Thursday, June 24, 2010

The Bach Cantata Pilgrimage

Conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner discusses his "Bach Cantata Pilgrimage" with his Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra. In 1999 Gardiner set out to perform all of the Master's extant church cantatas on the appointed feast day and all within a single year.

Bach is probably the only composer whose musical output is so rich, so challenging to the performers and so spiritually uplifting to both performer and listener alike, that one would gladly spend a year in his exclusive company.
–Sir John Eliot Gardiner

The Bach Cantata Pilgrimage
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI
Total Time: about 60 minutes.
 

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Choice Curmudgeonry


With a hat tip to Gerard Van der Leun of American Digest. . .

John Derbyshire, author most recently of "We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism," had in the WSJ a few weeks ago a short list of books for the curmudgeon.

It is a fine list and includes H. L. Mencken and Gulliver's Travels. As such I was reminded of some of my favorite curmudgeonly passages from Mencken and Swift.




Gulliver's Travels. Part III, Chapter VIII.
A further Account of Glubbdubdrib. Antient and Modern History Corrected.
Having a desire to see those antients who were most renowned for Wit and Learning, I set apart one Day on purpose. I proposed that Homer and Aristotle might appear at the Head of all their Commentators; but these were so numerous, that some Hundreds were forced to attend in the Court, and outward Rooms of the Palace. I knew, and could distinguish those two Heroes, at first Sight, not only from the Croud, but from each other. Homer was the taller and comelier Person of the two, walked very erect for one of his Age, and his Eyes were the most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made use of a Staff. His Visage was meagre, his Hair lank and thin, and his Voice hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were perfect Strangers to the rest of the Company, and had never seen or heard of them before; and I had a Whisper from a Ghost who shall be  nameless, "that these Commentators always kept in the most distant Quarters from their Principals, in the lower World, through a Consciousness of Shame and Guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the Meaning of those Authors to Posterity." I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a Genius to enter into the Spirit of a Poet. But Aristotle was out of all Patience with the Account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and he asked them, "whether the rest of the Tribe were as great Dunces as themselves?"

A Mencken Chrestomathy. XVIII. Pedagogy. The Education Process

If I had my way I should expose all candidates for berths in the grade-schools to the Binet-Simon test, and reject all those who revealed a mentality of more than fifteen years. Plenty would still pass. Moreover, they would be secure against contamination by the new technic of pedagogy. Its vast wave of pseudo-psychology would curl and break against the hard barrier of their innocent and passionate intellects– as it probably does, in fact, even now. They would know nothing of learning situations, integration, challenges, emphases, orthogenics, mind-sets, differentia, and all other fabulous fowl of the Teachers College aviary. But they would see in reading, writing and arithmetic the gaudy charms of profound knowledge, and they would teach these ancient branches, now so abominable in decay with passionate gusto, and irresistible effectiveness, and a gigantic success.
A Mencken Chrestomathy. XVIII. Pedagogy. Bearers of the Torch

This central aim of the teacher is often obscured by pedagogical pretension and bombast. The pedagogue, discussing himself, tries to make it appear that he is a sort of scientist. He is actually a sort of barber, and just as responsive to changing fashions. That this is his actually character is now, indeed, a part of the official doctrine that he must inculcate. On all hands, he is told plainly by his masters that his fundamental function in America is to manufacture an endless corps of sound Americans. A sound American is simply one who has put out of his mind all doubts and questionings, and who accepts instantly, and as incontrovertible gospel, the whole body of official doctrine of his day, whatever it may be and no no matter how often it may change. The instant he challenges it, no matter how timorously and academically, he ceases by that much to be a loyal and creditable citizen of the Republic.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Wagner and The Lord of the Rings

The music of Richard Wagner and the writing of J. R. R. Tolkien are both considerable interests of mine so you can expect substantial writing on both topics in the future. For now, I was recently watching Peter Jackson's spectacular film adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" and came upon two rather striking similarities. The first is of set design and the second of music.


 Leif Roar as Klingsor in Parsifal, about to set Kundry against Parsifal.
Stage design and artistic supervision by Wolfgang Wagner. 1981

 Christopher Lee as Saruman in The Fellowship of the Ring,
invoking the spirit of the mountain against the Fellowship.
Artwork and conceptual drawing by Alan Lee and John Howe, 2001.


Parsifal, Act I.


The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,
The Great River


The scene (using the word loosely since Wagner did not divide the acts into smaller scenes) in Parsifal is quite complex, with multiple choruses, the Knights marching up Montsalvat to the bells, and many themes including those of the Grail, the Eucharist, and the Lance. Shore's scene is considerably simpler but they function in not dissimilar manners. In Fellowship Aragorn catches sight of enormous statues of kings of old, his ancestors. This is simultaneously a reminder of their grandeur and weakness, and also his, that he is the rightful heir but turned from the path since he shares his ancestors' weakness to be tempted by the Ring of Power. Likewise the themes demonstrate Amfortas' mixed feelings, his sacred duty, his suffering, and his sin.

Likewise the figures of Klingsor and Saruman more than superficial relations. Generally, neither managed his tendency to sin and each turned to dark arts. In his classic work on Wagner, Albert Lavignac describes Klingsor:
[he] has vainly sought to root out of his heart the tendencies to sin; and, not succeeding, he has destroyed his animal instincts by laying violent hands on himself. . . he has listened to the Evil Spirit, and received from him unhallowed instructions in the art of magic. . . [Lavignac, 212]
That Saruman succumbed to a natural weakness and was not simply corrupted by studying "too deeply the arts of the enemy" requires some explication, handily provided by Tolkien himself in a letter c. 1956:
In the view of this tale and mythology Power–when it dominates or seeks to dominate other wills and minds (except by the assent of their reason)–is evil, these "wizards" were incarnated in the life forms of Middle-earth, and so suffered the pains of both mind and body. They were also, for the same reason, thus involved in the peril of the incarnate: the possibility of "fall," of sin, if you will. [Tolkien, 237]
Likewise where Klingsor "Layed violent hands on himself" Gandalf rebukes Saruman for his unnatural machinations, saying, "he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of reason." [The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Council of Elrond."]

Yet we ought not to read too much into these similarities and we should avoid trying to craft analogies and allegories here. The characters are themselves different and function differently in the plots of their respective stories. I do not suggest one was a model for the other but rather point out the noteworthy similarities of style and fundamental themes of two artists exploring man's nature in these particular scenes.

  –

Bibliography

Lavignac, Albert. The Music Dramas of Richard Wagner and his Festival Theatre in Bayreuth. Dood, Mead, and Company. New York. 1901.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Letter No. 181, an unfinished letter to Michael Straight. c. 1956. p.237. Houghton Mifflin Company.  New York. 2000.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Mozart: Rhapsody and Reverie


I. Rhapsody

Musicologist Arthur Hutchings on the Mozartian rhapsody:
. . . the form is "a becoming." In it we may be aware of phrases, of sequences which show metabolism. . . but the main principle of its form is the approach to and decline from climax. . . we imagine ourselves to be the performer; if we do not live along its line, we are not fulfilling the composer's demands of us. [Hutchings, 139.]


Piano Concerto No. 21, KV.467 - Andante


II. Reverie


Musicologist Cuthbert Girdlestone on the Mozartian "Dream Reverie:"
The true "dream" does not imply any strong emotion; it does not exude passion, but the exquisite fancy of a fresh and rich nature is its character. When melancholy speaks it is not with a tragic voice. They are inspired by a spirit of fairyland, too far removed from reality to know sorrow. Their form is that of a long, winding melody which cannot be broken up into phrases and follows on almost uninterruptedly from one end to the other, and Mozart's rhythms are found here at their freest. [Girdlestone, 39.]


Piano Concerto No. 6, KV.238 - Andante


Violin Concerto No. 3, KV.216 - Adagio
Gidon Kremer, violin. Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting the Wiener Philharmoniker


String Quartet in E-flat, KV.428 - Andante con moto
Salomon Quartet



Bibliography

Hutchings, Arthur. A Companion to Mozart's Piano Concertos. Oxford University Press. New York. 1948.

Girdlestone, Cuthbert. Mozart and his Piano Concertos. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, NY. 1964.

Around the Web

For Saturday, June 12 through Friday, June 18 2010.

1) Robert Weissberg at the Pope Center on how universities breed dependency.

2) At Mises Daily, Robert P. Murphy weighs in on the fractional-reserve banking question.

3) In the WSJ, Dale Buss on the potential end of the 45-year project of the Dictionary of American Regional English.

4) At the Well-Tempered Ear, Jacob Stockinger asks "How did Vladimir Horowitz play octaves so fast?"

5) Thomas Sowell vs the Intellectuals.  (For City Journal, Daniel J. Mahoney reviews "Intellectuals and Society" by Thomas Sowell.)

6) The "Tea Party" vs. the Intellectuals. (from Lee Harris at the Hoover Institution.)

Monday, June 14, 2010

A Taxonomy of Sports

Permit me to open with a few caveats and general statements. First, I do not regularly watch or follow sports. Second, I know people take the sports they follow and the teams the follow very seriously. Consider me then an impartial observer. My intent is to distinguish the appeal of various sports and to determine the significance or virtues of each. I will confine myself to the most popular sports. Also, I will not be quite as comprehensive as usual, my goal being more simply to encourage some deeper thinking about popular activities.

First we must begin with definitions. What is a sport? Sporting is a particularly vague word and today practically anything is considered a sport. I propose a finer distinction. I will start by saying what a sport is not. A sport is not simply a feat. A feat is simply a performance of something that is difficult to do, for example mountain-climbing, marksmanship, and weight-lifting are feats. Likewise a sport is more than simply a contest. The essence of a contest is what its name suggests, a mano-a-mano challenge like wrestling or fencing.

In contrast to a feat, which has no rules other than the natural limits that make the feat difficult, sports have man-made rules. These rules, though, should be sensible, complementary, and not arbitrary. They should not include deliberate handicaps or artificial constraints of time. While the feat has the harshness of necessity intrinsic to its nature the sport does not. Sports need not be as violent as natural contests are or seemingly impossible as feats. The rules ought to be appropriate to the central goal of the game, which ought to be simple in principle but difficult to master. They should not make the goal any harder than it is by nature. Whereas a feat has only the challenge imposed by nature and the contest has only the challenge imposed by the other player the sport ought to combine both in moderation, balancing the extremes. The player ought to be playing against an opponent to achieve the goal, not playing against the rules to achieve the goal. The rules create structure for the competition.

In contrast to the contest the sport is inherently social. It involves free men coming together of their own will to associate in sporting. The camaraderie of the team is integral to sporting, fostering both competition amongst the players as well as competition. As in life individuals use their unique skills to accomplish the task none of their teammates can, thus allowing a victory otherwise impossible.

Let us not forget an aspect of sporting integral to it though not unique: that of leisure. This can be inferred from the word itself, which derives from the word disport, which roughly means to carry away oneself from more serious matters. One takes up a sport in one's leisure time for the simple pleasure of it. It is an end in itself and the individual takes delight in it for that reason only. The object of sport is not like discovering or inventing something, or earning for practical remuneration, but a special and curious thing, desirable because it is pleasurable to do.

With these ideas in mind, let us consider a few sports of the major sports that seem to qualify (as many have been ruled out already.)

Basketball seems promising as it revolves around a simple concept difficult to master: get the ball in the opponent's net. There is likewise a team and it is not excessive in violence or challenge. But why must you effectively keep yourself and the ball in constant motion? And why is there a time limit? These are arbitrary rules that make the game proceed at an unnecessarily frenetic pace and for a duration of an arbitrary length. "But!" you may say, "if he can just run around with the ball you would have American football!" Indeed, but it is only by the distinction of this arbitrary rule then that the sport is to be unique?

Regarding American football, it seems promising too. It revolves around a simple concept difficult to master, requires much planning in the form of tactics and teamwork, and is challenging. Yet it is violent and most ungentlemanly. It also has arbitrary time constraints and rules about the passage of "game time." Also, the central challenge is practically non-existent. As with soccer/football, you essentially only play against the other team since the central challenge is so easy (anyone can, if he is unopposed, run across the field with a ball or kick a ball into a net.)

The issue that the game-play itself keeps stopping is of some but not great concern. While the carrying out of a play resembles a military maneuver the fact that the plays typically are so brief diminishes the similarity by resetting the situation. Yet while it adds excessive length, as we said earlier a sport ought to balance the extremes brought on by the necessities of feats. In battle, scoring is achieved through violence. (Here there is brutishness and mostly imitation-violence.) In American football, though, it is solved by getting to stop and start the situation anew. This is necessary as we said but the effect is that with the central feat being so easy, the players are mostly just running at each other and then stopping. The downs system remedies this in part by creating continuity from play to play. If American football is imperfect it is largely because its model is hard to adapt to civilized sporting.

Hockey is an unusual sport, essentially a modification of American football with the added challenge of being on ice, which also has implications for all of the equipment. None of these adjustments are virtues. They add challenge without any observable effect. It is likewise excessively violent and arbitrarily limited in duration.

Football/Soccer is perhaps the most curious of the major sports. It too is a modification of American football. Why can't you use your hands?! Likewise, why can you use your head? These are absurdly arbitrary rules and exist only to create a distinction between it and American football.

We see so far, though, that all of our sports are modifications of American football but that none are successful copies. We might add that both the football/soccer and hockey goalies add an additional and desirable mano-a-mano dynamic to the game, yet the constant interference of the other players diminishes this.

Baseball, however, is an altogether different sport. It revolves around teamwork and a simple concept difficult to master: throwing the ball past the batter or hitting the ball. In describing the central concept we immediately notice its uniqueness. The prime place of the pitcher and his unique role creates a completely different dynamic for the game. Baseball, in dividing the game between the contest between pitcher and batter and then batter and fielders balances both the need for teamwork and the classic mano-a-mano challenge. Unlike in football/soccer and hockey this one-on-one contest is free from interference because of a deliberate and not arbitrary rule.

It is the only sport we have looked at without an artificial time limit. It proceeds as long as the contest between the pitcher and batter takes. This may be long or short. Additionally to its credit, the central concept (throwing/hitting a ball) is difficult in itself but complicated by the skills of the other players. It also has unique and balancing elements of both stability and randomness: on the one hand players take the same positions on the field when fielding, but the positions of which players end up on base when trying to score are always random, since you cannot predict who will strike out or score.

It is competitive but not aggressively violent or confrontational, being non-contact. It requires health and stamina. It requires the player always keeps his mind in the game but does not require what other sports absurdly do, that the player be in constant motion. It does not require complicated equipment, the essences of the equipment being a stick and a ball. (A stick and a ball that fits in your hand are far more natural than the shapes of the equipment for other sports.) The glove/mitt is an essentially optional accessory. Early baseball was in fact played without gloves.

Baseball may seem more complicated than other sports, the pitcher-batter dynamic and the existence of having to run the bases being more complex than "get the ball in the net/goal." Yet unlike the adaptations of other sports these are for particular purposes. They enhance the dynamism of the game. By dynamism I mean both the range of potential outcomes and the motivating energy. Having men on base and outs and innings work with each other cumulatively to create a crescendo and decrescendo of dynamism. (Football comes closest to this with its system of "downs.") This is enhanced by the randomness of who ends up on which base when. In other sports it is simply, "X is winning, now Y is winning, now X is winning." Likewise regarding scoring, in some sports it is simply "x is about to score" over and over again at frenetic pace. These games appeal to individuals who cannot remain focused for a long time. Baseball achieves balance, (as does football to a good measure.) The tension builds slowly while at any moment a home run can shatter the status quo.

We see then that baseball and American football by far outshine their competitors and imitations by having rational and complementary rules, though baseball succeeds by a wider margin. Baseball's dynamism makes it the most entertaining to watch and the manner in which it achieves said dynamism makes it more gentlemanly to play.

Friday, June 11, 2010

War, with Sebastian Junger


Peter Robinson, host of the Hoover Institution's Uncommon Knowledge, interviews author Sebastian Junger to discuss Junger's latest book, War, which focuses on the fighting in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley.
 

War, with Sebastian Junger

Around the Web

For the week of Saturday, June 5 through Friday, June 11.

1) The National Endowment for the Humanities' 2010 Jefferson Lecture: Jonathan Spence on "When Minds Met: China and the West in the Seventeenth Century."

2) Lee Lawrence in the WSJ on "In the Realm of the Buddha" at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of The Smithsonian Institution through July 18,

3-5) Will "higher education" go boom?
  1. Glenn Reynolds thinks so.
  2. So does Mark J. Perry.
  3. . . .and so do the folks at NakedLaw.com
6) In an interview with Reason.tv, Joel Kotkin thinks America will still lead the world in 2050.


7-9) Of Economics:
  1. In the WSJ, and with polling data in hand, Daniel B. Klein says that "Self-identified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics." (Indeed and ahem.)
  2. At Mises Daily, Credit Expansion vs. Simple Inflation.
  3. At Mises Daily, A Primer on Austrian Economics.
10) In City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple on "sympathy deformed."

11) Jefferson Grey for History Net on The Order of Assassins. (For almost two centuries, from 1090 until 1273, the Order of Assassins played a singular and sinister role in the Middle East.)

12) In The American Scholar, Joel E. Cohen on what poetry and applied mathematics have in common.

13) In the WSJ, Stuart Isacoff on Beethoven's piano sonatas.

14) In the WSJ, an interview with "people's diva" Renée Fleming, who makes a foray into rock with "Dark Hope," an album comprised of covers of Death Cab for Cutie, Peter Gabriel and other pop acts.

15) Remembering the great baritone Giuseppe Taddei, 1916-2010.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Around the Web

For the week of Friday, May 28 through Friday, June 4, 2010.

1) George Will on "the limits of the welfare state." (This is a fine summary critique of progressive neo-liberalism.)

2) In the WSJ, Heidi Waleson on Prosperpina, Flora, and Philemon and Baucis at Spoleto Festival USA.

3) In the WSJ, John Jurgensen on André Rieu, a "maestro for the masses."

4) Larua Barton for the Economist on Mark Twain.

5) In the WSJ, Barbara Jepson on Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

6) At Chicago Boyz, James McCormick reviews "Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World’s Greatest Scientist" by Thomas Levenson.

7) In The New Criterion, Kenneth Minogue on "Morals & the Servile Mind." (A fine essay to which I added my thoughts on the matter here.)

8) In The American Scholar, Christian Wiman on anxiety, spiritual life, and transcendence.


André  Rieu conducting the Johann Strauss Orchestra.

A Response to "Morals & the Servile Mind"

A Response to 
"'Morals & the Servile Mind' by Kenneth Minogue"

Kenneth Minogue has an excellent essay in the June 2010 New Criterion I have the pleasure of commenting on. Putting the author's obvious erudition toward fine use Minogue considers some of our societal woes in an uncharacteristically systematic and philosophical manner. To his additional credit it is imminently readable, so go read it here. I add a few observations:

Aristotle's notions of "slavery" are certainly off-putting to anyone today yet it is good to see Minogue unafraid to look into and learn from them. In Politics I.v the philosopher discusses how the soul rules the body with despotic rule and the intellect the appetites with constitutional rule, thus he "who participates in the rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have, . . . is a slave by nature." This is not so very dissimilar from the modern notion of being a "slave of passions." This one might call, in Minogue's framework, an "internal compulsion." Thus one may be a slave to passion or a slave under an external force: one is still a slave. In our [classical]-liberal tradition we do not consider slavery innate but rather the rational principle innate. Framed as such Aristotle seems less foolish, still quite wrong, but not outlandish.

Consider now Plato's observation in Republic XXXI, that the many "constitutions" available to the "democratic man" creates a sort of anarchy of passions in him. Continuing this thread, Minogue's opening remarks echo Aristotle's ideas in Politics III.iii, which can be reduced to: sameness of state consists in sameness of constitution which consists in the virtues of the citizen. For both philospohers the problem is similar: the part [here, negatively] affects the whole. This begs the question: how can a man be virtuous when society contains bad people?

Yet where Plato seeks homogeneity Aristotle defends plurality, saying not sameness but what he variously calls proportionate requital/equity/justice binds a state together. With a wonderful metaphor Aristotle defends plurality and criticizes Plato for designing a system in which the "harmony passes into unison." Returning to our own liberal republican tradition, we may consider one of its virtues to be its inherent distinction between society and government, and that morality resides in the former and proportionate requital/equity/justice in the latter. 

Minogue makes an excellent point about morality (i.e. a specific morality) being achieved the only one with the force of law. Minogue writes:
Such an attitude dramatically moralizes politics, and politicizes the moral life. It feeds on our instinctive support for good causes. Yet it also suggests that the most important sign of moral integrity, of decency and goodness, is not found in facing up to one’s responsibilities, but in holding the right opinions, generally about grand abstractions such as poverty and war. This illusion might well be fingered as the ultimate servility.
Indeed. I was reminded of something I read just recently, James Fenimore Cooper in "The American Democrat" saying:
Party is the cause of many corrupt and incompetent men being preferred to power, as the elector, who, in his own per- son, is disposed to resist a bad nomination, yields to the influence and a dread of factions. . .

Party, by feeding the passions and exciting personal interests, overshadows truth, justice, patriotism, and every other public virtue, completely reversing the order of a democracy, by putting unworthy motives in the place of reason.
Thus we see that a particular morality today becomes a "cause" which once it achieves a certain mass gains a leader, which becomes a party, which seeks to impose the cause as law. This has two detrimental effects on both freedom and virtue. The first is is that it substitutes an external compulsion for an internal choice. By externalizing freedom you make freedom dependent on the virtue of others, bring us back to Plato and Aristotle's problem. Second, it substitutes the Aristotelian notion of virtue and happiness consisting in action for the same being simply holding the idea. For example, in the politically correct world it does not matter what you do so long as you carry the proper PC totems and assent to the "cause" of the day. Thus it actually diminishes the cause it proposes by eliminating the need for it to be fulfilled.


I would quibble with his definitions around freedom, myself thinking what Minogue states are subsets or inherent consequences of freedom but not the essence of freedom. One might say his points about freedom are the inherently political aspects of freedom. Overall though, this is a fine piece.