Sounds & Fury

The Emperor's New Clothes

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 2:59 PM Eastern on 25 Nov. See below.)

In a previous post on this blog discussing string theory, I wrote:

I confess I've a secret wish and suspicion that string theory — with its fundamental requirement of a 10-dimensional space-time universe (as opposed to our 4-dimensional one; and N.B., string theory doesn't merely predict a 10-dimensional space-time universe; it requires it), and its fundamental non-disprovability — will turn out ultimately to be the bust some few physicists think it will turn out to be. I intuitively don't like its messy, complicated, exercise-in-masturbatory-mathematics feel, in the same way I intuitively dislike the probabilistic basis of quantum mechanics. (I'm in good company vis-à-vis the latter. Einstein was unhappy with quantum mechanics for the same reason. It was what provoked his famous, "I cannot believe God plays dice with the world.") In short, from this mathophobic layman's vantage point, string theory seems but a complexly elaborate sandbox in which theoretical physicists can play about for decades without getting bored while seeming to be engaged in something on the verge of revealing the true nature of the reality underlying all the physical phenomena of the universe, and the true nature of the reality underlying the very universe itself from its birth to its ultimate death, if indeed it can be said to have either.

Physicist Lawrence Krauss, a professor of physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University, has his doubts as well:

Krauss' book [Hiding in the Mirror] is subtitled The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions as a polite way of saying String Theory Is for Suckers. String theory, he explains, has a catch: Unlike relativity and quantum mechanics, it can't be tested. That is, no one has been able to devise a feasible experiment for which string theory predicts measurable results any different from what the current wisdom already says would happen. Scientific Method 101 says that if you can't run a test that might disprove your theory, you can't claim it as fact.

I haven't read the book, but Slate's Paul Boutin has, and reports on it here.

Worth a look.

---

Update (2:59 PM Eastern on 25 Nov): To correct a minor gaffe in Mr. Boutin's piece, his,

Elegance is a term theorists apply to formulas, like E=mc2, which are simple and symmetrical yet have great scope and power. The concept has become so associated with string theory that Nova's three-hour 2003 series on the topic [PBS] was titled The Elegant Universe....

is, of course, quite misleading, not to say flat-out in error in this context. The PBS Nova series was titled The Elegant Universe because the host's (Brian Greene) best-selling book of the same title is the source on which the series is based; is, in fact, what initially provoked the series.

There Seems To Be An Echo In Here

You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. [...] It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

—Sherlock Holmes, A Study In Scarlet

Ignoring Useless Information Aids Memory [Headline]

Nov 23, 2005 — LONDON (Reuters) - Filtering out useless information can help people increase their capacity to remember what is really important, researchers said on Wednesday.

Scientists at the University of Oregon in the United States have demonstrated that awareness, or visual working memory, does not depend on extra storage space in the brain but on an ability to ignore what is irrelevant.

"Until now, it's been assumed that people with high capacity visual working memory had greater storage, but actually it's about the bouncer — a neural mechanism that controls what information gets into awareness," said Edward Vogel who headed the research team.

The findings reported in the journal Nature would overturn the accepted concept of memory capacity, which has suggested that how much a person can remember depends on the amount of information crammed into the brain at one time.

—Reuters Newswire story, 23 Nov 2005

How Stupid Was That?

Directed there by a link on the main page of The New York Times online edition, I was moved this past Tuesday (22 November) to enter a forum post in an ongoing discussion in the Cooking & Recipes section of the New York Times's Dining & Wine forum giving the link to my "Annual Bird Post" on this blog (NOTE: link updated 11/14/07), saying it might be of some interest to forum members as the current topic of forum discussion was, quite properly, how best to roast a turkey. The discussion was being led by the Times's Kim Severson, a cooking expert who writes for the Dining section of the Times, and whose most recent piece for that section dealt with simple approaches to roasting a turkey.

As of Thanksgiving Day, well over 150 persons had followed that link (as did, I'm absolutely certain, Ms. Severson herself), yet my forum post received not a single response or comment in the forum.

This, thought I, is most peculiar, and tried to think of what might explain the lack.

And then it hit me.

The lede graf of my "Annual Bird Post" opens with these three charming sentences:

You've all read or heard the experts with their esoteric "secrets" of turkey preparation to ensure a tender, juicy, beautifully browned roast bird for that Thanksgiving feast, right? Don't listen to them. Listen to me.

I'm too stupid to live.

Let Us Not Forget...

The Thanksgiving Turkey's Lament
(with apologies to Carl Orff, and the original Latin poet)

Once I lived in forests,
once I looked beautiful
when I was a turkey.

Misery! Misery!
Now brown
and roasting fiercely!

I'm now thrust into an oven.
I'm now roasting fiercely in the heat.
The servant now serves me up.

Misery! Misery!
Now browned
and roasted fiercely!

I now lie on a plate,
and can fly no more.
I see bared teeth!

Misery! Misery!
Now browned
and eaten voraciously!

Giovanni Unmasked

Here's a fine assessment of the provocative and engaging Barbara Willis Sweete film, Don Giovanni Unmasked (PBS, Masterpiece Theater), by the cultural blogosphere's down-under (Kiwi branch) opera freak, the lovely Sarah Noble of Prima la musica. Writes Ms. Noble, in part:

I doubt I can explain the concept of the film without making it seem hopelessly complicated. It's a film-within-a-film, set simultaneously in the 1930s and 17th century Spain. Death is the projectionist; Leporello hosts a black and white film of the Don's exploits which will apparently reveal his (Giovanni's) true identity. I know. But it's better and more comprehensible than it sounds. [...] Without getting too preposterously analytical and over the top, it really is a neat little exploration of Don Giovanni as a character, of the nature of Leporello's and Giovanni's complex relationship. 'Unmasked'? Well, he is and he isn't, and that's sort of the point.

Indeed it is.

He's At It Yet Again

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 10:28 AM Eastern on 20 Nov. See below.)

(Note: This post has been edited at 4:01 PM Eastern on 19 Nov for clarity, and to add a linked reference previously omitted.)

Some knowledgeable editor ought to take charge at the Arts section of The New York Times, and ban chief music critic Anthony Tommasini from ever again covering opera of any sort. Witness this most recent gem from his latest effort:

Best of all, Ms. Dessay [in the Met's new production of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette] treats opera like a form of theater in which acting and singing are one.

One wonders how Ms. Dessay, or, for that matter, any competent opera singer, could otherwise treat opera.

The above is easily on a par with Mr. Tommasini's numerous other operatic solecisms such as the one that had Siegmund and Sieglinde (in Wagner's Die Walküre) separated at birth; the one where Mr. Tommasini objected to Julie Taymor making "Mozart's fairy-tale characters seem archetypes [in the Met's new production of Die Zauberflöte] rather than individuals"; and the one that had Eva (in Wagner's Die Meistersinger) as Hans Sach's daughter(!), to mention here but three, all of which we've remarked on previously on this blog (this one in particular, and at length).

Faux pas such as these are not mere typos or lapsus calami. Neither are they mere errors of insignificant detail but betray a fundamental ignorance of the subject to hand. Were Mr. Tommasini but a music reviewer for some provincial, small-town rag these faux pas would be cause merely for a chuckle or two, or some minor-league tongue-clucking. But he's not. He's the chief music critic for the premier newspaper in what is arguably the arts capital of the world and as well our national "Newspaper of Record". And that, to not put too fine a point on it, is nothing short of an outrage.

---

Update (10:28 AM Eastern on 20 Nov): A reader writes in defense of Mr. Tommasini:

Regarding the statement to which you took such exception, to the effect that Dessay realized that opera was a fusion of singing and acting: it is true that any opera singer should realize this - but many do not, or at least they lack the skill to achieve or communicate this fusion. Like proper breath support, this should be a "given" in a singer's performance, but it is rare enough to warrant comment when one comes across it, as Tommasini obviously did in Dessay's performance.

My answer is that what Mr. Tommasini actually wrote does not say what this reader would like it to say. What Mr. Tommasini actually wrote implies that opera is not ordinarily a form of theater in which acting and singing are one, but that to her credit, Ms. Dessay treats it as if it were.

Now, it's true that had a professional music critic like, say, the New Yorker's Alex Ross written what Mr. Tommasini wrote, I'd have simply dismissed it as a sentence unfortunately worded, rare as that is with Alex, and never would I have imagined that Alex didn't know that almost the very definition of opera is that it's a form of theater in which acting and singing are one. Given Mr. Tommasini's history of ignorance-produced gaffes in his opera criticism, however, no such dismissal is warranted.

Savage Inside Humor That Even The Outsider Will Get

Read this, and follow the second link ("this page").

Hilarious. I love the image to pieces, and it limns a process of which I've no experience.

Interesting Contrast

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 6:28 AM Eastern on 19 Nov. See below.)

Music journalist and blogger Greg Sandow posts an eMail addressing the issue of the changed view of cultural hierarchies and the hierarchies of art, and its practical effect on our present arts culture, from Princeton professor of sociology and research director of Princeton's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Paul DiMaggio, that makes an interesting (or jarring, depending on how one responds to such things) contrast with this, and this, and this. Or vice versa.

I offer the above without further comment.

---

Update (6:28 AM Eastern on 19 Nov): Blogger Alex of Wellsung offers some thoughtful comments on this matter.

And Speaking Of New Culture Blogs (Administrative Note)

The Culture Corner of the blogosphere is beginning, it seems, to expand at an almost exponential rate. If that expansion continues we'll in short order no longer be able to refer to culture's place in the blogosphere as a corner. 'Tis a consummation, etc.

And now let's welcome to the Culture Corner of the blogosphere opera freaks and new bloggers Alex and Jonathan of Wellsung (uh-huh; cute as the dickens, that is), which blog now gets added to our exclusive Culture Blogs listing on the sidebar. Stop by, give Wellsung a read, and prepare to be hugely amused.

Now That We Know His Name... (Administrative Note)

...we can add the excellent blog of composer, critic, and new blogger Daniel Felsenfeld of Felsenmusick to our exclusive listing of Culture Blogs (on the sidebar). Do stop by and give Felsenmusick a read, and proffer Mr. Felsenfeld a welcome to the Culture Corner (Kultur Korner? Nah) of the blogosphere.

Dangerous To Get Near

There remains, permanently, something mesmeric about it [Act I, Die Walküre]. Not only utterly abandoned love but the disconcerting emotional nakedness and vulnerability that go with it are uninhibitedly expressed. It is as if the living creatureliness of those emotional beings has been skinned; the intensity of their experience borders on the intolerable. It is the first time in Wagner's output that the most deeply protected and (in this case) forbidden emotions are given open voice, so that what reaches us in the audience is something that has never before found expression in art. Although he had already composed, in Lohengrin, music that some people consider more beautiful than any by anyone else, it is only in The Valkyrie that he strikes for the first time the ore that is to provide him henceforward with his uniquely characteristic gold, an inexhaustible seam of feeling buried so deep, and under such pressure, as to be dangerous to get near. He alone seems to have possessed the secret of bringing it to the surface, white hot and liquid, yet somehow transubstantiated into music on its upward journey from the interior.

—Bryan Magee, The Tristan Chord

(As constant readers may have guessed by now, I'm at present involved in reading Magee's The Tristan Chord for the first time although it's been on my library shelves since its publication. I've previously only skimmed the book's biographical sections to fill in for myself any new information that may have surfaced, and of which I was unaware. Now that I'm reading the book in whole I'm finding little nuggets worthy of excerpting here on this blog, but, for me, little new information or thoughts on Wagner and on his operas. What's been particularly gratifying for me personally, however, is discovering that, so far, Magee's thinking at almost every point echoes, in all its essentials, exactly my own arrived at independently. I'm not entirely sure why that should be so gratifying, but it is, nevertheless.)

Way To Go

If I've correctly understood this piece by Chicago-Sun Times classical music critic Wynne Delacoma describing a new series of special classical music concerts by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra called, "Beyond The Score", it's surely one great way to go as a device to garner and educate new audiences for classical music. In fact, the series sounds so tantalizing and inviting that even I, an experienced and long-time concertgoer, would attend those concerts myself were I a Chicagoan.

The "Black Sheep" Voice

I'm fairly ignorant of the technical aspects of voice training and the operatic vocal biz, but the article, "The End of the Great Big American Voice", by Anne Midgette in last Sunday's New York Times caught my attention, and seemed to me somewhat alarming. But for countertenor and blogger Mezzogregory of Counter/Point 3.0 discrimination in schools of music and in the biz against certain voice types is something that's constant-companion familiar:

We vilify and worship the forbidden. The "black sheep" voice, perhaps is the best example of this. This is the voice that won't fit our categories of comfort. Because of its very being, we are excited by it, though it may not trot very well at the dog and pony shows that are the Young Artist Programs. I don't know a lot about being a big voice. I'm simply not one of those colossal beasts caged in the throat of a mild-mannered father-of-two by-day. But I do know a thing or two about being the black sheep, and I do not jump particularly well through the hoops presented me by the Young Artist Programs.

I searched a long time for my voice. A lot of ground has been gained in the "classical music world" regarding trebel [sic] clef singing males. But there is still a lot of ignorance. If there is still this much ignorance after a Baroque Revival, imagine what it was like almost fifteen years ago in Alabama, when my voice pretended to drop and then changed its mind.

RTWT here.

From The Quotes For The Ages Department

Don't tell me I ought to get out into wilderness. I know about the wilderness. That's the place where animals of all sorts abound — uncooked.

—Mrs. Bradley, The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries (PBS)

In The Beginning...

In the beginning was the Tone. Throughout musical history, composers have commenced major works with a primordial hum, as if to suggest that the universe was audible before it became visible. Monteverdi’s “Orfeo,” the first masterpiece of opera, begins with an open fifth, notes like twin pillars, over which a high trumpet plays skirling fanfares. Haydn’s “Creation” begins with monumental octave Cs, which have the weight of the word of God. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony starts softly, almost imperceptibly, with A and E gleaming in the horns and shimmering in the strings: we tune in to an eternity-in-progress. Wagner’s four-day “Ring” cycle is set in motion by a similar cosmogenic drone: an E-flat rumbles deep in the “mystic abyss,” as the orchestra pit in Bayreuth is called, and wave upon wave of consonant harmony emanates from it.

So begins New Yorker music critic and blogger Alex Ross's essay on the eccentric 20th-century Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988), and on the unexpected resonance and power of the single tone.

The music is anything but monotonous; it seethes with change. In the quartets, the players use every trick in the book to transform those long tones, varying the degree of vibrato, bowing over the fingerboard or close to the bridge, adding exotic mutes, scraping with maximum pressure. As the tones shift, split apart, and fan out, surprising shapes emerge. In the last part of the Fourth Quartet, a cluster of pitches creeps ever upward, and, in the process, major and minor triads materialize out of nowhere. [...] Orchestral works such as the “Four Pieces,” “Aion,” and “Anahit” build to crypto-Romantic climaxes worthy of Bruckner: horns leap up an octave, winds trill on high, timpani bang out thirds, and the heavens open.

Playing on Scelsi's mysticism, and on his conceit that he was a "messenger" or "medium," the essay closes with perhaps the most perfect two-sentence complement possible to its opening two:

The Fifth [string quartet], transcribed in 1984, was Scelsi’s last work—at least that we know of. Scientific researchers have recently observed a musical event that employs a curiously familiar style: a black hole in the Perseus cluster of galaxies is emitting a B-flat fifty-seven octaves below middle C.

If just 20 percent of mainstream classical music critics could write like that, classical music in this country, canonical or established as well as new, would not find itself wanting for audiences. Alas, Alex is a one-off, and so classical music will have to find other ways.

On The Virtue Of Impenetrable Prose

Writing that is incomprehensible or near-incomprehensible and yet impresses readers has spread like a toxic fungus across Western culture since Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel were the first philosophers of note to make cynical use of it. All three of those philosophers had important things to say, but all three were also highly manipulative in their attitude to their readers; and most of their epigones have shared their manipulativeness without possessing anything like their genius. In the twentieth century such writing has been particularly widespread since the Second World War. It aims, usually, at two main objects: one is to give the impression that because what is being said is so difficult to understand then it must be profound, and the other is to cast an incantatory spell over the reader so that he feels in some way hypnotized by what he is reading. Characteristically, the two combine to leave the reader spellbound by what he has read and yet unable to explain to anyone what it says.

—Bryan Magee, The Tristan Chord

Voigt And Wagner

Opera freak and blogger Sieglinde (Leon Dominguez) of Sieglinde's Diaries has up a long and detailed post with lots of neat and spot-on stuff to say about La Voigt and Wagner:

But now we have Isolde and Brünnhilde, two of the more complex figures in the operatic literature. They can be essayed in simple (but magnificent) gestures and still end in success: for instance, Birgit Nilsson does a take-no-prisoners approach to these two roles and blows everyone away with her liquid laserbeam. Voigt does have Nilsson's notes but lacks the density (but who else does[n't]) and the thrilling attack onto the note that takes my breath away every single time.

RTWT here.

Answer To A Theater Director's Challenge

Theater director and blogger Isaac Butler of Parabasis issued me a challenge which I readily accepted, and made my first brief answer in the comments section attached to Round 1 of that challenge. Here is Mr. Butler's fairly accurate recap of that round:

AC Douglas says that the period of Hamlet and Polonius' social rank can be extracted from reading the text. All that remains is to dress Polonius in period garb befitting a public meeting of the King and his advisors, of which Polonius is chief. Scott Walters counters, as I hoped someone would, that Shakespeare's actors in fact did not wear period garb, and that period accuracy is a modern concern. Douglas counters (craftily!) that we live in the modern era. So be it.

Well, Mr. Butler is not at all satisfied with that, his "[s]o be it" notwithstanding, and so he sets up a Round 2 thusly:

The problem with the idea that we live in a period-conscious era and thus must be conscious of period is that we are attempting to be mere translators of Shakespeare's words to the stage. [Mr. Butler is here referring to my contention in my post, "The Director's Chair", that the director's role should be that of translator. Needless to say, his "mere" is his characterization, not mine, as is his notion of the nature of the task of the director-as-translator.] And thus I can tell you that even disregarding Scott's (very good) point, we are still in hot water if we put Polonius in period garb (the period here being the period in which the play takes place, rather than Shakespeare's period). What's the problem? Well, if you follow the text of the play, the play doesn't really take place in a specific period. The legend of Hamlet comes (in its earliest form) from Saxo, called Grammaticus, in a 12th century text. It's not exactly clear when Prince Amleth lived, but it was sometime in the dark ages. Shakespeare's play also, however, contains contemporary references to the acting practices of the specific year of 1601. There are also the weapons used in the final fight scene, namely rapier and dagger, which do not fit a middle ages time setting. Finally, there are the weapons used in the duel, and the clothing that Hamlet himself is described as wearing by Ophelia in Act II Sc. 1, namely a doublet, stockings, a hat, garters and a shirt (these are described as being in disarry [sic]).

But it cannot take place in Shakespeare's contemporary time either, due to various other references throughout the script. The script is written with no real regard to period, therefore period cannot be our lodestone to clothe Polonius.

Furthermore, what evidence we have of Shakespeare's day suggests that the actors wore clothes from all different time periods. They essentially raided their costume racks for each show. So setting the play in Shakespeare's period won't work either. (Furthermore, the play clearly doesn't take place then. It sort of takes place in no real time).

Given all of this: how do we figure out how Polonius [is to] be garbed?

My answer is that Mr. Butler's above objections are mostly flawed, and therefore of no consequence.

First, it makes not a whit of difference how Shakespeare's actors were costumed. His theater, like all theater, followed the theatrical conventions of the time. Valid then. Not valid today.

Second, as I previously noted (in the comments section of Round 1), we get from the text the approximate period in which the play is set, and there are clues in the text to give us, first, what that period cannot be. It cannot be contemporary to Shakespeare (1601), nor can it be in the future (i.e., the future relative to 1601); ergo, the period is sometime in the past (again, relative to 1601). The period represented in Shakespeare's source (Saxo; see my previous but unrelated post on Hamlet for more on this) was ancient even relative to 1601. But for our purpose that source is Shakespeare's business and none of ours, and so can be totally disregarded.

As a matter of fact, the director actually has a fair amount of freedom in staging this play vis-à-vis selecting the period in the past he wishes to use in that staging (relative to 1601), and it really makes no difference at all which in-the-past period he chooses so long as it commits no serious anachronisms vis-à-vis the text. So, a director can pretty much take his past-period pick (again, relative to 1601). He can't go wrong as long as he's consistent throughout in his staging.

In short, my initial answer stands.

Now something more general concerning this particular business, and, by extension, every other business having to do with the staging of this play, or any other for that matter.

In my brief initial answer (in the comments section of Round 1), I only gave a textual warrant for period in answer to this present challenge. Were I directing this play, however, I would not choose to stage it using period-specific sets, and in period-specific costume. Rather, I would choose to stage it period-neutral (i.e., as few physical clues as possible as to specific period), and with as bare a stage as the action would permit consistent with an effective and dramatically coherent realization. I loathe stage trappings and busy-ness, most especially when the text itself is as evocative and rich as is the text of Hamlet. Staging Hamlet bare-stage and period-neutral produces, I think, the most transparent translation possible (i.e., transparent vis-à-vis the realization of the essential dramatic core or vision embodied in the text), and transparency in a director's finished work is, as I've already remarked (here), the directorial ne plus ultra.

All the above, of course, in strict accordance with the theater director's Prime Directive. And just what might that be? Thou mayest do any bloody thing thou wilt in order to realize a dramatically and aesthetically effective translation of the text into its concrete physical realization on the stage so long as what thou doest is consonant with the sense and spirit of the text at every point, and contradicts or diverges from it at none.

Thus spake A.C. Douglas.

Fly On The Wall View

From an interesting and entertaining fly-on-the-wall-view of the orchestral life by music journalist and blogger Jessica Duchen of Jessica Duchen's Classical Music Blog:

The most unpopular face tends to be the one facing the band from the podium. Tony [Byrne, London Philharmonic Orchestra co-principal viola] recounts, "When I first joined the orchestra, an old-timer took me to one side and said, 'Laddy, one thing you have to learn: the conductor is your natural enemy,' as if it was a blood sport!". The cliche of the autocratic maestro, stamping and screaming at his cowering band, is sadly based on fact.

RTWT here.

From The Inbox

(Note: This post has been updated (2) as of 8:02 AM Eastern on 10 Nov. See below.)

Regarding the, um, less than congenial reception of my post, "The Director's Chair" (and of myself as a trespassing and transgressing "civilian"), by several of the blogosphere's professional theater community, reader Joseph Alessandroni writes in an eMail (quoted with permission):

The pro's of the blogosphere's theatrical contingent may have pooh-poohed your contention that the playscript is the play, and that a director's main responsibility is to faithfully translate that playscript into a concrete physical reality that can be presented on stage for an audience, but you're in good company with that contention. You said theater was only of marginal interest to you, so I'd guess the name Jacques Copeau will be unknown to you, but for about the first half of the 20th century this French director-actor-critic-theorist was a major and influential voice in the theater, and his view of the director's main role exactly matches your own.

I thought you'd like to know that.

Enjoy reading your blog, and look forward to it on a daily basis.

Best wishes,

Joseph Alessandroni

I'm indeed gratified to learn of this (and gratified as well that Mr. Alessandroni enjoys the blog, and is a constant reader), but somewhat less than gratified to learn that my take on this matter was voiced previously by a Frenchman «spit!».

My thanks to Mr. Alessandroni.

---

Update (10:05 AM Eastern on 9 Nov): Uh-oh. Director and blogger Isaac Butler of Parabasis (he who thought it "ultimately ridiculous ... that we're spending a great amount of time as theater professionals arguing with someone who doesn't even like theater very much") doesn't much like what my eMail correspondent had to say (and be sure to read the attached comments).

Update (8:02 AM Eastern on 10 Nov): And the beat goes on.