Books For Free: The Gutenberg Project

. OK: Yet Another Postponement Alert (YAPA). For Folk Music of the Sixties - please stay tuned. But first, this. Perhaps some of my readers will sympathize with me. I look with great dismay at the disappearance of many of the things that I enjoyed the most from popular culture. I'm not talking about Popular Culture; just popular culture; the collection of ideas that form a potential base for any sort of a discussion with say, someone you meet on a bus: TV shows, movies, books, radio shows, personalities, events.  It makes me sigh; nobody knows the delights I've seen ... it's but a step to Swing Low, you know what I mean? Take me, Lord; or perhaps: Beam Me Up, Scotty. I am definitely not wallowing in nostalgia, at least not in the first place. I think of nostalgia as being the longing for bygone times. What we have here is the loss of a common culture. (Of course, the fact that I don't have TV makes it worse; otherwise I would have at least the 2009 equivalent of "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz!" with which I could make a stranger smile.) Oh sure; you have "knock-knock" jokes now, but how will you feel ten years hence, when nobody knows what they are? Think about it. Sometimes even terrible things need to be preserved. One major problem is that, of course, people rarely have the time or the energy to actually read paper books, and certainly not the books that the Baby Boomer Generation (the generation born immediately after World War 2, mostly blamed on the fecundity of returning GIs) cherished, and collected in their homes. It seems trite to call these books "classics"; the word has absolutely no meaning any more, simply because it is used for so many different things, from music, to literature, to cars, and to Rock and Roll. The attempt to create a Canon of Western Literature met the need to Publish or Perish in a huge clash called Post-Modernism, which left very little in its wake except systematic destruction of classifications of everything. So we're simply talking about books --whichever of them that happen to be now in the public domain, I must add-- that were held in high regard by SOME sector of the population in the past, and has been selected by SOME individual or committee as being worthy of preservation. [I will try and put the selection process here if I discover it.] To preserve copies of the actual books themselves would be moderately useful, of course. But one would have to travel to various locations for the only copy of a book that's available. The books are perishing, for the usual reasons that books do perish: the paper deteriorates because of its acid content, the air affects it, the bindings fall apart. Also, more recent publications, considered more useful to younger generations, need the space. The first idea was to scan the books. After the books have been selected to be scanned, the scanned pages are placed in various archives in image form, e.g. "jpg" or "png". The Second stage is to run the scanned images through an OCR scanner, where OCR stands for "optical character recognition", which is a kind of program that splits images into lines, and each line into individual characters. These programs have been available for decades, and have become very intelligent, and can cope with very poor image-text indeed. The Third, Fourth and Fifth stages have to do with visually checking the mechanical OCR output, which is a page of text in a file, processing the text to make sure italics, bold and other formatting, images, footnotes, etc are all handled appropriately, and a final PDF file or HTML file created. These files are finally indexed and cataloged, and made available to the public for absolutely free on the WWW. Anyone who is interested in this entire process, and in browsing through the available titles should visit Project Gutenberg, which serves as a home-page for the entire broader books-to-e-text movement. On a recent visit to this page, I found myself interested in the process of how these books were created. One of the most creative ideas to come along is to DISTRIBUTE the PROOF-READING of the scanned book pages to thousands of internet volunteers around the globe. It seemed reasonable to believe that my labor was worth more than my contribution of a few dollars to the project, and so I followed the links, and soon found myself volunteering to be a proof-reader. I am now in my fourth day, still on trial, and struggling to get qualified as an authorized proof-reader. At present all I'm allowed to do is to check the OCR output, and nothing else. It takes three weeks of experience to move ahead to higher levels of participation. In these troubled and cynical times, one needs something to counter the despair that occasionally sets in, and every bit of positive information is infinitely precious. I urge all visitors to this page to sign up to proof-read Project Gutenberg books at the Distributed Proofreading page. If you're unsure of whether you have the skills or the energy to volunteer --they only ask for a few pages at a time-- you can try it out on this page. (Your first few attempts will be checked by a qualified proof-reader anyway.) At the very least, download a book or two, and enjoy reading them! P.S. Johannes Gutenberg was, of course, the first to invent the printing press, with which he printed a Bible; see picture at top. He is showing a favorite page from his Bible, which he printed in German. Gutenberg's invention is considered a crux of Western Civilization, and for good reason. By the way: an archival copy of every piece of writing that is copyrighted must be deposited with the Copyright Office, and ultimately in the Library of Congress. This procedure is, I understand, being reviewed. Archimedes

Race, America, and the Future

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I'm postponing a post on Folk style music to talk about a different issue that has come up.

An article in the Chronical of Higher Education is claiming that the emergence of biracial or multi-racial personalities in the public eye does not serve to battle racism in the US.

Oh gosh.

I recently wrote about the tendency to generalize, which causes both confusion --when done carelessly-- and improved understanding, when undertaken appropriately.  Racism is part of a collection of thinking patterns that allow people of modest intellectual means to cope with an evolving society.

Any sort of prejudice --including racial prejudice-- is a thinking tool.  It is a collection of stored thought-patterns that spring into play when one does not have the time or the inclination to deal with a particular situation from scratch.

For instance, a person waiting for a bus sees someone approaching, with a determined look in his or her eye.  Two reactions are possible.

Reaction 1.  Oh look; here's somebody coming to talk.  I wonder whether I should make eye contact, and possibly miss the bus from being distracted, or should I engage the person long enough to be of help?

Reaction 2.  Oh look; here's somebody coming to talk.  Hmm.  From the clothes they're wearing, it looks like someone foreign, and they're probably going to talk funny.  And smell of garlic.  They're probably going to ask for money, or a bus token ...

Though, in the best of all possible worlds, we ought to weigh the demands of civility and hospitability against the possible risk of missing the bus, depending on how crucial it is to catch the bus, we could choose Reaction 2, because it is the more efficient course of action.

Consider a different example, this one involving bigger risks.  You're in a city park, and an animal is approaching.  It is hairy, and big.

Reaction 1.  It looks big and hairy, and most big hairy things that I know are dangerous.  But it seems to have a smile on its face, and it's tail is wagging.  It looks like a wolf, but looks friendly ... maybe I should just smile back, and call 911 on the phone, or I could just run like hell ...

Reaction 2.  Oh god, it's a wild animal, and it's got teeth.  I'm not going to make eye contact, I'm just going to walk away slowly, until I'm out of its sight.

In this case, we would readily admit that the prejudiced Reaction 2 could save your life.  So at least some of the time, prejudiced behavior could be useful.  But beware.

Racism can be simply prejudiced behavior.  I've heard the following sorts of prejudices: * The kid who won the competition is probably foreign; foreign parents are always pushing their kids.  * The people next door are unemployed.  They're probably drug addicts.  * The fourth grade teacher is gay.  He probably fondles the boys.

Despite the statistical success of people who base most of their actions on prejudice, many of us realize that the social changes that have been for the better have been accomplished by people systematically choosing to ignore prejudices, and think each action through.  Thinking through choices carefully is more work, but in return, one gets a better social and cultural environment.

There is another kind of racism, which comes from having to share resources.  There's just  so much available; why should they get such a large proportion of it?  This is true of migrant labor in the US, and land use in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, in Native American Reservations, the institution of gambling in states which traditionally did not allow it, and even in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

There is nothing appealing in this attitude, except that the culprits often hide behind the claim that they're doing it for their families and generations yet unborn.

Finally, of course, there is a worse kind of racism yet --or some kind of ism, anyway-- namely the belief that certain kinds of people are less than human, need less, should be allowed less, and should be watched carefully, and not be allowed to have too numerous offspring.

The number of people who engage in all these sorts of lazy thinking are on the rise, but their proportion is dwindling, compared to the size of the overall population.  I may have done more harm than good in outing this sort of behavior as simply mental laziness, but it serves to put the problem of race in perspective.

Futurists of fifty years ago predicted that the first white nation to have a black elected head of state would probably be the USA.  They predicted that by the end of this century, there would be few individuals of greater than 70% or less than 30% African descent living in the USA; in other words, that the caucasian and the african sectors of the population would mix.

This, of course, is bad news to those whose occupations depend on race.  Their livelihood is unlikely to be threatened in the short run: certain sociologists, certain political scientists, leaders of minority groups, professional chauvinists.  But, in the long run, it doesn't matter whether a particular election brings multi-racial individuals to the fore, or whether it doesn't.  This will all pass, and multi-racial people will be the majority, if they are not so now.  In good times, we will not need to invoke race in order to gain a mean advantage over our fellow human beings.  In bad times, we will recognize that people of all heritages can help us, and we must learn not to be too proud to take help where we can.

Of course, future generations, neither black nor white, but a sort of uniform grey, may miss the wonderful kaleidoscope of ethnic events and artifacts that we find all around us, the sheer color of racial diversity, using 'color' in the metaphorical sense.  But there are ways to preserve the cultural diversity of these times, without prejudicial baggage.  Perhaps we can learn to sing the folk music of all our nations (and sing it properly, without transforming it into gibberish, as the Scouts have done, no matter how well-meaningly).

Archimedes

Salvation is Created Chesnekov - Finlandia by Sibelius

. For the small devotional assembly on the day preceding Graduation at our college, the choir and band jointly performed a work by a Russian composer: Salvation is created. [From a philosophical point of view salvation alone is bad enough, but to think of it being actually created give me a toothache! But from a strictly musical point of view, Salvation is a perfectly good word with which to start out a chorus...] Meeting the band director (whose idea it apparently was, to perform the 2-minute-plus work, judging from the fact that he conducted it) at the grocery store later that evening, I told him how very much I enjoyed it. His eyes lighted up, and he revealed that it was quite uncommon to have the work performed as a choral/band piece; apparently it is quite popular in the two separate formats: band transcription or a capella choral. Going out on YouTube, I discovered numerous submissions of this piece, performed by various groups. Here is the most disciplined choral performance, even if a little quiet, by the (no longer in existence) Dale Warland Singers. The Russian text is as follows (I'm not attempting to translate it, because it is poetic, and probably loses in the translation): Spaséñiye, sodélal yesí Posredé ziemlí, Bózhe. Allilúiya. The piece is frustratingly simple; there is no development at all, it's effect is entirely at the sensual, and rhetorical level. It is a collect, such as the Anglicans have. The instrumental version (wind ensemble; I could not find an orchestral version. This seems somehow appropriate; an orchestral performance would probably trivialize it) I have is by an unknown band, probably kept anonymous for fear of reprisals by the record company.  Here is a version for combined choir and band. Note for music insiders: this piece is almost totally homophonic (with some melodic interest, as always, in the bass, and occasionally in the tenor, over a pedal-point). In such a piece, the each note in the bass line has more importance for its role in a specific inversion of the chord than for its melodic function, at least compared to contrapunctal works. You can savor each chord separately; note the heavy use of first inversion, and a startling second inversion on the dominant chord, which subsequently hurries upward and downward to root position over slight harmonic shifts. This work somehow reminds me of the chorale in Finlandia, even though that chorale is somehow more scandinavian than this one, and this one is somehow more Russian than that one. (You would think that this is saying the obvious, but I only say that I don't know how or why this is so. I can't quite put my finger on the attributes of either piece that makes them have their distinctive national style.) Here is a performance by the Nino Rota Orchestra and chorus. This next is a wonderful performance by a Chinese choir, singing in Finnish! The song seems to inspire people of all nations. (Note again the use of the second inversion in an accented position.) Finally, an interesting Bach chorus: Komm, Susser Tod, "Come, sweet death," a strongly contrasting mood to both the preceding examples of slow choral pieces. (Actually, the Bach work might be only an organ piece, and not a chorale, even if the melody is a chorale melody.) This is a recording of a transcription for large orchestra by Leopold Stokowski, of (Disney's) Fantasia fame.

Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Folk Music, and Folk Art

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I had imagined that a "Folk Tune" or a "Folk Tale" was simply a tune or story that has origins in antiquity --I was a little vague about that-- and whose author was unknown.  In other words, I imagined that anything sufficiently old whose author was Anonymous is a piece of folk material.

This, of course, does not hold up to Scholarly Scrutiny.  There is --no surprise-- a whole literary (and I mean that in the literary sense) field of scholarship of not only folk tales and fairy tales, but of literary criticism of the work of folk anthologists, such as the Brothers Grimm.

The categorization of a story as a folk tale or fairy tales depended, apparently, on its having come from an oral tradition. This seems reasonable, and is in line with the needs of precision in definition.  So on one extreme, we have a story from an oral tradition (possibly authenticated by a collector, such as the Brothers Grimm, whose certification has to be carefully checked by the scholarly community), and on the other, we have simply a story of unknown origin, which emerges at some point in time, at least prior to the Victorian era, let us say, at which time interest in folk tales rapidly expanded. Unfortunately, here we hit a problem.

How does an oral tradition begin?  Let's look at Nursery Rhymes, for a minute.  The view among most sharp adults is that at least some nursery rhymes were --in contrast to being simple little bits of rhyme to keep little kids amused-- actually social or political commentary.  In the case of such songs as "The Grand Old Duke of York" it is a little more obvious, even though, not being a student of history, the reference eludes me:

Oh, the grand old Duke of York,

He had six thousand men,

He marched them all to the top of hill

and marched them down again!

(The War of the Roses?)  The rhyme

Ring a Ring of roses,

a pocket full of posies

ashes, ashes,

we all fall down!

is understood, at least by some, as reference both to the great bubonic plague, or possibly the fire of London, which were about the same time.  (I remember reading somewhere that the ring of roses, as well as the ashes, was in fact a description of the symptoms of the plague, but I could be mistaken.)  The doings of the nobility were often the subjects of the rhymes, especially if there was an implied criticism.  How did the oral tradition come into being here?  Does it matter whether the rhymes were passed down by oral tradition, or circulated on Broadsheets (a kind of renaissance protest poster)?

An article yesterday in the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a scholar, Ruth Bottigheimer (who teaches at Stony Brook), has a theory that at least one family of fairy tales, namely the "rags to riches stories", such as Cinderella, and Puss in Boots, were synthetic creations, concocted by the putative "collector".  Apparently the insiders of the study of folk tales and fairy tales were up in arms against this idea, because it overturns so many of the assumptions about the oral tradition of these stories.

The evidence is pretty strong, from where I'm sitting.  It has to do with the fact that in the parts of Italy where one version of these stories emerged ("Constantino Fortunato"), conditions were ripe for the public to look favorably on a rags-to-riches story, and so the collector, known by the pen name of Straparola, accommodated them.

This overturn of accepted wisdom is the stuff of scholarly excitement, and bringing a sociological angle into a literary study is hardly a revolutionary idea.  At any rate, sister Bottigheimer is enjoying considerable notoriety since 2005, when she first presented her ideas at a meeting of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research.

I encourage the reader to look up the article in question.  One gets a vivid picture of the study of folk and fairy tales, and the amusingly violent reaction of academics to a fairly unsurprising theory.  Taking the broad view, the folk aspect of the material becomes vague, when one thinks that the inspiration for it is either political or commercial, which is to say, sociological.  The patina of age which is associated with folk material is romantic, but perhaps it is time for us to consider that the oral tradition we assumed that it originated in is not too essential for our enjoyment of it.

An interesting parallel is that of mistaken authorship.  In the early part of the last century many musical compositions were misattributed to famous composers, and subsequently revealed to be the misattributions they were.  Many of them are wonderful pieces, but as soon as the mistake emerged, the way the pieces were taken out of the mainstream was startling.  It really brings out the Philistinism that masquerades as good taste in certain sectors of society.

[An interesting recent publication is the collection "Tales of Beadle the Bard" by J. K. Rowling.  Ostensibly, these stories are, in the Harry Potter Universe, attributed to Beadle the Bard, a sort of medieval wizard, who created stories for children, collected by the 'modern' wizard Dumbledore, translated by Hermione Granger.  They are, of course, simply written by Jane Rowling herself.  Ah!  But what are their real origins? Inquiring minds ought to be interested.]

Oh what a fuss they make about folk art!  The 20th century seethed with indignation over many things: folk song, folk music, early music and authentic instruments, and historically informed performance.  I must admit that I, myself, have been involved in despair over inauthentic performances of my favorite music.  But life is too short to keep butting one's head against such things; obviously one wants to hear things played the way one likes, but it seems preposterous, in retrospect, to insist that everyone should prefer them played the same way.  In earlier posts, I have given links to performances of the same piece in contrasting styles.  Often, both performances are perfectly acceptable, even if one or the other brings out additional nuances that one might truly miss if they were absent.

Tomorrow: Folk Music of the Sixties.

Arch

Generalization, a Glorious Human Weakness!

. Everybody likes to generalize.

Oops, I did it again! Well, most people do. Why is this? Because it is an evolutionary trait that enables most mammals --and who knows how other life forms think?-- to retain and understand a larger volume of organized information than non-mammalian species. Here's a rough idea why this is such a brilliant strategy:

Method 1: unorganized knowledge of a little kid

Woodpecker - bird, has wings, flies, eats bugs, is noisy

Robin - bird, has wings, eats worms, is noisy

Dog - mammal, quadruped, barks, wags tail, slobbers over people that it likes.

Cat - mammal, quadruped, meows, purrs when likes people

Chicken - has feathers, lays eggs, can be eaten if cooked, eats worms

alligator - likes to stay in water, lives in zoos

people - talk, laugh when amused, cry when sad, eat when hungry (or get grumpy), like dogs and cats, come in male and female types, females have high voices.

Method 2: organized knowledge, with aspects of generalization creeping in

Mammals - quadrupeds, like and are liked by people

- dogs: bark, wag tails, slobber

- cats: meow, purr

- alligator: probably growls or something, live in zoos, exception: not liked by people.

Birds - flying, noisy

- Woodpecker, eats bugs

- Robin, eats worms

Two-legged walking types - male and female types with different appearance and voices

- chickens: bird-like, can be eaten, lay eggs

- people: like mammals (except alligators, of course)

Other types

- snake: slithers, unknown type, bites people

As you can see, with this --very hypothetical, of course-- classification, there's a lot less information to remember for each individual type. Obviously the Alligator has been seriously misclassified, and the Chicken has been classified as a biped, rather than as a bird.

Back to the question: why generalize? Now, every type of animal in a classification has some things in common with the others. Is it not reasonable to imagine that each type of animal has more in common, until proven otherwise? As soon as this child hears about its mother's "eggs", this classification scheme would be confirmed. (Can people be eaten, if cooked? Oh dear.)

Generalization in Abstract Theories

Mathematics is all about generalization. For instance, one is familiar with the idea of the diameter of a circle. What about a sphere? Of course. What about a square? Well, let's see now. After all, the diameter of a circle is the furthest apart two points in the circle could be. So this same definition can be used for a square, too! Or a cube. (In fact, a cube of side L has a diameter of L times the square root of 3, which follows from Pythagoras's Theorem. The diagram at right is intended to depict a cube in glorious 3-d.  Suppose all the blue lines, purple lines and the green line all have length L. Now the diameter we want is the red line, which is the hypotenuse of the red-yellow-green triangle. The green side has length L. The yellow line is itself the hypotenuse of a blue-blue-yellow triangle, so its length squared is 2 times L squared.)

A prime number is an integer that can't be factored into smaller integers. Factoring is an elementary skill, and it's not hard to get little kids factoring a number like 30 into little prime factors. Once they get to algebra, a kid probably gets annoyed when the process of converting x*x + 7x into x(x+7) is also called the same name: factoring. Hey, wait; are there prime polynomials? Sure. If you can't factor it, it's a prime polynomial, such as x*x + 5.

Readers who know about complex numbers and irrational numbers probably see the opportunity here to re-classify the last example as a composite. So, of course, it's all relative, whether or not something is considered prime. Classification becomes a matter of semantics very soon.

Generalization, too, becomes a matter of semantics, and the stretching of the meaning of the term that we want to generalize has to pass the test of whether it is more useful or less useful once it is generalized. For instance, the expression "The only good chicken is a dead chicken" is useful only if you're thinking about eating it. Dead chickens, as we all know, lay only a limited number of eggs (if "lay" is the word we want, here), so if you want the eggs, you gotta keep the chicken alive.

The tendency to over-generalize is commonly taken to be a sign of the most extreme foolishness. But generalization, as with most abstract operations, has to be practiced before it is perfect. As I read in a book somewhere, a child who has seen numerous examples of flying birds will assume that all flying things are birds. An encounter with a bat, for instance, will dispel this misapprehension, and that's a part of growing.

Consider the opposite case. A child who does not generalize at all, who does not indulge in any kind of speculative generalization is, to my mind, a cause for concern. So, while a tendency to make reckless generalization has to be moderated, gently, if possible, the child who does not generalize at all ought to be gently encouraged to make generalizations, and test them out.

Archimedes

Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, and the Scouting Idea

. Robert Baden-Powell introduced the idea of Scouting as an after-school activity for school boys in England, following the Boer War. Baden-Powel had seen action in the wilder parts of the British Empire, and was fired with the idea that the basics of field survival, and the idea of adventure in the outdoors could have something to offer boys, an alternative to exclusively indoor activities. My knowledge of the Boy Scouts comes from dabbling in the Scout Troop and the Cub Scouts Troop at my boy's school. The Scouting Culture had an interesting variety of aspects to it, and I shall try to describe them as objectively as I can, leaving you to draw your own conclusions. Boy Scout Skills Boy Scouts were taught a variety of highly useful skills. Starting with simple first aid, camping skills, cooking, woodcraft --being able to read the signs left by people in the woods, both unintentional (which way did they go, here?) and intentional (here's an indication for us to go right!), basic sewing, making simple camp furniture using only wood and rope, map reading, etc. The emphasis was in being able to function out in the field or in woods, in contrast to the tendency for urban youth to be dysfunctional outside the city, or even outside the home. Boy Scout Attitudes Scout attitudes were distillation of Christian attitudes, and generally accepted British ideals, starting with service, respect, patriotism and integrity, and brotherhood towards other scouts, most especially scouts of the worldwide organization. These high ideals were encapsulated in the Scout Law, and the Scout Promise, which took the form of what amounted to a promise to God. This contained the seeds of trouble, when the time would come when one could not assume that all decent men would be god-fearing. The original Scout promise, with "religion" replacing "God", and "Queen" replacing the original "King", and then "My Country" replacing "The Queen" : ***On my honor, I promise to do my best, ***to do my duty to my religion, and my country; ***to help other people at all times, ***and to obey the Scout Law. Boy Scout Organization The movement spread all over the commonwealth, and of course into the United States, where presently their histories diverged. The different difficulties of the American branch of the Scouts and the British branch are a study in the different paths they chose to follow. The Commonwealth Scout movement gloried in its diversity; indeed my strongest memories of Scouting are of multitudes of scouts singing their unique scouting songs very, very badly, but very enthusiastically indeed. Scouts collected songs from all over; from New Zealand to China to India to Africa, sung in the native languages and horribly mispronounced until the words were quite unrecognizable. I have personally seen Canadian scouts wince as an entire Jamboree sang Alouette in Scouting French, which is a sound no one should be forced to hear. Similarly, there are songs descended from ditties learned by Baden Powell himself from the musical tribes of South Africa, subsequently mangled by all the nationalities of the world. So the organization gloried in its diversity, and its ability to bring scouts of different nationalities and ethnicities together, united in their common Scouting culture, and of course, the bad singing). One staple is "ging gang guli guli guli guli watcha", or "ging gang guli guli guli guli wash-wash", the latter for the more hygienic-minded scouts. So the Scouts had very valuable skills to offer, an amazing organization, wonderful ideals, and dedicated leaders with a lot of knowledge and experience. Unfortunately, the movement seemed to attract very earnest individuals, with a very limited sense of humor, and moreover it is these persons who tended to rise to levels of responsibility and power within the movement. There was no lack of perfectly normal, intelligent, well-balanced members in the movement; it was just that they did not have the time, or the inclination to take the reins of the movement. Since the mid-twentieth century, the various philosophical and social developments that have made their mark on Western Culture such as the equality of races, and the equality of Women, and the notion that separate is not equal, threw the Scouting culture into disarray. Locked into the rigid code of the Scout Law and the Scout Promise, a sort of Scouting catechism, it was not clear to the leadership how these things --which, to Scouts, have almost religious significance-- can be liberalized into a new environment where girls were eager to join traditionally male only activities, where sexual preferences considered deviant in Victorian times were being considered relatively non-alarming, where strict segregation of the sexes was not common anywhere, and where subscription to a religion was not considered an essential demand on decent people. The culture of Scouting, in some of its aspects, in its glorification of diversity, was perfect for this new era. But the ritual aspects of it, the Law and the Promise, were not flexible enough. And, tragically, the leadership of the Scout movement have not been able to find a sufficiently elastic successor to the old Baden-Powell promise, which defiantly mentioned God, Queen and Country. Scouting, by the middle of the twentieth century, was no longer an organization with military connections. It had taken a path most definitely away from militarism, towards non-military activity that was still vigorous and adventurous. But the rigidity protected by the Law and the Promise had military aspects to it, which it was now necessary to moderate. Over the first few years of this century, the British Scouting Association, which had dropped the name Boy Scouts in favor of simply Scouts, adopted flexible promises, which could be made to God, or Allah, or even not made to a deity at all; there was provision around promising loyalty to the Country (since some members were guests from other lands), and the strictly masculine culture was moderated to accommodate girls. (The companion organization of Girl Guides in Britain did not reciprocally move to admit boys, which does make a weird kind of sense in the imperfect world in which we live, where sometimes women do need to have time away from their brothers!) To some die-hard old-timers, admitting girls has destroyed the delightfully testosteronic atmosphere they may have perceived as being essential to the Scouting ethos, and the new promises seem worse than no promises at all. But to my mind, Scouting still has a lot to offer. Even if badges are now given for computer skills and other such indoor things as for the old time knots and whipping (nothing dangerous: just a way of finishing off ends of ropes), it is possible to enjoy the aspect of Scouting that has to do with outdoorsmanship in spite of the fact that its appeal might not be universal within the society of Scouts. Can a group maintain its coherence even if everyone in it doesn't do the same stuff? As long as the singing is bad, I think they can hang together. Arch

Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro

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The character of Figaro was initially created by the French playwright (and multi-talented character himself) Pierre Beaumarchais around 1765 (when Mozart was a teenager). This gentleman who started his adult life as a watchmaker (and was actually granted a patent for an original escape mechanism for a watch) was many things, from author, playwright, entrepreneur, spy, diplomat, all the way to suspected poisoner. But the world of classical music knows him as the writer of several plays featuring the character of Figaro, a barber. The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia, by Rossini, 1816, based on the play Le Barbier de Séville, 1773) recounts how the young Count Almaviva engages the services of the town barber Figaro, to seduce and later marry the lovely Rosina. Rossini's delightful opera showcases Figaro's mischievous nature, but the play and the opera are true to the Feudal sentiments of that time (even if there may be foreshadowings of the fact that the authority of the aristocracy was a lot less absolute than they wanted to think it was). Note that the earlier play was made into an opera much later than the later play, something I had not known until recently.

The sequel, The Marriage of Figaro, was written in the rather different social context of 1784. The American Revolution was under way by then, and the bells were tolling the death of Feudal society in Europe, and though Beaumarchais was too much of a cynic to be wholeheartedly committed to the philosophical ideals of the revolution, the play had elements of protest against aristocratic excesses, most specifically the rights of a feudal lord over the women of his household. The play was passed by the official censor, then recalled, then passed again, according to Wikipedia. At any rate, it came to the attention of Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (who is said to have subsequently emigrated to the USA, and enjoyed a career in education at Columbia University), who obtained permission to write an opera based on the play. As the play Amadeus depicts it, this permission was not obtained without significant effort, but it was finally given.

The story opens with Figaro measuring the room he is to share with his beloved Susanna, with whom he is to be married very shortly. The room they have been assigned, in the opinion of Susanna, is really too conveniently close to the bedchamber of the Count. "Ting ting," the countess will ring her bell, in the middle of the night, to send Figaro on some errand, and then "Ding Dong!" will sound the bell of the Count, for poor Susanna.

This possibility has not occurred to Figaro, who is furious at the idea. Now that he thinks of it, the Count has been planning to seduce his little Susanna all along, it is perfectly clear, the villain! The couple is convinced that their wedding day is to be the occasion on which Susanna is visited by the Count, as part of his traditional feudal privilege, to have her maidenhood.

Figaro, in this play, is not the cunning fox he was portrayed to be in the earlier "Barber"; his clumsy plots are hilarious, but backfire as often as not. It is Susanna whose intelligence keeps their plans on the rails.

While Figaro furiously beats his brain, Cherubino, a goofy page enters the scene. Cherubino is in love with not only his little girlfriend Barbarina, but also with Susanna, and even with the Countess herself. (This performance is by the legendary Frederika von Stade, one of the most delightful Cherubinos of the 20th Century. Here is another version, by Veronique Gens.) While he is made to run errands for all of the women in the place, he swoons over each one, and in a diverting interlude, is trapped in the Countess's closet, as a cover for Figaro, who was plotting with the women when the Count marches in. You have to realize that this is basically a French farce, which means that everything goes deliciously wrong in the most hilarious way, and the principal clown of the piece --Figaro, in this case-- has to give the most outrageous explanations of what is going on. It is all part of the genre. (To add to the confusion, an elderly woman of the household believes that Figaro has written her a love-letter, and the elderly Dr Bartolo claims that Figaro owes him money. This pile up of confusion upon confusion has the features of a stretto fugue, where voices enter with the fugue subject before the previous entry has completed its statement.)

The Countess, feeling that her husband, Almaviva, has lost interest in her, tearfully confides in Susanna, who is more a friend than a mere maid to the Countess. There are lovely, tender duets of Susanna and the Countess, tinged with little bits of mischief, but full of pleasant girl-talk.

The great denouement of the opera has to do with an assignation the Count makes with Susanna for the evening of the wedding. The assignation is backed by blackmail on the part of the Count, and Susanna is initially on the brink of tears, but they put their heads together, and come up with an idea. The plan is for the Countess herself to make the appointment, disguised as Susanna. Predictably, everything goes wrong, but Susanna saves the day with her intelligence and tact, and the fond support of her friend the Countess. Here is the Countess (Kiri Te kanawa) singing Dove Sono, a sad aria deploring the Count's changing feelings. Mozart, inspired by the brilliant play, and da Ponte's excellent libretto, and with this subject so in tune with his character, writes music so ineffable that it is in a class by itself.

In contrast to many operas in which the overture has a poignant thematic relationship to the opera that follows, the overture to Figaro simply creates a lot of excitement. It is nothing but a sequence of orchestral flourishes, but nevertheless manages to invoke in our minds the mood of the plot. (Contemporary sources recount that it was written in a few minutes on opening night, which is a bit hard to believe, but--anything is possible with Mozart.) The score is rich in ensemble vocal writing (as Mozart describes in Amadeus) --duets, trios, quartets, etc, each one a treasure, both musically and comedically. And, unlike the original play --which, I must confess I have not read-- which is reputed to be a lot edgier than the opera, the opera manages to defuse the dastardliness of the Count, and redeem him, leaving no bitter aftertaste.

Figaro is by no means the only good opera Mozart wrote. Cosi fan Tutte, another of his comic operas, is utterly delightful, even if one has to ponder the point of it a little, and one is never sure what Mozart intended to be the moral of the story. Don Giovanni, based on the character of Don Juan, the legendary indiscriminate lover of women, has some amazing music in it, as do all Mozart's operas, up to The Magic Flute, whose meaning Mozart lovers love to argue about, a description of a custody battle in a fantastic magical setting. I plan to write about some of these in the course of the Summer.

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