Thursday, December 31, 2009

The Onion Strikes Again


Certain sectors of the particular layer of the biosphere called The Christian Intellectual Right --that is, the Flat-Earthers who champion the Creationist cause-- have been saying that the Earth was created around 6000 years ago.  The Onion breaks the story from 6000 years back about the reaction of the Sumerians (who were struggling to make a go of things just about then) to God suddenly deciding to create the Heavens and the Earth --well, it must be a sort of re-creation, because what were the Sumerians doing, then, if they hadn't been created?  You can read all about it here: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/sumerians_look_on_in_confusion_as

Arch, baffled by the implications.

P.S. I mean, I'd be pretty upset if someone tried to create me when I was busy with something.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Richard Wagner's Music

The music of Richard Wagner (the first name is pronounced in the German way, as Ric-hard, or sometimes Ree-shard). Known a little better today than a few decades ago, because of the use of The Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now, Wagner's music still deserves to be more familiar. (Unfortunately, it is reported that Hitler loved the music of Wagner, and this created a great deal of ill-will towards the composer, which persists to this date.) Wagner wrote principally opera, which are essentially large-scale musical dramas. Up until Wagner began innovating with this genre, operas were written in very sectional form, as are certain types of Broadway musicals, with songs, dances, dialogue between songs, duets, etc. Wagner very deliberately began to move in the direction of an unbroken, continuous musical line which did not naturally and comfortably split into musical 'numbers', as they are called. With the understanding that these chunks were not intended to be 'free-standing', here are a few, to get you started enjoying Wagner.
  1. The first I can think of is the Pilgrim's Chorus from Tannhauser. It is actually a chorus for men, but there is an orchestral version in the Overture, and this is what I'm thinking of. The chorus, in slow triple time, starts out softly played by horns and trombones, representing pilgrims approaching from a distance. It swells, into a churning, agitated middle section, mostly in the string section, and then fades away, as the pilgrims depart, once again with the trombones.
  2. One of the most ethereal pieces of music is the prelude to Wagner's opera Lohengrin. Lohengrin was a mythical knight loosely associated with the Arthurian legend, and the opera relates the tragic love story in which the knight Lohengrin comes to the succor of Elsa of Brabant (who has been accused of kidnapping her own brother). Most of Wagner's Overtures have a symbolic structure that depicts some abstract aspect of the struggle in the story. But this one represents simply Lohengrin's pure love for Elsa. It is such a beautiful piece of writing that it seems almost too hard to return to the real world after it is over. I doubt that a mere YouTube clip can do justice to the music, which starts out very, very soft, with just violins (playing 8 parts, instead of the usual two), and gradually swells in power to a climax punctuated by a firm clash of the cymbals, after which it dies back to a whisper once again. Ok, I've got a sound clip ready; now to upload it...
  3. Wagner's music is very grand. Even in austere works, such as Parsifal, about a painfully innocent knight who simply cannot understand the complexities of love and sex, and his encounter with a woman of loose morals, set against a backdrop of monastic renunciation, the music is sumptuous. It might not be the richness of brocade and velvet, but it's still quietly perfect, the best hair shirt money can buy. The overture to Parsifal has this strange austerity. In this video, one of the most heartbreaking moments comes in at around 1:20. Understandably it is not very exciting; it has a contemplative character.
  4. You have already heard about Die Meistersinger, Wagner's last, and most lighthearted opera. There is a lovely section where Hans Sachs teaches the young knight Walther how to compose a standard Mastersinger song. I will try and get this uploaded for you.  For the moment, here is the young knight Walther singing his prize song in the competition, and the ravished response of his love, young Eva.  The bass voice --Hans himself-- is calling for quiet for the young singer.
  5. Wagner's beautiful Siegfried Idyll was composed as a Christmas gift for his lady (Cosima von Bulow), whose birthday was at Christmastime, and who happened to have just delivered their son, Siegfried, which happened also to the be name of the hero in the Ring Trilogy Wagner was just completing. The Idyll combines several musical themes from the Trilogy, as well as a well-known lullaby.
  6. [In progress]
Arch, uploading furiously.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Pianos, Electric pianos, and keyboards

[A new look for this post!! Hee hee!]

If you don't have a musical family tradition, and you have a musical child, or even if you have a child with unknown potential, you could be easily intimidated by the prospect of getting started with an instrument.  How to proceed?

There are two objectives you could have: (1) general musicianship, and (2) learning an instrument.

(1) General Musicianship:  In a good school district, with a competent music teaching team (or even a single good music teacher), the child's musical development should be in good hands. It is a travesty that this can't be assumed as a given in this day and age. If absolutely necessary, a piano teacher will provide excellent general musicianship; in fact, I would go so far as to suggest that even if a child takes up some melodic instrument, like violin or flute, it makes sense to give them a couple of years of piano anyway.

What I call general musicianship is (a) getting familiar with mainstream traditional music, such as folk-songs, group songs, chorus singing (even "The more we are together" type songs are better than nothing!), and listening to classics, such as Peter and the Wolf, or excerpts from Bach, etc.  If a teacher isn't available, you could organize this sort of thing yourself, with the help of DVDs or the TV.  (b) Group singing.  Every child should have the chance to try to sing in a group. A church setting is okay, if that's your scene, or school, or any such thing.  (c) The rudiments of theory and musical notation.  A year of this is enough to be considered general musicianship, or even one summer of it.  If the kid is interested, you could always follow on with something the following year.  Teachers are understandably unhappy with this sort of interrupted training, so depending on how sympathetic you are to the needs of the music teacher, you could choose to send your kid more often, provided the kid, of course, is willing.

(2) Learning an instrument: Not everyone wants to learn an instrument, nor does everyone want their kid to do so.  If you do, you could choose piano and something else, or piano, or something else.  I would encourage the two instrument approach, if you can afford it, and your youngster has the motivation; otherwise, any instrument is fine.

Piano: For traditional instruments, you have to be guided by the teacher's preferences.  A piano teacher, one of the more traditional ones, will insist on your buying a conventional piano.  A spinet model is all you need, and they run about $3000.  You can rent for a hundred or so a month (or maybe less), or get a used one.  Something less than 15 years old is best; pianos do not improve with age.  Though there's no guarantee that your young person will become a musical genius, access to a piano during childhood is such a fabulously enriching thing that if you can afford it at all, you should go for it.  Warning: if you can't stand noise, and you can't stand kids plunking on the piano, maybe you should give the whole thing up.  If you have a silent piano in the house, the whole purpose has been defeated.  The point is for the kid to play the damn thing, so you have to be ready to take the noise.

Electric keyboards, and Digital Pianos.  For general musicianship, these two sorts of instruments are perfectly acceptable.  An electric keyboard (or synthesizer) can be bought for around $100, and a digital piano from $500 and on up to $3000.  The expensive ones mimic the feel of a traditional piano very well, to the point that practicing on one will enable one to play a real piano.  (Practicing on an electric keyboard will not build the finger strength required to play conventional piano properly with good form and --don't be surprised-- endurance.  Playing the piano requires muscle training, and electric keyboards will not provide it, but the best digital pianos could.)  Some traditional piano teachers will reluctantly live with the student practicing on a good digital piano.

On the plus side, Digital pianos have lots of sound effects, so that the young musician can be more easily persuaded to spend time playing the thing.  The same is true with electric keyboards.  My $200 Casio has some 500 different 'voices', such as violin, and oboe, and organ.

(Why are they called "synthesizers?  It used to be the case that earlier models would synthesize a tone-color by blending artificially generated wave-forms, such as square waves, sawtooth waves, and sine waves.  Modern synthesizers work with sampled tones from actual instruments; that is, a note from an actual piano, or violin or orchestra is recorded, analyzed and stored in the instrument.  The Mellotron, used by the Beatles in Sgt Pepper, did exactly this with tape loops, but now it's done at the factory using digital recordings.)

If there is a possibility that your youngster might be a serious amateur or professional musician, then you might consider an instrument such as a violin, flute, saxophone, or trumpet.  These are actually portals for more useful instrument playing:

A student starting with a violin can switch to a viola, cello, or double bass.  A student starting with flute could progress to oboe, clarinet, English horn, or bassoon; a student starting with trumpet could take up horn, or possibly trombone, tuba, or any of the numerous brass instruments that are featured in orchestras and brass ensembles.  Saxophones provide a door into a tradition of jazz music.  The whole idea is to make it possible for the child to play in an instrument ensemble someday, if the inclination is there.  There is, of course, no guarantee that this will happen, or even that the kid will ever be interested.  But if interest awakens in college, for instance, it might just be too late.

A wonderful ensemble instrument is, of course, the lowly recorder.  If you are so lucky as to have an adult in your community who can guide a young recorder ensemble through its early stages, you can have junior playing in a recorder ensemble right away.  (The Suzuki folk know the power of ensemble playing to motivate kids, and ensemble playing is a mainstay of the Suzuki method.)

A guitar is always a possible choice, even in addition to another instrument. Guitars are light and travel well, and it's possible to acquire quite a lot of general musicianship via a guitar, which has happened in our family.  I was first turned onto the potential of the simple nylon-strung folk guitar by the film The Sound of Music (which has inspired many), and by the writings of Maria von Trapp herself, who called it an orchestra in a box.  Especially for the musically inclined youngster with wide interests and a liking to travel, a guitar is an excellent companion on any trip.

One of these days, they'll invent a folding keyboard that fits inside your suitcase (and if you do, I want credit), and then a guitar will have some serious competition as the instrument of choice of the wandering minstrel!

Last, and most certainly least, is of course a ukulele.  They're not as cheap as you would expect: $80 is about what an inexpensive one would cost.  They come in different sizes, from Baritone, all the way down to Sopranino.  I have left out other instruments such as harmonicas and bagpipes, but they're any one of them better than a home without any musical instrument at all!

Arch

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Christian Theology and Wikipedia

Theology is a topic that I have avoided for the longest time, since I was not really interested in the subject. It was far more interesting to study how the various religions addressed the issue of conduct and morals, rather than how the dealt with the internal resolution of their ideas, principles and mythology.
A friend of mine remarked one day, in disgust, that Theology was more an art form than a branch of logical reasoning. I had taken this to be an expression of general distaste for the subject rather than a serious observation, until this morning, when I looked up Immaculate Conception, just to be sure that my suggestion about the virgin birth of Jesus was on the mark. Man, was I ever wrong!
It turns out that Immaculate Conception is a dogma of what is called Mariology, the study of the mother of Jesus. The dogma is that Mary, herself, was free of any taint of sin from birth. The main churches of Christianity teach that Man is sinful by his very nature, and that even a newborn infant is sinful by its very existence. This is the doctrine of original sin, and one of the biggest philosophical stumbling blocks to belief in Christianity. So, we are told by the Catholics, especially Pope Pius the Ninth, that Mary was free of sin at birth, and remained sin-free for the rest of her life, so that Jesus, when he was borne by her, was untainted by sin in any way.
Unfortunately, the Wikipedia article brings ridicule upon itself by detailing various other principles and dogmas, each more ludicrous than the one before, each one a horrible band-aid to make an earlier, flawed declaration marginally more plausible (and failing utterly), until the entire thing is pathetic.
The earlier part of the article is evidently written by a Catholic, or at least someone at least moderately sympathetic to Catholic theology. Then comes a section in which the Protestant views of the Immaculate Conception are presented, understandably non-sympathetically. Even the most minute assertion is challenged with subsequently interposed, parenthetical editorial annotations, such as [why?] and [need references], and so on. Obviously, Wikipedia is not the place to present a fair and balanced description of a religious dogma that is not universally accepted. An article on immaculate conception in an encyclopedia, it seems to me, has to be laid out by a neutral authority, who objectively explains the various stands on the issue, after which authorities that espouse one view or another can present their particular take on the matter in such a way that it is clear that there are sides to the story.
The Wikipedia concept is focused on information, rather than opinion, and will obviously be more useful for objectively verifiable facts, e.g. history, natural science, biography, etc. In the areas such as theology, accuracy has to be about dates and sources, and not about logical consistency and the nature of religious reality, such as it is. The world is increasingly less interested in whether Mary was born without sin, than in the question of how many angels can occupy the point of a needle. So, though it is deeply annoying that the first author of the Wikipedia article, who could actually be any idiot who got it into his or her head to write it, seems to have doubts about the quality of the portion of the article on Protestant objections to immaculate conception, the article has probably not been read by more than a handful of readers. And that's probably how it should remain. [Added later:] Lest my fans misunderstand my position on this whole immaculate thing, I want to make it perfectly clear that I totally and absolutely believe that Mary was sinless at birth. Actually, I believe that everybody is sinless at birth, including myself. (And most of you, if you're normal.) All the sins that besmirch my record at the present date were earned with blood sweat and tears by yours truly, and under no circumstances will any deity take credit for them, under penalty of law. Oops, I forgot that deities are above the law. For those who are not hep to the Original Sin business: be ye informed that Original Sin was invented by the Catholic Church, and subsequently subscribed to by the protestants, long after Jesus was dead (or left the earth as a human being, anyway), so in a sense it was invented behind his back. He would certainly have had some harsh words to say about it, if he had been asked. Added yet later: in contrast to their highly embarrassing theology, various progressive members of Vatican moral think tanks, and Catholic intellectuals outside Rome, have been leaders in interpreting what it means to be a Catholic in modern society, especially in the Third World. The fight against poverty and ignorance by Catholic individuals has sometimes outshone those of the Protestant churches, especially in the poorer countries of South America.
Archimedes

Friday, December 25, 2009

Ave Maria

. This phrase, which means literally "Greetings, Mary," is the first phrase in a certain passage in the book of Luke, generally called the Annunciation, in which the Angel Gabriel is said to have informed the maid that she bore a divine child. (This charming story is considered to have been added to the oral tradition by the Greek Christians almost a century after the birth of Jesus. Google "immaculate conception", and you should get some authoritative opinions on the matter.) I was inspired to write about the phrase because I happened to have been "ripping" an album of the Anonymous4, in which was featured a track called Ave Maria (dated between 500 and 1500, according to Susan Hellauer's liner notes), and the ripping program (the legendarily feeble-minded Win Media Player) suggested that the composer was Franz Schubert. Full points for attempted helpfulness, but this simply shows that the brains out at the Internet music database only know one piece called Ave Maria. In addition to Franz Schubert's evidently highly popular Ave Maria, there is Charles Gounod's tune, written to be sung over Prelude No. 1 in C major, from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, and countless others, including (I just learned this) Anton Bruckner. Johannes Brahms has set the words as well. How old is the Ave Maria? Obviously the New Testament accounts date from around the first or second century, and the original passage from Luke (taken from two verses in Chapter 1) dates from then. A rough translation goes like this:
Hail (Mary), blessed art thou above all women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb!
By the time the year 1500 had arrived, the prayer was now significantly expanded:
Hail Mary, full of grace, Blessed art thou above all women, And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of god, Be with us sinners, now and in The hour of our death.
It so happens, though, and I'm almost certain of this, that Schubert's lyrics have additional elements that have nothing to do with this prayer (which in turn has only the slightest origins in the Bible, which again, in turn, contains only the merest fraction of all the competing Christian writings known at the time.) The last "petition in the prayer" was added, according to Wikipedia, around the time of the Council of Trent, and is at least partly attributed to Petrus Canisius, a Dutch Jesuit. At any rate, considering the popularity of the text, and the plethora of composers who have set it over the centuries, it is a charming eccentricity of Media Player and it's database that it singles out Schubert to be the lone recipient of credit for the music. At the time of the carol sung by Anonymous 4, of course, Schubert was not even a twinkle in his father's eye. (At least it didn't suggest Celtic Woman, which would have been inexcusable.) Arch, baffled by the illogic of Roman Catholicism, but content. The Wisdom of God is the foolishness of men, according to them, and we should leave the Catholics to further contribute to the wisdom of their deity.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Recorder Music

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Recorders are a sort of niche area within classical music.  They were going out of style in the time of J. S. Bach already (we are a little confused about whether he wanted recorders or flutes in his orchestras; probably sometimes it was one, and sometimes the other).  They came into fashion in the seventies, because they're not difficult to learn to play moderately well.  An ensemble of several recorders (of varying sizes, of course) is called a consort of recorders.

Here is the Loeki Stardust Quartet from Amsterdam.  These guys are very well known indeed for their virtuoso playing.  There's no indication of what the piece is.

The Flanders quartet playing a piece by Merula (16th century).

Two numbers from The Art of Fugue by J.S. Bach, played by the Daphne Recorder Quartet.

This is Sirena, evidently an all-woman ensemble with a gorgeous double-bass recorder (looking a bit like a double-bassoon).  They're playing a lovely chorale by Bach [:Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier].

Here are these irrepressible Sirena gals again, playing a dance from Michael Praetorius, a collector of early music centuries before research into ancient music came into fashion in recent times.  Praetorius's name is known to me principally as the one to whom is ascribed the tune Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (There is a Rose blooming), whose harmonization by Bach is a Christmas favorite.

Finally, here is the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra playing one version of J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto no. 4 in G.  This version has two recorders and harpsichord, rather than two recorders and violin.  The recorder soloists are (Italian: Flauto dolce): Günther Höller, Ulrike Thieme.  The harpsichord soloist is the celebrated Christiane Jaccottet.


Added later: Sirena is evidently a Swedish group. A visit to their site quickly reveals that they have a zany sense of humor. Here is an extended video clip featuring several of their favorite pieces, and lots of oddball high jinks.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Carols of the Season

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There is a lot of good music for Christmas, including carols, and with the magic of YouTube we can sample them here!

Carols are of several varieties, and each kind has lovely examples.
  • One kind is simply ancient songs and dances that come to us from ancient times; there are medieval carols that are still sung today that come to us from England, France, all the lands that are today Poland, Germany, Austria and Hungary, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, and The Netherlands.  (There are also carols from many other nations, e.g. the Czech Republic / Slovenia, Greece and Russia, not to mention the Middle East, and quite probably Egypt.)  I am not a specialist (though I play one on the Web), so I can only offer a few examples, without supplying the research that you crave for, in your ceaseless thirst for knowledge.
  • The Boar's Head Carol, is actually one of the macaronic carols mentioned below.  It is a secular carol, having more to do with the midwinter celebration than Christmas as such.  (There is nothing to connect the birth of Jesus with the winter months.)  This is probably one of the most ancient carols that are still sung today.
  • Another sort is Victorian carols, a product of the great proliferation of carols of a couple of hundred years ago in England that are essentially Christmas hymns, that simply haven't gone through the rigorous committee process that precedes acceptance as an actual hymn.  Many of these are disguised as ancient carols, and many others of these are indeed actually ancient carols metrified and harmonized in Bach style.  One is Ding Dong Merrily on High, whose tune is is derived from an old French dance called Bransle Officiel.
  • In Dulci Jubilo, a so-called macaronic carol, with Latin lines interspersed with English / German lines.
  • The justly famous and beloved O Holy Night, Cantique de Noel, or Minuit Chretiens ("Midnight, Christians!"), with music by Adolphe Adam, who happened to be Jewish, resulting in the carol being proscribed for decades before it was finally allowed in Catholic churches. This utterly sentimental song has beautifully idealistic words.  This is a delightful performance.  The carol is also lovely sung in French by a tenor.  This is Enrico Caruso, and if you've never heard him, here's your chance.
  • One of the most interesting and popular modern Christmas hymns is O Little Town of Bethlehem.  This one is very much an Anglo-American collaboration.  The words are by Boston (Philadelphia?) pastor Philip Brooks, who wrote them evidently inspired by a visit to the Holy Land, and the town of Bethlehem, the legendary birthplace of Jesus.  The music is, as it happens, provided by a fascinating variety of composers, because there are actually close to a dozen different tunes to which this hymn is sung.
    • Probably the most common tune in the USA is apparently the original one composed for the hymn by one Lewis Redner: St Louis. Here it's sung by Connie Talbot, about whom I know absolutely nothing.
    • The most common tune in Britain is Forest Green, to which in the USA many other hymns are sung, and hardly ever O Little Town.
    • A tune that found some favor is Walford Davies's Christmas Carol.
    • A lovely alternative is Bethlehem, by Joseph Barnby. (There was only a horrible MIDI available on the Web, so I put together this file. Unfortunately, there are some clumsy mistakes in my arrangement of Barnby's harmony, which I should have left alone...)  The original tune and harmony is available at the site The Hymns and Carols of Christmas.
  • Another sort is broadly derived from Christmas hymns, which in turn have many sources, many of them German: e.g. Hark the Herald Angels Sing, whose tune, attributed to F. Mendelssohn, was simply a hymn-tune from one of the many hymn collections he knew, with his wonderful harmony (subsequently improved by David Willcox, and the usual suspects).  
  •  The poster boy of Christmas Hymns, at least where I grew up, is of course Adeste Fidelis: O come, all ye faithful, words adapted from Prose for Christmas Day, by John of Reading, a British Monk of the fourteenth century.
  • Let all mortal flesh keep silent  I haven't found a decent recording of this on the Web, but I'll provide a link when I do.  This hymn is intended to be sung unison, and the tune is variously called Picardie, or French Carol.
  • There are also modern carols, simply compositions by known composers, to supplement the musical diversity available for church and university choirs. 
  • One beautiful example is "The Little Road to Bethlehem", by Michael Head.  This performance is exceptional.  (The performance depends critically on the soprano soloist, as well as the treble line.)
  • Here's another one: The Three Kings, by Peter Cornelius.  The chorale that weaves through it is Wie schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern, "How brightly beams the morning star", a hymn beloved of Johann Sebastian Bach. (In fact, J. S. Bach's opus no. 1 is a cantata based on that carol.)
  • Another one: A Spotless rose, by Herbert Howells.  The singing is good, despite all the coughing.  I love the moment when the baritone sings: "The blessed babe..."  Gorgeous!
  • Here is the little door, sung by Chanticleer, a wonderful American male voice choir.  Words evidently by G. K. Chesterton.
  • The most famous Christmas carol, arguably, is Silent Night (Stille Nacht, in German), composed by Francis Xavier Gruber. I have written about it earlier, last year.
  • The Blessed Son of God, music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, a carol with very modern harmonies (redolent with major sevenths, and lovely suspensions). The video is a little annoying; just don't look at it.  (If you search on YouTube, there is a beautiful recording sung by a Dutch quartet, where the lines of the harmony are very clear.  Unfortunately it seems a heavy bandwidth is needed for it, for whatever reason.)
  • Modern carols that derive from folk songs from 'foreign lands', e.g. India, Japan and Korea.  
  •  An instance is "Sleep in my arms", created by Malcolm Sargent from a Korean folk song Arirang.
  • Carols that are metrizations of chants.
  • Finally, songs that are not carols at all, but simply Christmas songs, that are essentially modern popular songs with a holiday theme, e.g. Jingle Bells, and Feliz Navidad, not to mention Grandma got runover by a reindeer.  (This can be easily converted into a bona fide carol with a few glorias and hallelujas inserted into it.)One of my personal favourites is the Christmas Waltz, by The Carpenters.  (There is an unfortunate fleeting emphasis on "things", entirely unintended, I'm sure.)
Archimedes

Monday, November 30, 2009

Another gorgeous aria by J.S.Bach: Wohl euch, ihr auserwählten Seelen

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I'm always rediscovering these arias, aren't I!

This one (I don't know what the words mean) is available on YouTube in several versions.

The first one is by Bach Collegium Stuttgart, conducted by Helmut Rilling, and in this recording sung, I believe by Helen Watts.  The Stuttgart uses modern instruments, in contrast to other orchestras that more increasingly use original instruments.  As you can hear, modern instruments (which, most significantly, use steel strings on the violins and violas, etc.) sound fine on Bach arias.  The flutes are regular silver flutes, in contrast to original instrument ensembles, which use recorders.  (I'll try to put in a picture of a recorder sometime.)  Unfortunately, sister Helen seems to be simply singing the piece without much real feeling.  But Bach certainly can be performed like that.

Another version is by The English Baroque Soloists, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, with Magdalena Kozena singing the aria.  Magdalena manages to inject a little more conviction into her interpretation, but it is still still cool singing for Ms Kozena.  (Perhaps the words mean something fairly neutral, such as The Sun Rises In The East.  Wait; euch means y'all.  It means "Y'all should jolly well auserwählten yourselves.")  Here you can clearly hear the recorders, which have a lovely limpid sound, particularly attractive to romantics and antiquarians such as myself.  This version, at least, goes all the way to the end (grumble-grumble).

The photo (a composite from Google Images) shows three different sizes of recorders.  The young fellow seems to be playing a soprano, the woman with him an alto, and the lady above is playing a particularly ornate tenor recorder (probably at a renaissance fair somewhere).  There are also bass, and sopranino recorders.

[Added later: I have just found out that Helen Watts died on October 9, 2009.  This great Welsh contralto has given us a great many wonderful arias in the oratorio repertoire.  May she be remembered long.]

Arch

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Growing up Male or Female in America

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Thomas Bartlett recently wrote an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about being a boy: The Puzzle of Boys.  (The title of this post links to the article ---at least I hope so.)

The fascinating thing about gender differences to me --certainly in humans--- is that they're so hard to think about objectively, and yet they're so fascinating when someone does write about them.  After thirty years, since feminism was first given the stature of a popular movement in the seventies, it seems that bringing up girls to be the way they had been for millennia: pretty and nurturing, is still going on in quite ordinary homes all over the world, and bringing up boys to be willful and aggressive (and "mission-oriented") is also taking place.  There was a limited movement towards a more gender-neutral approach to child-rearing, started as early as Benjamin Spock, but declining greatly during the more conservative times in the US, though enlightened conservatives must certainly be aware of the dangers of too enthusiastic gender-reinforcement in early childhood.

I suspect that there may be a subconscious belief in most Americans that the gender differences, even reinforced by feelings of discrimination among both genders, is what provides the tension that makes the social-cultural-economic dynamics of this society work.  There might be a suspicion that since it is Sex that drives the marketplace, too much unisex anything is bad for business.

I'm determined to write at greater length on this topic, but I'm going to close for now.

Arch

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The Irish Dance to "Mr Blue Sky"

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Quite by accident, I got interested in a song by Electric Light Orchestra (ELO):  Mr Blue Sky, which was 'performed' during a recent rally in Ireland---having to do with some funding for the Arts issue.  ELO seem to have recorded this song before I got to be aware of them as the band that was featured in the eighties musical Xanadu, starring Olivia (what a babe) Newton-John (and, of course, Gene Kelly, of "Singing in the Rain" fame).

ELO originated in Birmingham, and perhaps it's this fact that causes their dialect to be so thick; even the Beatles at their worst would sing quite clearly.  (In fact, when singing, the Beatles seemed to mimic American pronunciation.)  From Gerry & the Pacemakers, Herman's Hermits and the Monkees, for instance, you got very thick dialect.  (I realize these other bands were not from Birmingham!)

The song, Mr Blue Sky has all the innocent delight of Here Comes the Sun.  (Someone evidently loved the four opening chords of Paul McCartney's Yesterday, and used them to open Mr B.S. to good effect.)

On YouTube, there is a delightful cover of MrBS by the British artist Lily Allen, who has a very charming voice, remarkably suited to this particular song. But  I wonder whether that pounding beat can't be replaced by something just as energetic, but perhaps a little more sophisticated?  [On second thoughts, Ms Allen wreaks her own kind of havoc on the lyrics, with those glottal stop things they do over there.  Perhaps there's something about the song that requires a sort of strong regional accent...]

Arch

Saturday, November 21, 2009

December Named National Awareness Month


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The Onion reports that December has been named National Awareness Month.  All the details are at their site (just click on the heading of this post).

Well; there doesn't seem a lot more to be said; the old Onion seems to have said it all.  Also look on this site for reported alternatives for President Obama's war plan.

Arch, very worried

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Beatles, After the End: More Great Stuff

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[This was a post started in 2009, and never published!  Here it is, warts and all:]

Not only did the Beatles disappoint their many fans by revealing their group to be shockingly mortal, they went on to pursue creative solo careers, almost the first really big rock 'n' roll band to get a posthumous life of this sort.

John Lennon, one of the Senior Beatles, made albums with a couple of backing groups: The Plastic Ono Band, with his most characteristically angst-filled solo album, at a time when he was in counseling.  Imagine was made with a big studio band with many big names among them.  Some time later came Mind Games, and many years later, he made Double Fantasy, shortly before he was killed by a crazed fan.  (BTW, an album I have just been acquainted with this minute is Walls and Bridges.)  For my money, Shaved Fish, a compilation of Lennon's greatest post-Beatles hits, is a winner from first track to last.

Mother, and Working Class Hero are notable tracks on Plastic Ono Band.  On Imagine, apart from the title track, there is Jealous Guy, and Oh Yoko, both well known, but not favorites of mine.  I should mention Give Peace a Chance, and So this is Christmas, and Watching the Wheels. Here are two favorites: Mind Games, and Aisumasen. Another is Whatever gets you through the night, with Elton John.

Paul McCartney, soon after the demise of the Beatles, formed a successful group called Wings, and released a sequence of highly successful albums through the seventies and eighties.  His style now diverged dramatically from the joint Lennon-McCartney style of their Beatles compositions, and most fans would consider that the whole had been far greater than the sum of the parts, certainly as they survived the breakup of the group.

Before Wings, Paul recorded McCartney with his wife, Linda, which contained the songs Junk, and Maybe I'm amazed. Admiral Halsey, Live and Let Die, and other songs from McCartney and Wings were heard all through the seventies, and it was clear that at least 50% of the charm of the Beatles was the disarming whimsy of Paul McCartney, which combined with the anger of John Lennon, which was transformed by his humor (and sometimes directed inward, at himself) together gave the Beatles the magic formula.

Ringo Starr released a couple of albums which contained a few tuneful songs, and was helped enthusiastically by George Harrison.  Ringo himself, despite his frustration with John and Paul, never held back when called upon for a special event, for charity or for the sheer fun of doing something creative. He continued to hold the Beatles banner high, even when it was almost certain that no project could possibly attract the support of all the surviving Beatles, after John's death.

George Harrison, in my estimation, was the one who surprised us all. Heading in a new direction with music which had its roots in country music and southern rock, George wrote a sequence of a half dozen songs that should earn him a place as one of the great songwriters of the century: My Sweet Lord, Give me Love, What is Life, All things must Pass, these songs are almost painfully tuneful, and they deserve to be re-sung and rerecorded for a long time to come. Forgive me for giving a link for Paul's rendition of All things must Pass; I prefer his more rhythmic version to George's slow, philosophical performance. There are tons of other Harrison songs: those written for Concert for Bangladesh, a number of them performed at Concert for George.

McCartney is developing into an even better live performer than he used to be with the Beatles (John was probably the weak link there; in most of the video clips he looks very much under the weather), and some of Paul's live performances of Beatles songs compare well with the original studio versions.  It's heartbreaking, in 2009, to be left with only McCartney and Starr, but we must learn to be thankful for all that recorded treasure of the Beatles in their time.

Archimedes

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The End: The Last Three Beatles Albums


The purpose of these posts is to focus on the music, and only secondarily to talk about the musicians themselves, though to some extent their personalities intrude into a discussion of the music.

All three of The Beatles, (the White Album), Abbey Road, and Let It Be were worked on concurrently; if not concurrent, their creation periods overlapped considerably. Abbey Road is more explicitly a valedictory album, consisting of an effort to cooperate in producing one last piece of work together. Let it be --the movie and the album taken together, documents the struggle to stay together, and its failure, while The Beatles (White Album) must have started out being a straightforward album, in the course of which it became clear that things were going horribly awry. I have no documentation of these claims, so you have to take them for what they're worth (which is: not much).

The White Album ("The Beatles") consisted of two discs, and contained a number of gems; I shall mention only a few: Back in the USSR was a satire of California Girls by the Beach Boys,  While my guitar gently weeps practically invented heavy metal, a genre that is hard to define. George Harrison's stature as a composer was now undeniable.  The guitar solos included work by Eric Clapton. Rocky Raccoon is a hilarious spoof on Wild West ballads for children's TV, presumably.  Obladi-Oblada is a song much admired in some quarters.  Blackbird, Why don't we do it in the road, and Julia are three more interesting songs on the first disc.  Blackbird is a lovely piece of guitar work by Paul McCartney, while Julia is an ode to John's late mother, featuring John on guitar.  There are many instances of Paul McCartney reemerging as a serious rocker, e.g. Helter Skelter.

The second disc contains Mother Nature's Son (also recorded by John Denver, of all people), Sexy Sadie, and Revolution.

Abbey Road seems to me what the Beatles wanted to be their farewell album.  There is a song, The End, which has each of the three guitarists playing a guitar solo (I can't remember which segment is by which), and a drum solo (or solos, who knows?).  Most interestingly, the album was created with never more than two Beatles in the studio at the same time, possibly even only one of them at a time.  All the combining of tracks was done at the engineering stage.

Before the heartbreaking last tracks, they managed to squeeze in a pile of terrific songs: Come Together, a Lennon song on the lines of Walrus.  It goes way beyond simple entertainment into a defining experience; Something, by George Harrison, possibly the most effective song he ever wrote, and performed incomparably by the Beatles (despite the obvious dysfunctionality); Maxwell's Silver Hammer (Paul McCartney), silly black humor; Here comes the Sun (Harrison), a startling ode to the Sun in the midst of all the negative 'vibes', a truly sunny song, one of my all time favorites; Because, an eerily beautiful song featuring something like 8 tracks of John, layered.  A little later comes an amazing medley of fve songs: Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, the first two by Lennon, the last three by McCartney, all seamlessly stitched into an amazing compound song.  It may not be great art, but it is great entertainment, made all the more poignant by the fact of being created piecemeal.

Let it Be: in my mind, this will always be the soundtrack of the movie.  The uncharacteristic production was by Phil Spector, but by now it is so familiar that I don't miss George Martin's hand at the controls.  To mention only the songs that have become extra well known: Don't let me down (the B side of the Get Back single); Across the Universe, by John Lennon, with an Indian flavor, more recently released in a more unplugged recording; Let it Be, by Paul McCartney; One after 909, a song written when they were still in school; The Long and Winding Road, McCartney; and, of course, the famous rooftop performance of Get Back.  (I love this particular clip!  Apparently they performed it 3 times on the rooftop.)

[Added later:] I had to add something more; I felt I had short-changed this album.  Let It Be, though surrounded by tragedy, in that it depicts the four Beatles in an almost constant state of disagreement, does present a completely different Beatles soundI, Me, Mine, a strange song sung by John in a peculiar voice, I dig a pony, also a Lennon song; Two of Us, a duet by John and Paul,  One after 909, another duet; all of these seem utterly relaxed, and back away from the heavy metal sound in some of the albums immediately preceding.  Further, the songs in this album, in particular, even ones where John and Paul sing together, manage to present their contrasting characters and personalities simultaneously.  Is it the genius of Phil Spector (the Motown producer and arranger responsible for the sound of Diana Ross and the Supremes, whom Beatles fans loved to malign for having produced Let it Be), or was their sound evolving towards Let it Be all along?  In any case, it seems to me that the Beatles could not have made a whole lot of albums with the Let it Be flavor; it was possible because it was the only one of its kind.

There were other songs: Hey Jude, The Ballad of John and Yoko, not to mention the songs for Yellow Submarine; obviously we're not going to talk about all the Beatles' songs.  What I've presented are my favorite songs, and the ones that were --and are-- heard most often.  For those who want to immerse themselves in the sights and sounds of the Beatles on the eve of the breakup, the four Anthology DVDs are wonderful.  They are presented by Paul, Ringo and George in such a way that one can choose what to believe, and what to disregard based on what one knows of the character of each of them.

Four such talented individuals, with such unique personalities; what were the chances that they would get together, and find that they were compatible?  What were the chances that their different musical instincts could remain convergent for so long?  But it happened, and the result was a hundred amazing songs that influenced popular music for half a century.  They influenced harmonic styles in pop music, lyrics, the sophistication of bass lines and guitar themes, studio recording techniques, their responsibilities towards their fans, the media, the development of the idea of a pop musician as a multi-dimensional person with many interests.  They expanded their middle-class values to embrace many liberal ideals that were developing in society with grace and a fair degree of patience.  They were arrogant as youths, but learned humility in some measure, not an easy thing for such successful individuals.  And their music is worth preserving, and keeping before the public.

Arch

Beatles: Studio Magic

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Beatles fans loved them to go on tour; there were record crowds at their concerts, both in England and abroad.  But, let's face it; their performances on tour were never very good.  They are most definitely not among the great tour bands.  (Perhaps, since they disbanded, road band equipment has improved greatly, and musicians have learned to better manage their sound on tour.)  Inevitably, the touring stopped around late 1965, and the Beatles became primarily a group that recorded in the studio.

Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was an album that broke new ground in many ways.  It was one of the earliest "concept" albums, i.e. an album centered around a unifying idea, in this case, a music-hall variety show.  Almost every song is a winner, though few of them were ever released as singles.  The title track, Sgt Pepper's Lonelyhearts Club Band, is both unremarkable musically, and a familiar landmark of the album! It's declamatory style is very unique, but it isn't a desert island track, by any means.  With A little help from my friends is a brilliant piece of songwriting, sung by Ringo Starr.  It is hard to put a finger on what makes the song so great, but it is an essential piece of Beatle culture. Then comes Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, an amazing song that in retrospect seems clearly inspired by the prevailing drug culture, but still managed to connect at a purely musical level.  (There were at least a few songs of that time that had no connection to drugs at all, either in their performance, or their subject matter, but were sung with a certain edge to them, using a style inspired by artists who really were under the influence.  C'est la vie.) The next few songs are favorites of mine, including Fixing a Hole (with a slightly megaphone-like music-hall sound) and Getting BetterShe's Leaving Home (which used a string ensemble), and When I'm Sixty-Four both attracted both popular and critical attention, and are really good songs, though the former is rarely played these days.  For the benefit of Mr Kite is a circus-poster inspired piece, and Lovely Rita a paean to a meter-maid.  There is a George Harrison song inspired by Indian music, which ends with a horse-laugh:  Within you, without you, and of course the stunning A Day in The Life, with the closing piano chord that was celebrated for many years (the Forever Chord).

The Beatles project for the second half of 1967 was Magical Mystery Tour, which was conceived as a TV special, featuring a tour with the Beatles, which was to be condensed down to a musical variety show and an album.  Some memorable songs did come out of this, though few outside Beatles Fandom found the video footage of much interest.  (I personally was surprised at how graceful all 4 Beatles were, physically.  John Lennon, particularly, was a graceful man.)  The Fool on the Hill is a gorgeous, atmospheric song, and Lennon's I am the Walrus is equally stunning, a song that matched the whimsical, humorous poetry of Lennon with a memorable tune and imaginative instrumentation.  I'm at a loss for words to describe the impact of this song at the time it was released, especially for established Beatles fans, and I can't even imagine what effect it must have had on those just being turned on to the Beatles for the first time.  (I hate to rely on YouTube for musical clips, because the visuals sometimes distract from the impact of the pure sound, but a black screen isn't much of an improvement, either.) Hello Goodbye is a deceptively simple, short song featuring Paul's vocals, and All you need is Love is an offering by John Lennon, a very epigrammatic and enigmatic statement about the philosophical environment they were living in. It is impressive that they embraced the philosophical challenges they faced, rather than sidestepping them.  This stuff is difficult to write about objectively, since we know a great deal about these people, and it is tempting to extrapolate backwards, to guess what seeds these songs revealed that would later grow into major themes, feelings and problems.  Hello goodbye seems to point at communication problems among the Beatles, and between them and their financial and logistical staff, while All you need is Love suggests that Lennon focused on the big picture, possibly ignoring many details, which presumably concerned McCartney more acutely.

Next up: Decline and Fall, the fabulous, tragic last albums by the Beatles

Arch

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Beatles, the Fabulous Transition Years: Rubber Soul and Revolver

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Rubber Soul is the hiding-place of such wonderful, timeless Beatle songs as Nowhere Man, Michelle, and In my life.  It's startling that John Lennon would write such a retrospective-seeming song barely in his thirties.  Their cleverness with lyrics simply exploded at this time (possibly driven by external forces, such as George Martin), with both McCartney and Lennon writing lyrics that stand well on their own.  Harrison was still getting started, judging from the songs that managed to get on the Beatles albums, but we now know that many of his songs were simply kept out by Lennon and McCartney.  Only their extreme youth can excuse this.

Then came a release of an amazing single with Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane, which have not really been established in any of the albums, but inserted as an afterthought it seems, in Magical Mystery Tour.  These two songs have been taken into their collective heart by the mainstream music establishment (despite the strong suspicion that drugs were involved in the inspiration of at least Strawberry Fields).  Strawberry Fields is a recollection of an orphanage into whose grounds John Lennon (at least) liked to sneak, while Penny Lane is Paul McCartney's celebration of a street in downtown Liverpool.  Both songs are heavily orchestrated with brass, Penny Lane featuring a "Bach" high trumpet in C, which Paul heard on the radio, and wanted to feature in the song.  John's strange vocals in Strawberry Fields is due to combining two recordings at different pitches, which necessitated slowing one of them down.  This record, in retrospect, seems to me to be a major milestone in the evolution of the recorded sound of the Beatles.

Revolver, with its striking cover art by Klaus Voorman, a friend from the old Hamburg days (and a major Bassist) is the first instance with a serious contribution: Taxman, by George Harrison, as well as the amazing Eleanor Rigby, brilliantly capturing some of the alienation of the time, in this case, that of agism.  Even if Paul McCartney's feelings about the subject might not be as sympathetic as some way wish, there is no doubt that he was able to depict the pathos of aging pretty well.

This album continues the Beatles tradition of referring to little incidents in their lives in the songs.  This became a common occurrence at that time; it probably reflects the isolation of the group from its fans.  They must have some inspiration, why not the little incidents they experience?  They know the fans are hungry for details about them, and every little clue is analyzed in detail, so why not?!  Dr Robert, She Said, For no one, all these have a feel of excerpts from a journal that make sense only to the subject.  Whatever the lyrics meant, the music is superior.

Arch

Monday, October 12, 2009

My Second Favorite Rock Band: The BEATLES!

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What am I thinking?

I should have written a post on these guys a long time ago!

My first exposure to the Beatles, at least visually, was the movie A Hard Day's Night.  We had just won second place in the inter-house drama contest, and were sent out to see any movie of our choice, and we chose A Hard Day's Night.  It was a complete shock; I was immediately a fan.  Soon I was learning to play the guitar, and was learning all the songs from the movie.  A Hard Day's Night probably won for the Beatles their most faithful fans; the album is one of the most creative and tuneful, and harmonically interesting (in a conventional way) of all the pop music available at the time.  (There were probably better albums out there, actually, but these comparisons must take into account the visibility of the albums . . .  Ok, it's meaningless; satisfied?)  The movie had no plot to speak of; it was a fictional and glamorized account of a day in the life of Our Boys From Liverpool, supported by Paul's fictional Grandfather from Ireland, and a fictional Girlfriend for George.  (Not so fictional, really.)  Supposedly, for the first and last time, this Beatles album featured mainly songs whose creative seeds came mainly from John Lennon.

The opening song, the title song of the movie, opens with a huge chord which, having been analyzed carefully recently by someone using fairly simple Fourier analysis, is revealed to have been played on two guitars, the Bass guitar, and backed with a big 13th chord (a sort of dominant seventh with extra notes) played on a piano.  You can Google it.  There are many harmonic innovations that are hardly original, but possibly new to pop music.  The Beatles --at the very least the three who wrote the songs-- were unarguably very musical people (not a requirement for being a major rock group at that time), and the body of their compositions is a very satisfying collection of music.  A Hard Day's Night features an interlude which sounds as though it was played on an Indian sitar, but is actually played on a 12-string guitar.  (Stop press: I recently read that the guitar solo was doubled on the piano.  Whoa!  That George Martin has a lot to answer for!)  Most of the songs are contemplative, musical and romantic.  The driving rock songs on the B Side were written to balance the mellow A Side of the album.

I should have known better is a fun song featuring John Lennon on a harmonica.  This is one of my favorite cool rock songs.

If I fell is a lovely ballad, a duet between John and Paul, and is harmonically interesting (even disregarding the introduction, which is simply a chromatic chord sequence with no relation to the rest of the song).  It is soft and romantic, and the words are just doggerel rhyme, but it works.

And I love her, sung by Paul mcCartney is a lovely serenade, followed by I'm Happy just to Dance sung by George Harrison.  Another big rock number which was on the album, and which dates from around that time is Can't buy me love, which really rocks.  Here's a live performance, which is noisy and unsatisfactory.  A clip from the movie is a little cleaner.

Shortly after this movie, perhaps the lives of the four Beatles developed in a direction that made sappy sentimental songs less attractive to them, who were in their late twenties and fairly well settled with their respective wives and girlfriends.

Their next album was mostly covers (re-recordings of songs written by others), With the Beatles.  An extensive description of this album is available on Wikipedia, but here are my favorite cuts: No reply, a song with a definite samba, or bossa nova beat.  There is a heavy use of seventh chords (which is common in bossa nova songs).  Rock and Roll Music (Chuck Berry) and Kansas City (Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller) are fun rhythm 'n' blues songs.  Another interesting cut is Every Little Thing, which features the kettledrums, of all things.

Next came Help, a movie, during the filming of which, it is suspected the boys were mostly high on drugs.  Despite that, there were several wonderful songs in the Help album that had little or nothing to do with the movie.  Help, the title track, is well known.  A little-known song, Night Before, is one of my favorites, and comes second in the album, followed by You've got to hide your love away, strongly influenced by Bob Dylan, if not by his poetry, at least by his singing.  A lovely song, sung in 3-part harmony is You're gonna lose that girl.  True 3-part harmony is not uncommon in Beatles songs, but this one is more traditional barbershop than most of the others.  Ticket To Ride is an edgy song with interesting accompaniment and harmony.  It's only love is a contemplative song that out-Dylans Dylan.  Actually, I take that back; the lyrics begin to show a little of the maniacal word play that marked Lennon's literary work; in this case, not punning, but alliteration.  The last two cuts are I've just seen a face, Yesterday, and Dizzy Miss Lizzy, one of the great rock performances, in my humble opinion.  Unfortunately they never played it this well live.

This brings us to the end of the so-called early years.  Already the team of Lennon and McCartney were being inspired by interesting new instruments (and old instruments, e.g. 12-string guitars), and of course they were relentless consumers of the other popular music that was in the air, and much of this found its way into their own music.

[More in the next post.]

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Heartbreak & Health Care

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Health care in the US is the only kind that most Americans (most US natives, anyway) know: you pay a certain amount of money to a company; if you get sick, they try to get you well; if you stay healthy, they keep the money.  In the past, of course, most insurance companies could invest your money in the fabulous Stock Market, and make a lot of money, while they waited for you to get sick.  This is how they could afford to sit around arranging for your health care; after all, they were in it for the profits, and we did not hold that against them.

Health care in some other countries are paid for out of taxes; in other words, the government got to hold your money instead of private insurance companies, while the government waited for you to get sick.  In the US, of course, we hate the idea of the government holding onto money, and we would like to avoid it if possible.  I don't know why this is; surely we don't believe that the US government is more corrupt than say, the Canadian government.

Or maybe it's a matter of efficiency.  Maybe we feel that it would be better to let a private company handle health care rather than the government.  Like roads, for instance.  Oh, wait; roads are handled by the government!  Oops.  Maybe if we asked Blue Cross to keep the roads in shape, the roads would be in a heckuva lot better shape than they are now.  (But we would pay a lot more for the satisfaction.  And we could sue them if there were potholes.  And we could sue them if there was a traffic jam just when we wanted to get to the hospital in a hurry!  There are lots of strange pluses to farming out jobs to the private sector.)

The more left-leaning folks in government are more sensitive to the fact that people losing jobs are losing their health insurance.  At least some of these folks probably have family members who are sick just when they're handed a pink slip.  For anyone who doesn't completely avoid listening to media sources that are sympathetic to the plight of the unemployed, it is heartbreaking to listen to the horror stories of people who are unable to get health insurance.  The fiscal conservatives had a good platform when unemployment was low.  When unemployment is high, they really don't have a plan to look after the indigent.  I sometimes wonder what the doctrinaire conservatives really think about the plight of the working class.  Perhaps it is something like: well, someday they'll be well off, too; it's just a matter of time.  And they will thank us for making sure that the wealthy don't have to subsidize the subsistence of those close to the poverty line.  It is amazing that so many Americans of very limited means tend to vote in sympathy with really affluent people.  They do not realize that the problems of the ultra-affluent and the problems of the merely modestly well-off are very, very different. 

There are horror stories about the heartbreak of foreigners who got screwed by their health system, e.g. Brits who could not get decent health care, and Canadians who supposedly had to wait for months and months for health care.  Well, each case has to be examined on its own merits, and we must not only satisfy ourselves about the facts of each case, but also whether the British or the Canadian system, as the case may be, made changes in order to respond to that particular problem.  In the US, insurance companies do respond slowly to pressure from customers.  But they're ultimately responsible to their greedy stockholders, not their patients.

Conservatives in this country tend to respond more to the heartbreak of the insurance companies.  Compared to the large profits they've made in the past, their profits in more recent times must be slimmer, simply because the Stock Market is in trouble.  But a visit to the corporate headquarters of any major insurance company should cure anyone of a suspicion that all their resources are focused on keeping their customers well for a reasonable cost.  The health insurance industry is very high on the food chain, and the worse the unemployment situation gets, the more afraid they should be that Congress will make it very hard for them to keep swindling the consumers on an ongoing basis.

Many so-called "moderate Democrats" are afraid of being called names such as "Socialist" or "Communist" or the accusation of being a blind follower of the President.  All sorts of vicious name-calling has blossomed in response to the irrational reactions of the conservatives, and the influence of the health-insurance lobby.

Nobody is more aware of heartbreak in health care than doctors and nurses.  Many doctors and nurses no doubt went into the profession as a means for gaining power and a certain degree of affluence.  But an amazing proportion of them seem to be in favor of major changes in health care practice, and within the health insurance industry.  In the last analysis, perhaps it is self-evident that without a degree of altruism, one simply cannot be a physician or a surgeon, even if this suspicion seems at odds with our feelings when we get their bills!!!  Whatever the true facts are, doctors have come out in favor of health care reform, though perhaps not as radical reform as would make most Americans really happy once the reform is actually here.  Though it is possible that plans that work in other countries will not work here (because Americans are particularly prone to rip off the system?), the chances are that there is a plan that could work.  The difficulty is to find a plan that (1) can work well, (2) can be adjusted if it needs to be, in small ways, and (3) which cannot be subverted by the conservatives and Big Health in the future.  Because, rest assured, some of the best minds in the country may be trying to get us all better health care, but some good minds are working even now to sabotage the whole thing.

Arch

Friday, September 18, 2009

National Cheeseburger Day 2009

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The Holiday Insights Page has found no documentation of the origin of the annual celebration on September 18th.  But Hungry Girl, a website associated with Weight Watchers has done some research, and

Oh gosh!

Cheeseburgers come with a wide assortment of nutritional values.  A cheeseburger, of course, has a hamburger patty, but --according to Hungry Girl, anyway-- all cheeseburgers are not born equal.

Wendy's Junior Cheeseburger comes in the low-fat winner: 370 calories, and 12g fat.  (If they really like you and they're not too busy, they will make a "W" with the mustard.)

Hungry Girl is deeply grieved by McDonald's 1/3 pound Angusburger with cheese: 750 calories, 40g fat.
McD's were far more pro-nutrition in the past, says Hungry Girl.

Hardees 2/3 pound Monster Thickburger: 1420 calories, and 108g fat.  Its 60 grams of protein is hardly an excuse.

It should be possible to make your own hamburger at home with easily far less fat, and considerably less calories.  Grill a 95% or better lean patty on your George Foreman Lean Machine  (or similar) grill, put on a slice of low-fat colby or swiss cheese, use a reasonable amount of fat-free or low fat mayonnaise, a little steak sauce or ketchup (don't go overboard), and you've got a cheeseburger that probably comes close to the Wendy's Junior Cheeseburger minimum.  (The JC, I must say, has a really small patty, though it's satisfactory for a quick snack.)

Ray Cotes discusses the true cost of a cheeseburger on his page.

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Saturday, September 12, 2009

Tristan & Isolde, 2006

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While everyone else was probably watching a breaking news story, I was totally absorbed in a film of a legend on the periphery of the Arthurian sagas: Tristan and Isolde.

I had known the essence of the story since I was a schoolboy: a Cornish knight, Tristan, or Sir Tristram, had been sent out to Ireland to bring home to Cornwall an Irish bride, Isolde, to marry King Marke of Cornwall. The young knight and the princess fall in love, despite their painful awareness of their duty both to the political circumstances and the laws of chivalry, facilitated at least in part by the love potion that was to be administered to the girl to prepare her for marriage to the older King Marke. The potion has the tragic effect of making her fall (even more firmly) in love with the young knight Tristan. The story grinds to its inevitable end, made palatable sometimes, and more painful at other times, by the intense poetic sensibilities of the young lovers, the fussing and blundering loyalty of Isolde’s nurse and maid, Bragnae (or Brangane, in some stories), and numerous details that are inserted by various writers who have retold this tale, to sharpen the edge of the tragedy.

In many ways, having known of the legend since childhood, I was certain that I could not be as moved by the story as I had been as a child. Richard Wagner, too, had written one of his greatest operas based on this story, but that same opera had, in my mind, made the legend useless for all other writers and operattists, simply because Wagner extracted every iota of agony from the story in a score that is considered bloated and self-indulgent by some, and magnificent by others.

A problem with Wagner operas is that they transport medieval stories to some glorious sound-stage in the sky, where the action refers to familiar historic --or legendary-- events, but what one sees is so stylized that only the music saves it from being totally ludicrous. Cinema, meanwhile, has succeeded in many instances in presenting period scenes which are more convincing each year. Despite their heavy-handedness, Cecil B. De Mille’s representations of Roman times set a certain standard of realism that subsequent productions have to beat. I have always said that Monty Python’s Holy Grail, despite the relentless parody and pantomime, realized on the screen my own mental image of those terrible times. In contrast with the lush beauty of The Agony and The Ecstasy, and Romeo and Juliet, for instance, films set in medieval Britain have been, at least half of them, successful at depicting the contrast between the life at court, and the life of the peasants, and the contrast between the depiction of life at court in fairy-tale films such as Camelot, and in later movies which showed a more realistic, less stainless-steel-stylish view of knights and their ladies.

Tristan and Isolde, 2006, presents a step towards realism, even if it stops from going so far towards historical realism as to make the movie unwatchable. I’m probably reacting to the fact that the principals act and behave very much in line with the characters as they existed in my mind, which of course is not saying a lot. James Franco and Sophia Myles, who have the title roles, are perfect, and so is earnest King Marke, and the anxious Bragnae (played by Bronagh Gallagher). There are the usual horrible medieval bullies with their poison-dipped swords, and so forth --after all, one of the main messages of the story is about better living with medieval chemistry-- and enough locker-room humor to keep the men from going out for a cigarette and not coming back. Sophia Myles has a brilliant way of being the beautiful girl next door, who would or would not give you the time of day depending on her mood. Both the young lovers are people one could fall in love with (if one was the appropriate gender, I suppose), and I was so in love that --- I could not watch the ending. So this review is written under false pretenses. One of these days, I will watch the whole thing, and suffer. Three thumbs up!

[Below is a link to a fragment from the prelude to Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.]



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Friday, September 11, 2009

A few of Mozart's Last Masterpieces

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Don't misunderstand me: I do not mean to suggest either that Mozart wrote just a few masterpieces, or that they were all written at the end of his life.  I just want to talk about a few late ones.

The first is the Piano Concerto no. 23 in A major, Köchel 488.  This beautiful piece wafts in, like a soft breeze, and comes to an end like a happy smile, with one of his most modest codas.  (The "coda" is the last several chords and gestures at the end of a work, the blustery ending part which, in a Beethoven symphony, for instance, seems to go on for years...)

Here it is:

Note the opening few notes, the falling third as we describe it, from the fifth note of the scale to the third.  In this particular performance Malcom Bilson plays a fortepiano,  a gentler-voiced precursor to the modern piano, more appropriate to piano and orchestral pieces of this period, especially with a period orchestra, as that of the English Baroque Soloists (John Eliot Gardiner).  Note: this recording has been performed in a transitional style to bridge Baroque practice (the keyboard instrument plays throughout the work, and if it is a featured solo instrument, it is given special prominence during solo passages) and Classical practice (the solo keyboard sounds only during passages when it is explicitly scored for).  The constantly sounding fortepiano gives the music a certain "crunchiness" that might sound peculiar to those not accustomed to it.

This work is not only one of Mozart's most brilliant and beloved creations, but a jewel of all Western Art of all ages.  Though it does not contain an expression of great sorrow, or holy joy, it still manages to capture our ability to find pleasure in ordinary things.  John Eliot Gardiner describes Mozart's music as showing us what it means to be human, and I completely agree with this view.  The slow middle movement is lovely, with even painfully beautiful moments that interrupt its overall tranquility.

The same falling third is the opening figure of another beloved work of Mozart's, namely the immortal Clarinet Concerto in A, Köchel 622.  Equally well known and equally frequently played, the Clarinet Concerto has a wider range of emotions than the Piano Concerto. (Mozart wrote at least 27 piano concertos, but only one clarinet concerto has come down to us.)  The work ends with a definitely bubbly movement, in startling contrast to the problems with health, money and marriage that Mozart was thought to have been experiencing at the time at which the piece was written.  Mr Köchel's catalog is generally in chronological order or composition or publication--I'm not sure which, but we cannot really assume that the Clarinet concerto is as much a later work than the piano concerto as their respective catalog numbers would suggest.


The clarinet concerto too, has a beautiful slow (middle) movement which is simply gorgeous.  It comes out clearly, how much Mozart loved to write these slow movements, though the structure of the faster movements displayed his structural genius in more obvious ways.  In a slow movement it is impossible to hide behind structure, and your melodic inventiveness and your harmonic skill are painfully or happily exposed, as the case may be.  The falling orchestral "chorus" intersperses each solo essay by the clarinet, and Mozart uses poignantly different harmonies for the repeats.

At about the same time, Mozart also wrote his Clarinet Quintet, Köchel 581, for clarinet and string quartet.  This masterpiece (numbered between the other two, for whatever that's worth) features the same opening falling third as the other two works mentioned earlier.  Again, there is no fuss or drama here; it seems a pleasant conversation among friends, written by someone who had nothing to prove, except maybe that it is possible to write a perfectly satisfactory quintet with a clarinet as guest with a string quartet.


The slow movement of this one is every bit as delightful as those of the other two works; maybe even more lovely.  The intimacy possible with a string quartet is hard to compare with anything else. The phrases seem almost vocal, speech-like, earnest, ardent, eager, conversational.  Listen to the commentary by the string quartet to the opening statement of the clarinet!  Such perfect agreement!  The remaining two movements are jolly to the point of rowdiness, but that was Mozart all over.  Part of the wonder of the man was how such buffoonery and such ineffable elegance could reside within the same person.

These are among the greatest compositions within classical music of the past four centuries, but it is almost impossible to make a list of The Great Compositions of Mozart.  If you like these, there are many, many more, even if you want to give time for only the very best: the last five symphonies, the last five piano concertos, all the string quartets, the operas (most definitely Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, Cosi Fan Tutte), the masses, especially the Great Mass in C minor and the Requiem in D minor, the piano sonatas (especially K310, K330, my favorites); the five violin concertos, The Concerto for Flute and Harp K 299, the Gran Partita, K361, The Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola K 364, and The Sinfonia Concertante for Four Winds K 287b.

[Note: the fact of the two opening notes being the same for the three works featured in this post should not be given any special significance; I merely mention it as a curiosity.  The opening themes of compositions of this period were constructed from arpeggios and scales, and it is easy to see how this particular choice of a germ of a theme would appeal to Mozart.]

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