Sounds & Fury

New Addition (Administrative Note)

With a few minor reservations having to do with postings concerning some rather personal and messy internal orchestra politics, we've added Of Music And Men, the new and excellent weblog of Ilkka Talvi, concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, to our exclusive listing of Culture Weblogs. I direct your attention most particularly to these two fine posts (here, and here), both of which touched this old fiddler's heart (something that, scurrilous and libelous comments to the contrary notwithstanding, I do in fact possess).

Do stop by, and give those posts, as well as the rest of Mr. Talvi's weblog, a read.

Never Thought I'd See The Day

This morning, on the WQXR all-night show, I for the very first time in my life heard a complete performance of Rossini's Il barbière. I had no intention at all of listening through the complete performance, but thought I'd stick around for the overture (who can resist a Rossini overture?; certainly not I).

When that was over, I said to myself, Well, OK, I'll stick around for the Largo al factotum (who can resist a well done Largo al factotum?). Not very well done, actually, and something of a disappointment. Colorless is, I guess, the best way to put it.

But I said to myself, Well, I've gone this far, so how can I not stick around to hear Una voce poco fa (who can resist a well-done Una voce poco fa?). It wasn't all that well done, either, but neither was it badly done. It was ... how to put it? ... strangely done; the singer not quite up to it technically, and the voice not nearly brilliant or beautiful enough, but the whole still curiously engaging; engaging enough that I said to myself, Well, OK, I'll stick around for the first act Finale (who can resist a Rossini Finale?).

Then came the intermission when I discovered I was listening to a performance by the London Philharmonia Orchestra (conductor, Alceo Galliera, whom I've never heard of), and with singers Luigi Alva, Mario Carlin, Gabriella Carturan, Fritz Ollendorf, Tito Gobbi, and Maria Callas.

Maria Callas? Oh. That explains that Una voce poco fa. But what was so engaging about the performance of the whole number despite its manifest deficiencies?

And Tito Gobbi turning in a disappointing Largo al factotum? Huh? I thought he was a superstar Italian-opera baritone. How could he turn in so colorless a Largo al factotum?

Those questions — questions for which I had (and have still) no answer — and a generally (but not entirely) first-rate orchestral realization compelled me to listen to Act II in its entirety, and, indeed, things seemed to go much better for those two singers in the second act.

Or maybe I just wanted them to.

But I'm glad I listened through the whole thing. What delicious music! All of it. The vocal writing is positively brilliant, and everything done with a wink, never taking itself too seriously, as indeed none of it is. In other words, quintessential Rossini, and so, though I thought I'd never see the day, I must now buy a recording of this opera, after which it will be the only Italian opera recording ever to have a permanent place on my library shelves with the exception of Verdi's Falstaff and Otello.

So, please, Italian opera mavens and Italian opera freaks of the blogosphere, Which recording? (Comments have been enabled for this post for 10 days for your convenience.)

P.S. Did I mention I'm crazy for Rossini?

Oh.

So I did.

It's That Damned Dissonance

It's a commonly- and much-heard argument that extreme and unrelieved dissonance is the reason why "non-tonal" 20th- and 21st-century music from Schönberg forward is held by so many to be so unappealing, even repugnant. That argument always struck me as misplaced, misguided, and generally in error. Extreme dissonance — resolved or unresolved, relieved or unrelieved — is, it seems to me, not at all the problem even for those who insist it is. Closer examination of such a claim almost always reveals that, at bottom, what's really at work is a failure by the one making the claim to jettison his Classical / Romantic expectations of musical logic and rhetoric (admittedly difficult for those of us for whom that logic and rhetoric was mother's milk), and his lack of any serious and clear-minded effort to try to tap into and grasp the musical logic and rhetoric of the new work before him on its own terms rather than attempting to coerce those terms and/or the work's musical logic and rhetoric into conformation with more familiar musical structures.

I hasten to add that by the above I do not mean to say, or even imply, that by successfully accomplishing that fresh and unbiased way of hearing one would find automatically that all "non-tonal" 20th- and 21st-century music is appealing, good, or even "real" music. On the contrary, my guess is that most of it would rightly be judged as arrant gibberish musically, mostly because of 20th- and 21st-century "non-tonal" composers' unhealthy obsession with matters of process wherein what is but a means becomes an end in itself. My point is merely that musical judgments must be based on appropriate musical criteria, and judging "non-tonal" 20th- and 21st-century music by structural criteria appropriate to tonal music, especially of the Classical and Romantic eras, is in fact no real judgment at all, but rather, in a manner of speaking, a case of judging an apple by criteria appropriate to an orange.

So endeth today's lesson.

Declaration

With this post, as well as for those I've previously called attention to, I officially declare myself in love with writer on music and weblogger Vilaine Fille (a.k.a. Marion Lignana Rosenberg) of Vilaine Fille despite her misplaced love of Italian and French opera, and her sorely misguided Francophilia which can come to no good. I hold it as a foregone conclusion that, unbidden and out of her own considerable resources, she sooner or later will come to understand the error of her ways in those matters, repent of them, and join us in her devotion to the One True Cultural Faith.

Self-Righteous Twit, Or Bad Judge Of Gaucherie?

Alex Ross of The Rest Is Noise characterizes conductor Alexander Lazarev as the former for making this little gesture commenting on the audience's concert etiquette, or rather lack of it. I, on the other hand, think the latter. Lazarev, it seems to me, had exactly the right idea, but a somewhat flawed understanding of the depth of his audience's gaucherie and ignorance. Next time, he ought to instead try holding up a STOP sign-type deal, with a diagonal red line struck through a red circled pair of clapping hands. If one can credit the newspaper piece, that's about what was needed to get the message across to this particular audience.

On The Pritzker

First-rate post on the Pritzker Prize and this year's recipient, architect Thom Mayne, by writer on architecture and weblogger Nancy Levinson of Pixel Points.

Survivor

People who believe in the Devil are either too much horrified by their belief to tolerate the slightest mention of him, or they find a naughty thrill in playing with their superstition. On the whole, a belief in the Devil is a superstition which is likely to survive, and even to flourish, when all other capacity for belief is exhausted. It is so very easy to live up to.

—Sir Donald Francis Tovey (1875-1940)

Putting A Stop To It

Oh dear. I note the participation by someone of whom I'd have least expected it (because manifestly unnecessary) in one of those manifold variations of that tiresome exercise in self-trumpeting: the Desert Island List game. (To shield the misguided, no link provided.) Public participation in such a game, of course, gives one the opportunity — or, rather, excuse — to display for the impressing and admiration of all and sundry the breadth of one's knowledge as well as one's depth of general intellect, and the level of refinement of one's tastes.

As I said, a tiresome exercise.

This particular variation of the Desert Island List game took the form of a literary questionnaire with seven items, one of which was itself an undisguised desert island list entitled, Five books you would take to a deserted island.

Slick, what?, and double tiresome.

Typically, I ignore these things, and pass over reading participants' responses, as I did in this case. A few years ago, however, on a largely knowledgeable-persons-populated online classical music forum in which I sometimes participated (the population including a fair number of professionals), when the periodic eruption of a call for the Desert Island List game surfaced, and was met with the beginning of the posting of answering lists, with, of course, each list prefaced with the de rigueur demur of, "I really hate lists, but...," I was determined that, this time, because in a really pissy mood that day, I would attempt to put a stop to the thing aborning.

What a bunch of wusses [I cooed]. These Desert Island List games are sissy stuff. I say, no more sissy stuff here. Let's get down to it the Real Man way.

It's the Apocalypse, and you've been chosen by the Dark Horseman to save harmless for all surviving and future humanity but a single work of music, all other works of music to be consumed by the conflagration, and lost forever to humankind as if none of it had ever existed, and none of it ever again to be re-created.

The challenge is: What's the one work you choose to save harmless for all humanity, and why? (N.B., for the present purpose, Wagner's Ring, for instance, counts as four works, not one.)

The howls of protest that greeted this challenge were virtually deafening. I, of course, knew that's just what would happen. After all, how can one display the depth and breadth of one's knowledge, intellect, and refinement of tastes by choosing but a single work, and that most especially given the way the challenge was posed as, abiding by the rules, the choice would not be revelatory of one's own accomplishments and gifts, but a measure of one's understanding and judgment of humankind, and what would be to its greatest benefit?

The bargaining for a change in the rules began at once. One work is impossible!, was the cry. Make it five. OK, not five. Three; at least three! Two? At least two works! How can one choose, say, a symphony of Beethoven's, but consign, say, Le Sacre to oblivion, or vice versa? Be reasonable!

Oh, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth! A truly pitiable thing to behold.

But I remained obdurate. The rules of the challenge, I declared, were nonnegotiable. And closing a loophole that would be spied by all sooner or later, I further stipulated that but a single work could even be mentioned. No I-choose-X-but-it-was-a-close-call-between-X-and-Y-not-to-speak-of-Z permitted. (I told you I was in a particularly pissy mood that day, right?)

Their last hope shredded to tatters against my iron will, and their surrender imminent, I then delivered the coup de grâce. I asked everyone to give hard, frank thought to the reason their objections to the rules of the challenge were so vociferous and adamant — the real reason, not the reason they all to a man had given.

That did it. Everyone pretty much got it right off, and, indeed, that was the last time any variation of the Desert Island List game was ever even proposed on that forum.

The really interesting thing, however, was that about 75% of the usual players insisted on going forward with this particular variation of the game under the rules set forth.

And so they did (as did I), and a few astonishing and unexpected outcomes were to be observed.

First, was the utmost seriousness with which everyone took the challenge, all participants almost palpably feeling the immensity and weight of the responsibility that had been hypothetically thrust upon them. This was perhaps the most astonishing and unexpected outcome of all. And totally absent was any trace of self-trumpeting the opportunity for which is the sine qua non characteristic of all variations of the Desert Island List game.

Second, was that all the choices (including this writer's) were of works where the human voice, solo and / or in ensemble, played a principal part.

And lastly, all the choices put forward were, without exception, of pre-20th-century works. This from a group famous for being cheerleaders for so-called New Music (this writer, of course, not included among them in that regard).

I confess that these unexpected outcomes — the earnestness and care invested in the choosing of the work most particularly — I personally found touching and reassuring. Took the pissy right out of my mood P.D.Q. that day, it did.

Wouldn't it have you?

Moses Redux

Yes, that's right. I surely did. I watched it again last night on its annual airing on ABC.

And, no, I'm still not ashamed.

Off With His Head!

[Note: This post is a rare, off-topic excursion for this weblog as it has nothing at all to do with high culture or the arts. It's been provoked by my reading this essay (link via Arts & Letters Daily) on three lunacies engineered and promoted by the Health Nazis (concerning smoking, drinking, and "unhealthy" foods) which encouraged me to reprint below an article of mine published in 1999 (print) dealing with similar lunacies, and offering a modest attempt at an explanation of their common etiology; an explanation that serves as a modest attempt to explain as well the lunacies of the Health Nazis, for at the root of all such lunacies can be discerned the same loathsome creature: the zealot with an agenda.]

"Off with his head!" roared the Queen. It was always her first — and usually only — solution, no matter how disproportionate or inappropriate, for all that perplexed, vexed or displeased her.

Quite a character, the Queen of Hearts. Easily literature's most ruthless and relentless proponent of the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle.

New York City, it seems, has lately taken the old gal to, um, heart, and instituted a new legal process. If you get stopped by the police for any reason while driving your car in New York City and are declared by the stopping officer to be legally drunk, you lose your car on the spot; not for the nonce, but forever. As far as you're concerned, it's gone, baby. Kaput. History. And there's no appeal. Its new owner is now the city of New York, and it can do with it what it will (what it will is sell it at auction and pocket the cash). Never mind that, at the very least, such action denies due process and is only borderline constitutional. New York City, you see, had what it perceived as a drunk driver problem. Now it figures it won't.

Pretty neat, huh?

That any American city or state takes Carroll's Queen to heart should come as a surprise to no-one. Over the past three decades all America seems to have taken that draconian royal personage to heart. Witnesseth but a few prominent examples.

Item: The criminally imbecile "war on drugs", ill-conceived at its inception, continues unabated to the present day. Never mind that its ultimate objective is one it had no business fighting battles for in the first place (viz., forcibly compelling people to cease practicing private behavior that's deemed socially unacceptable). Never mind that in almost three decades of doing battle it hasn't managed to put so much as a dent in drug use, and costs taxpayers billions of dollars each year. And, most of all, never mind that it's responsible for evils whole orders of magnitude more egregious than the perceived and largely fictional evil it was intended ultimately to eradicate. That's all beside the point.

And what's the point?

If you ask the cheerleaders of this war for an explanation, a defense, of their advocacy, they'll first utter lofty sermons about protecting our children — America's most frequently invoked straw man to justify otherwise unjustifiable agendas — followed by other arguments equally as lofty and mendacious. After one cuts through or discards all the obfuscating and sanctimonious gibberish, what remains, in effect, is the desperate cry, "We've a drug problem, and this method of solving it is the most simple and direct. We have to protect our children. Off with his head!"

Item: In many cities and states it's difficult to buy a handgun, and virtually impossible for an ordinary citizen to get a permit to carry one. Never mind that such prohibiting laws virtually guarantee that the only persons carrying handguns will be murderers, rapists, muggers and other assorted thugs.¹ That's beside the point. There's a handgun problem, and we have to protect our children. I mean, all those handgun-related deaths!

Righto. One solution coming up. Off with his head!

Item: Smoking is now banned in federal buildings nationwide, and in some states in all public places whatsoever, ballparks included. Never mind that the ban's sine qua non is a largely bogus and politically-motivated report on the lung cancer-causing effects of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) released in 1993 by the EPA, complete with manufactured and cooked statistics.² That's beside the point. There's a tobacco problem that needs a solution, and we have to protect our children. Off with his head!

The instances go on, but I won't. In America, off-with-his-head solutions are legion. A written list would have entries so numerous it would rival the number in Leporello's infamous list of his master's conquests.

So what's happening here? Is there some common ground, a common impulse that compels Americans to so easily, even eagerly, accept off-with-his-head solutions for even the most complex of problems?

Indeed there is, and one part of that ground is plain old intellectual sloth. Americans are famous for it. Another is our fat, comfortable, self-satisfied bourgeois way of life which we don't want disturbed. After all, any laws passed to stem (insert name of offensive behavior here) won't affect us good people.

The rest of that ground resides in another aspect of our national character; a legacy of those who first stepped on these shores at Plymouth almost four centuries ago.

There's an old but fairly amusing joke. It goes: When it came to British colonization, Australia got the hands-down better of America. Australia got all the convicts. America got the Puritans.

On second thought, not so amusing.

But there's no gainsaying it. Even in this do-your-own-thing-anything-goes era the Puritan impulse is still alive and well in us Americans whether we acknowledge it or not. And that impulse is forever fighting to assert the Pure and the Good.

And what must it fight? Why, the demons, of course. The Puritan impulse must have its demons or it perishes, and that impulse is not at all ready or willing to go gentle into that good night. And if demons aren't readily apparent, well, then, they must be sought out. And if they still remain elusive and can't be found, why, then, they must be invented. The Puritan impulse simply cannot and will not be denied its demons.

So much for the ground.

But ground is just an empty plot without a planter to sow it. And therein resides something darker; something more sinister. For at the bottom of every off-with-his-head solution, as at the bottom of every human outrage in history, of all magnitudes and without exception, are to be found always the same loathsome creatures: zealots with an agenda.

Zealots used to operate openly, loudly, and brazenly on street corners, podiums, and pulpits. But today that simply doesn't play well in most places. The public is far too sophisticated, too savvy, generally. Technology has made them so. And so zealots have wised up, most of them. They understand that today things must be done more quietly, more soberly; done even, in the beginning, by indirection and subtle manipulation. It takes longer doing things that way, and one doesn't immediately get exactly or all one wants, but today it's still the best way to go. And if one is patient and plays things just right, one will end up getting everything exactly as one wants it — eventually.

But as planters, zealots must first find fertile ground to sow. No problem in America. In America, fertile ground is everywhere for the sowing, for what ground more fertile for zealots to sow than a smug, intellectually slothful Puritan ethos loath to acknowledge or even recognize itself head-on? Such an ethos is particularly nutritious soil for zealots' sowings and mischief-making of all sorts, and for catastrophes as well. And so, in America, all that's fundamentally necessary is right to hand for enterprising zealots.

Is it any wonder, then, that off-with-his-head solutions in America are legion?

Not a bit of it.

There's a curious article of faith that would have it that as God is good and the ultimate creator of everything, even the worst of things can be put to good use if only one is perceptive enough to discern it.

I don't at all buy that particular article of faith, but that notwithstanding, I can think of one good use to which the off-with-his-head solution can be put: if one meets a zealot on the road, rather than debate or even speak with him, Off with his head! There are, after all, exceptions to everything.

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¹I omit good guys like the police as they're useful only after the fact, useless before the fact, and, except by happy accident, absent during the fact.

²The EPA looked at 30 existing independent studies of the lung cancer risk from ETS from various countries around the world. Of the 30, only six showed even a marginal lung cancer risk, while the U.S. studies, which constituted 11 of the 30, showed no lung cancer risk. Made unhappy by this, the folks at EPA creatively reworked the analysis and the numbers to show that, "correctly read," all the studies, if lumped together and subjected to a specialized (and in this case, wholly inappropriate) statistical technique called meta-analysis, showed, that though not obvious, there really was a lung cancer risk from ETS (surprise!). And those clever little devils even came up with a creative if lame (and unsupported) body count to make the conclusion sound even more ominous (3000 a year, nationwide).

Envy

I envy Alex Ross for a number of reasons: his cross-Atlantic trips undertaken with the every-day casualness of a trip across the Hudson to New Jersey, his dream job with one of the top periodicals in the country, his graceful writing style, etc. But most of all, I envy him his kitties, and if he doesn't stop posting kitty pics of those sublimely beautiful creatures (like this most recent one), I'm going to ask my good friend Guido to arm himself with a couple hand-carried, velvet-lined cages; make a little trip over to Alex's apartment; and do a little job in my behalf. It's somewhat out of Guido's, um, ordinary line of work, but although you'd never guess it by looking at him, he can be very sweet and gentle when the occasion demands, and I don't think he'll mind too much doing me this special favor, atypical though it may be, as kittynapping, after all, isn't a capital offense like kidnapping or ... well, you get my drift.

New Addition (Administrative Note)

I don't know how we missed this weblog, but In The Wings, written by pianist and weblogger Heather, gets added immediately to our exclusive listing of Culture Weblogs. We call your attention particularly to this post of hers which is quite first-rate.

(Thanks to Ionarts for directing our attention to this weblog.)

Shocker

The photo in this article is a real shocker. I fear the great James Levine will not be long with us.

What a huge loss that will be.

Requiem Aeternam Blogospherem

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 7:07 PM Eastern on 26 Mar. See below.)

Composer and weblogger Forrest Covington of The Muse at Sunset fears that the end of blogging as we know it is close at hand.

More and more, blogs do not allow comments, or if they do, you have to register and be vetted for the privilege of commenting. This was inevitable, it's the tragedy of the commons again. Blogs were meant to be open communities, but every time an open community is established, the same thing happens- the people who exploit and ruin the experience for others far out number the ones who contribute positively. There are now comment spammers, who have caused many blogs to shut down comments. Even well known blogs, like Instapundit, aren't really blogs anymore, but rather pages of links and commentary. It was the open, public aspect that made a blog a Blog. Once that's gone, it's just a web page. The trend of putting up Blogads, while great for the blogger who gets the money, is another destructive force. I very seldom watch TV, when I do, I am appalled at how far the commercialization has gone. Essentially, the experience is ruined, unless it is taped and all the ads zapped out. Commercialism is the buzzard hovering over the corpse, but it always gets in.

I would first note that Mr. Covington's notion of what blogs* and blogging are about is too narrowly construed, and largely in error. To paraphrase, and with apologies to, the poet, there are more things in blogs and blogging, Mr. Covington, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Since their entrance into the not-exclusively-techie sector of the Web, blogs are not now, nor have they ever been "meant to be open communities." Neither was the ability to comment publicly on a post-by-post basis via a publicly accessible blog comments function an integral part of blogs or blogging in the beginning. Like Topsy, the comments function just "growed," while attaching itself to an already established entity. From the beginning of their use by "civilians," blogs were, and today remain, individual platforms for giving public voice to one's personal likes, dislikes, concerns, and interests within one's own personally owned and controlled space in any style or manner one chooses. (And, by the way, and just for Mr. Covington's information, his complaint that "Even well known blogs, like Instapundit, aren't really blogs anymore, but rather pages of links and commentary," betrays an embarrassing deficiency of blogospheric knowledge. Instapundit has, from its inception, been nothing other than "pages of links and commentary." Its reputation — and popularity — have, in fact, been built on just that blog model — the original model of the blog.)

The idea of the individual blog as merely a single entity in some commonly-owned and -controlled open public community, or the idea of each individual blog with its post-specific public comments function being considered a commonly-owned and -controlled open public community, is repugnant to the very concept of blogging which has always been, and remains today, a level-playing-field foundation for the erection of an individual and personally created, owned, and controlled bully pulpit for every person with access to the World Wide Web regardless of one's qualifications and gifts or lack thereof.

In short, blogs and blogging constitute a paragon of the democratic — the one-man-one-vote democratic — not the communal. The presence or absence of a blog comments function affects the nature of that paragon not one whit. Some bloggers enjoy interacting directly and publicly on their blogs with their readers; others do not. I, for instance, find that sort of direct public interaction with my readers most distasteful, my attitude being, if you want to comment publicly on something I've written, do so on your own blog, and don't clutter mine with your opinions. And if you don't have a blog, then create one. It can be done in a matter of minutes — literally — and at zero cost, and it's so easy to do it could be done by a trained chimp, so there's no excuse for you not to create your own blog other than pure sloth, and I refuse to have activated on my blog a comments function to serve you as reward for that sloth.

An inhospitable attitude, you say? Perhaps. But, then, I'm not running a bloody Bed & Breakfast here, am I. I'm running a bully pulpit; my own bully pulpit, and being hospitable is not one of the obligations of ownership.

On Mr. Covington's second point, the so-called commercialization of blogs by the putting up of Blogads or the like by the blogger, I simply don't see what harm such commercialization can do as long as it's controlled by the blogger himself. I see only benefits for both blog and blogger as those ads are sources, or potential sources, of income — real, hard-cold-cash income. And benefits for readers as well, as a blog whose owner is properly recompensed is a blog that's more likely to be run well, and be around for a while. If a blog's readers find those ads objectionable enough, or find that they're in some negative way affecting the blog's content or readability, well, those readers will simply stop being readers, won't they. After all, there's nothing forcing them to be readers of that particular blog. And if enough readers desert a blog because of its so-called commercialization, then the blog will either close down, or the blogger will reduce the ads to a level acceptable to most readers, and the blogger, his blog, and his blog's readers will all be well served.

In other words, the so-called commercialization issue is a non-issue, and therefore no cause for alarm.

I think, in the light of all the above, I can safely and with assurance say to Mr. Covington that his proposed requiem aeternam blogospherem is, um, somewhat premature, and entirely unwarranted.

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*I loathe the terms blog, blogger, and blogging, but have used them here throughout for the sake of consistency with Mr. Covington's use of those terms.

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Update (7:07 PM Eastern on 26 Mar): Forrest Covington responds. His rhetorical, "OK, then. What exactly is a blog, and how is it different from a webpage per se?" has already been answered in my above post. But perhaps Mr. Covington's "infuriandus est" state of mind blinded him to the fact. I would add only that the other distinguishing feature is that a blog is refreshed with new material on a fairly frequent and fairly regular basis; not typically the case with ordinary web pages. The "commercialization" question was also dealt with in my above post; specifically with Mr. Covington's rhetorical, "[W]hat is the difference between a blogger and a paid commentator?" The question, as I suggested, is meaningless, not to say non sequitur, unless one holds that a blogger, by the fact of his receiving money for his writing, becomes, ipso facto, a paid stooge of one sort or another. The very idea is, of course, absurd.

But I do encourage Mr. Covington to keep on trying in his efforts to make his case. The "hem of [my] robe" can wait for that kiss he feels so unfit to bestow upon it until such time as he's finally successful in those efforts.

On Verdi Again: Another Opera, Another Voice

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 8:33 PM Eastern on 14 Mar. See below.)

Weblogger Jens F. Laurson of Ionarts has some (lots of) apposite remarks on Verdi's Nabucco, with all of which I'm in complete agreement, although why Mr. Laurson took the time and effort to go on at such length about this repulsive paradigm of the typical post-bel canto Italian opera escapes me.

And my single comment on that same Met broadcast of Nabucco (posted on one of the opera lists in which I sometimes participate)?

It's beyond my feeble capacity of imagination to comprehend why a premier opera company like the Met would give even a thought to, much less spend hard-come-by funding on, mounting such a piece of organ-grinder trash as Nabucco. And beyond my feeble capacity of understanding why audiences would fork over hard, cold cash to attend performances knowing in advance what to expect, and moreover, remain in their seats rather than make a beeline for the exit doors after being confronted with a cast of wobbly-voiced shriekers such as today.

Or as, in an earlier century, the honest and wickedly ever-sharp Rossini quipped after reading one of Verdi's early scores: "If the name of the composer had been kept hidden from me, I should have wagered that he could only be an artillery colonel."

That pretty much says it all about Verdi as opera composer to the masses, the flashes of genius discernable in his later Don Carlos, and the authentic genius on full display in his much later Otello and Falstaff — the latter his greatest achievement in opera, and one of opera's greatest achievements — notwithstanding.

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Update (8:33 PM Eastern on 14 Mar): Weblogger Leon Dominguez of Sieglinde's Diaries comments on this and more — hilariously.

Where Has This Girl Been Hiding?

Outside the critical writings of New Yorker classical music critic, Alex Ross, one has today to really scratch about long and tediously to find critical writing on classical music and opera that's genuinely well-informed, revealingly detailed at appropriate length, and expressed in graceful, evocative prose that does both the subject and the critic proud.

Well, this is the culturesphere corner of the blogosphere, which makes the scratching about lots easier, lots quicker, and relatively painless, and my latest scratching about in this realm turned up just such writing in this superb review of the Met's production of Don Carlos by that most elegant of vilaines filles, Marion Lignana Rosenberg, on her tres elegant weblog, Vilaine Fille. In certain circles I'm somewhat notorious in respect of my distaste for Italian opera generally, and the operas of Verdi and Puccini in particular, but Ms. Rosenberg's richly detailed and illuminating review of Don Carlos almost makes this opera sound like something an Italian opera-hater such as myself really ought to get familiar with in some depth. I don't know that I'd actually go that far, but Ms. Rosenberg's informed, thoughtful, and passionate assay is certainly making me think about it.

Wherever has this girl been hiding?

Lox And Bagel

Here's how to make a lox and bagel sandwich.

What's that? You know how to make a lox and bagel sandwich?

No you don't. You only think you do.

Pay attention.

You need:

• (1) New York water bagel: plain, poppy seed, or caraway seed. Any other junk in or on the bagel is not permitted. (If you have no access to this delicacy, read no further. It's hopeless.)
• 1/4-3/8 lb very thinly sliced lox (salt-cured salmon; tough to find nowadays), or nova (lightly smoked, brine-cured salmon). Norwegian or Scottish nova is best. If you've no access to a genuine Jewish deli, this can be had pre-sliced in vacuum-sealed plastic packages in most high-class supermarkets. From here on in, I'll refer to both lox and nova as lox.
• 4 oz Philadelphia Cream Cheese, original style (no substitutes, and not the "lite" or "easy-spread" style either; it's loaded with chemical junk).
• (1) medium red onion
• (1) slice genuine imported Swiss cheese, thinly sliced (optional ingredient)
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

Now, proceed as follows:

Bunch the lox slices loosely on a plate, and set aside to allow the lox to lose its initial refrigerator chill. The lox is at the right temperature when it just becomes completely limp.

Cut bagel in half through (along) its diameter. Very lightly toast, if desired.

From the center of the onion, slice off one or two tissue-thin slices. Leave slices whole, or separate into strands if desired.

On the bottom half of the bagel, lay down a slab of the full 4 oz of cream cheese (or as much of it as is necessary) to cover entire bottom half of bagel to a depth of 3/16"-1/4" at all points including the hole.

Lay down the sliced onion (or pile on the strands), and very lightly press into cream cheese. Lightly salt and pepper.

Plop the lox onto the onion. Do not lay down the lox in flat slices. Plopped lox contains lots of air spaces among the folds which work wonderfully to intensify the flavor of the lox. (To get an idea of what plopped lox looks like, pick up a slice of temperature-correct lox, and hold between your thumb and first two fingers. Raise the lox slice about a foot above the cutting board, and let the lox drop. What you see on the cutting board is properly plopped lox.) Lightly salt and pepper (if you're using regular lox rather than nova, forget the salt).

Gently gather the Swiss cheese slice between your fingers into a plopped (as opposed to flat) shape, and lay it on top of the lox.

Replace top of bagel.

Cut sandwich in half, top to bottom.

Let sit to meld all the flavors while you make a pot of coffee (at least three cups; two to drink with the sandwich, and one for after).

Serve sandwich with a glass of  iced water, and a cup of coffee.

Fress! Slowly savor each luscious bite. If you finish off the sandwich in less than 20 minutes you ate too fast, and savored too little.

Afterwards, light up a cigarette, pour a final cup of coffee, and luxuriate.

(Whaddaya mean you don't smoke? Makes no bloody difference. Smoke anyway. A lox and bagel sandwich without a closing smoke is like great sex without a closing smoke, or home without Plumtree's Potted Meat: incomplete.)

And never say I never did anything for you.

Comment To A Response

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 5:08 PM Eastern on 12 Mar. See below.)

ArtsJournal editor Douglas McLennan has opened a five-day (March 7-11), weblog-format "public conversation" on ArtsJournal with the question,

Has the emphasis on practical benefits warped our arts infrastructure, and caused us to neglect the need to strengthen demand for the arts? Have we neglected what "Gifts of the Muse" terms the "missing link": the individual, private experience of the arts that begins with early engagement and intense involvement, and that is the gateway to other, more public benefits?

Or more briefly, Is there a Better Case for the Arts? To answer the question, Mr. McLennan invited ten experts in the field of arts promotion and funding (and one concert performer: the violinist, Midori) to discuss the issue, and invited reader comment via a weblog comments function on what they had to say.

Although others seem not to have had a problem with it, I couldn't make that comments function work for me, and as an eMail to Mr. McLennan on the matter has received no reply, I thought I'd simply post my comment here.

One of ArtsJournal's invited participants is Dr. Joli Jensen, a professor in the Faculty of Communication at the University of Tulsa, and the author of several books in the field of American cultural and social thought, her most recent, Is Art Good for Us? Beliefs about High Culture in American Life, questioning our taken-for-granted assumptions about the transformational power of high culture (I haven't read the book, and am here merely quoting from Dr. Jensen's bio as posted on ArtsJournal). Her first post in the ArtsJournal conversation had this to say at its close:

In the end, we are all fans, just of different forms of culture. For art fans, the task is to help people understand why we love the stuff we love. But it is also to become curious about, and respectful of, those who seem immune to the forms that give us such pleasure, and who instead find meaning and value in forms that give us the creeps. That’s where I think we need to begin.

As readers of this weblog know, the subject of the present public conversation on ArtsJournal has been something of an idée fixe on this weblog from its very beginnings, and over the past year I've said pretty much all I have to say on the subject. I'll remark here only that Dr. Jensen's above quoted notions, should they be acted upon in earnest, would mark the beginnings of a precipitous slide down the most slippery of slopes to wholesale prole-pandering, and constitute a potent ground plan for the enervation and emasculation of any of the arts of high culture to which it was applied. As I priorly wrote, in part, in one of the very first posts on this weblog (a post that concerned itself with classical music specifically):

During the past decade or so, one has read often of attempts made by various classical (or "serious", or "art") music entities — symphony orchestras, chamber groups, recital organizers, even opera companies — to gain a larger audience for their "product", and it's nothing short of depressing to observe that, virtually without exception, they've all, to greater or lesser degree, pursued a model that's not merely wrongheaded, but positively suicidal. That model, in keeping with the rabidly populist and promiscuously equalitarian Zeitgeist of our era, and using promotional techniques employed in the world of mass entertainment, has at its core the concept of reaching out to The People; or using less euphemistic and less generous terminology, the concept of pandering to proles. While such a concept is perfectly appropriate and spot-on in the world of mass entertainment, it's an ultimate kiss of death in the world of classical music for the simple and should-be (but astonishingly, largely isn't) obvious reason that, much as one wishes it were not the case, classical music is not, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever even marginally be, an object of mass or even widespread appeal no matter how vigorously and assiduously it may be promoted. Classical music is, by its very nature, a fundamentally elite enterprise, and should never be viewed or promoted as anything other.

One of the pernicious aims of the current leveling Zeitgeist is the dissolution of all hierarchies, both natural and culturally determined without distinction. And while that aim is doomed ultimately to failure, the casualties it will produce, and has already produced, along its doomed way will take whole generations to restore to good health, provided, that is, the casualties have not been utterly destroyed by the murderous onslaught.

That thinking applies, mutatis mutandis, to all the arts of high culture, and a willful refusal to recognize and accept the truth embodied in that thinking, and a refusal to address the problem posed in ArtsJournal's present public conversation in the light of that truth, can result only in an abject failure to effectively address the problem at all.

But that kind of truth is anathema today, and I hold out no hope that anyone connected with the present public conversation over at ArtsJournal will take any notice of it whatsoever.

Too bad.

---

Update (5:08 PM Eastern on 12 Mar): Daniel Green of The Reading Experience comments. I assure Mr. Green and others that by my calling classical music (and, by extension, all the arts of high culture) an elite enterprise by nature I did not intend to suggest, "that those who appreciate serious art are for that reason, or because of some preexisting set of characteristics, a superior caste." I meant precisely that classical music and the arts of high culture are elite enterprises by nature in that the "audience [for those arts will always be] 'small' or 'self-selected'.”

Brave New World

Richard Curtis, a forty-year veteran of the book publishing biz, and one of its most savvy and successful literary agents, has, on commission from Backspace, perhaps the Web's most valuable writer's resource site, written a three-part series of articles on the state of the biz (here, here, and here), and for wannabe authors of fiction at least, it at present appears bleak.

How bleak?

This bleak:

We regret [says Mr. Curtis in the submission guidelines posted on Richard Curtis Associates, his agency's website] that at this time we are only considering non-fiction submissions from new authors. Due to unfavorable market conditions, the agency no longer reads fiction submissions by authors who have not been previously published by a bona fide publisher.

Considering that, today, almost no bona fide publisher of substance will even look at a fiction ms by a new, unknown-to-them author except when submitted by a bona fide literary agent, that's about as bleak as things can be. And I'd bet (although I don't really know) Mr. Curtis's firm is not alone in such restriction among major literary agencies.

And what are those "unfavorable market conditions" above referred to?

Says Mr. Curtis in Part II of the above referenced commissioned series:

As the publishing industry entered the twenty-first century, book industry executives began requiring editors to produce elaborate profit and loss projections and other corporate-style analyses of the potential viability of books and authors. What was the sales performance of previous books? Did they “sell through” satisfactorily or did returns cross the threshold of unprofitability according to the latest formulas devised by bookstore chain number-crunchers? The mantra of “The Bottom Line” was invoked ad nauseam at every editorial committee, and editors were constantly reminded, “We can only afford to publish hits. If you can’t project a big profit on a book, turn it down.”

[...]

And what about the author? Was he or she attractive and mediagenic? Did he or she have a “platform” – an organizational base such as a hit television series or chain of fitness centers capable of promoting the sale of books? Was the author willing to buy large quantities of books for giveaway or resale by his or her franchise?

More and more, the importance of traditional literary criteria took a back seat to “The Numbers” and “The Platform.” Promising but modestly successful novelists discovered they could not get their second or third books published, and aspiring newcomers could not sell their books at all. As for nonfiction, no matter how compelling the memoir or business guide or social commentary might be, publishers were disposed to reject it because the author was not “branded.”

Pretty depressing stuff, for authors and readers alike.

Or is it?

For now ... printed books are still the reading devices of choice [says Mr. Curtis in Part III of the series]. But for each generation that succeeds ours, the definition will continue to shift to the virtual spectrum.

This is not some futuristic reverie. The medium exists now. It’s called blogging,

Say what? Blogging? Has this man suffered a premature Senior Moment?

Unlike conventional diaries, blogs are dynamic, multimedia, and public. Indeed, it is their public aspect that provokes fascinating speculation about their potential to become the 21st century’s answer to the book. They satisfy the classic criteria for books: they are printed, distributed, and publicized. But they are not printed on paper, they are not distributed in stores, and they are not publicized in traditional ways.

[...]

Best of all ... bloggers come with two guarantees that publishers crave: built-in sales numbers and built-in platforms. Their popularity is not a matter of speculation. It is a function of virally infectious appreciation, an audience voting with clicks of its mouse. It can be measured precisely and analyzed by the number, concentration, and demographics of “hits” on their sites.

Even with advances in market analysis such as BookScan, traditional book publishing is at best a speculative venture. Publishers can compile information about readers ‘til the cows come home, but when the time comes to decide how many copies of a book to print, the best they can do is an educated guess. By the very nature of blogs, however, precise and real-time market research is embedded in the medium, research that can be used to create pinpoint-targeted advertising campaigns.

Beyond my thinking Mr. Curtis dead wrong in his understanding of the nature of blogs and blogging's future, What's wrong with this picture?

This, that's what, as is Mr. Curtis's summing up of the just-around-the-corner Brave New World of virtual books; not the much-in-the-past-touted eBook (in which I think the future of the book does lie), but ... but ... the blog!

As authors assume the roles traditionally performed by publishers such as distribution and publicity, the laws of disintermediation - the elimination of middlemen or agencies of any kind - render publishers less and less relevant. And that goes for editors, reviewers, critics, bookstores and libraries. “Gatekeepers” - the priestly class that tends the holy flame of literary taste and tells us what is gold and what is dross - may have little place in a world where the best judges of taste are readers themselves.

[...]

As Big Publishing becomes more and more dysfunctional and authors grasp the capabilities of the new paradigm [i.e., the blog], the transformation of the book from a three-dimensional object to a dematerialized but richly sensory experience will accelerate. And so will the redefinition, the reinvention, the repurposing of the author, as we progress - reluctantly but inexorably - on the road to virtual.

O tempora! O mores!

The Gates: Another View

Bet you never saw The Gates before from this perspective (Windows users: Hover on the image, then click on the zoom icon appearing in the lower right-hand corner to enlarge).

As I've previously described them (in the comments section of another weblog), like an encroaching viral or bacterial infection.

Cleared up now, I understand.

Good to hear.