; font-family: proxima-nova, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span lang="EN" style="box-sizing: border-box;" xml:lang="EN"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><blockquote><span lang="EN" style="box-sizing: border-box;" xml:lang="EN"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Poon, too, has spent an inordinate amount of time documenting her artistic process — yes, even the less glamorous parts of being a musician, like </span></span></span><a href="https://youtu.be/LDJvC6oPSP0?si=ZwUzG-LzFqn2hFm6" rel="noopener nofollow noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #bf1e2e; font-weight: 600; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">drilling</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="box-sizing: border-box;" xml:lang="EN"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> the same tricky passage in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto over and over and over. Today, <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">day-in-the-life-of-a-musician-at-so-and-so-conservatory</span> videos are aplenty online, but in 2017, when Poon, then a senior in the Columbia-Juilliard Program, began making them, she was ahead of the curve. </span></span></span></blockquote><span lang="EN" style="box-sizing: border-box;" xml:lang="EN"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"></span></span></span><p></p><blockquote><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(52, 58, 64); color: #343a40; font-family: proxima-nova, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span lang="EN" style="box-sizing: border-box;" xml:lang="EN"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“</span></span></span><a href="https://youtu.be/gXFcK5nwISk?si=V6_xTCvplKrr-g-K" rel="noopener nofollow noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #bf1e2e; font-weight: 600; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Learned to Play Harpsichord 2 Hours Before Performing</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="box-sizing: border-box;" xml:lang="EN"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">,” one is titled, with 900,000 views. “</span></span></span><a href="https://youtu.be/yW6O8shL_R8?si=ZtCScG2EUnwaZwqF" rel="noopener nofollow noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #bf1e2e; font-weight: 600; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Upgrade! Picking a New Steinway Model B Grand Piano</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="box-sizing: border-box;" xml:lang="EN"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">,” reads another, with over 500,000 views. In the thumbnail of her vlog “</span></span></span><a href="https://youtu.be/SQE823HGcgc?si=GQ1UUWOsl_2XLPSJ" rel="noopener nofollow noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #bf1e2e; font-weight: 600; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Practicing Chopin - 10 Days Till Concert</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="box-sizing: border-box;" xml:lang="EN"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">,” she’s staring at her music stand with an elbow propped on the keyboard, seeming quite exasperated. That one’s also been viewed more than 500,000 times. (If you’re curious, here’s a </span></span></span><a href="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVZ6DX4ZN_0EolHB8VMSQKxQfavIo-5md&si=aE4C2mOlF6sVsWmn" rel="noopener nofollow noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #bf1e2e; font-weight: 600; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">playlist</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="box-sizing: border-box;" xml:lang="EN"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> of more than 150 vlogs Poon recorded between 2017 and 2021.) The videos have clearly struck a chord with viewers and have helped her build a YouTube subscriber base comparable in size to that of star violinist Ray Chen.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p></div></blockquote><p>I'm leaving that in the original format so you can follow the links. I quit watching her videos quite a while ago because while it is certainly a normal part of life for a musician to drill over and over particular passages, it is hardly normal to spend much time listening to someone else do so! Though I do recall a time when I was a student in Salzburg. One evening I went out to the practice rooms to go over the <i>Concierto de Aranjuez</i> first movement at quarter-speed prior to playing it the next morning in Pepe Romero's master class. The practice rooms were in a small building behind the residence and as I went in I heard a violinist playing the same four bars from the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto over and over again. I vaguely recall it was a passage in thirds. Anyway, I spent a couple of hours on the Rodrigo and when I left I heard the same violinist still working on the same little section. I felt like such a slacker!</p><p>I know that Hilary Hahn has put up videos of herself practicing, but it would feel like masochism for me to do the same. And Schadenfreude to watch someone else practicing. Don't watch other people living their lives, for Pete's sake! Live your own life! Sheesh...</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Now let's find some good music to listen to. How about Tiffany Poon? I can't seem to find a performance newer than six years ago. Here is some Beethoven:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uWBABv4XeLk" width="320" youtube-src-id="uWBABv4XeLk"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">Just about the first chamber music I ever tried to play was this, the Partita No. 1 by Bach arranged for French horn and guitar:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UbQaz03Usj8" width="320" youtube-src-id="UbQaz03Usj8"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">In honour of the ANUS sacking, here is the <i>Sinfonia Concertante</i> by Mozart for violin and viola:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_0hTDZ0whpU" width="320" youtube-src-id="_0hTDZ0whpU"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">I first discovered this piece while reading Paul Johnson's biography of Mozart where he mentions this as an example of how Mozart in later life wrote a piece of transcendental beauty oh, every few weeks.</p></div>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-55331169158781778732024-02-26T09:22:00.000-06:002024-02-26T09:22:12.319-06:00Walter Piston 1894 - 1976<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi3dZ6OK09ETqrp8Q5ZhB29THrNvzl6-5J8aLa036YdauJ56_WtEyn-c6M6kfwSjJ-XUE3kC-APO69F1x0tgOYQwZv8YYKLijLoopGOtqNgyR_lY8yXiwFtQCe6AAWGHAPCKgjUZ-Aqy2GIYUNk_iBaQXJg21RujK8ZtuuW2On_UnGBrDy63Qq7y_j28Q/s300/Walter_Piston.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="242" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi3dZ6OK09ETqrp8Q5ZhB29THrNvzl6-5J8aLa036YdauJ56_WtEyn-c6M6kfwSjJ-XUE3kC-APO69F1x0tgOYQwZv8YYKLijLoopGOtqNgyR_lY8yXiwFtQCe6AAWGHAPCKgjUZ-Aqy2GIYUNk_iBaQXJg21RujK8ZtuuW2On_UnGBrDy63Qq7y_j28Q/s1600/Walter_Piston.jpg" width="242" /></a></div><p>I put up a symphony by Walter Piston as an envoi to my post yesterday on varied topics. After listening to it I realized that Piston is very likely a seriously underrated composer. One suspects that in the welter of programs featuring women composers like Fanny Mendelssohn, black composers like William Grant Still and black women composers like Florence Price, music by mere dead white men like Walter Piston is likely to be over-looked. And so it is.</p><p>You need to start by reading the Wikipedia article on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Piston">Walter Piston</a>. He died about the time when I was still a young musician so my only awareness of him was the name on the cover of various textbooks:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho5muQRkwFjjE-srcbgjM-VV9zmkDgvM7fUAFOCGH_s-lVRPkCUb5kslADUes5HjBG8lpMABbT-1_bYcqofuTTrtdUKRDUsKsYOsajyiqF-zt-qk0PAOuL0WJuSNvtlVP-qgl514KIA55FJ8AmeS56B0E5X29fUblBNsXFfZRTi1GIGp8nCdnjQFQFZlg/s902/Screenshot%202024-02-26%20at%208.50.04%E2%80%AFa.m..png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="902" data-original-width="698" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho5muQRkwFjjE-srcbgjM-VV9zmkDgvM7fUAFOCGH_s-lVRPkCUb5kslADUes5HjBG8lpMABbT-1_bYcqofuTTrtdUKRDUsKsYOsajyiqF-zt-qk0PAOuL0WJuSNvtlVP-qgl514KIA55FJ8AmeS56B0E5X29fUblBNsXFfZRTi1GIGp8nCdnjQFQFZlg/w155-h200/Screenshot%202024-02-26%20at%208.50.04%E2%80%AFa.m..png" width="155" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBYxtS4vqTCQ8QY88FdxV4cn7HdWQl-KiJmOega3rjxHobA3Sh1zBTzwjhwJMDxytFRZ6jUdkqGZR_h6nvgfTmeosg2R8qRDuY8QL4ZsdcyjOyiCMFSluZ6lMmSen5Aeaem7hNYyRvKYvKkM8Nc2xoJu2lDIJ1cuS4VeKJxGj6zgvQwZ_uiLlQmyKdp-g/s1046/Screenshot%202024-02-26%20at%208.51.08%E2%80%AFa.m..png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1046" data-original-width="696" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBYxtS4vqTCQ8QY88FdxV4cn7HdWQl-KiJmOega3rjxHobA3Sh1zBTzwjhwJMDxytFRZ6jUdkqGZR_h6nvgfTmeosg2R8qRDuY8QL4ZsdcyjOyiCMFSluZ6lMmSen5Aeaem7hNYyRvKYvKkM8Nc2xoJu2lDIJ1cuS4VeKJxGj6zgvQwZ_uiLlQmyKdp-g/w134-h200/Screenshot%202024-02-26%20at%208.51.08%E2%80%AFa.m..png" width="134" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlHPpGHPs7yto4ZMfGTjAWGMYYNLhPZl9r3cPCJSerlnbrZLaiwnHM26ETCWmN6ZT2me1x74IUg0wWSqzbjRddUQ1TJemJHpUwwWLIwdBw6ceZjAKuhs8BSuAbyVmpMV3uHz4e72bnrqhyphenhyphenlJvzQEDYYWY1RS1RB1_EudBISfSkgG_i0FbsKfJ-i1wr0Tw/s1012/Screenshot%202024-02-26%20at%208.51.49%E2%80%AFa.m..png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1012" data-original-width="694" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlHPpGHPs7yto4ZMfGTjAWGMYYNLhPZl9r3cPCJSerlnbrZLaiwnHM26ETCWmN6ZT2me1x74IUg0wWSqzbjRddUQ1TJemJHpUwwWLIwdBw6ceZjAKuhs8BSuAbyVmpMV3uHz4e72bnrqhyphenhyphenlJvzQEDYYWY1RS1RB1_EudBISfSkgG_i0FbsKfJ-i1wr0Tw/w138-h200/Screenshot%202024-02-26%20at%208.51.49%E2%80%AFa.m..png" width="138" /></a></div><br /><p>I think I came along just a bit too late for those texts. For harmony, for example, we used Aldwell and Schachter and in my Fugue course we just used Bach. But my musical DNA does connect back to Piston, indirectly. One of my composition and theory teachers was Robert F. Jones who studied with Arthur Berger who was a student of Walter Piston. Piston himself was a student of the ubiquitous Nadia Boulanger:</p><blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">On graduating </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_honors" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Latin honors">summa cum laude</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"> from Harvard, Piston was awarded a </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Knowles_Paine" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="John Knowles Paine">John Knowles Paine</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"> Traveling Fellowship.</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTEWestergaardPiston19684_7-1" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Piston#cite_note-FOOTNOTEWestergaardPiston19684-7" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;">[7]</a></sup><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"> He chose to go to Paris, living there from 1924 to 1926.</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTEThomson1962_9-0" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Piston#cite_note-FOOTNOTEThomson1962-9" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;">[9]</a></sup><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"> At the Ecole Nationale de Musique in Paris, he studied composition and counterpoint with </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Boulanger" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Nadia Boulanger">Nadia Boulanger</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, composition with </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dukas" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Paul Dukas">Paul Dukas</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"> and violin with </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Enescu" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="George Enescu">George Enescu</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">.</span></p></blockquote><p>Piston taught at Harvard from 1926 until he retired in 1960 and the list of his students is mind-boggling:</p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">His students include </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Adler_(composer)" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Samuel Adler (composer)">Samuel Adler</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leroy_Anderson" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Leroy Anderson">Leroy Anderson</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Berger_(composer)" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Arthur Berger (composer)">Arthur Berger</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Bernstein" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Leonard Bernstein">Leonard Bernstein</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Binkerd" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Gordon Binkerd">Gordon Binkerd</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Carter" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Elliott Carter">Elliott Carter</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Davison_(composer)" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="John Davison (composer)">John Davison</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Fine" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Irving Fine">Irving Fine</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harbison" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="John Harbison">John Harbison</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Kohn" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Karl Kohn">Karl Kohn</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_B._Kohs" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Ellis B. Kohs">Ellis B. Kohs</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Kubik" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Gail Kubik">Gail Kubik</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a class="new" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Billy_Jim_Layton&action=edit&redlink=1" style="background: none; color: #a55858; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Billy Jim Layton (page does not exist)">Billy Jim Layton</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No%C3%ABl_Lee" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Noël Lee">Noël Lee</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a class="new" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Middleton_(composer)&action=edit&redlink=1" style="background: none; color: #a55858; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Robert Middleton (composer) (page does not exist)">Robert Middleton</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moevs" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Robert Moevs">Robert Moevs</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pinkham" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Daniel Pinkham">Daniel Pinkham</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Barnes_Royse" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Mildred Barnes Royse">Mildred Barnes Royse</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Rzewski" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Frederic Rzewski">Frederic Rzewski</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Sapp" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Allen Sapp">Allen Sapp</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shapero" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Harold Shapero">Harold Shapero</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, and </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudio_Spies" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Claudio Spies">Claudio Spies</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">,</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-GrovePollack627_2-4" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Piston#cite_note-GrovePollack627-2" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;">[2]</a></sup><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"> as well as </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_D%27Accone" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Frank D'Accone">Frank D'Accone</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">,</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTEMorgan2001_10-0" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Piston#cite_note-FOOTNOTEMorgan2001-10" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;">[10]</a></sup><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Ronell" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Ann Ronell">Ann Ronell</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">,</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTEAndersen2001_11-0" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Piston#cite_note-FOOTNOTEAndersen2001-11" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;">[11]</a></sup><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Strassburg" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Robert Strassburg">Robert Strassburg</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">,</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTEPfitzinger2017422,_522_12-0" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Piston#cite_note-FOOTNOTEPfitzinger2017422,_522-12" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;">[12]</a></sup><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehudi_Wyner" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Yehudi Wyner">Yehudi Wyner</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">,</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTEPerlis2001_13-0" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Piston#cite_note-FOOTNOTEPerlis2001-13" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;">[13]</a></sup><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"> and </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_P._Perry" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="William P. Perry">William P. Perry</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">.</span></blockquote><p>So as a teacher he is probably one of the most influential music professors in North America in the 20th century. What about as a composer?</p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">In 1943, the Alice M. Ditson fund of </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Columbia University">Columbia University</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"> commissioned Piston's </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._2_(Piston)" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Symphony No. 2 (Piston)">Symphony No. 2</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, which was premiered by the </span><a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Symphony_Orchestra_(United_States)" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="National Symphony Orchestra (United States)">National Symphony Orchestra</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"> on March 5, 1944 and was awarded a prize by the New York Music Critics' Circle. His next symphony, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._3_(Piston)" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Symphony No. 3 (Piston)">the Third</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, earned a </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_Music" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Pulitzer Prize for Music">Pulitzer Prize</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">, as did his </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._7_(Piston)" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="Symphony No. 7 (Piston)">Symphony No. 7</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;">. His Viola Concerto and </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No._5_(Piston)" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;" title="String Quartet No. 5 (Piston)">String Quartet No. 5</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.000001px;"> also later received Critics' Circle awards.</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-GrovePollack627_2-5" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Piston#cite_note-GrovePollack627-2" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;">[2]</a></sup></blockquote><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-GrovePollack627_2-5" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Piston#cite_note-GrovePollack627-2" style="background: none; color: #795cb2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none;"></a></sup><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">[All quotes from Wikipedia.]</p><p style="text-align: left;"> See the Wikipedia article for the long list of works that include pieces for every conceivable combination of instruments except for solo voice, opera and guitar. Let's listen to two symphonies and a string quartet to get an idea of his work. First, the Symphony No. 3 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. This is the premiere recording from 1948.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/18IybqdI5dw" width="320" youtube-src-id="18IybqdI5dw"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">The Symphony No. 7 with the Louisville Orchestra conducted by Jorge Mester. The premiere was in 1961.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aXfIq2F_d9c" width="320" youtube-src-id="aXfIq2F_d9c"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">Finally, the String Quartet No. 5 with the Harlem Quartet:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Tecrr8yTsVc" width="320" youtube-src-id="Tecrr8yTsVc"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">So, what do you think?</p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-60958781732890342312024-02-25T08:58:00.003-06:002024-02-25T10:18:08.623-06:00Various Musings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqkocVqWvV9UFeXJf8zn2Qc2SGSQrt9M8Qe_JJYTB2i93CQBbIhW7cs_tx8zNxcrAvTdRnVn5Rn6aes5rrvyjzDHRGdl_XfNV_l5d6e9p5KBPaMmh2zk8DI8fX0sjGQKuaR2zx_aT6FOVMh8dlCP3ChJbYY4md_fifhigeR-AMj8eF8ANMH18N8YQuA8I/s202/Screenshot.jpg.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="62" data-original-width="202" height="62" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqkocVqWvV9UFeXJf8zn2Qc2SGSQrt9M8Qe_JJYTB2i93CQBbIhW7cs_tx8zNxcrAvTdRnVn5Rn6aes5rrvyjzDHRGdl_XfNV_l5d6e9p5KBPaMmh2zk8DI8fX0sjGQKuaR2zx_aT6FOVMh8dlCP3ChJbYY4md_fifhigeR-AMj8eF8ANMH18N8YQuA8I/s1600/Screenshot.jpg.png" width="202" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">This is Wittgenstein's General Propositional Formula which I am still working towards understanding. Bertrand Russell explains the elements of it as follows:</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><i>p</i> with the dash over top stands for all atomic propositions.</li><li>that funny looking thing is the Greek lower case <i>xi</i> with the dash over top and stands for any set of propositions.</li><li><i>N</i> (<i>xi</i> with dash) stands for the negation of all the propositions making up <i>xi</i> with dash.</li></ol><div>My keyboard will not do any of these symbols except for the upper-case italic N and the brackets. Russell goes on to explain the formula in three more paragraphs that, frankly, shed little light. He summarizes by saying:</div><blockquote><div>The symbol is intended to describe a process by the help of which, given the atomic propositions, all others can be manufactured.</div></blockquote><p>Uh-huh. I'm currently studying a text on propositional logic which will, over time, clarify this. The problem is that this is on a level of generalization and abstraction so elevated that it is extremely difficult to grasp--and this despite the very plain and simple words used in explanations. But the whole discussion kind of assumes you just had a seminar in propositional logic.</p><p>[Added update: of course if you are a musician that formula is perfectly obvious: the passage is to be played <i>piano</i> with <i>tenuto</i> and a breath between each note. The big N stands for <i>Nebenstimme</i> and tells us the piece is by Arnold Schoenberg as this is how he indicated a secondary voice, as opposed to <i>Hauptstimme</i>, the main voice.]</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Having a cup of Earl Grey tea with my breakfast reminds me of something that has been bugging me for years: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Luc_Picard">Captain Jean-Luc Picard</a> from <i>Star Trek: The Next Generation</i> is obviously intended to be French (even though the inspiration for the character was a pair of Swiss scientists) as is evidenced by his visit to the family vineyard in one of the films spun off from the tv series. His character is described like this:</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Jean-Luc Picard was born to Maurice and Yvette Picard in La Barre, France, on July 13, 2305. As a child, he dreamed of joining Starfleet. He and the rest of his family speak English, with UK English dialects—the French language having become obscure by the 24th century... [from Wikipedia]</p></blockquote><p>The problem is that Patrick Stewart, a Shakespearian actor born in Yorkshire, is so obviously not French in any way. That note about the French language having become obscure is a feeble attempt to paper over what is obviously either a serious mis-casting or a badly-conceived character. Frankly, I can't imagine an actual French character, or actor for that matter, playing the part of the captain of the Enterprise. So why not just admit the character is English? Who knows. But every time Captain Picard strides to the replicator and orders a cup of "tea, Earl Grey, hot" I curse inwardly.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">The media are awful. That's been said a thousand times, but let me add some refinements. The idea of sober, truthful, discussion of the events of the day has been leached out to the point that the New York Times is a cookbook with articles interspersed designed to affirm whatever nonsense passes for fact on the Upper West Side. Even the Wall Street Journal to which I have fled because it is almost the only place left with actual news, frequently succumbs to absolute nonsense. Today featured <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/drug-cartels-expand-murder-extortion-trafficking-146ede54?mod=hp_lead_pos8">an article on Mexico</a> that discussed the apparent failure of AMLO, the current president, to solve the cartel violence problem. There were some scary statistics. As a matter of principle I refuse to accept any statistics without a precise and thorough description of how the data was obtained and the calculations derived. So, yes, I don't believe statistics. Apart from that there were photos of a few remote villages and some anecdotes. So, basically a made up story. But it leaves the reader the strong impression that Mexico is a chaotic, violent and corrupt society to be avoided. Mind you, my impression of Washington DC from the outside is quite similar. But I have lived in Mexico for 26 years and the truth is that Mexico, at least where I live, is a peaceful and productive society much given to traditional customs and courtesies. There are no homeless people and not even any shoplifting. As for television I have avoided it for a couple of decades now.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;"> I notice that a number of the books I have ordered from Amazon recently have been apparently printed to order. For example, my just-received text on propositional logic says on the last page:</p><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;">Made in the USA</div><div style="text-align: center;">Coppell, TX</div><div style="text-align: center;">18 February 2024</div></div><p style="text-align: left;">Coppell is a suburb of Dallas and the book is copyright 2020. Quite a few others were also printed to order such as the 1611 edition of the <i>King James Bible</i> and the English edition of the <i>Hebrew Bible</i>. I only just started checking and I notice that the University of Chicago edition of Wittgenstein's <i>Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology</i> and Saul Kripke's book on <i>Rule-following and the Private Language Argument</i> published by Blackwell are also printed out in Coppell TX. This is really one of the fruits of information technology: any book can be printed out in a convenient location for speedy shipping. What a wonderful thing this is as one of the irritants of the intellectual life is not being able to get a particular book.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Now this blog is not exclusively about music, but that has certainly been the major focus and I am feeling deeply guilty over having nothing musical so far! So let's do some listening. I noticed the other day that Jay Nordlinger, music critic at The New Criterion was complaining that in all his years of reviewing concerts he has yet to hear a single symphony by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Piston">Walter Piston</a>. This is particularly shocking as Mr. Piston, a professor at Harvard, wrote the book, or rather books on this stuff. For decades his texts on harmony, counterpoint and orchestration were used in courses throughout North America. So here is the Symphony No. 6 with the Seattle Symphony conducted by Gerard Schwartz. A very fine work, it was recorded on Naxos.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pY8MsPspOWc" width="320" youtube-src-id="pY8MsPspOWc"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">[Another update: two of Piston's symphonies won the Pulitzer Prize in music.]</p><p></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-79262354319378541882024-02-23T06:07:00.000-06:002024-02-23T06:07:15.848-06:00Friday Miscellanea<p style="text-align: center;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSMY9IN23fPxVE2nmqZRmS1x4qkhhby-Vi3OoaJUuG7MZmP8rPinvWySBsrdlcHJjUGEfENoQSgQh5Yd6FfsOH7udTEt8gep6opi0SqkXPdC_prigcG7khnylfoTJMLs0GQsUVgRQbAsF0ye-KdxqEV0cpscR_Ug8YZJ0TNdfVx97gcVkmwA9y9fSf7Co/s800/Gris%20violin%20guitar.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="519" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSMY9IN23fPxVE2nmqZRmS1x4qkhhby-Vi3OoaJUuG7MZmP8rPinvWySBsrdlcHJjUGEfENoQSgQh5Yd6FfsOH7udTEt8gep6opi0SqkXPdC_prigcG7khnylfoTJMLs0GQsUVgRQbAsF0ye-KdxqEV0cpscR_Ug8YZJ0TNdfVx97gcVkmwA9y9fSf7Co/w260-h400/Gris%20violin%20guitar.jpg" width="260" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Juan Gris, Violin and Guitar</td></tr></tbody></table><b><br /></b><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>"If it is true that Mahler's music is worthless, as I believe to be the case, then the question is, what I think he ought to have done with his talent. For quite obviously it took a <i>set of very rare talents</i> to produce this bad music."</b></p><p style="text-align: center;">--Ludwig Wittgenstein, <i>Culture and Value</i>, p. 67e</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p>I was delighted to stumble across this post at On An Overgrown Path: <a href="https://www.overgrownpath.com/2024/02/not-everyone-climbs-mountains.html">Not everyone climbs mountains</a>. I'm somewhat nonplussed to discover that the title of the post is actually a quote from, well, me.</p><blockquote><p>On his excellent The Music Salon Canadian blogger Bryan Townsend wrote:</p><p><i>On an Overgrown Path tells us There is no mass market for classical music. I'm pretty sure of two things regarding that: first, I have known this ever since I got into classical music, so it ain't news and two, that is a big part of the appeal. Not everyone climbs mountains and not everyone listens to classical music.</i></p><p>Bryan's thoughtful response supports my thesis that for two decades classical music has been chasing a non-existent mass market, as exemplified by the strategy of turning BBC Radio 3 into a clone of Classic FM complete with 'info-commercials'. But, and that is very important but, we cannot overlook that classical music is losing traction with audiences to an alarming extent. </p></blockquote><blockquote><p>Bryan Townsend is right when he says 'Not everyone climbs mountains and not everyone listens to classical music'. But what happens when the lack of new mountain climbers means that the essential guides and Sherpas disappear to seek other work? What happens when the essential fixed ropes start failing due to lack of maintenance? What happens when the routes to base camps are closed down due to lack of traffic? What happens when essential funding for the climbing infrastructure is withdrawn due to the lack of mountaineers? What happens when the mountains are dynamited by BBC Radio 3 to make them easier to climb?</p><p>This is exactly what is happening with classical music.</p></blockquote><p>Yes, most sadly true: as the audience dries up, the schools of music begin to shut down, there are fewer role models for young musicians and composers and so on. My comment was just from an individual perspective.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">I'm not sure this is indicative of the above, but <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/english-national-opera-sacks-singers-during-interval/ar-BB1ioBcR">English National Opera sacks singers during interval</a></p><blockquote><p>Singers and musicians at the English National Opera were handed redundancy notices midway through the final performance of its acclaimed production of The Handmaid’s Tale.</p><p>Formal redundancy letters, which came following a long-running funding crisis at the company, began to be sent out electronically shortly before the curtain for the final performance of the opera’s run had gone up.</p><p>But many of the performers only saw the details of their redundancy during the interval, when they opened the notifications backstage.</p><p>Despite this, they went back on stage to finish the performance, winning plaudits from the audience at the London Coliseum.</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Music theory from a mathematics perspective: <a href="https://plus.maths.org/content/how-many-melodies-are-there#:~:text=Four%20to%20infinity&text=So%2C%20a%20mere%20ten%20note,work%20his%20way%20through%20those.">How many melodies are there?</a></p><blockquote><p>The equivalent of a writer staring at a blank page, wondering how to fill it, is a composer staring at the 88 black and white notes on a piano wondering how to compose a melody that's never been heard before. How can one possibly take the eight notes of a standard scale and write a brand new melody when so many great melodies have already been written? Perhaps they've all been taken!</p><p>So, to counter the fear of there being no new melodies, I thought it would be interesting to examine the number of melodies available to a composer looking at his blank stave to see how many there potentially are.</p></blockquote><p>Follow the link for the answer. But the bottom line is:</p><blockquote><p>So, a mere ten note melody will produce over 75 billion potential melodies of 13 notes within the octave! It's going to take our composer a while to work his way through those.</p></blockquote><p>Of course, composers don't work like this!</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">The enjoyment of classical music is dependent on listening skills. If you have only ever listened to three minute pop songs you are not going to find a Bruckner symphony very easy to appreciate. Running parallel with this is the issue of reading skills, which seem to be in similar decline: <a href="https://www.joannejacobs.com/post/why-joe-college-can-t-read">Why Joe College can't read</a>.</p><blockquote><p>Students also lack reading stamina: They have trouble staying focused on a challenging text. In middle and high school, they read short passages to prepare for tests, but rarely whole novels, Kotsko writes. He links to Peter Greene's lament that students' knowledge of literature "is Cliff's Notes deep, and they may never develop the mental muscles to work their way through a long, meaty piece of literature."</p><p>Learning "to follow extended narratives and arguments" is a valuable life skill, Kotsko argues. Young people who can't engage with complexity won't be prepared for the world.</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">One wonders <a href="https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/is-philosophy-self-help/#">Is Philosophy Self-Help?</a> Well, certainly lots of it isn't. But from the titles at least, some of it is, or purports to be.</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">In the past decade or so, there’s been a flowering of philosophical self-help—books authored by academics but intended to instruct us all. <i>You can learn How to Be a Stoic</i>, <i>How to Be an Epicurean</i> or <i>How William James Can Save Your Life</i>; you can walk <i>Aristotle’s Way</i> and go <i>Hiking with Nietzsche</i>. As of 2020, Oxford University Press has issued a series of “Guides to the Good Life”: short, accessible volumes that draw practical wisdom from historical traditions in philosophy, with entries on existentialism, Buddhism, Epicureanism, Confucianism and Kant.</p></blockquote><p>After mulling over several conceptual models, the author concludes:</p><blockquote><p>Philosophy seeds new concepts, novel understandings—as it might be, alienation, ideology, structural injustice; new ways of comprehending freedom, status, power. Philosophical argument serves more to nurture these concepts and give them life than to establish theorems critics can’t dispute. In Murdoch’s words, “the task of moral philosophers [is] to extend, as poets may extend, the limits of language, and enable it to illuminate regions which were formerly dark.”</p></blockquote><p>Which is not terrible, but it avoids the whole question of truth which is, despite everything, still rather important.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">An economist recently called classical music the greatest (nearly) free gift in life, so let's have some examples. First up, a Mozart string quartet from Wigmore Hall:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DpMyE3KHV5g" width="320" youtube-src-id="DpMyE3KHV5g"></iframe></div><br /> Sibelius, Symphony No. 2:<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iXU8EXL7a_4" width="320" youtube-src-id="iXU8EXL7a_4"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">My new favorite harpsichordist, Jean Rondeau with some terrifying Scarlatti:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1yyBP3t7g90" width="320" youtube-src-id="1yyBP3t7g90"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">And a completely different kind of terrifying: the first movement, <i>De profundis</i>, from the Symphony No. 14 by Shostakovich, sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau:</p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXuJWbVti2I">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXuJWbVti2I</a></p><p style="text-align: left;">Poem by Federico Garcia Lorca.</p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-19900236592497987662024-02-18T16:36:00.000-06:002024-02-18T16:36:42.846-06:00Escaping the Zombie Culture<p>When Ted Gioia is right, he's really right: </p><h1 class="post-title unpublished" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; caret-color: rgb(64, 64, 64); color: #404040; font-family: var(--font_family_headings, var(--font_family_headings_preset, "SF Compact Display", -apple-system, system-ui, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol")); font-size: var(--font-size-32); font-weight: var(--font_weight_headings_preset, bold); line-height: var(--line-height-36); margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-state-of-the-culture-2024?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=296132&post_id=141676786&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=nbbt9&utm_medium=email">The State of the Culture, 2024</a></h1><h3 class="subtitle" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; font-family: var(--font_family_headings, var(--font_family_headings_preset, "SF Compact Display", -apple-system, system-ui, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol")); font-size: var(--font-size-18); font-weight: 400; line-height: var(--line-height-24); margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: var(--size-12); text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-state-of-the-culture-2024?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=296132&post_id=141676786&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=nbbt9&utm_medium=email">Or a glimpse into post-entertainment society (it's not pretty)</a></h3><h3 class="subtitle" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; font-family: var(--font_family_headings, var(--font_family_headings_preset, "SF Compact Display", -apple-system, system-ui, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol")); font-size: var(--font-size-18); font-weight: 400; line-height: var(--line-height-24); margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: var(--size-12); text-align: center;"><br /></h3><blockquote><div><div>The fastest growing sector of the culture economy is distraction. Or call it scrolling or swiping or wasting time or whatever you want. But it’s not art or entertainment, just ceaseless activity.</div><div><br /></div><div>The key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds, and must be repeated.</div><div><br /></div><div>It’s a huge business, and will soon be larger than arts and entertainment combined. Everything is getting turned into TikTok—an aptly named platform for a business based on stimuli that must be repeated after only a few ticks of the clock.</div><div><br /></div><div>TikTok made a fortune with fast-paced scrolling video. And now Facebook—once a place to connect with family and friends—is imitating it. So long, Granny, hello Reels. Twitter has done the same. And, of course, Instagram, YouTube, and everybody else trying to get rich on social media.</div></div></blockquote><p>It is worth reading the whole thing. I've been pushing back against this kind of thing most of my life. He's wrong that it is a 2024 phenomenon, but the current version is supercharged by new software and media. I think the first time I encountered this kind of sensation was when I was given tranquilizers when I was in the hospital for a few days in my late teens. I got quite anxious when I realized that I had been staring at the wall for quite a while with no thoughts! This is not normal! But it was television that really brought it home. I never owned a television until I was in my forties, too busy and no interest. But when I got one, after a few years I discovered I was sitting there, mindlessly switching from channel to channel, looking for something, anything, to watch. When I realized this was becoming a habit, I cancelled my cable and gave my tv away. That was many years ago and I don't miss it. I noticed an even worse version of this on YouTube when you get hooked on watching those short clips. Mind you, YouTube can be enormously useful, you just have to watch how you interact with it.</p><p>I don't use any of the other social media like Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram and all the others. In fact, a few years ago I decided it was time to "de-digitize" part of my life so I took up writing with a fountain pen, writing a daily journal, writing some poetry, doing some sketching, stopping the use of music software for composing and going back to pencil and eraser on staff paper and so on. Except for the sketching, I have kept all this up, quite happily. Oh, and possibly the most important one, every morning I start the day by reading something serious. Right now it is the <i>Tractatus Logic-Philosophicus</i> of Wittgenstein, but I have read a lot of other stuff. The first hour of the day is devoted to that and not the internet.</p><p>I have mentioned all of this before, but in the light of the Ted Gioia post I thought it was worth reiterating. Ann Althouse had something similar up this morning: <a href="https://althouse.blogspot.com/2024/02/10-pages.html">10 pages?!!</a> If you scroll down you will see that mine is the third comment. Later on Ann quoted my comment and said:</p><blockquote><p>Even one page of serious philosophy or poetry would be enough of a challenge. It's not the pages, it's the time and the degree of engagement.</p></blockquote><p>Yes, the degree of engagement. Or you might say focus, or concentration. Because what all actual study or creative work requires is uninterrupted concentration--and that is what all our social media software is designed to frustrate, as Ted points out.</p><p>But, you know, the solution is pretty simple. Just stop and do something else. Something worth doing. Wood-carving, bird-watching, tennis (ok, pickleball), chess, reading an actual book, play guitar. Anything!</p><p> </p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-31029089660669495662024-02-18T08:01:00.000-06:002024-02-18T08:01:16.492-06:00Sunday Musings<p style="text-align: center;"><i><b>The world of the happy is a different one from that of the unhappy.</b></i></p><p style="text-align: center;">--<i>Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus</i>, excerpt from proposition 6.43, by Ludwig Wittgenstein</p><p style="text-align: left;">I have stumbled across this idea myself a few times, describing it as the difference between standing in a swimming pool with your nose just above the water versus standing in a swimming pool with your nose just below the water. There is also an old quote by an English writer to the effect that if your income is three and sixpence and your expenses three and tuppence you are happy, but if your income is three and sixpence and your expenses four pounds, you are unhappy. The Wittgenstein quote is more about one's attitude toward the world. This also relates to questions of aesthetics. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, but the causes must lie in the aesthetic object.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">I thought of a musical analogy to a Wittgenstein remark about samples. Back when we used a reference standard meter kept in Paris the nature of its role meant that we cannot say that it is one meter long because there is nothing we can compare it to: it is the standard. Similarly, you can't tune a tuning fork as it is the standard. I suppose if you had a number of tuning forks, you could determine if one of them, for instance, were defective. But in that case it would not be a "tuning fork" because it could no longer be the standard. Another peculiar thing I ran across in Wittgenstein is that if there were an island somewhere with a plant that was poisonous to humans and animals, and if there were no humans or animals on the island then the plant would not be poisonous. These odd things come up when you are examining the nature of language and how it reflects or pictures the world. When I have finished my study of Wittgenstein then I am going to take a close look at how music notation reflects or pictures music itself.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">A terrible thing has come to pass in British Columbia: <a href="https://www.timescolonist.com/national-news/bcs-2024-vintage-faces-wipeout-as-wine-report-predicts-up-to-99-loss-due-to-cold-8311909">B.C.'s 2024 vintage faces wipeout, as wine report predicts up to 99% loss due to cold</a></p><blockquote><p>Across B.C., the 2024 vintage is facing a near-total wipeout, according to a report into the January cold snap commissioned by industry group Wine Growers British Columbia.</p><p>It says the province faces "catastrophic crop losses" of 97 to 99 per cent of typical grape production. </p></blockquote><blockquote><p>Environment Canada data show Kelowna's daily low temperature breached -20 C from Jan. 12 to 14, hitting -26.9 C on Jan. 13.</p><p>Daily lows were around -20 C on Jan. 11 and Jan. 15, and did not return above -10 C until Jan. 20.</p><p>Wine growers say the loss in grape and wine production triggered by the deep freeze — described by the report as "an almost complete writeoff of the 2024 vintage" — is expected to result in revenue losses of up to $346 million for vineyards and wineries in B.C.</p><p>The industry is also anticipating an additional revenue loss for suppliers, logistic providers and distributors of up to $99 million.</p></blockquote><p>British Columbia is my home province in Canada, though I haven't lived there for thirty-some years. When I was attending premieres there of my String Quartet No. 2 in May of last year, I took the opportunity to pick up some fine BC wines including an outstanding Bordeaux blend, a BC port and a couple of bottles of BC ice wine. Here is one I opened a little while ago:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHZSMe_lD_8Hc05QhiFTy6AdBYVU_quYYF74-qGv8Q-6oCw9-Mnq4HhN8pmV6XkWdx6H8yZcT6fNpTO59HMXmYnz_bASOE6QG54ITdRJdB0l9633rhJGAfht6hWAz7jQ_ZauAGrVkCOveuTEtITVYLOr9FtPIOPH_PtOf7DCljUsb8Li7fU9U6pPoQYCo/s4032/IMG_9646.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHZSMe_lD_8Hc05QhiFTy6AdBYVU_quYYF74-qGv8Q-6oCw9-Mnq4HhN8pmV6XkWdx6H8yZcT6fNpTO59HMXmYnz_bASOE6QG54ITdRJdB0l9633rhJGAfht6hWAz7jQ_ZauAGrVkCOveuTEtITVYLOr9FtPIOPH_PtOf7DCljUsb8Li7fU9U6pPoQYCo/s320/IMG_9646.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><br />Ice wine, for those who don't know it, is a very rare and special wine. It is made from ripe grapes that have experienced an early frost and are completely frozen. The Inniskillin label states that they harvest at precisely -10° Celsius. Crushing frozen grapes means that part of the water is retained as ice crystals so the juice is richer and sweeter making for a wonderful dessert wine. It tastes rather like honey, if honey were a wine. Ice wine was discovered in the 18th century by wine-makers in the Mosel valley in Germany. Only three countries produce it, to my knowledge: Germany, Austria and Canada and the latter is the largest producer. When I left for my flight back to Mexico I noticed stacks of BC ice wine in the duty-free shops. You really never see ice wine outside the producing countries as very little of it is exported.<p></p><p>So the whole BC wine industry has been wiped out, certainly for this year and perhaps for longer. How long will the vines take to recover? The wine industry has been developed over the last few decades and during this time the main region, the Okanagan, has not experienced catastrophic cold as it did this year. But, as we can see, it is still a very northern area for grape vines and the possibility was always there. Did investors and growers proceed with their plans partly based on the projections of higher temperatures due to anthropogenic climate change? And were the models projecting these changes flawed? These are probably good questions to ask.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Here is a suitable envoi from an UB40 album I used to have:</p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Pss4bwnA6Yc" width="320" youtube-src-id="Pss4bwnA6Yc"></iframe></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-78274052987518882412024-02-18T05:00:00.000-06:002024-02-18T05:00:02.913-06:00Today's Listening<p>From the marvelous Polish counter-tenor Jakub Józef Orliński and L'Arpeggiata:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Ppo9l7asVs" width="320" youtube-src-id="4Ppo9l7asVs"></iframe></div><br /> It's not often that you get a whole album of premiere recordings from the 17th century.<p></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-5935919396101296852024-02-16T06:29:00.000-06:002024-02-16T06:29:09.676-06:00Friday Miscellanea<p>I have been a fan of opera ever since I saw my first European production which was <a href="https://themusicsalon.blogspot.com/2016/05/moses-und-aron.html">Schoenberg's Moses und Aron</a> in Madrid in 2016. This was designed by Romeo Castelluci and I was simply blown away by the production. Follow the link for a photo and some details. In the New York Times yesterday there was a review of another Castelluci production: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/14/arts/music/castellucci-ring-la-monnaie.html">A Model for Modern ‘Ring’ Operas Is Unfolding in Brussels</a>.</p><blockquote><p>He trusts the libretto to tell the story, and he trusts it to be timely on its own. After all, the “Ring” has always been relevant; that is the nature of mythic storytelling. And he isn’t misguided in having the operas stand alone. They are distinct — “Siegfried,” for example, an interjection of opera buffa, and “Das Rheingold” a seamless, proto-cinematic vision for the art form’s future. In the first two installments, Castellucci has presented an extended, visual essay on the essence of each work, his staging behaving like Wagner’s score in constantly commenting on and illuminating the action. The results have novelistic sweep and ambiguity, and are both persuasive and breathtakingly theatrical.</p><p>The world of “Das Rheingold,” in Castellucci’s production, is one of tribalism and violent hierarchy. Valhalla, the recently completed home of the gods, is a fortress built on loot. Wotan and Fricka, its rulers, enter by navigating — maybe even trampling — the bodies, made to look nude, of countless people laid out across the stage. Surrounding them are statues and reliefs based on the Elgin Marbles, the Greek friezes that have long been housed at the British Museum.</p></blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5VZmdi8WPH8_2ZIfu8Bh5marVbXoLL4D3yRjYUBvdiRJ1mxX63GfciFYBMh2QrpCzw9C_Wa7S8nBDoDgOXe7Xh0qBV_m22YTAPunOHkSuNmSKL9cGjSoZDNcJSSrwxkqbmg4Va8q_8braUgtuSnSp1_8fdAbTlCEiiI9TpVBW4Z8PYqPNfC15y7gsza4/s2048/14ring-tbfg-superJumbo.jpg.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5VZmdi8WPH8_2ZIfu8Bh5marVbXoLL4D3yRjYUBvdiRJ1mxX63GfciFYBMh2QrpCzw9C_Wa7S8nBDoDgOXe7Xh0qBV_m22YTAPunOHkSuNmSKL9cGjSoZDNcJSSrwxkqbmg4Va8q_8braUgtuSnSp1_8fdAbTlCEiiI9TpVBW4Z8PYqPNfC15y7gsza4/w400-h268/14ring-tbfg-superJumbo.jpg.webp" width="400" /></a></div><br /> I will be in Salzburg for the festival this summer and have requested a ticket to a new production of <i><a href="https://www.salzburgerfestspiele.at/en/p/don-giovanni-2024">Don Giovanni</a> </i>on July 28 designed by Castelluci and conducted by Teodor Currenzis. This may not be the Golden Age of opera composition, but it is certainly one of opera production.<p></p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">One of the reasons I am devoting a lot of time to the study of Ludwig Wittgenstein these days is that he is unquestionably someone who was not out to establish his brand as a philosophical guru or "influencer." There are fewer and fewer like him these days: <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2024/2/1/24056883/tiktok-self-promotion-artist-career-how-to-build-following">Everyone’s a sellout now</a>.</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">The internet has made it so that no matter who you are or what you do — from nine-to-five middle managers to astronauts to house cleaners — you cannot escape the tyranny of the personal brand. For some, it looks like updating your LinkedIn connections whenever you get promoted; for others, it’s asking customers to give you five stars on Google Reviews; for still more, it’s crafting an engaging-but-authentic persona on Instagram. And for people who hope to publish a bestseller or release a hit record, it’s “building a platform” so that execs can use your existing audience to justify the costs of signing a new artist.</p></blockquote><p>There is a rather depressing example in the recent career trend of Jordan Peterson, someone who, a few years ago, I would have cited as an example of someone with the highest standards. But since he has started buying expensive suits and hysterically alerting us to a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuEFnUGcUCQ">new crisis</a> every day on YouTube, I tend to steer clear of him. The pre-success Peterson can be seen in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCOw0eJ84d8&t=109s">this clip</a>. Grubby t-shirt, long pauses for thought and a genuinely spontaneous examination of some important ideas.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Here's an interesting memoir of opera-lover Dana Gioia: <a href="https://hudsonreview.com/2024/02/the-imaginary-operagoer-a-memoir/">The Imaginary Operagoer: A Memoir</a></p><blockquote><p>There was something shameful about loving opera. Especially for a boy. Opera was pretentious, boring, effete, and effeminate. By the time I was ten, I understood the unsavory reputation of the art. Opera represented everything that my childhood in postwar America asked me not to be.</p><p>I had never been to the opera. I had never even seen an opera house, except in old movies. I knew from the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera that rich people went there, but they didn’t much enjoy it. Only Groucho had any fun. The patrons were old and overweight—bejeweled matrons and potbellied bankers stuffed into tuxedos. There was also something sinister about opera’s orgy of opulence. In Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera, the opera house was built over the city sewers. A mad composer emerged from this mephitic underworld to kidnap and kill. He wore elegant clothes, including an opera cape, but without his stylish mask, he was a monster. Opera was somehow both tedious and malevolent.</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">I think we are developing a theme today: opera! I said above that I became an opera lover in 2016. This was shockingly late in life. Actually I had had a certain amount of exposure to opera before, a bit of listening in university music courses and even more directly, I played the guitar parts in a number of operas by Rossini and others and even the mandolin part in <i>Don Giovanni</i> which I learned specifically for the occasion (and I haven't played the mandolin since!). I've even been to a few opera productions in both Canada and Mexico. But I didn't experience what opera is really about until I started going to European productions. There might be some good ones in New York and possibly Toronto or other urban centers in North America, but I haven't seen them. Europe however is teeming with spectacular opera productions. It really is an absurd art form, opera, because it is obviously out-of-date and ridiculously expensive. For one thing you have to build a large expensive building that can be used for little else. But there really is nothing like a great opera in a great production. And no, a video is not the same. All you can get is a faint hint of the real experience.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gVUanA7g-Vs" width="320" youtube-src-id="gVUanA7g-Vs"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">The history of opera is a long and interesting one. Have a look at <a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Opera-Carolyn-Abbate/dp/0393348954/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2VFDDJ0R4JFJY&keywords=abbate+opera&qid=1708084546&sprefix=abbate+opera%2Caps%2C164&sr=8-1">A History of Opera: The Last Four Hundred Years</a> by Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker. There was one opera I became very fond of early on and that was the first opera that has found a niche in the repertoire: <i>L'Orfeo</i> by Claudio Monteverdi. Here is a recent production by Les Arts Florissants:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pYUGVnfwDcE" width="320" youtube-src-id="pYUGVnfwDcE"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">The New York Times asks the musical question: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/arts/music/schubert-operas.html">Schubert’s Operas Were Failures. Is Their Music Worth Saving?</a></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">It’s surprising that opera eluded Schubert, who by most counts started about 20 stage works, completed fewer than a dozen and saw the premieres of just two. After all, he wrote some of the most beautiful vocal music in the repertoire: the song cycles “Die Schöne Müllerin” and “Winterreise,” and hundreds of beloved lieder like “Gretchen am Spinnrade” and “Ave Maria.” </p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">And yet the operas remain curiosities better heard than seen, often composed to clumsy librettos and denied the revisions that could have accompanied rehearsals.</p></blockquote><p>Another great composer that could not solve the mystery of opera was Joseph Haydn.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/israel-daramola-interview-decline-challenges-music-press-journalism.php">Israel Daramola on the challenges facing music journalism</a></p><blockquote><p><i>Can you talk about the state of music journalism now and how it compares to the past?</i></p><p>There’s kind of nothing left, really. I mean, there’s a couple of big brands that still remain, like Rolling Stone and Billboard, and even Spin is still around, but a lot of them have become content farms, especially online, and very few of them are still publishing anything in print. So a lot of it is just hanging by a thread. We’re almost seeing, especially in music, the dawning of another kind of blog era, where there’s a lot of boutique blogs and a lot of local localized music blogs. But as far as a thing that’s covering music, period, it’s probably like one writer at all the major newspapers and outlets and then a handful of music publications that still exist.</p></blockquote><p>I suppose what is amusing about this is that, as far as I can see, music journalism as discussed here is really just pop music journalism and that turned into lifestyle journalism a long time ago--along with simple pieces promoting the latest.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Let's have a non-opera envoi today as we have already had so much opera. Here, from Cathedral Brixen in South Tyrol (the most Austrian part of Italy) is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mass">Missa in angustiis</a> No. 11 in D minor (nicknamed the <i>Nelson Mass</i>) one of six Joseph Haydn wrote towards the end of his life. Some have argued that this is Haydn's greatest single composition.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nUzDvS845Sc" width="320" youtube-src-id="nUzDvS845Sc"></iframe></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-28412080830996417182024-02-09T11:40:00.000-06:002024-02-09T11:40:18.261-06:00Hannigan and Vivier<p>I sometimes feel there is not a lot to celebrate in Canadian music, but two people that do attract attention are soprano Barbara Hannigan and composer Claude Vivier. Here is the former talking about the latter: <a href="https://www.boosey.com/cr/news/Performer-Picks-Barbara-Hannigan-on-Claude-Vivier-s-Music/102379?utm_campaign=3351630_Qnotes_Feb24_b2c_NY&utm_medium=Dotmailer&utm_source=Email%20Marketing&dm_i=2KD7,1ZU4U,7L7OEZ,74D63,1">Barbara Hannigan on Claude Vivier’s Music</a>.</p><p>And a couple of pieces she mentions: here is <i>Lonely Child</i> with Hannigan as conductor.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D2dR9G7CJ48" width="320" youtube-src-id="D2dR9G7CJ48"></iframe></div><p>And here is just a brief excerpt of <i>Wo bist du Licht?</i> with Hannigan as singer:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DL4r_tS7AO8" width="320" youtube-src-id="DL4r_tS7AO8"></iframe></div><p>And here is a different performance of the whole piece with score:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/j0Qdi8ZbmRU" width="320" youtube-src-id="j0Qdi8ZbmRU"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-73529682572416472982024-02-09T08:26:00.000-06:002024-02-09T08:26:16.269-06:00Friday Miscellanea<p style="text-align: center;"><i>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.</i></p><p style="text-align: center;">Wittgenstein, <i>Culture and Value</i>, p. 76e</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p>Some really good news for students of antiquity: a method has been created to read those carbonized scrolls from <a href="https://scrollprize.org/grandprize">Herculaneum</a>. 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...</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">How one composer assured the longevity of his music: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/feb/04/john-cage-gig-2640-german-church-halberstadt-st-burchardi-">‘There’s a certain madness to it’ … fans await new chord in John Cage gig with 616 years left to run</a></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">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.)</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">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: <a href="https://www.sfcv.org/articles/music-news/candlelight-concerts-tackles-job-expanding-classical-audiences">Candlelight Concerts Tackles the Job of Expanding Classical Audiences</a></p><blockquote><p>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.</p><p>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.”</p><p>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?</p></blockquote><p>So they are "taking on classical music" by avoiding it?</p><blockquote><p>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.</p></blockquote><p>But there sure are a lot of candles, so there's that...</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">I have this sinking feeling that we will have to have a Taylor Swift item in every Friday Miscellanea to the end of time: <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/academics/2024/02/07/professors-combine-taylor-swift-and-econ-swiftonomics">‘Swiftonomics’ Course Brings Taylor Craze to College Classrooms</a></p><blockquote><p>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.</p><p>“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.”</p><p>And references to Swift will “long live,” according to Krugman.</p><p>“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.”</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Here are <a href="https://salmagundi.skidmore.edu/articles/477-thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-art">Thirteen Ways of Looking at Art</a>.</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">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.</p></blockquote><p>I'm almost inclined to agree with Wittgenstein that aesthetics and ethics are inherently about <b><i>values</i></b> and therefore beyond the region in which we can say meaningful things.</p><blockquote><p> <b><i>7. Of what one cannot speak, about that one must be silent.</i></b> </p></blockquote><blockquote><p>--Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * * </p><p style="text-align: left;">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):</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRoj0-SQWN_MU4SyRsClpWg1cTxBSIBHiUO2uAWZgR1BUPbS3z28TsAMil-7t01Q6C-lo9lm-Mrl19OTUEEgSE2LXPhgo7mLDJ-iwcElXPMeiXC3PQolmonbicrlPL7ng5-j2xTTL9ZyJh8JZndxSoXtn06jt3Tf9ekuJPaqsiP4I211MxpG6UW7lS23I/s1556/Screenshot%202024-02-07%20at%208.41.17%20a.m..png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1556" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRoj0-SQWN_MU4SyRsClpWg1cTxBSIBHiUO2uAWZgR1BUPbS3z28TsAMil-7t01Q6C-lo9lm-Mrl19OTUEEgSE2LXPhgo7mLDJ-iwcElXPMeiXC3PQolmonbicrlPL7ng5-j2xTTL9ZyJh8JZndxSoXtn06jt3Tf9ekuJPaqsiP4I211MxpG6UW7lS23I/w400-h163/Screenshot%202024-02-07%20at%208.41.17%20a.m..png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />* * *</td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: left;">Just for fun here is a quick version of the Cage piece <i>Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible)</i>:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XDKsTi2Ehjc" width="320" youtube-src-id="XDKsTi2Ehjc"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And one of a million performances of the Chaconne, here is Hopkinson Smith on lute:</div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LtjtuljFPa8" width="320" youtube-src-id="LtjtuljFPa8"></iframe></div><br /> Finally, here is Virna Kljaković with a Chopin Nocturne:<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E3qHO9aOQYM" width="320" youtube-src-id="E3qHO9aOQYM"></iframe></div><br /><div><br /></div>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-42268167955887757552024-02-04T09:58:00.000-06:002024-02-04T09:58:36.451-06:00Perpetual Grad Student<p>It didn't seem so then because of my doubts about getting a job in the field afterwards, but my time as a doctoral candidate in musicology at McGill University in Montreal was a very happy time in my life. It was a time of intellectual and aesthetic exploration unconstrained by economic factors. I had a full scholarship which paid for tuition and I was given employment in the form of teaching courses to non-music majors.</p><p>I did leave before writing a dissertation for other things, but I really enjoyed the seminars. For me education is about learning, not about certification. A number of years ago I was asked to give some pre-concert lectures in our local chamber series, one on Chopin and I realized that my many years at university had actually taught me almost nothing about Chopin except for brief discussion in a 19th century music history course. So I undertook to give myself a graduate seminar in Chopin based on ones I had at McGill on DuFay, Shostakovich and comic opera. It was great fun and I think the talk was successful. But the big reward was that I discovered I could give myself a course in anything I wanted.</p><p>Right now I am mostly through giving myself a course in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein">Ludwig Wittgenstein</a>. I first tried to read the <i>Philosophical Investigations</i> many years ago (fifty to be exact!) with no discernible success. Subsequently I have taken a couple of runs at the <i>Tractatus Logic-Philosophicus</i> with even less success. But my complete lack of comprehension has actually led me to want to try harder and last year I read the whole of the <i>Investigations</i> coming away with an understanding of perhaps, oh, 4 or 5% of the text. Then I decided to give it a more serious try and read the <i>Tractatus</i> again in a couple of different translations and watched some videos on it by a Dutch professor. Ok, faint inklings. So I just finished Anscombe's introduction and I'm reading Hülster's introduction which is actually quite clear. Then I think I will read the <i>Tractatus</i> again. After that I will read the Routledge Guidebook to the <i>Investigations</i> and maybe try to write a summary. Oh, and I have also been reading the Monk biography of Wittgenstein which is pretty mind-boggling in itself.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfYyA62FHJ1Q4GSzRgBMBMBY59kk1aMjTX8695XCwhXP8nAfvqZ2zK8jAU-We1oINAY26DQTJfbBbC0rM_740CkuiK_UUhnKR7y6hHMB_HuOqL-ME-T5Uh05DIpps_rH-TKyZM4ffukVoEQ6A3Zlzl8FkPT9LcliFtZX6gNkLv20oBKEHgcUA4OOoZLk8/s1846/Screenshot%202024-02-04%20at%209.16.43%20a.m..png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1434" data-original-width="1846" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfYyA62FHJ1Q4GSzRgBMBMBY59kk1aMjTX8695XCwhXP8nAfvqZ2zK8jAU-We1oINAY26DQTJfbBbC0rM_740CkuiK_UUhnKR7y6hHMB_HuOqL-ME-T5Uh05DIpps_rH-TKyZM4ffukVoEQ6A3Zlzl8FkPT9LcliFtZX6gNkLv20oBKEHgcUA4OOoZLk8/w400-h313/Screenshot%202024-02-04%20at%209.16.43%20a.m..png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My Wittgenstein shelf<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>And here is that biography:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_bqZVUWkyQH1QzbBEU8w3SnAMVNslqRH_zvrsSJ0FzIKEYxKF25JAyDOCKe4WnzFDMpfpKPTTTTj3AcCpSMyor6FWT8XoDemQGkVSauqC_IY-UZJI-xOmIC_M3hTabpHC7hxIw9h4LZQVZ0-_LWMfqZfviO2YGNIa1rxJsH9ddgsOpM2MNIiLCyZLKUU/s1994/Screenshot%202024-02-04%20at%209.26.02%20a.m..png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1994" data-original-width="1332" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_bqZVUWkyQH1QzbBEU8w3SnAMVNslqRH_zvrsSJ0FzIKEYxKF25JAyDOCKe4WnzFDMpfpKPTTTTj3AcCpSMyor6FWT8XoDemQGkVSauqC_IY-UZJI-xOmIC_M3hTabpHC7hxIw9h4LZQVZ0-_LWMfqZfviO2YGNIa1rxJsH9ddgsOpM2MNIiLCyZLKUU/w268-h400/Screenshot%202024-02-04%20at%209.26.02%20a.m..png" width="268" /></a></div><p>What has this to do with music? Well, there is a potential connection. I've been chewing over my thoughts on the problem of musical structure and I think that Wittgenstein's picture theory about the representation of reality could actually be very helpful. I talked about the problem in this post: <a href="https://themusicsalon.blogspot.com/2023/11/musical-structure.html">Musical "Structure"</a> in which I made the point that music does not have "structure" which is a spatial concept, rather it has "flow," which is a temporal concept. In any case, once I have finished my Wittgenstein seminar I will return to the problem, with, I hope, more intellectual tools to bring to the table.</p><p>Some listening: Henri Dutilleux, <i>The Shadows of Time</i>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-i4SLjibbm4" width="320" youtube-src-id="-i4SLjibbm4"></iframe></div><p>My next seminar will be on the Mozart operas for which I will be reading Charles Osborne's book <i>The Complete Operas of Mozart</i>. I also have the marvelous box of DVDs of the complete productions at Salzburg in 2006:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgByJOtRtlqo9NFPVCSJa2jldXiiaSdcjCislWRnPWLYjv9EVkBBCqhs7RHSp6BV38-BLjewPUYha_Rxq8m1VacTzjB9-QAw5Spxayvy9KCDrV6rEF4LW9H8XteU3tT8FRlZruVrCL67OiyQ-Vwqn8R_nE-BiWBSH7ajlfO2YwBbAiknXyE0rVwHT0M4pY/s1500/919nTtntDFL._SL1500_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1106" data-original-width="1500" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgByJOtRtlqo9NFPVCSJa2jldXiiaSdcjCislWRnPWLYjv9EVkBBCqhs7RHSp6BV38-BLjewPUYha_Rxq8m1VacTzjB9-QAw5Spxayvy9KCDrV6rEF4LW9H8XteU3tT8FRlZruVrCL67OiyQ-Vwqn8R_nE-BiWBSH7ajlfO2YwBbAiknXyE0rVwHT0M4pY/w400-h295/919nTtntDFL._SL1500_.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-22140176713309391872024-02-02T06:01:00.000-06:002024-02-02T06:01:28.787-06:00Friday Miscellanea<div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>"You might think Aesthetics is a science telling us what's beautiful</b></div><b><div style="text-align: center;"><b>--almost too ridiculous for words."</b></div></b></div><p style="text-align: center;">--Ludwig Wittgenstein, <i>Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology & Religious Belief</i>, p.11</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p>I'm always looking for good news items for the Friday post and this certainly qualifies: <a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-01-playing-instrument-linked-brain-health.html">Playing an instrument linked to better brain health in older adults</a></p><blockquote><p>The paper, "The relationship between playing musical instruments and cognitive trajectories: Analysis from a UK aging cohort," is published in International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.</p><p>The findings show that playing a musical instrument, particularly the piano, is linked to improved memory and the ability to solve complex tasks—known as executive function. Continuing to play into later life provides even greater benefit. The work also suggests that singing was also linked to better brain health, although this may also be due to the social factors of being part of a choir or group.</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">None of that comes as a surprise. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *<span style="text-align: left;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7sthx0isvNsFh77b0xKCCoPdmMUhPfF8AwoRB8HpEMGMQsiT85QIahSBlWsr9llfmzR6iHFNpRkihB1wm1KEbiLJVv517Pkxg_g94KIMCF_xy6FbV0J4bIf1UGwo8cDvBjwY6iaav8P9DrqoNcH2HLW7NJXrkOKWGuF5kC8zeF7TJvrove4w4SOmiFwI/s563/clapton%20harrison.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="563" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7sthx0isvNsFh77b0xKCCoPdmMUhPfF8AwoRB8HpEMGMQsiT85QIahSBlWsr9llfmzR6iHFNpRkihB1wm1KEbiLJVv517Pkxg_g94KIMCF_xy6FbV0J4bIf1UGwo8cDvBjwY6iaav8P9DrqoNcH2HLW7NJXrkOKWGuF5kC8zeF7TJvrove4w4SOmiFwI/s320/clapton%20harrison.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">New dangers for buskers: <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/silencing-a-piano-man/">Silencing a Piano Man</a>.</p><blockquote><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">In London these days, if you’re lucky enough not to be hounded on the street by mobs of virulent pro-Hamas protesters, you just might find yourself assaulted by a gaggle of arrogant Chinese Communists. At least, that is, if you make your living by playing boogie-woogie on public pianos.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">That’s what happened the other day to British piano man Brendan Kavanagh, whose YouTube channel has 2.4 million subscribers. Until this dustup occurred, I was unfamiliar with him. He comes off as a totally easygoing type, a middle-aged bloke who enjoys his music, loves sharing it online, and doesn’t take himself too seriously. In brief, a free spirit.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">Alas, there are people moving among us in the Western world who, far from being free spirits, are agents of the planet’s largest terror regime. The other day Kavanagh was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65iwnI2hjAA" rel="noopener" style="background-color: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; color: #008285; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">livestreaming</a> while tickling the ivories at St. Pancras Station in London – on a Yamaha upright donated to the station, as it happens, by Elton John – when a half-dozen or so of them approached him. They were all wearing identical red scarves and carrying small Chinese flags.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;">At first it appeared as if one of them wanted to play the piano. But no: she said something in broken English about a “disclosure form” and about recording for Chinese TV. Then one of her male comrades told Kavanagh to turn off his camera, insisting that it was the group’s “right” not to have their images recorded. Kavanagh replied, firmly but pleasantly, that “we’re in a free country…..We’re not in Communist China.” To which the young man shot back: “Sorry, this is racist now!” And when Kavanagh’s hand grazed against one young woman’s flag, the Chinese guy exploded: “Don’t touch her!”</p></blockquote><p>Read the whole thing.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Here's a weird one: <a href="https://www.psypost.org/2024/01/extreme-metal-guitar-skills-linked-to-intrasexual-competition-but-not-mating-success-221020">Extreme metal guitar skills linked to intrasexual competition, but not mating success</a></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">New research sheds light on the relationship between guitar skills in extreme metal music, mating success, and male competition. The study, focusing on male heterosexual guitar players, reveals intriguing connections between the time spent practicing certain guitar techniques and the psychological aspects of mating motivation and intrasexual competition, challenging traditional notions of artistic displays in human courtship and social status. The findings have been published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. </p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">One of the most significant findings was that the speed of guitar playing was a significant predictor of intrasexual competition. This indicates that guitarists who perceive themselves as playing faster than their peers tend to have higher levels of intrasexual competitiveness. Moreover, this fast-playing speed was specifically linked to the superiority enjoyment aspect of intrasexual competition, suggesting that these guitarists derive pleasure from feeling superior in their skill compared to other male guitarists.</p></blockquote><p>Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go practice some scales...</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">I sometimes criticize Ted Gioia when it comes to musicology and music history, but regarding the current scene, he really knows his stuff. Have a look at this piece on the struggle over copyright: <a href="https://www.honest-broker.com/p/nine-ugly-truths-about-copyright?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=296132&post_id=140424957&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=nbbt9&utm_medium=email">Nine Ugly Truths about Copyright</a>.</p><blockquote><p>Maybe you’re starting to realize that battles over copyright law have nothing to do with nurturing creativity. It’s all about cold, hard cash.</p><p>But the combatants can’t say that openly—they must pretend that they care about fairness and virtue and your favorite indie rock band and all that claptrap. They spread this nonsense via</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>their huge legal teams</li><li>public relations</li><li>friendly media outlets (many of which they own or indirectly control).</li><li>lobbyists (they employ armies of them)</li><li>donations to politicians.</li></ul><p></p><p>That’s why you never hear a straight story about copyrights. These people are paid to prevent it from happening.</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * * </p><p style="text-align: left;">Music journalism today: <a href="https://althouse.blogspot.com/2024/01/who-cares-didnt-read-it-this-is-not.html">Who cares... </a></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Sample text: "With the internet swirling with theories about Megan’s lyrics, Minaj took to X (formerly Twitter) to voice her displeasure with the song and announce her follow-up 'Big Foot,' which she released on Monday. The title appeared to be a reference to Megan’s 5-foot-10 height and the fact that she was shot in the foot...."</p></blockquote><p>And let's move on quickly from that!</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;"> Norman Lebrecht writes <a href="https://thecritic.co.uk/soothing-sounds-in-time-of-war/">Soothing sounds in time of war</a></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Grainy photographs exist of Leonard Bernstein playing piano in the desert with a small orchestra. In 1967 Daniel Barenboim brought moral support, and Bernstein conducted Mahler’s Resurrection symphony on the Mount of Olives. In 1973, Leonard Cohen camped out with a tank division. </p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">My favourite eyewitness story concerns Toscanini and Huberman, caught by a torrential downpour on the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Turning into a tented kibbutz, they sheltered in the only tin-roofed structure, a communal dining hall.</p><p>Word spread that Toscanini was drinking coffee, and kibbutzniks in blue overalls besieged him with questions in German about metronome markings in Brahms’s first symphony and Berlioz’s Fantastique. “Extraordinary country,” he beamed. “Even the peasants know music.”</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">We haven't posted them in a while, so let's listen to Toscanini with Brahms' Symphony No. 1:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/k9BEwMYzkew" width="320" youtube-src-id="k9BEwMYzkew"></iframe></div><br /> And Daniel Barenboim with Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique:<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YUeUIkOSiQI" width="320" youtube-src-id="YUeUIkOSiQI"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">And as a musical footnote to the photo of Eric Clapton and George Harrison, here is <i>Badge</i> written by George Harrison with Eric Clapton, anonymously, (even though George's wife Patti ran off with Eric):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0FGxH50WS7Q" width="320" youtube-src-id="0FGxH50WS7Q"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-63832170434033160272024-01-29T09:07:00.000-06:002024-01-29T09:07:59.019-06:00A String Quartet Concert<p>I don't do a lot of concert reviews, partly because, apart from the Salzburg Festival, I don't attend a lot of concerts. But I saw one on Friday so this is an opportune time to check in on string quartet concerts as they are done nowadays. Some context: this concert was part of our local chamber series here in Mexico, though the audience is largely expatriates. The quartet were Americans from San Francisco and the program was one quartet each by Fanny Mendelssohn, Benjamin Britten and Beethoven.</p><p>First reactions: the Fanny Mendelssohn was a bit dull, but the Allegretto was dynamic and fun. The Britten was surprisingly good with lots of atmospheric textures and effects. And the Beethoven was Beethoven, that is, by far the best piece of the evening. I'm all for hearing unfamiliar works, by the way, and in the fullness of time we will discover what composers are really worth hearing often enough that they will find a place in the canon. In other words, audiences and performers will make these aesthetic decisions based on the aesthetic worth and audience enjoyment as they should and not on gender, race or any other collective membership.</p><p>What I really disliked was the first violinist and spokesperson for the group standing up before and rehearsing the standard narrative for us about how oppressed women composers were in past ages and how now we are enlightened and can congratulate ourselves on overcoming this bias. He didn't offer a similar narrative before the Britten based on how oppressed homosexuals were, etc, so thanks for that.</p><p>What I really enjoy about attending concerts in Europe is that never, out of dozens and dozens of concerts in various countries, have I ever had to listen to a speech before a concert retailing the social justice narrative. No, not once.</p><p>If I had attended the Sunday concert I would have been lectured on how oppressed black composers were as the opening composition was by George Walker. Those are the two oppressed groups we must always defer to, which means that, of course, everyone is being steadily reduced to their identity as a member of a collective. A very inappropriate approach for a field as dependent on individuality as composition. But there it is.</p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-61849742172307563432024-01-28T13:27:00.002-06:002024-01-28T13:27:50.991-06:00Today's Listening: Jarrett, CPE Bach<p><a href="https://thecritic.co.uk/laid-back-bach/">Norman Lebrecht</a> alerted me to this recording:</p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zRMyLqcHqE">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zRMyLqcHqE</a></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEYcCu26opw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEYcCu26opw</a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXLcsPSfK04Tt3lxkLoEv9r8W6f6n0qOOeCFYI563w_dixWxGgsW1EPTj2BIwXcTKPThbgZMXTtKOXSIpMSyjDSJ2Ygi9KcRbROAhDoUnavtCKeZXppC7sqz7nLFVgK2fkm5H2-0U98runfUQsoDY1WHjyJf8DvtWOPBwDXUFxraIoit4reNlK-31zA3g/s1177/cpe_bach_enl-9056f5d9b311491dfc0eb06a8c9a03dbc6b18177.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1177" data-original-width="948" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXLcsPSfK04Tt3lxkLoEv9r8W6f6n0qOOeCFYI563w_dixWxGgsW1EPTj2BIwXcTKPThbgZMXTtKOXSIpMSyjDSJ2Ygi9KcRbROAhDoUnavtCKeZXppC7sqz7nLFVgK2fkm5H2-0U98runfUQsoDY1WHjyJf8DvtWOPBwDXUFxraIoit4reNlK-31zA3g/s320/cpe_bach_enl-9056f5d9b311491dfc0eb06a8c9a03dbc6b18177.jpg" width="258" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-20383456413781559872024-01-26T06:15:00.000-06:002024-01-26T06:15:52.040-06:00Friday Miscellanea<div style="text-align: center;"><b><i>"Between stillness and motion</i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i>the great beat of being"</i></b></div><div style="text-align: center;">--Octavio Paz</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div></div><p style="text-align: left;">Greil Marcus on <a href="https://yalereview.org/article/greil-marcus-why-i-write">Why I Write</a>:</p><blockquote><p>I’ve always believed that the divisions between high art and low art, between high culture, which really ought to be called sanctified culture, and what’s sometimes called popular culture, but ought to be called everyday culture—the culture of anyone’s everyday life, the music that we listen to, the movies that we see, the museum objects we pass by or are fixed by, the advertisements that infuriate us and that sometimes we find so moving—are false. Nearly everything I’ve written is based on that conviction, and on the learned belief that there are depths and satisfactions, shocks and revelations, in blues, rock ’n’ roll, detective stories, movies, and television as rich and profound as those that can be found anywhere else.</p></blockquote><p>I think I believe this too, but it cries out for a balancing. There are indeed depths and satisfactions and revelations in popular culture, music, movies and television that can be truly profound. Just as there is fraudulent crap and pompous pretension in high culture. But you know, if you are a critic worth your salt, then you have to point out the dreary, mechanical, pseudo posturing in a lot of popular culture. Because, you know, it is easier to do that and make a buck than to transcend it and do something great.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">I've applied to attend the Igor Levit concert at Salzburg in August so I was curious to read this review: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/jan/21/igor-levit-review-wigmore-hall-london-brahms-piano">Igor Levit review – this was a recital where everything was just right</a></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Levit does brooding well, his sombre frame drooping over the coffin-black piano in a self-effacing act of concentrated communion. He also does variety. His commanding technique, muscular yet flexible, suited the mood swings of the E-flat Rhapsody that concludes the Four Klavierstücke Op 119, or the hurly-burly of the capriccios that flank the Seven Fantasien Op 116. Mostly though, this was a supremely poetic performance, Levit moving body and soul to convey the spirit of these deeply personal utterances.</p></blockquote><p>At Wigmore Hall, of course.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://samkriss.substack.com/p/taylor-swift-does-not-exist">TaylorSwifting</a>:</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">You might have recently heard that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—via SoftBank Kabushiki Gaisha, via its wholly-owned subsidiary Gannett, which owns USA Today alongside a sad little clutch of failing syndicated local newspapers—has hired the world’s first full-time Taylor Swift reporter. His name is Bryan, and I’m deeply upset. Not because I don’t think Taylor Swift is worth writing about. Taylor Swift is, by any sensible measure, the most famous person in the world. The actual leaders of actual countries beg her to visit their dying lands, put on a show, make their miserable people spend some of their miserable money, maybe nudge the whole economy just a few points out of recession. When a war breaks out in Asia, both sides immediately try to argue that they’re fighting on the side of Taylor Swift. She is bigger than Elvis, bigger than the Beatles, bigger than God. She has blasted herself on a jet of pure sugary Americana into every quiet crevice of global culture. She provides the texture of daily life for thirteen year old Indonesian girls with hijabs and hard scraping eyes. There are swathes of rebel bushland in central Africa where children tear the guts out the earth at gunpoint and the central government has no power at all—but Taylor Swift does. In my travels across China, the only Western music you’d ever hear playing anywhere belonged to Taylor Swift. She’s not a solitary human being; she’s Coca-Cola. She has fundamentally changed the inner workings of the record industry, show ticketing, intellectual property—why not? Let’s say music theory too. She invented tone. She invented pitch. Taylor Swift seems destined to be remembered by our drooling, mud-eating descendants as a kind of culture hero, the mythical source of everything left for them to inherit. First was she who plucked strings and made pleasant sounds. Who taught man to spin thread and mark the hours of the sun. She who scattered the stars in the sky. She’s kind of a big deal.</p></blockquote><p>Very little of that has any relationship with truth, but it is fun to read.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">On an Overgrown Path tells us <a href="https://www.overgrownpath.com/2023/12/there-is-no-mass-market-for-classical.html">There is no mass market for classical music</a>. I'm pretty sure of two things regarding that: first, I have known this ever since I got into classical music, so it ain't news and two, that is a big part of the appeal. Not everyone climbs mountains and not everyone listens to classical music.</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Classical industry executives should make it their New Year's resolution to finally understand that there is no mass market for classical music. For two decades classical music has been chasing a non-existent mass market. The latest manifestation of this misguided thinking is the reinvention in the UK of BBC Radio 3 as a clone of Classic FM by the network's new Controller Sam Jackson, who worked for Classic FM for five years culminating in the post of 'Senior Managing Editor, Classic FM, Smooth and Gold'. Forget whether you love the new BBC Radio Classic 3 FM, or like me you loathe it with a vengeance. Let's instead look at the facts.</p></blockquote><p>Can't we just ignore the facts and listen to some Bach instead?</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">The phrase "<a href="https://musicologynow.org/welcome-to-the-sound-wellness-revolution-endels-ai-generated-soundscapes-and-the-commodification-of-passive-listening/">the Commodification of Passive Listening</a>" is one that fills me with a kind of bored distress akin to that of any number of science fiction dystopias. Follow the link for the story.</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Endel, a German company founded in 2018, has been described as “the first-ever algorithm to sign a deal with a major label.” Unlike music companies that use generative AI to write new songs, Endel is a standalone subscription service (currently 14.99 USD/month) that uses AI to create ever-shifting “wellness soundscapes” that dynamically adapt to information such as the weather, time of day, and listener’s heart rate.</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * * </p><p style="text-align: left;"> Now for some music. Here is Igor Levit at Royal Albert Hall:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1VF2CNpxgNs" width="320" youtube-src-id="1VF2CNpxgNs"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">Yuja Wang with the Ravel Piano Concerto for the Left Hand written for Ludwig Wittgenstein's brother Paul who lost his right arm in the First World War.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZbEtk1kdYx4" width="320" youtube-src-id="ZbEtk1kdYx4"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">Now let's have a paean to active listening! A Kyrie by Jacob Obrecht:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D1s1Xyk-wKA" width="320" youtube-src-id="D1s1Xyk-wKA"></iframe></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-45229859488538326602024-01-22T16:44:00.000-06:002024-01-22T16:44:22.068-06:00Today's Listening: Grigory Sokolov--Petrushka<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Fm2oTJswW8" width="320" youtube-src-id="4Fm2oTJswW8"></iframe></div><br /><p></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-56199131124012992372024-01-20T08:03:00.000-06:002024-01-20T08:03:25.667-06:00Differential Quote Day<p> I'm still doing research for my next Music, War, and Philosophy post and I keep running across interesting quotes:</p><li>“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” ― Francis Bacon, <i>The Essays</i></li><li>"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force." --attributed, possibly incorrectly, to Dorothy Parker</li><li>“With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.” ― William Lloyd Garrison</li><li>“The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.” ― Edward Gibbon, <i>The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</i></li><br /><div>Let's apply that first one to some music: Some pieces are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Here is one from each category:</div><div><br /></div><div>Vivaldi, Concerto in B minor for Four Violins:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GWZTyiMXulQ" width="320" youtube-src-id="GWZTyiMXulQ"></iframe></div><br /><div>Schubert: Symphony "Great C Major":</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3fQtcoBuPmE" width="320" youtube-src-id="3fQtcoBuPmE"></iframe></div><br /><div>Bach, Art of Fugue:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cH_C3Yt3NBI" width="320" youtube-src-id="cH_C3Yt3NBI"></iframe></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /></div>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-10783326859076095282024-01-19T06:20:00.000-06:002024-01-19T06:20:53.975-06:00Friday Miscellanea<h4 style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh-qQR53qdFTG6yu5M23kXLxyZX0sh7Kpe6GepWi3r6WU0FIF-nMgRNL-sGWrqUlLO55NZQIexGab45CRX5-kcjxllFhc2g6nAm3wAuKMyXFDHufMUtAkSb3YFUPylNjT8WwleMjzq7X0fRD4b51WjKIqr4f8WF0nqWc1_xpcOu8JAOPN2vDK3hevCIIQ/s600/pdq.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="600" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh-qQR53qdFTG6yu5M23kXLxyZX0sh7Kpe6GepWi3r6WU0FIF-nMgRNL-sGWrqUlLO55NZQIexGab45CRX5-kcjxllFhc2g6nAm3wAuKMyXFDHufMUtAkSb3YFUPylNjT8WwleMjzq7X0fRD4b51WjKIqr4f8WF0nqWc1_xpcOu8JAOPN2vDK3hevCIIQ/s320/pdq.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Late-breaking news: </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/17/arts/music/peter-schickele-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ok0.1duU.TRWMsMySQ7GM&smid=url-share&fbclid=IwAR2LtMIyuiM91uNAppCsfEK31PWEwoyUrTmhcEzVI3B1XqujfOmlnobQ1_4" style="font-weight: 400;">Peter Schickele, Composer and Gleeful Sire of P.D.Q. Bach, Dies at 88</a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. The New York Times delivers a hefty obit to this unique composer.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-weight: 400;">For more than a half century, through live performances seemingly born of the marriage of Mozart, the Marx Brothers and Rube Goldberg; prizewinning recordings; and even a book-length biography, P.D.Q. Bach (“the only dead composer from whom one can commission,” Mr. Schickele liked to say) remained enduringly, fiendishly alive.</span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-weight: 400;">Leaping from Mr. Schickele’s pen in P.D.Q.’s name were compositions like the “No-No Nonette,” the cantata “Iphigenia in Brooklyn,” the “Unbegun” Symphony and “Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle and Balloons.”</span></blockquote></blockquote><p><span style="font-weight: normal;">Read the whole thing! Now on with our regularly-scheduled program.</span></p></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">* * *</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">"A gramophone record, the musical thought, the musical notation,</div><div style="text-align: center;">the sound waves, all stand to one another in that internal relation of depicting</div><div style="text-align: center;">that holds between language and world."</div></h4><p style="text-align: center;">--Ludwig Wittgenstein, <i>Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus</i>, 4.014</p><p>With war come some heroic music stories: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/jan/16/dalia-stasevska-joshua-bell-interview-ukraine-kyiv-russia">‘Our music cannot be destroyed’: the duo reviving a macabre Ukrainian masterpiece</a>.</p><blockquote><p>In the National Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw, violinist Joshua Bell and conductor Dalia Stasevska are on an intensely focused mission to get the opening bars of a concerto just right. The work begins with a series of exposed chords from the woodwind, from which rises a declamatory flourish on the violin that fades into a lyrical phrase so intimate and hushed that it steals the breath. The musicians are recording the piece, so the passage is repeated over and over, then critiqued, with the finest of adjustments made. </p></blockquote><blockquote><p>The violin concerto is by the virtually forgotten Ukrainian-born composer Thomas de Hartmann. The musicians of the International Symphony Orchestra Lviv (INSO-Lviv) are giving it its first commercial recording since the work’s premiere in 1943. They will then perform it in a concert of Ukrainian and Polish music in Warsaw. The timing of this wartime resurrection has its own irony, since De Hartmann’s klezmer-inflected score was deeply influenced by his distress at the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, and especially by the fate of its Jewish citizens.</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">The headline is deceptive: <a href="https://slippedisc.com/2024/01/contemporary-music-is-over-done-dead-what-now/">CONTEMPORARY MUSIC IS OVER, DONE, DEAD. WHAT NOW?</a> In reality these are some interesting thoughts from French composer Jean-Louis Agobet.</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Let’s look at how haute cuisine emerged from the hushed and totally utopian space of the 1970s and 1980s. Elitist, terribly hermetic in its codes and vocabulary, the cuisine of the happy few has become incredibly open and popular without renouncing quality, creative demand and invention, but by abandoning the purity of the space in which it was deployed, by completely rethinking the discourse and the codes which accompanied it and by embracing, this is the essential, a real economic, social and referential diversity…</p></blockquote><p>Creative quality is something that can be nurtured in hermetic spaces and then used to infuse more popular offerings, is the message here.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">I tried to watch the Bernstein movie <i>Maestro</i> on Netflix, but found it uncongenial (as I do with most movies about classical music) and turned it off after five minutes. I did enjoy this review, though: <a href="https://quillette.com/2024/01/16/leonard-bernstein-deserved-better-than-maestro/">Leonard Bernstein Deserved Better Than ‘Maestro’</a></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Was it any good? The fact that the first extended scene about music didn’t come till about 90 minutes into the two-hour film should be enough to supply you with your answer. By confining the plot to a small part of Bernstein’s personal life, Cooper somehow managed to turn the most talented, flamboyant, beloved, successful, and complex American musician in history into a two-dimensional domestic villain.</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * * </p><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://variety.com/2024/music/news/universal-music-group-lay-off-hundreds-1235870243/">Universal Music Group to Lay Off ‘Hundreds’ in First Quarter</a>. I have to say that articles like this do not make me more comfortable with the corporate approach to music:</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">A Universal rep said in a statement: “We continue to position UMG to accelerate its leadership in music’s most promising growth areas and drive its transformation to capitalize on them. Over the past several years, we have been investing in future growth—building our ecommerce and D2C operations, expanding geographically, and leveraging new technologies. While we maintain our industry-leading investments in A&R and artist development, we are creating efficiencies in other areas of the business so we can remain nimble and responsive to the dynamic market, while realizing the benefits of our scale.”</p></blockquote><p>Doesn't sound like there is any room there for creative freedom.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Is "algorithmic anxiety" something real? <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a46425012/kyle-chayka-filterworld-interview/">How to Take Back Your Life From Algorithms</a></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Songs are getting shorter, because it only takes 30 seconds to rack up a listen on Spotify. Poetry has enjoyed an unexpected revival on Instagram, but mostly when it is universal, aphoristic, and neatly formatted to work as image as well as text. There’s the phenomenon of the “fake movie” on streaming services like Netflix; these cultural artifacts have actors, plots, settings—all the makings of a real film, but still seem slickly artificial, crowd-sourced and focus-grouped down to nothing.</p></blockquote><p>In other words, what you like is being erased by what suits an algorithm. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/13/business/music-streaming-fraud-spotify.html">Their Songs Were Stolen by Phantom Artists. They Couldn’t Get Them Back.</a></p><blockquote><p>Despite their backgrounds, both men were stymied by the vast and arcane world of music streaming fraud, a realm where anonymous pirates are constantly devising new ways to steal from the $17 billion a year pool of royalty money intended for artists.</p><p>That’s a giant, tempting pot of gold for scammers around the world. Beatdapp, a Vancouver company that detects fraud for industry clients, estimates that a little more than 10 percent of that pot, about $2 billion, is swiped annually.</p><p>“Bad actors are getting creative,” said Andreea Gleeson of the Music Fights Fraud Alliance, a collection of labels, distributors and streaming platforms. “It’s a constantly moving target.”</p><p>Spotify and its rivals were supposed to end the era of music piracy. In the late 1990s and early aughts, millions of fans routinely downloaded songs from online peer-to-peer file services without paying a penny, a fiasco that cost the industry a fortune. When monthly subscription services (like Spotify) and pay-per-song offerings (the early version of Apple Music) came along, musicians and labels finally had a lucrative way to harness the convenience of online music.</p><p>But the streaming ecosystem, say critics, is easily gamed. For $20, artists can buy an annual subscription to a music distributor, a company that can instantly post songs to dozens of streaming platforms. Unfortunately, bad actors have the same opportunity.</p></blockquote><p>Read the whole thing. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.ludwig-van.com/toronto/2024/01/08/report-new-research-looks-music-builds-social-connections/">New Research Looks At How Music Builds Social Connections</a></p><blockquote><p>It will be no secret to anyone who’s attended a live concert that the experience can bring people together, and that it can happen on what feels like a visceral level. The implications point to questions and theories.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Has music evolved as a way to create and build social bonds? Was that its main driving force in early humans?</li><li>Traditional and modern societies tend to mark most public occasions with music, which helps to establish trust within groups.</li><li>Spontaneous synchronization to the rhythm of music has an effect on specific areas of the brain, as well as on feelings of positive connectedness.</li><li>Several studies show that the feeling of affiliation with the group persists after the musical experience, and resulted in increased cooperation and cohesion within working groups.</li><li>That effect has been observed in children as young as 14-months of age.</li></ul><p></p></blockquote><p>Read the whole thing for a few caveats.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;">Here is some good news from <a href="https://bachtrack.com/classical-music-statistics-2023">Bachtrack</a>:</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"> One notable finding over the past ten years has been the steady rise in programming of music by living composers. Worldwide, since 2013, contemporary music has risen from around 6% to 14% in our listings. This is a trend reflected in many individual locations: in the UK rising from 6% to 15%, and in the US rising from 7.5% to 20%. In some locations, such as Japan, Austria and France, there are comparatively fewer performances of contemporary music, but even in each of these locations, there is an observed rise.</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p style="text-align: left;"> Here is the Thomas de Hartmann Violin Concerto in a live performance:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9MauZ9WntcY" width="320" youtube-src-id="9MauZ9WntcY"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">Here is <i>Nucleus</i> (2003) for orchestra by Jean-Louis Agobet:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RcM7BjFbGhQ" width="320" youtube-src-id="RcM7BjFbGhQ"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">Let's have a little Leonard Bernstein. This is his <i>Serenade</i> for violin and orchestra after Plato's Symposium.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JUvs9HiKr_M" width="320" youtube-src-id="JUvs9HiKr_M"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">And for something less modern, here is the Takeuchi String Quartet with the String Quartet in G major Hob.III:81 Op.77-1 by Joseph Haydn:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Mje3B8nxyA" width="320" youtube-src-id="4Mje3B8nxyA"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com5