Around the Web

For the week of Saturday, February 13 through Friday, February 19.

1) In Standpoint, Nichi Hodgson on Petrarch.

2) The Laudator Temporis Acti, The Maverick Philosopher, and Aristotle. 

3) Another excellent essay from Peter Gutmann on his Classical Notes site: Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23, Op. 57.

4) Michel Gurfinkiel in the WSJ reviews "For the Soul of France" by Frederick Brown. 

5) In the WSJ, Jeffrey Collins reviews, "Hobbes and the Law of Nature" by Perez Zagorin.

6) In City Journal, Richard Brookhiser on Washington's New York.

Charles Kesler on the 'Grand Liberal Project'

Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution's Uncommon Knowledge interviews Dr. Charles Kesler, Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, a Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute, and Editor of the Claremont Review of Books:

June 2009.

In a sweeping review of American political history, Kesler outlines the grand liberal project begun a century ago. It is a project, he asserts, that has expressed itself in three distinct waves: political liberalism, economic liberalism, and cultural liberalism. Kesler further maintains that Barack Obama seeks nothing less than to complete and perfect this project. Finally, he confronts the issues of how conservatism lost its way in the face of the liberal project and how it might regain its i[n]itative.

Around the Web

For the week of Saturday, February 6 through Friday February 12.

1) Myron Magnet in City Journal on the education of John Jay.

2) Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal on "The Galbraith Revival."

3) At Reason, Damon W. Root on Citizens United and the problem with conservative judicial restraint.

4) At Mises Daily, David Osterfeld on Marxian and Austrian class perspectives.

5) Daniel Elkan in The New Scientist on when your brain gets the joke.

6) In the Hoover Institution's Policy Review, Sally Satel on the many issues of bioethics and bioethicists.

7) Sacred, Beautiful, Universal: The Corpus Christi Watershed Colloquium XIX on Sacred Music:


A refreshingly frank answer from CMAA President and Stanford Professor William Dr. Mahrt when he is asked what to say to someone who grants that Gregorian chant is important but says his parish doesn't have anyone who can do it: "You have to learn."

Also, as mentioned in the video, Sacrosanctum Concilium. (See Chapter VI, 'Sacred Music')

Book Reviews

8) In the WSJ, Robert K. Landers reviews, "Flight From Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War" by Michael Kranish.

9) Also in the WSJ, Matthew Kaminski reviews S. M. Plokhy's "Yalta: The Price of Peace."

10) Steven Levingston in the Washington Post reviews, "The Artist, The Philosopher, and The Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped" by Paul Strathern. 

11) Matt Welch of Reason reviews "Inside Obama's Brain" by Sasha Abramsky.

12) In The Art Newspaper, Lorenzo Pericolo review
s:

• Caravaggio. Sehen-Staunen-Glauben. Der Maler und sein Werk, by Sybille Ebert-Schifferer.
• Caravaggio: The Complete Works, by Sebastian Schütze

13) In Defense of Abundance: Daniel Ben-Ami of Spiked-Online reviews:

• Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World, by Barbara Ehrenreich
• Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
• Reset: How this crisis can restore our values and renew America, by Kurt Andersen 

On the Overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail

Overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (KV.384)

Die Entführung was commissioned in 1781 by Joseph II, Emperor of Austria, and premiered with the Nationalsingspiel at the Burgtheater in Vienna on July 16, 1782.

Instrumentation: piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 clarin trumpets, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, strings (2 violins, 2 violas, cello, bass.)

The score is available via the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe.  

Incipit. Violins.

Zubin Mehta, conductor.

The overture [. . .] is quite short, and changes from forte to piano all the time, the Turkish music always coming in at the fortes. It keeps modulating, I doubt if anyone could fall asleep during it, even if they hadn't slept a wink the night before.

- W. A. Mozart. (26 September 1781.) [2]

There is a new feature here that not only keeps the Turkish element in check but determines the basic character of the overture as a whole. This is the secretive, fantastical whispering with which the theme – built up on simple triadic intervals – begins. A fairy-tale atmosphere envelops us, as it will later do in the allegro section of the overture to Die Zauberflöte, casting its spell on us and holding us in thrall till the very end with its secretive whispering and brightly darting flames. [1]

–

Only by a willful obstinacy can you avoid getting swept up by the opening of this overture, a 118-bar presto in 2/2 time. The piece opens with jovial and venturous little tune but piano and against a giddy repeated 8th note figure in the bass. It is like a friend telling you of a fantastical discovery, barely able to repress his excitement. We do not wait long, though, for the theme is repeated only once, though higher as if the secret is about to burst out, when it is joined forte by the whole orchestra and we are swept off and away at the urging of the timpani and the jangling of the triangle. The main theme repeats piano in the violins and clarinet with the other strings repeating the 8th note figure, then it is once more joined forte by the rest of the orchestra. The second half of the main theme is then repeated two extra times by only the piccolo and 1st violin, with the 16th note element leading right down into another forte and a rising scalar passage in the strings, piccolo, and bassoon, and topped off with a whole-note doubled by the remainder of the orchestra. Without rest, though, we dart into a more skittish version of the main theme which is repeated piano:

 

mm. 39-42. 1st violin.

Then another forte, and another variation on the theme:

mm. 44-46. 1st violin.

The rest of the section whizzes by in like fashion, with modulation, alternation between forte and piano, and variation on the main theme. It concludes in a whirlwind, with a little figure repeated over and over by the woodwinds and strings,

mm. 84-86. Violins

rising each time, until it gives way to a full version of the main theme with the whole orchestra.

Where the first section was a hasty tour of fantastical sights the next section, starting in m.119, in C minor and marked andante, is a deeper look into this new world. It begins as someone walking into a foreign land, with footsteps both cautious and weary:

mm. 119-123. Violins.

This theme is then taken up by the oboe piano, in whose hands it is less urgent but more vulnerable and full of longing. Abert draws proper attention to the "outburst on the fermata [m. 128], where the whole sense of yearning finds finds particularly concentrated expression." [1] We will later hear this same theme, in C major, from Belmonte when he makes his entrance. As Abert notes also, the  interplay between winds and strings is especially effective here, with the winds both coaxing out and then supporting another sad little phrase from the strings. This phrase is repeated in the violins who play it an octave apart and alternate it a tone each measure until they take it up still higher at a crescendo leading into a forte for all the strings and woodwinds. The theme is then repeated again by the strings before the clarinet and flute heighten the moment with an ascending passage of 16th notes and a dotted G crotchet hovering above as the violins and oboe now together play the little theme, now dotted, in a sublime moment.

Yet we do not dwell in this wondrous land of heightened senses for long and after another "outburst" on a fermata we dive back into the opening material tempo primo. The last notes of the overture fade away with just one lone half-note on the triangle ringing on to remind us of the great fanfare as Belmonte enters like the figure in the andante. 

The overture to Die Entführung is a remarkably efficient and effective piece, first catching the listener's ear and whisking him off to a far away land, and then giving him a slight hint of an exotic, passionate world. So transported, we eagerly look on as the scene hinted at in the andante unfolds  before us.

–

[1] Abert, Hermann. W. A. Mozart. Yale University Press. New Haven and New York. 2007. (p. 668)
[2] Cairns, David. Mozart and His Operas. University of California Press. Berkeley and Los Angeles. 2006. (p. 74)

Around the Web

For the week of Saturday, January 30 through Friday, February 5.

1) In City Journal, Peter Sloterdijk on how "the modern democratic state pillages its productive citizens."

2) In the Chronicle of Higher Education, David Glenn on classroom multitasking:

A student today who moves his attention rapid-fire from text-messaging to the lecture to Facebook to note-taking and back again may walk away from the class feeling buzzed and alert, with a sense that he has absorbed much more of the lesson than he actually has.

3) Karen Wilkin of the WSJ discusses "The Drawings of Bronzino" on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through April 18.

4) In the WSJ, Lee Rosenbaum interviews Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

5) At Gramophone, the 2010 Grammys.

6) On Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson asks Hoover fellows Richard Epstein and John Taylor, "Are we all Keynesians now?"

7) At The New Criterion: Anthony Daniels, Ayn Rand, and a raging debate. 

8) In Standpoint, Charles Saumarez Smith on the "civilizing servants":

We have got used in recent years to the idea of the professional bureaucrat as a term of abuse, as if all bureaucrats are intellectually second-rate, interested only in the perpetuation of systems of existing management and not in innovation. But these art bureaucrats of early Victorian England were something else: tirelessly hard-working, writing books in the morning, serving on committees in the afternoon, endlessly networking and socialising in the evening, with a dedicated sense of mission to create and reform institutions of art for the educational benefit of a broad public.

–

Around the Web

For Saturday, January 23 through Sunday, January 31.

1) In the WSJ, Andrew Manshel asks: Are symphonies to big to succeed?

2) Joseph Fouche at Chicago Boyz: No one ever expects the Spanish Armada.

Remembrances:

Otmar Suitner (87), conductor of the symphonies of Dvorak, Mozart, and Beethoven, The Marriage of Figaro, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, musical director of the Pfalz orchestra at Ludwigshafen, chief conductor of the Dresden Staatsoper.

Earl Wild (94), pianist and performer of Buxtehude, Bach, Mozart, and Rachmaninov.

Roger Scruton on Beauty

Our need for beauty is not, I believe,a redundant addition to the list of human interests. It is not something that we could lack and still be fulfilled as people. It is a need arising from our metaphysical condition, as free individuals, seeking our place in a shared and objective world. We can wander through this world, alienated, resentful, full of suspicion and distrust. Or we can find our home here, coming to rest in harmony with others and with ourselves. The experience of beauty guides us along this second path: it tells us that we are at home in the world, that the world is already ordered in our perceptions as a place fit for the lives of beings like us. But beings like us become at home in the world only by paying tribute to our ‘fallen’ condition. Hence the experience of beauty also points us beyond this world, to a ‘kingdom of ends’ in which our immortal longings and our desire for perfection are finally answered. As Plato and Kant both saw, therefore, the feeling for beauty is proximate to the religious frame of mind, arising from a humble sense of harmony between the world around us and the needs within, and aspiring towards the highest unity with the transcendental...

We can, at any moment, turn away from desecration and ask ourselves instead what inspires us and what we should revere. We can set ourselves on a path along which the light of beauty shines – as we do when we listen to Mozart’s opera in the quiet of our home, so rescuing it from the grip of those who would despoil it. We can turn our attention to things we love – the woods and streams of our native country, friends and family, the ‘starry heavens above’ – and ask ourselves what they tell us about our life on earth, and how that life should be lived. And then we can look on the world of art, poetry and music and know that there is a real difference between the sacrilegious, with which we are alone and troubled, and the beautiful, with which we are in company, and at home.

fr. 'The Flight from Beauty'

On the Overture to Idomeneo

Overture to Idomeneo

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (KV.366)

Idomeneo was commissioned in 1780 by Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria, and premiered at the Cuvilliés Theatre of the Munich Residenz January 29, 1781.

Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets (autograph reads: clarin trumpets), timpani, strings (2 violins, 2 violas, cello, bass.)

The score is available via the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe.

Incipit. 1st violin.

John Eliot Gardiner conducting the English Baroque Soloists.

". . . magnificent in terms of both its design and its execution, a piece aglow from first to last with supremely tragic emotion." [1]

"The overture is the score and the drama in microcosm: grand but ominous, driven forward relentlessly as though by the surge and sweep of the sea felt both as physical presence and as the angry Neptune, a symbol of the power of malignant fate over human affairs. . . This is the pattern of the overture: authority threatened by forces beyond its control." [2]

–

In their observations quoted above, Abert and Cairns capture the essence of Mozart’s overture for Idomeneo. As such I hope simply to elaborate on why and how the piece, in all of its terrifying splendor, is so effective.

The overture opens with a fanfare-like tune in D major for the whole orchestra. Yet like the final piano sonata KV.576, this festive opening quickly gives way to something altogether different. Where the sonata continued into whimsy, though, Idomeneo plunges into strife. In the 7th measure the 2nd violins give way to a series of half-note tremolos as the rest of the strings yield to a menacing motive, amplified by a like response in the woodwinds:

8m. Strings.	9m. Woodwinds.

The contest is repeated two times until the 1st violins break out into a dotted crotchet figure repeated against a persistent, agitating quaver figure in the 2nd violins, one we will hear incessantly through the rest of the piece.

mm. 14-15

The descending figure in the 1st violins is played and then repeated twice, though the third time in abbreviated form with only the descending element. Shortened, as if struggling and weakening against immovable forces, it falls into a skittish crescendo of tremolo crotchets. At m. 23 we have a forte chord with the basses then thrice launching the violins into an ascending passage. The violins then give up a lovely little secondary theme, (perhaps a cousin of the theme from mm. 57-61 of the Sinfonia Concertante, KV.364, written not long before Idomeneo), which is then taken up by the basses before a descending scalar passage leads into that little theme’s full flowering. Yet this glorious blossoming is against that persistent agitating figure in the 2nd violins again. The theme is then taken up in part by the violas and basses as if in support. At bar 41 the little theme, as if deflated and exhausted, falls piano in a little chromatic descent.

The descent leads into a tremolo, out of which the 2nd violins grow into another incessant and agitating quaver figure, now dotted, and against which the first violins cautiously press on:

mm. 49-53

The little theme in the first violins continues on, sighing and meandering until at last the winds take it over and into another forte chord, after which another series of rising passages driven on and up by the timpani follow. The horn and trombone then take up our little theme from mm. 14-15 against the persistent violins, a contest which ends with a slightly innocent little descending dotted passage and little sighs before a forte unison.

We return to a variant of our first two themes, the chromatic crescendo in the strings and the woodwind reply. It is played and then repeated three times, escalating in intensity each, but descends not into a fury but a fortissimo dotted rhythm and another forte unison.

After the recapitulation of the major themes in which the woodwinds see an increased role trading the material with the strings, the movement draws down to an ominous close. At m. 137 we get a rising scale piano in the oboes and clarinets followed by a descending chromatic figure in the flute, cut off by a harsh chord. The pattern repeats, with the woodwinds a tone or semitone lower each time. Eventually just the flute repeats its little figure against the pedal points:

m. 152

Cairns is quite right to note how “the tonality is a chromatically inflected D minor; the grand D major of the opening seems far away.” Both Cairns and Abert have noted the similarity between Mozart’s closing figure here and one from the opening of Gluck’s overture to his Iphigénie en Tauride.

Mozart

Gluck

The quotation is both a fitting homage toward the great Gluck and his masterpiece and an appropriately somber place at which to introduce us to Illia, who we find lamenting the destruction of her Trojan home and longing for Idamante, her rescuer, who is in love Argive princess.

Idomeneo’s overture is an ingenious balance between the sinfonia and the overture, functioning both to set the mood of the opening scene and to introduce the essential theme of the whole opera, the grand tragic struggle.

–

[1] Abert, Hermann. W. A. Mozart. Yale University Press. New Haven and New York. 2007. (p. 613)
[2] Cairns, David. Mozart and His Operas. University of California Press. Berkeley and Los Angeles. 2006. (pp. 54-55)

- Sheet music to Mozart's Idomeneo via the Neue Mozart Ausgabe.
- Sheet music to Gluck's Iphigénie en Auride via the Petrucci Music Library. [PDF]

Happy Birthday Mozart

Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart was born today, the 27th of January, in the year 1756.

Posthumous painting by Barbara Krafft in 1819.

Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat. KV.364

Issac Stern (Violin), Pinchas Zukerman (Viola), and 

Zubin Mehta conducting The New York Philharmonic Orchestra. 1980 . 

Part I | Part II

Three Quotations via  
Phil. G. Goulding's "Classical Music: The 50 Greatest Composers"


"No instrumentation over-refined or over-laden; no development too complex or too slight. Everything is in perfect proportion to everything else–everything is just as it should be. . . For Mozart, besides having genius, had talent; he is one of the few composers in the world who had both, and that one reason is why he is unique."

- a 19th century music critic

"Before God, and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me, either in person or by name. He has taste, and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition."
- Joseph Haydn

"A phenomenon like Mozart is an explicable thing."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

–

"Mozart's abnormal receptiveness gave him the most complete grasp that has yet been known of that diatonic system which is the basis of European musical training. This may seem an extravagant claim, but we can explain many a Mozartian tour de force only by recognizing that the man could cary in his head not just chords, their inversions, and  few "stock" contrapuntal gambits–for these served all musicians of talent–but the discords, suspensions, and contrapuntal ornaments most of us, even to-day, have to work out, as we do a mathematical problem.

[This passage from the D major Quintet], not a particularly ambitious work, could have been written by no other composer, ancient or modern. Yet its movement opens tamely and serenely and is not disturbed by the writing itself. To hear the passage without seeing it on the score paper, is to be unaware of its astounding technical virtuosity. Thus easily does Mozart seem to have acquired the style; this is a measure of his superb taste."

- Arthur Hutchings, in his "Companion to Mozart's Piano Concertos"

An insightful discussion of Mozart and Così fan tutte with classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz from 2006, the 250th anniversary the composer's birth. (A discussion brought to my attention just today by my esteemed co-blogger Mr. Northcutt.)

Other Mozartiana here at APLV:

- Thoughts on the Magic Flute

- The Music of Milos Forman's 1984 film, Amadeus (an essay in three parts)

- A review of Milos Forman's 1984 film, Amadeus (also in three parts)

- Selected Clips of Don Giovanni

- A Mozart Bibliography

and a new essay, for today: "On the Overture to Mozart's Idomeneo."

Common Knowledge

The Young Cicero Reading. Vincenzo Foppa. Fresco, 1464.

 A selection from David McCullough's John Adams:

"You are now at a university where many of the greatest men have received their education," Adams reminded him. He must attend all the lectures possible, in law, medicine, chemistry, and philosophy. . . [Adams] sent a gift of several volumes of Pope, and a fine edition of a favorite Roman author, Terence, in both Latin and French. "Terence is remarkable, for good morals, good taste, and good Latin," Adams advised. "His language has simplicity and an elegance that make him proper to be accurately studied as a model." On hearing that John Quincy's course studies did not include Cicero and Demosthenes, Adams could hardly contain his indignation. John Quincy must begin upon them at once, he declared, "I absolutely insist upon it."

Latin and Greek were not all that mattered. John Quincy must neither forget nor fail to enjoy the great works of his own "mother tongue," and especially those of the poets. It was his happiness, too, that mattered.

"Read somewhat in the English poets every day. You will find them elegant, entertaining, and constructive companions through your whole life. In all the disquisitions you have heard concerning the happiness of life, has it ever been recommended to you to read poetry?"

". . .You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket. You will never have an idle hour."

"You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen." [1]

–

What might Mr. Adams make then of the college student today, not only unable to quote Shakespeare, but unable to recognize him? Of one who reads neither the Greek nor Roman languages and cannot recall the histories of either? What of a woman, B.A. in hand, who would not know what to make of being called a Porphyria, a Portia, or a Penelope? What should we make of a graduate who knows not a whit of Keats or a phrase of Mozart?

We might say that when such a person reads, he has nothing to compare it to. When he writes, he has no model for elegance. When he hears music, he cannot say whether it is more harmonious or rhythmic than anything else. When he sees an item in the newspaper, he cannot say whether, one time ago, a similar event happened with a similar cause. What one might most generally say is that this individual lacks the ability to make an analogy, perhaps by lack of intellect but at least by lack of information. We might say that lacking any knowledge of what has happened, exists, or is possible, this individual cannot assess the significance of what he perceives. Is is rare, commonplace, ugly, beautiful, dangerous?

One of Adams' points developed above is the need for a model against which to compare both one's work and the work of others. Usually works thought to exemplify a particular idea or ideal are held up as models, ones studied, imitated, and perhaps surpassed after one's education. There exist models of every archetype, the hero, villain, genius, fool, gentleman, rake, statesman, tyrant, et cetera. What of these, though, constitutes an education? As often is the case we come now to a definitional issue: what is an education? Let us take a simple definition and see what it suggests:

1. the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.
2. the act or process of imparting or acquiring particular knowledge or skills, as for a profession. [2]
   

We immediately see a bifurcation between general knowledge (1) and specialized, vocational knowledge (2). The former is what presently concerns us, though I would preface by noting vocational education should succeed that which is defined in part one, i.e. reason and judgment should precede all other study, be it of the law, medicine, farming, et cetera.

For part one (1) of our definition I first draw your attention to the concept of "developing the powers of reasoning and judgment." One recalls the tired teachers' platitude that they, "do not teach you x, y, or z, but rather teach you to think." Do they, in fact? Are students taught principles of "thinking," about concepts, precepts, first principles, causality, epistemology, dialectic, or logic? Even in philosophy courses these issues take a back seat to the more appealing ones. Who wants to grind through formal logic and Aristotle's Physics when you can read Socrates being clever in The Republic. And when one reads The Republic, what is easier to focus on: whether the state should ban bad books, or whether dialectic is itself a valuable epistemological tool?  Issues of morality and ethics are more fun to debate because everyone has an opinion of them, though to be taken seriously they must stand on epistemological and metaphysical foundations. Understanding of such principles requires time and patience. The worksis inglorious, and the rewards may seem always far off, though "it is wonderful how might may be done if we are always doing." [2] How many people can claim to have been taught these principles?

The are usually only two systematized approaches to thinking offered students, broadly referred to as "the scientific method" and the "geometric proof." Sadly, both are explained without a philosophical context and only applied within their respective realms. It is as if to say to the student, "in these two fields, (or even more specifically, "in these two classes") we have strict methodologies about making, testing and substantiating claims about the world. Outside of these fields, good luck!"

Of course the positive significance of teaching these two rational methods must not be overlooked. Consider the great technological achievements achieved in spite of a lack of overt training in "thinking". Yet one need only listen to a scientist, even a fine and successful one, even perhaps the greatest of his era, express his views on something outside his field to learn that philosophical poverty (and its dangers) may be the concomitants of this selectively-applied, strictly "scientific" reason.

To quote economist Thomas Sowell, "The problem isn't that Johnny can't think, it's that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is." Indeed. Students are not taught any systematized way of making sense of the world thus they do not in fact know what it means to "think" about something.

–

Before continuing we must make a few concessions regarding our statements and their implications:

1. We must be wary in judging a culture by its art. True, art can be considered a barometer for values, yet we must consider whether art that is famous or, even art that is excellent, whether or not it necessarily reflects the values of the people of the society that produced it.
2. We must consider a culture's best and brightest independently from the hoi polloi, not necessarily because their values differ but because the latter group lacks the resources (leisure or intellect) to appreciate some art.

Such is why I have confined this discussion to college-educated people and thus is why when we speak of "a society" we are in fact only speaking of a certain group within that society. Yet those we speak of we expect to be the best and brightest, those most capable of receiving and carrying on the best of the culture into which they were born. I also consider that which is passed on to be significant:

A liberal humanist education is underpinned by the assumption that children are rightful heirs to the legacy of the past. It takes responsibility for ensuring this inheritance is handed over to the young. It is because education gives meaning to human experience that it needs to be valued in its own right. One of the key characteristics of education is its lack of interest in an ulterior purpose. That does not mean it is uninterested in developments affecting children and society; it means that it regards the transmission of cultural and intellectual achievements of humanity to children as its defining mission. [5]

–

Continuing, part two (2) of our definition concerns "general knowledge." What a society considers "general knowledge" defines its ethos and character, i.e. its heroes, villains, its stories, music, literature; even sayings, euphemisms, superstitions, myths, et cetera. With our earlier observations in mind, what can we say is "common knowledge" for "educated," i.e. college-educated, people? One might say, that which is taught to everyone in college, i.e. the baseline college education; in other words, that which today constitutes a Bachelor of Arts degree or a liberal education. As far as I can tell, the meaning of the BA is indiscernible, suggesting neither a particular body nor degree of knowledge.

Charles Murray describes the ridiculousness of the current "BA System":

Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a "BA."

You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that's the system we have in place. [4]

We have a curriculum watered down in the hopes of making it within reach of people who cannot otherwise understand it. First, this curriculum naturally hurts those capable or seeking a full liberal arts education and second, when those the curriculum was watered down for fail, it benefits no one. (No one, except perhaps high schools who get to boast that their students went on to college, testing services, and the colleges' coffers.)

Culturally, though, what is the impact? A culture where you cannot discuss Shakespeare or Mozart with a college graduate. One where a single chord that should wring the heart and would have set a scholar from generations ago to exclaim, "Beethoven!" goes unrecognized. Perhaps most conspicuously absent, so conspicuously on account of its long history and esteem, is Classical knowledge. Stories, myths to some cultures and simply examples to others, that have bound and permeated Western Civilization for the last 2,500 years and more are now not part of the common cultural ethos. Who would be touched to be called a Pylades or a Hypermnestra? Does invoking the name "Hecate" conjure up the thoughts for people today as it did for past readers? Even in the 18th and 19th centuries, amidst the burgeoning of science and the enlightenment, Greek and Roman stories flourished in art. One could fill pages listing merely the operas based on Classical themes and characters. The people of those eras had no pretense such stories told happened, i.e. the stories were not myths to these people, but they retold them because those stories said something important, about the world, about man, his nature, strengths, weaknesses and so on. I would theorize also because these stories were theirs as Westerners. It was their inherited tradition, the Western way of understanding the world and how they thought man should live in it, and it was their gift to enjoy, their challenge to increase, and their duty to pass on. 

Without the same body of stories, historical or mythical, how to understand Mozart recalling Shakespeare, Shakespeare evoking the name of a Roman king, or Gluck quoting Tasso quoting Homer? More practically, who would know the difference if you called the president a Honorius or a Cincinnatus, called a battle a Cannae or a Zama?

I am reminded of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Captain Picard has to communicate with an alien who communicates strictly by metaphor, for example instead of saying "he is alone" he would say he is "on the ocean" and to express a great struggle, he would mention the names of two famous people who struggled. The alien, dying, asks Picard to tell him one of his Earth stories and Picard tells him the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu:

The difficulty of course was that the characters had different stories and different traditions, but what if Picard had none? The episode concludes with Picard reading the Homeric hymns and familiarizing himself with "our stories." What story would you, could you, tell? Of Ceyx and Alcymone, Achilles versus Hector, of the labors of Hercules or the crimes of Heliogabulus?

What is the alternative to investing some portion of society with its historic culture? For the West, perhaps it is a hopelessly literal society that forgoes artistic, metaphorical expression and chooses to express an emotion clinically or with vulgarity instead of with beauty. Perhaps it is an arrogant one writing heedless of Cicero or Demosthenes, or a cowardly one that prefers to medicalize parts the human condition instead of embracing or at least pondering them. (On that note, consider Adams' suggesting to his son that a poet be a companion and poetry a source of happiness.) It is generally, though, an ungrateful one that treats tradition as a burden instead of as an inheritance.

In his essay The New Learning That Failed Victor Davis Hanson accurately describes the decline of the Classical core of liberal education. I have been concerned more with the effect, which I see most of all to be a decline of communication, a decline: of capacity to  communicate at all (lack of intellect and reason), of desire to communicate with grace, sophistication, and depth (lack of models), and ability to draw on universal, significant, elements (lack of stories); all components of a Classical education. Yet Hanson points out what is perhaps modernity's worst crime against its Western heritage:

The West, alone of world cultures, was self-critical and introspective, curious about other civilizations, ready to turn its own empirical standards on itself, always attempting to match its idealism with actual fact—Socrates teaching about the vanities of the wealthy, Antigone the bias of the male chauvinist, Aristophanes the contradiction of democratic egalitarianism, or Tacitus and Sallust the use of Western military power for nefarious purposes. Indeed, professors and students are now denouncing perceived Western pathologies only through a tradition of Western empiricism and free expression of thought, unavailable elsewhere. [6]

The turning of Western tradition's virtue of self-criticism into self-immolation and self-repudiation is the heart of the loss of our stories. I believe Dr. Hanson has answered the why of it in his essay, so now we may ask: what have we in their stead?

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Other Online Reading:

- The Yale Report of 1828 · Part I: Liberal Education and Collegiate Life

- The Yale Report of 1828 · Part II: Liberal Education and the Classical Curriculum

- List of Liberal Arts colleges in the United States.

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[1] McCullough, David. John Adams. Simon and Schuster Paperbacks. New York. 2001. (pp. 259-260)
[2] Education. Dictionary.com
[3] Malone, Dumas. Jefferson the Virginian. Little, Brown and Company. Boston. 1948. (pp. 57)
[4] Murray, Charles. For Most People, College is a Waste of Time.WSJ.August 13, 2008.
[5] Furedi, Frank. Let's give children the 'store of human knowledge.' Spiked Online. November 18, 2009.
[6] Hanson, Victor Davis. The New Learning That Failed. The New Criterion. May 2008.