Movie Review: Amarcord

Directed by Federico Fellini. 1973.

Perhaps with the exception of Mr. Hulot's Holiday, there is no film more effortless to watch than Amarcord. This is all the more striking because Amarcord lacks a traditional plot with conventional scenes and dialogue to move it along. In contrast, the narrative of Amarcord is conveyed through the film's musical and visual rhythms, through a sense of the passage of time. It is an ease of motion, the imperceptibility of its connective tissue, which makes Amarcord a dreamlike whole out of the film's motley bits. This dreamlike passage of time universalizes the film's rich visuals into an overwhelming sense of a sumptuous, joyous, loved life.

In fact the larger-than-life visuals of the film would surely overwhelm a dialogue-heavy, plotted film, distracting with their absurdity. The dreamlike mood liberates the visuals which one can experience as ones own dream. Fellini's great contemporary Andrey Tarkovsy explored similar tone and structure, additionally commenting in his book "Sculpting in Time," that

It is above all through sense of time, through rhythm, that the director reveals his individuality. Rhythm colours a work with stylistic marks. It is not thought up, not composed on an arbitrary, theoretical basis, but comes into being spontaneously in a film, in response to the director's innate awareness of life, his "search for time." –Andrey Tarkovsky [1]

Amarcord's dreamlike sense not just of sight and sound but of motion which makes the Felliniesque style so natural and appealing.

Yet Amarcord still has a nominal narrative: a year in the life of a teenage boy in his coastal Italian hometown. Here too, though, Amarcord is larger than life and though we see the daily goings on of Titta, his family, and the townspeople, it is memory filtered through the gauze of Fellini's own waltzing, voluptuous sense of the world. School, then, consists not in homework and rote drills but in the lioness teaching arithmetic, the flame-haired headmaster, and one of the most ingenious pranks you'll ever see. And in girls. Grossing out, pining after, and lusting at girls.

Politics is the grandiose absurdities of the fascist regime with all of its uniforms, gun-twirling, and stomping around town. One of the film's best moments comes during a party parade when a giant paper mache likeness of Il Duce is raised as the party boys twirl their guns in demonstration of their health and commitment. The scene shifts from the comic proportions of the giant red face to the absurd as without warning one of the boys is being married to his beloved Aldina. . . by the giant face! Again the memories freely coalesce here, the sights, sounds, and emotions blending together into a tide you cannot help be swept up in.

The town too becomes iconic with its square, sight of the annual torching of the winter-witch, and the boulevard down which the town beauties strut and a lone motor-biker sweeps. Then there's the movie theater, sight of many hoped-for encounters, and the storefront of the massively proportioned tobacconist (and a hilariously-placed portrait of Dante.) One of the best moments in town comes when the boys stand outside one of the stores and press their faces to the glass as the owner bemoans that he couldn't get away with offing them once and for all. It's a brief scene but it establishes the town not just as a place but in time. They boys surely must do that every week and, we get the sense, so must have boys for many years, and so they'll continue to.

Yet Amarcord is not about growth or coming of age, but of the ebb and flow of people in life. It's also about remembering, people, places, feelings, with intensity and affection. The film is bookended by scenes of the arrival in town of the "puffballs" which signal the end of winter. This device, as well as Nino Rota's waltzing theme, give Amarcord a rondo-like sense of departure and return. To quote Tarkovsky again, we fall into Fellini's rhythm and become his ally. We eagerly follow him through the vast ivory hotel and we wait for the Rex to pass by the shore. So sure is he of the truth of these fables and so beautifully does he tell them that the fabulous, like a wintertide peacock, ceases to be the impossible and becomes a marvel.

–

[1] Tarkovsky, Andrey. Sculpting in Time: The Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses His Art. 1986. p.120

The Heretical Mind

T. S. Eliot famously observed the nature of the heretic as, "a person who seizes upon a truth and pushes it to the point at which it becomes a falsehood." This generalization strikes me as especially perspicacious and indeed indicative of a particular mode of thinking in which one observes events and attributes them all to one, or even a few, central causes. This cause-seeking reasoning is of course useful and fundamental to understanding the natural world, yet it is a potentially myopic approach.

Dr. Jeroen Vanheste in his study of classicism similarly observed that

Theories that consider everything to be a construction or a convention or the expression of a specific ideology, are a radicalization of an intuition that in itself obviously contains some truth. [1]

We are all liable to such a preoccupation and we see the generalizations everywhere when we read the
philosophically-untrained simplifying the world for us. We read of historical slights like "the essence of Greek culture" and political drivel about "the three ways to fix. . ." We see scientists struggle with  what occurred before time and anthropologists and now neuroscientists trying to make sense of human action. The fruits of such thinking often seem to come in the form of prescriptions, and Dom Prosper Guéranger, speaking about antipathy toward the Roman liturgy, observed:

All heretics without exception start out by wishing to return to the customs of the early Church... they prune, they efface, they suppress–everything falls under their hatchet–and while we await a vision of our religion in its pristine purity, we find ourselves encumbered with new formulations, fresh off the press, and incontestably human, for the men who created them are still alive. [2]

All other values, principles, and accidentals are stripped away and replaced by those of the observer, which are usually invisible to him and those of his age. The whole has been destroyed, but what has been revealed and what has simply been lost?

It seems, perhaps, that while both are necessary, learning by observation and learning by deconstruction (all too often "murdering to dissect"), are the lesser and lower, or better, preliminary, forms of learning. The ideal, then, would be learning by creation, no longer looking or digging but learning about the nature of things by purposeful making and being.

Now the creative act surely seems the most radical for it is no small matter to change the world, let alone make one, yet all three approaches change or make, yet only the creative admits to its purpose. Too it is just as systematic, built on rules and laws, and as well fuses past, present, and future just as the overtly fact-seeking sciences seek to contribute to one true knowledge.

The heretical mind is the philosopher as hunter-gatherer. The creative mind is the philosopher as man.

–

[1]Vanheste, Jeroen. Guardians of the Humanist Legacy: The Classicism of T.S. Eliot's Criterion Network and Its Relevance to Our Postmodern World. Brill Academic Pub. 2007. p. 437
[2] Institutions Liturgiques 1.399

A Visit to Strand

I was walking uptown to my bus stop the other day when I realized how much time remained to spare. Happily, I stood not only in the vicinity of but in front of Strand and so I entered. I hadn't been inside for a while and upon realizing this I made haste to the music section. Craning my neck up toward the rafters I began scan the shelves. Nothing new for Mozart. Ooh, something on the Missa Solemnis? Definitely. A whole book on parody in Bach? Gold! So I troubled the clerk for a ladder and making my way up I noticed a serendipitously placed misfile: a book of concerto themes. Not necessary, but charming: mine now.

This went on for some time until I brought my hefty pile toward the register. I plopped it on the counter, beaming with pride as the cashier began to ring up my books. Bloop. Bloop. "Yes, yes, keep blooping!" I greedily chirped to myself. Now I thought I had shopped with great prudence but my purchase qualified me for a free tote. The icing.

Now short on time, I hustled toward the bus stop and on the journey I became aware of the social dimensions of my purchase. From the moment I had stepped outside the bibliophile's enclave of Strand, my bag had identified me as a book man. This experience surprised your humble blogger, who generally endeavors not to serve as a bipedal billboard. Yet there I walked, telling all how I loved books. The bag didn't have a sports team logo or a pricy brand name stenciled on the side, but it said, "Strand," that is, "books." What a powerful statement the word book still makes. I was also seized several times with the urge to strike several specimens of the chattering couture masses with my sack, but that might have been unrelated.

At home I spent a few hours rearranging my bookshelves to accomodate my new wards, embossing them and introducing them to the fold.  I may get a little carried away playing the librarian, entering the titles into a catalogue as I do, but I can't help feeling a custodian to these books and the ideas within.

Movie Review: Metropolitan

Directed by Whit Stillman. 1990.

How easily one can miss the beginning of Metropolitan. Not the first scene, mind you, but the beginning at the credits. Before we meet anyone or see anything at all, we hear with no repeats or emphasis the chorale tune Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott. It's a warm and hopeful but lonely little theme here, undeveloped and unaccompanied, and it's followed up by this jaunty, jazzy tune. The contrast and the transition, or lack thereof, mirror those of Metropolitan's main character, Tom Townsend.

Tom's been an outsider to the Upper Haute Bourgeoisie world since his parents divorced, but one night during the debutante ball season he takes up an invitation to a party. Redheaded, thin, and quiet, he doesn't last long before getting singled out from the chatty and well-fed upper crusters for some questions. It turns out Tom is a bright young man. Exceedingly so, in fact. He's articulate about his radical political ideas and literary tastes, adding to the party's facile chatter with his thoughts on Veblen and Austen, and he's a hit with everyone, if a bit of a sphinx.

The curtain is pulled back on Tom for us in the next scene at his home, a far cry from the capacious, opulent apartment at which he just partied, where in his mismatched skivvies he pours some coffee  with his cereal. He doesn't fit in with his newfound friends and partiers, for sure, but more importantly he doesn't want to. We grow to learn that Tom's more comfortable looking in than living with, but he has to keep going to the deb parties now because the ladies, especially Audrey, are counting on him as an escort. So with a loan from his mother he gets himself a secondhand tux and suits up for the balls.

As her official escort Tom naturally gets to know Audrey and their conversations throw the two into  sharp relief. She answers from the heart, he from the head. She empathizes with Austen's heroines, he thinks they're inauthentic. Tom in fact is taken aback by her empathy for the character and we don't know what to make of his surprise until he admits he hasn't read the book. He prefers criticism to novels, he says. Again, Tom prefers thinking to feeling, looking in over sharing with. Shortly after their conversation, Audrey, fishing for some feedback on Tom, is happy to learn from her friend that he mentioned her. He said she was well-read. Not witty or kind or pretty, or even silly, but well-read, as if he had no opinion of her character at all but only of what she knew. This conversation is mirrored later on when Audrey admits she likes Tom, but in explaining why she describes what he thinks, not who he is.

What is it exactly, then, that keeps bringing Tom and Audrey together? His sociological interest in the goings on of the, "Rat Pack," some sense of duty to escort Audrey, or his obsessive interest in an old flame who frequents the group? As his motive shifts through all three we learn that Audrey has had a crush of her own since college: Tom. Yet Audrey and her escort seem to be drifting apart as Tom reconnects with the college infatuation who inexplicably cut him off. In a moment all the more gutting for its simplicity and subtlety Audrey walks past a bookstore before Christmas and in the window glimpses a set of Jane Austen novels.

Yet Tom can't seem to rekindle his romance with Serena. The deal-breaker falls when Serena admits she didn't save their correspondence. Tom is completely galled by her indifference to having thrown away his letters, clearly feeling that he himself was thrown away. Not quite thrown away, Serena explains, because some girl wanted them: Audrey. What Tom gave away in love Serena tossed aside with indifference and Audrey collected in secret and distant longing.

At last we see in full the many symmetries between Tom and Audrey. Like their taste in books, her evasion of reality is essentially imaginative whereas Tom's is analytical. Audrey prefers the idealized fictions of the author whereas Tom prefers clarifying criticism. She ignores Tom's coldness and imagines feelings for her whereas Tom ignores Serena's coldness and tries to understand why she broke off communication. Her obsession with Tom is positive whereas his with Serena is negative.

Yet there are cracks in Tom's facade. Austen has replaced Spengler on his night table and in a passing moment he wonders whether his idol Fourier wasn't full of it. The guy's ideas didn't work, after all. Tom's learning that his own studied persona of studying others, his radical politics, overall his analytical distance, isn't so satisfying as being with Audrey.

Metropolitan ends with a buddy sojourn in which Tom and the last remaining member of the Rat Pack, now dissolved in the post debs remainder of their lives, journey out to the Hamptons to rescue Audrey from rivalrous rake Rick Von Sloneker. This is handled with good humor and affection for the characters, but one notices as much the absence of the supporting cast. Gone is the pretender, the actor, the leader, the hostess. There's no more bitchy chatter about who's who or endless commentary on the nature of society. There are three friends. Especially for Tom and Audrey, in discovering each other they've discovered themselves and now, debutante balls aside, they really are ready to step out onto life's stage, together.

Sacred Music VII: Canons and Constraints

At the heart of our various essays on the liturgy and musical style has been my argument that certain musical procedures, namely polyphonic ones, are by nature the most appropriate for liturgical music.

To further this point I would like to compare two contrasting developments of a theme from Johann Pachelbel. The first is the composer's own, the famous Canon/Chaconne in D, and the second is a contemporary arrangement by pianist George Winston. Please note that I'm not suggest Pachelbel's piece is by any means the ideal liturgical piece, but rather that his technique creates a far different effect with the theme than Winston's, and that effect is more amenable to the liturgy's needs.

Studying Pachelbel's work we observe two features at work: a canon in the violins over the ground bass in the cello.

These two procedures will provide an overarching sense of stability throughout, the counterpoint of the canon constraining the elements and weaving them into a texture and the ground bass serving as a rhythmic and harmonic touchstone. None of the variations steals the show. All of the energy is focused and balanced.

The effect is in great contrast to that of Winston's set of variations, which feels like a series of riffs and subdivisions rather than a cohesive whole with a sense of direction. Here the rhythms are unchecked and we are jerked by the variations rather then embedded in the texture. The result is a profoundly more free-wheeling feel, despite, incredibly, the presence of Pachelbel's ground bass.

Again, this comparison is not qualitative by a study in contrasts. How much more contemplative is Pachelbel's piece with it's Baroque aesthetic of constrained expressivity than the contemporary variations which seem to seize at you with every jingle and jangle. Pachelbel's rhythm's are vigorous, yet it is a fire refined by an aesthetic of balance, of harmony in the non-musical sense of conformity and congruity.

Movie Review: Lincoln

Directed by Steven Spielberg. 2012.

Just behind my seat at the 7:10 showing of Lincoln sat a couple. The man, a tall and lanky fellow himself, laughed uproariously at the jokes director Steven Spielberg generously sprinkled throughout his picture. His lady companion, it is safe to say, enjoyed it even more, chortling, sighing, oohing, and ahhing, I kid you not, every other of Lincoln's 150 minutes. The couple exiting down the escalator were surprised how much they liked it given how much talking it contained. I myself left reasonably pleased, and it has been this favorable consensus amongst dissimilar moviegoers that has made Spielberg such a crowd favorite. The consensus among critics owes itself, I think, to that Spielberg specialty of uniting disparate, conventional, and often only moderately well-executed, elements into a palatable whole.

Take the main elements of Lincoln: the president talking politics with various appointees, particularly Secretary of State Seward, the president talking family matters with his wife, a bumbling trio of political lackeys sent by Lincoln to cajole, intimidate, buy, or otherwise persuade congressmen to vote for the 13th Amendment, and congressional debate. Not one of these elements is especially remarkable.

The scenes in congress take up the lion's share of the movie and they'll delight the largest share of Lincoln's viewers with the quick wits and funny faces of the congressmen. Yet these scenes run too long and the center of the movie becomes a 19th century C-SPAN. Spielberg offsets this with the trio of W. N. Bilbo and company running around gaining votes. Such scenes are both entertaining and practical, the now classic Spielbergian ability to move the plot with action. Yet they are overplayed in both quantity and their comic factor to balance out the Congressional scenes which will dull some of the audience. Still, the characters are a hoot and their scenes not only give more detailed looks, however fleeting, at the congressmen, but also move the plot along by showing us the increasing support for the Amendment. Rather impressive in terms of plotting, really.

The scenes between Abraham and Mary Todd, however, are likely the most honest in the film. When he scolds her for indulging her grief for her dead child while he had to forebear, we feel honest and plain pity for the man. This in contrast to the admiration Spielberg tries to coax from us on account of Lincoln's political woes, woes he twice campaigned to undertake. Yet the political scenes are not unmoving and in the most genuine of them Lincoln makes the case for his political maneuvers to his cabinet. With a troubled, weary smile from Daniel Day Lewis' brilliant performance, he refers to those measures as, "not legal but not criminal." Reactions to these scenes and ideas will likely align with reactions to the Lincoln himself.

Another scene reinforces this split. Here Lincoln pauses in his deliberation over whether to tell the Confederate delegates to proceed North to discuss peace, potentially scuttling his Amendment plans, or deliberately to stall them, prolonging the war but winning the Amendment, and he begins to talk to the two telegraph clerks who will send his message. He asks them if they think they are meant to live in their age. Lincoln is of course asking the question of himself, and the director of us. Should we be grateful to, or for, Lincoln? Those generally optimistic about the possibilities of politics, who think big in terms of plans and progress, or who more easily weigh ends and means, will find sympathy with Lincoln for his extraordinary efforts and forgive him his transgressions. Those more skeptical will see an ideologue for one cause who, despite the righteousness of that cause, violated other principles and perhaps broke a system in attempting to fix a problem when and how he saw fit.

Yet such quality, in some cases excellent, elements coalesce in Lincoln by means of cheaper ones such as jokes, quirky characters, and articulate and but incontinent speech. Such is not to say the main plot of Lincoln, the passage of the amendment, is poor. It speeds along for a while but starts to sag about halfway through because we never feel the amendment is truly in jeopardy, and we never feel the amendment is in jeopardy because despite the sour faces and relentless fretting of those around him, Lincoln himself never seems to doubt its passage himself. This certainty robs the film of tension because the opinion of Lincoln and our own hindsight outweigh all of the congressional flapping. Moreover we get the sense that the amendment is inevitable because it is naturally right, reinforcing expectations of its success and diminishing the tension.

In fact after the passage of the amendment, at which most of the tension dissipates, Lincoln starts to fall apart. Despite the fact that the passage of the Amendment in the House (January, 1865), Lee's surrender at the Appomattox courthouse (April 9, 1865), and Lincoln's death (April 15, 1865), occurred near in time, they feel stitched together in the film. We suddenly feel like the director is simply hitting requisite marks and we pause for the credits after every portentous piece of dialogue. Worse, though, are the scenes after his death in which Spielberg flashes back to yet another speech, at which point we feel like we're on a track of Lincoln's Greatest Hits. This conclusion dragged not only interminably but needlessly because Spielberg already had the perfect ending built in. The movie should have ended when Lincoln heads out to the theater, his lanky frame trudging off alone under the arcades of the White House corridors, and says, "I must go, though I wish I could stay." This would have been superior in terms of visuals, pacing, tone, and plot, to another hoary speech.

Of performances, Daniel Day Lewis' is so good it is easy to take for granted. The elements Lincoln's gait and drawl are more properly those of impression than projection, nonetheless they are part of the performance and they convince. Anyway, the acting is more than fine, with a consistent thread of frustration and exhaustion running under Lincoln. You can see the stiffness and tension behind the calm and every time he pulls out one of his many stories, we sense it is as much to quell his own nerves as to assure those around him. Lewis' fine performance is built upon the script's equally fine characterization of Lincoln. We grow to understand that he is drawing on every source he knows, from political allies to enemies, from Euclid to scripture, and turning to every tool he knows from humor to solemnity, not just to win his cause, but simply to carry on.

The supporting cast is generally only successful because they look quirky and speak more finely than we are accustomed. They're effective but not exceptional. When the movie relies on Tommy Lee Jones' grizzled visage for effect we know it's not trying hard enough. Most of what we get to know about the politicians comes from an undeveloped blurb or two about why they do or don't support the Amendment.  Had these characters brought more and better articulation of the arguments for and against Lincoln's maneuvers in conducting the war and passing the Amendment, the the film would have been the richer.

Yet there is much to enjoy in Lincoln, chiefly the dialogue with its rich expression and circumlocutory insults.  On the other hand there is much entertaining talking in Lincoln, but surprisingly little dialogue in which an idea is developed. That Lincoln presents ideas but doesn't really argue them, giving the viewer the false impression that he has been educated an edified, is probably its greatest flaw. Still, there's a good deal here, but Lincoln's not more than the sum of its parts.

The Classics Problem

Two articles I stumbled upon this morning spurred some post-breakfast thinking on academia, specifically of the Classical variety. The first via Rogue Classicism discussed the demise of a prominent classics blog and the second was a list about dissertations in The Guardian. After chewing on the articles a while I came away with a little indigestion and now that it has passed I have a few thoughts on what we might call The Classics Problem.

The Classics Problem is that Classicists think there's a problem with Classics, namely that Western Civilization isn't groveling at the feet of people who count conjunctions and propose emendations to medieval gardening treatises. This fundamental problem turns out to be a handily protean one to the Classist who readily transforms it into the perennial calamities of slackening education standards, cultural decline, social indifference, inadequate funding, social injustice, and forest fires.  Classics is the answer, of course.

Hieronymus Jackdaw,
a prominent Classicist

I would propose that in good measure Classists are the problem, having delved too greedily and too deep into their precious texts. They want to hoard as one discipline what should be gleefully diffused amongst the humanities. Instead of standing prominently alone, Classicists need to be willing, to some degree, to disappear into the foundations of other disciplines.

Classists ought to consider, perhaps, that little more may be dug up and researched about the ancient world with great profit. They ought to consider that their esoteric articles, dissertations, and academic paraphernalia may do less good for the world than would sharing the fundamentals they take for granted. Classicists might need to realize there is a much smaller space for research than is commonly thought and that that sequestering professors in offices and articles in private databases is not the best way to spread ideas.

The world needs more of its Greek and Roman heritage flowing in its veins, yes, but it needs it in plays, operas, and novels, not commentaries. We need statesmen weaned on Thucydides and Cicero, generals studied of Alexander and Julius Caesar, and philosophers who actually read Greek. We don't need, "Classics," or "culture," our "a culture of classics," rather we need our own authentic, living, culture grounded in Classics. We need creativity. That means we need more students of English, music, and history with a solid classical education, and that means we need teachers.

Of kind, we need teachers of Classical languages, yes, and history, but we also need history, music, art, and even science teachers with firm Classical foundations. Similarly Classicists need to broaden their intellectual horizons. It will simply not do to sit down to translate Plato or Thucydides and concede discussions of content to the philosophers and historians. As an aside, teachers of Latin and Greek need to read the great works in their native language and develop on their own literary expression. Studying Latin and Greek is a gift, but it can wreak havoc on your style if you don't synthesize the elements into a sensible whole. Academese is already an aesthetic catastrophe, Classical Academese is a blight on humanity.

Of quality, we need good ones, naturally, but full-time ones. We can't have our greatest minds teaching 15 hours a week and chasing sabbaticals so they can finish that paper on Cicero's underpants. A tenured university position doing mostly research cannot be the ideal.  We can't be dismayed at the idea of grading tests and papers, but we need to be excited at the thought of what Classics can do for a brilliant mind. We should not always think on getting back to "our work," but we need to imagine a Mozartian score to a Sophoclean libretto or a Bachian fugue on a line of Heraclitus and infuse the excitement over such possibilities into education.

In short: more creation, more cultivation, less curation. We need to stop standing around the spear, lecturing everyone about its beauty and importance, and we need to pick it up and give it a good throw.  That'll get everyone's attention.

Review: Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares [TV, UK]

Several weeks ago your humble blogger fell prey to some or other bacterial nastiness, so ill in fact that he couldn't read or write. Even his beloved music brought him no pleasure. In those sweaty, fevered hours I, your humble author, turned not only to television, but to reality programming.

Scoff. Guffaw if you must, but hear me. Indeed that I could, deprived of most of my critical faculties, still follow the show suggests the reality tv experience is more pacification than engagement or even diversion. Yet I count the experience as fortunate, having stumbled upon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

Famous most, perhaps, for dining entrepreneur and Master Chef Gordon Ramsay's spirited, confrontational, and profanity-laden criticism, Kitchen Nightmares follows the titular chef around Great Britain as he whips flagging restaurants into shape. The show's appeal is apparent: Ramsay is passionate, blunt, and brilliant. His precise, vivid descriptions are informative and his enthusiasm for good food and culinary excellence is inspiring. It's also easy to get hooked on his outrageous harangues against the know-it-alls who refuse to take professional advice even as their businesses fall apart around them. Surely, though, I gained something more from Kitchen Nightmares than the addition of shambolic to my vocabulary? Indeed I did.

The thread I found most noteworthy, and cautionary, ran through every episode, and it is the path which leads to failure. In all the failing businesses Gordon visited, the chefs had met that adversity which greets every endeavor, not with joy, creativity, renewed effort, or humility, but with stubbornness. They refused to admit and learn from their mistakes and as they muddled along and the business failed, they put less and less effort into it. Gradually, day-by-day, they became more and more miserable until the restaurant had become a burden they could not wait to put down. This downward spiral was surprisingly affecting to see and I think it will touch a nerve in anyone who has hit a rough patch in any endeavor. As such I  found myself rooting for the chefs, not only to rise out of their shame and despair but also to rediscover the love of their craft.

Most of the chefs passed through several phases of Ramsay-induced frustration. First, they grew indignant when he ruffled their pride with his criticism. Whose puddings are flat and whose dining room looks like a strip club. After a bit they relented and followed his recommendations. Then they began to resent the quantity of effortful work they needed to put in. Finally, most realized that, exhausted though they were, they were starting to care again. The customers began to come back and the chefs and owners began to take pride in their work and rediscover the joy they had known.

The cussing and shouting may make the commercials, but Ramsay is in fact encouraging and constructive. He doesn't try to commandeer the kitchen and in fact refuses to, but rather explains to everyone what his job is and how to do it, and then tries to inspire him to dig down and find the will to get it done. Ramsay teaches the kitchen teams that fun comes not from goofing off from the work, or goofing on it with indifference, but from taking delight in the experience with all its responsibilities and absurdities. He teaches them to trust one another and to refine their own skills and form their own characters so they can in turn be trusted. Ramsay clearly wants them to succeed because he enjoys and respects excellence and he wants everyone to be excellent. He also understands as a businessman the risks they took opening a restaurant. Overall, the show is a far cry from the foul-mouths and flying cutlery of the commercials.

What came across most, in fact, was not Gordon's ballsy style but his creativity and energy. Ramsay brings a youthful, joyful energy and a technical mastery which excite everyone around him. He enters these drab, depressed restaurants like a tempest, upturning the musty eateries with new decors, new advertising, better organization, and of course, new menus. Many of the restaurants in their downward slides had turned to unwrapping prepared foods and heating them in microwaves. Sure Ramsay was appalled at the poor quality and deceit, but he showed them how this shortcut had cut them off from the joys of cooking: experimenting with fresh ingredients, forging relationships with the local growers and sellers, and pleasing diners with something excellent you prepared yourself with care and your unique style. When the chefs realized Gordon held them as professionals to a high standard they were downright ashamed at their own carelessness and apathy. You could see in their faces the thought, "How did it, how did I get to this point?" Seeing them rise, rediscovering their passion and craft, and seeing everyone find his place in the restaurant surely is the true heart and appeal of the show.

Ramsay's intensity and passion even went so far as to make me a tad self-conscious. He didn't want the chefs to put a broccoli out of place on a single plate: maybe I need to step up the quality of my work. Are there days I just muddle through? Am I proud of the work I do? Am I giving them my best and what I've promised? Would my work hold up to the scrutiny of an expert? Do I talk myself into easy excuses, do I take shortcuts? Do I admit my mistakes and learn from them?

Reflective questions from an entertaining show.

App Review: The Orchestra, by TouchPress

by Touch Press. 2012.

Christmas comes early this year with another iOS app from Touch Press, who earlier this year brought us Shakespeare's Sonnets. Their latest offering, The Orchestra, brings Touch Press' characteristic polish to an app of musical exploration and appreciation. The Orchestra takes selections from eight orchestral works, from symphonies by Haydn and Beethoven to Stravinsky's Firebird and Salonen's Violin Concerto, and presents them supplemented by a host of tools.

The first of these tools is the video itself. At first this claim might seem an exaggeration, but we don't simply get a video of the performance, nor do we even get a superbly filmed concert performance. We get a performance during which cameras were able to float free and close to the performers, capturing close ups of all the sections, and which is expertly edited together to show sections and details at the appropriate time. Moreover, you can view up to three preselected angles at the same time, capturing, say, the conductor and two sections. Simply tap, pinch, and drag to cycle, expand, and arrange the videos as you please. You can also array the videos in miniature above the score. This is simply a blast. It's a treat to get such good camerawork but it is downright exciting to see so much going on in one view.

click to enlarge

The next of The Orchestra's features is the score, which scrolls along as the piece plays. A red line marks your current position and you can swipe back and forth to rewind or skip ahead. The scrolling is all perfectly smooth and if you have the videos playing at the same time there's nary a jitter out of them either. Even if you jump back or ahead several dozen bars the app picks up where you stop without a pause. Slick.

You can choose either a full score or one showing only the staves of currently playing instruments. This  feature, in conjunction with the auto-scrolling and the ease with which you can rewind, makes The Orchestra a tremendous aid to anyone learning to read a score. Beyond the score, though, are two visualizations of the musical selection. The first is a bar-graph style version of the score in which the parts are color coded and note values are represented not by different symbols but by lines of varying length. This increasingly popular visualization of the score helps emphasize the note lengths and shapes of the rhythms and it's gratifying to see it more formally welcomed into musical learning.

The second visualization, however, I had never seen before and makes clever use of the tablet's touch interface. Touch Press calls it a, "mesmeric synchronized BeatMap," and it consists of an overhead view of the orchestra, color-coded by section, with each instrument replaced by a dot. As the piece plays, the dots flash whenever the particular instrument hits a note. This is a splendid way to get a better sense of the orchestration of a piece, but one additional feature puts this tool over the top. If you tap the section, the app lowers the volume on the others. What a great way to study both rhythm and harmony, being able to isolate the sections and see which instruments play which rhythms and hear the timbres both by themselves and then in concert with the others. Due to space limitations this feature is only available for the Beethoven symphony, although you can enable and download it for the other apps with an in-app purchase.

Lastly, The Orchestra includes textual commentaries by Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and LA Times music critic Mark Swed. You can overlay both either as text or audio over the videos or score, which makes for a great follow up to the performance. Also, presenting these commentaries as overlays is much preferable to simply tucking them away as text files. Also included are descriptions of the instruments, accompanied with brief video descriptions from the principal players, a 3D model of the instrument, a MIDI keyboard letting you tap out notes on the instrument and see its range, and shortcuts to selections showcasing the instrument. These are nice touches, as smoothly implemented as the rest of the app, to material which could simply have been thrown in to fill out a features list.

These materials do, however, make me yearn for more scholarly information. I hope Touch Press considers following up The Orchestra with similar apps dedicated to specific pieces, with full performances, scholarly articles, and scores annotated with observations on harmony, structure, and so forth.

Still, this is a brilliant app. The Orchestra is exciting to use and takes a big and welcome step in app design. It doesn't simply put a lot of useful information at your fingertips, but it takes one topic and gives you many paths to and through it. The score and visualizations and videos aren't left as discrete bundles but are stitched together into the experience of hearing the music. The result is a dynamic app which feels less like a reference book and instead disappears into what becomes an enhanced experience of the music. Bravo and Encore.

N.B. The Orchestra weighs in at a hefty 1.8 GB, but that's to be expected with so much video.

The Impossible Task

Throughout most of the year, arguing for traditional Catholic liturgical music, chant, is a difficult task. You have to contend with indifference, ignorance, philistinism, and, most fiercely, the inertia of the status quo. Yet Advent inertia is a whole different beast from the habits of the rest of the year. Advent is not like Lent, when you might be able to slip a solemn tone in amongst the usual assortment of dour hymns, or Ordinary Time when dropping On Eagle's Wings one week won't ruffle anyone's feathers. No, during Advent people have expectations, namely that of yuletide cheer peppered with a few minor thirds. Never mind the miracle and implications of incarnatus est et homo factus est, one must serve up the usual sweet fodder. The details don't seem to matter too much, as long as you serve the following courses:

• twelve toe-tappers
• eleven pop tunes
• ten minor melodies
• nine cheery carols
• eight bobbing ballads
• seven gooey lullabies
• six wintry airs
• five golden oldies
• four rhyming refrains
• two merry rounds
• one Old Testament anthem
• and Handel's Hallelujah chorus

You'll know you've pleased everyone if you see Fezziwig come jiggering out of the sacristy.

Now I'm not usually persuaded by the claim that parishioners want the music that's played at church. I don't think people would miss the Mass of Creation were it suddenly to disappear. Many people expect some kind of music, not unreasonably, but they don't care too much about style or content. Yet during Advent and on Christmas. . . So what to do? How does one finagle a sacred mass without a yuletide revolt in the pews? I have a few suggestions.

The first is to stay calm. There's a place in the world for people who have no musical taste (Arctic penal colonies), so don't get apoplectic because they prefer The First Noel to Puer Natus Est or some bird's nest from Rutter to a Byrd Gloria. This isn't the time to give lectures about textual primacy or voice leading to such parishioners. Just tie them up and leave them somewhere for the winter.

Second, be practical. This is also not the time to push your ideas, however beautifully developed and presented, on choir directors. They tend to be busy and frazzled during December. By now you're probably out of time to persuade them, so instead just throw away all the music you don't like. They're not organized enough to have extras.

Third, if you manage to incorporate proper music into a mass but expect Occupy Schola to show up demanding Go Tell It on the Mountain, consider ending the mass with something popular. If you give them what they want at the end, they might forget about what came earlier. A compromise.

Fourth, try offloading the cheesy music to a Lessons and Carols concert. You might not want to yield this occasion to the philistines, but better it than mass.

Lastly, people slip back into old habits, so you'll probably never improve things once and for all.