Sounds & Fury

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar

The Guardian's theater critic, Lyn Gardner, in an insightful piece entitled, "In Praise Of Boring Plays", writes:

On his website One Writer and His Dog, the playwright David Eldridge is posing a really interesting question: can theatre be difficult and popular at the same time? It is pertinent, because work that challenges the status quo, in terms of form and its use of tools, is often hard work for us in the audience, too. On the surface, Forced Entertainment's Exquisite Pain might seem boring. For over two hours, without an interval, a man and a woman sit side by side and give testimony about the experience of suffering. Just at the point when you think you can't bear it any more, you realise that what you are watching is transcendent and magnificent - and that only by enduring it can you find its pure beating heart.

[...]

John Cage had a point when he talked about music in relationship to boredom. His advice was that if something bored the pants off you for two minutes, you should try it for four, and if that still didn't work, "try it for eight, 16, 32 and so on. Eventually one discovers it's not boring but very interesting."

Perhaps. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Staging Wagner: A Brief Comment

[Note: This post has been edited as of 10:52 AM Eastern on 30 Apr to correct a colossal lapsus calami: the phrase, "sung libretto" should have read, "mimed libretto" as it now does.]

For the past several days, I've been reading a book titled, Wagner And The Art Of The Theater, a stage history by music critic and one-time dramaturge at Covent Garden, Patrick Carnegy, and if I've learned anything from what I've so far read, although I suspect Mr. Carnegy would be horrified to hear it, it's that intellectuals whose principal profession is as directors of the spoken-word theater, and especially intellectuals with a political bent and/or something of their own to say, should never be permitted anywhere near an opera house stage when the staging of a Wagner opera or music-drama is at stake. These theater folk can't seem to get it through their theater-besotted heads that when music is the primary carrier of the drama as it is with all Wagner's music-dramas, and to some extent even with his canonical operas — Holländer, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin — one is not free to stage the work as if what's required is to interpret and realize the work fully in the concrete terms of the stage as is the case in the spoken-word theater. With Wagner's works, what's required is to stage the work in such a way that, along with the mimed libretto, the stage business is realized as part of the work's supportive armature only, which armature never interferes or competes with, or reiterates or mimics what the music is saying, but stays well out of the music's way — is transparent to the music, so to speak — so that the music can do what it's intended to do, and what it and it alone is capable of doing: make immediately and directly sensible to an audience the drama in all its multilayered richness and complexity.

Peter Gelb take note.

WFMT Press Release

Along with, we imagine, every other classical music blog in the blogosphere, we just received the following press release from Chicago's WFMT which we pass along for your information:

98.7WFMT Pays Tribute to Cellist, Conductor Mstislav Rostropovich

Listener Memories, Recordings and Rare Interviews Pre-empt Regular Music Schedule

Chicago, IL -- 98.7WFMT, Chicago's Classical Experience, is paying tribute to Russian musician and human rights activist Mstislav Rostropovich who died this morning in Moscow. Today, Friday April 27, and tomorrow morning, Saturday April 28, the station is airing recordings from its archives of Rostropovich cello performances and conducting various orchestras around the world. In addition, the station is airing voicemails and reading emails from listeners recounting memories of the world-renowned musician, who visited Chicago many times during his lifetime. Rare interviews have also been posted on wfmt.com.

The special tribute pre-empts previously scheduled musical programming.

Streaming is available at http://www.wfmt.com/

Emblem Of Our Era

We link this sans comment.

Atque In Perpetuum, Slava

Mstislav Rostropovich, one of the great instrumentalists and musicians of the last century is dead at age 80.

Atque in perpetuum, Slava. Ave atque vale.

Obituary can be read here.

A Joke?

It's meant to be a joke.

Maybe not.

The Tristan Project

[Note: This post has been updated (4) as of 8:00 PM Eastern on 2 May. See below.]

Here's an effusive encomium for a happening titled The Tristan Project, which will make its New York debut on 2 May, by blogger George M. Wallace of A Fool In The Forest.

That a man might experience a full performance of Tristan und Isolde for the first time and emerge with his sense of life unaltered is possible, but I cannot imagine it to be common. As with Wallace Stevens' blue guitar or certain massive bodies in space, things as they are changed by being near to it, and when the performance is as fully realized as that of the Los Angeles Philharmonic last night words may be altogether inadequate to the task of expressing just what has happened — appropriately enough for a work in which words tell us almost nothing and the music tells almost everything.

We've heard nothing but raves for this enterprise conceived and put together by postmodern director Peter Sellars, videographer Bill Viola, and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen with the Los Angles Philharmonic and various soloists, but we quite frankly remain skeptical; particularly after seeing still images from Mr. Viola's video contribution to the Project that plays behind and around orchestra and singers while the opera is in progress. Not to put too fine a point on it, they're irredeemably tacky. But even were they not, we simply can't see how they could be anything but a distraction from the only thing that counts: the music-drama itself which needs no help whatsoever — could play itself out on the barest of stages — to create its own profound reality.

But we've not been in attendance (nor in future expect to be) at any performance of this happening, and unlike an unseen Eurotrash production of a Wagner opera where merely from the description of the physical realization of the work it's possible to declare the production a fraud and an outrage, this production is so novel a thing in concept and presentation (that is, novel for today, but hardly novel historically; such a concept and such presentation techniques were in use in opera as early as the second decade of the last century) that informed critical comment is impossible at a distance.

And so we shall keep our silence.

---

Update (11:18 PM Eastern on 25 Apr): And here's a rundown of a subsidiary series of radio programs that airs on WNYC, New York (and audio-streamed on the Web; the link to the audio stream can be found at the preceding WNYC link), 28 April - 4 May. We were made aware of this via an eMail from reader Eric Anderson several days ago (Thanks!, Eric), but forgot to include the information in the above post.

Update 2 (1:57 AM Eastern on 26 Apr): We've just finished listening to the three MP3s linked to in Mr. Wallace's above linked post which are recordings of hour-long pre-concert talks with Peter Sellars and Bill Viola speaking about Wagner's Tristan act by act, Sellars providing his interpretation of what's going on in each act, and Mr. Viola describing how he came up with the images he did for each act.

Mr. Sellars's reading of Act I is only slightly eccentric, and altogether harmless. His reading of Act II, however, is toxic beyond tolerance.

He first speaks of Tristan and Isolde working out their "issues" with each other in this act, which "issues" he then goes on to describe.

So far, so harmless. It's merely silly but not fundamentally distorting, and uses, I suppose, modern terminology and situations to describe things in such a way as to make them more "accessible" (to use the current in buzzword) for younger audiences.

But pretty soon comes the toxic stuff.

Mr. Sellars, being the leftist, avant-garde, postmodern twit that he is, concocts a perfectly imbecile postmodern tale nowhere even hinted at in Wagner's score: he tells us that King Marke and Tristan were in fact homosexual lovers ("the love that cannot speak its name," Mr. Sellars reminds us), and that's what's at the core of Marke's hurt and grief, and Tristan's distress all of which Mr. Sellars then goes on to explicate in detail in the light of this newfound reading.

That his reading makes absolutely no sense on any ground, and is, of course, nowhere even so much as hinted at in Wagner's score, as we've said, troubles Mr. Sellars not at all, his justification — the sort of justification drummed up by all postmodern vandals to justify their vandalism — being that an ancient medieval illustration unambiguously portrays Marke and Tristan as homosexual lovers.

All this goes way beyond being merely silly. It's hugely distorting, and, worse, poisons everything that Wagner's transcendent tale has to tell. We truly hope this ugly bit of rubbish didn't actually make its way to any degree whatsoever into the actual realization of The Tristan Project, for if it did it would make the Project merely another Eurotrash Tristan production of which we at present have more than sufficient.

Update 3 (10:30 AM Eastern on 1 May): More on videographer Bill Viola's contribution to the Project.

Update 4 (8:00 PM Eastern on 2 May): George M. Wallace updates his post on The Tristan Project which post we linked in our above post. Mr. Wallace's update is well worth your time reading.

Featured Past Post #31 (Administrative Note)

A new Featured Past Post is up on the right sidebar.

It's The Craftsman, Not The Tools

We post the below sans comment except to note that Microsoft Paint is a small utility that's been included as an accessory in every copy of Microsoft Windows ever sold.

I Love The Internet II

In response to this query posted to perhaps the premier opera eMail list on the Internet which query was a response to something I'd earlier posted to the list:

I'd really like to know. Seriously. Your statements that Italian opera is corrupt without saying why has left me addlepated, hornswoggled and bamboozled. Frankly Mr. Douglas, you really do appear as if you hold Italian opera and its lovers in contempt. Can I ask ... do you not mind that people know you hold them in contempt?

I replied:

I thought I made crystal-clear why I consider Italian opera corrupt, the bel canto rep in particular. I'll repeat it here. Because Italian opera is a corruption of opera's idealized origins as dramma per musica, the Italians over the centuries having generally (there are exceptions) turned opera into little more than a crowd-pleasing showcase for songbirds.

What I hold in contempt are TOFs (True Opera Fan -- a little like a teenage movie fan only worse, much worse). You know, the diva-centric sort who, at bottom, care nothing for genuine opera (i.e., opera as dramma per musica), and understand it less. One has only to witness TOFs engaging in one of their favorite pastimes of "calling" an opera while it's in progress in the same way that sports announcers call the rounds of a prizefight, to understand the justice of my contempt. For the TOF, singers are the be-all and end-all of opera, and nothing else really matters. It's those very TOFs that the Italians centuries ago set out to pander to; ergo, their corruption of opera as an artform, making it a showcase for songbirds rather than genuine dramma per musica. And, yes, I hold those showcases in contempt as well. The music for those showcases is quite often very pretty and engaging, but pretty and engaging in the same way that, say, high-class street trollops are pretty and engaging.

Knowhadamean?

The firestorm of abuse directed my way that followed, including calls for my banning from the list which I'd joined only a few months earlier, was prompt, voluminous, vicious, and doorpost-ignorant, with special offense being taken to my use of the term, dramma per musica(?!).

I suspect you'll think me disingenuous when I tell you that, as deliberately provocative as my comments were, I didn't expect that firestorm of abuse, not from members of this particular eMail list, but instead expected heated arguments against what I'd written. Only a single such materialized, but, alas, it subtly but critically misunderstood the central thrust of my comments, and so I responded with this further clarification:

Glorioski! An intelligent response at last.

My "main objection to Italian opera," as you put it (and although it should be totally unnecessary at this point in my comments on the subject, but, alas, on the evidence of at least one lister's remarks, I see is not, I repeat: I exclude entirely Mozart's "Italian" operas from this discussion as they're sui generis and Italian in nominal form only), is NOT that, "there are all these _songs_ (which serve only to show off the singers) getting in the way of the drama," also as you put it, but that those songs, which are intended, first and foremost, to serve as individual displays for singers within the overall showcase for singers that is the entire opera itself, act merely as proxies or substitutes for, or in lieu of, genuine (music-)drama. If it were the case that they simply "[got] in the way of the [music-]drama," that would be merely a fault of technique (of the composer's) that could perhaps (underline perhaps) be gotten around in performance by a combination of clever staging, discreet musical rearrangement or alteration, superb acting, etc.

With much of the Italian rep, and the bel canto rep in particular, that's not the case at all. Rather, the case there is simply that there's no genuine music-drama for the songs to get in the way of. What pretext of music-drama exists in the opera is but a pale simulacrum of genuine music-drama (pale, notwithstanding that individual moments may be emotionally heated, dramatically charged, or fraught with bathos or, more rarely, pathos) which pretext is meant to serve as the overall frame into which to set and individually display the singers singing their songs -- in short, the result of an act of purposeful intention on the part of the composer, not a fault of his technique which technique in the genre's best practitioners is, in fact, quite highly developed indeed.

If one accepts that this is what opera is about, and what opera is capable of dramatically, then one will view that solution not as something to be sneered at, but as an artform in its own right, and judge on their own terms and in that light operas that employ that solution. If, however, like myself, one views that solution as antithetical to what opera at its origin (i.e., at that point in time when opera was first viewed as or became a separate genre unto itself) was meant to be -- viz., dramma per musica; drama through the agency of music; genuine music-drama -- then one will view that solution as an out-and-out subterfuge; a corruption of what opera is really about, and a betrayal of what the artform is capable of dramatically.

And therein resides the reason of my contempt for Italian opera generally as it's come down to us through the centuries from its birth.

to which clarification no response has been forthcoming. Not so much as a single one. The firestorm of abuse, however, has apparently burnt itself out, scattered snide or otherwise insulting remarks referring to my good self, albeit expressed only en passant in messages having nothing to do with me or anything I wrote, seemingly having taken its place.

I love the Internet.

Say What?

Say what?

Great Neck South [High School] has been producing opera for 38 years, but its ambitions have grown recently. Instead of scenes and single acts, students now perform an entire work every school year: fully staged; with an orchestra, not just a piano; in the original language. You get a new appreciation for the art form's challenges when you hear a Long Island high-school student struggling to sound natural and lovelorn as he sings the German lines [from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte], "Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön / Wie noch kein Auge je gesehn!" ("This likeness is enchantingly lovely / As no eye has ever beheld.")

RTW Heartening T here.

Philistinism: Not Just An American Problem

And here I was imagining that the problem was peculiarly American. Then I read this cry of outrage from across the pond from Sir John Tusa, managing director of London's Barbican Centre:

I’m sick to death ... with justifying the arts as if there was something specially problematical about doing so, as if funding the arts is irrational or even unnatural. Thinking about the arts, judging their value, explaining particular trends in the arts — this is an essential part of a human activity that takes itself seriously. What is a waste of time is being required to justify the arts as if millennia of arts activity required justifying anew, as if a failure to justify them could — or should — lead to the end of the activity altogether.

This demand for an incontrovertible justification for the arts goes hand in hand with the further cry: “Yes, these reasons are familiar enough, but you cannot demonstrate that they add up numerically or financially.” No one has ever funded the arts because they have convinced the sceptical about their essential utility.

[...]

[W]hy is the demand for justification of the arts so often accompanied by the implied slur that those in the arts are engaged in a selfish activity — which they want others to pay for — by representing them as some kind of personal indulgence, constituting a private play-thing?

[...]

I’m sick to death, too, that the arts play such a small part in the activities of local authorities. There are statutory responsibilities on local authorities to provide key services such as education, housing and the police. There is no equivalent statutory responsibility to provide for the arts. Perhaps inevitably, when local authorities do produce a cultural strategy ... there is no mention of anything truly recognisable as [an] arts provision. Can you be surprised when the very word “culture” in local authority-speak has been debased to include swimming, walking and enjoying parks almost to the deliberate exclusion of the visual and performing arts.

[...]

Arguably, [the] binary approach — state-subsidised arts bad, privately funded arts good — is one of the most damaging and destructive aspects of the public arts debate. It is untrue, it obfuscates, it is intended to damage, and it distracts attention from the fact that however we are funded, basically we are all in the same business.

Arts policymakers judge the education and outreach programme of a major arts institution not by whether it is of high quality and raises the creative awareness of the children it is aimed at, but only whether it is directed at socially targeted groups such as refugees or the socially marginalised.

Valuable as such activity may be, it is far from clear why an education programme dedicated to developing creative understanding in the broadest sense should be limited and defined in this way. Such may well be the priorities of social welfare departments. Why are they the priorities of arts policy-makers? The only possible answer can be that the arts policymakers themselves do not believe in the value of excellence of the arts as such and on their own.

Why do we allow the language of the arts to be bogged down in the impenetrable cant of social science?

[...]

The principle that those who spend publicly given money should be open about how they spend it is unquestionable. But the manner in which accountability is operated is crucial. Too often the cry of “accountability” is used as a none-too-transparent cloak for interference. The proliferating forms in which accountability is demanded only get in the way of the creation of the arts for which the money is given in the first place. This is not an accident, a byproduct of a bureaucratic tic for tidiness. It is usually a deliberate — and nontransparent — way of exerting control that would not be tolerated in other circumstances.

All sounds too familiar to American ears, doesn't it.

RTWT here.

(Thanks to Jessica Duchen for the link.)

Excuse Me?

Anthony Tommasini, chief classical music critic for The New York Times, has an interesting piece in this Sunday's edition concerning the succession of the music directorship of the New York Philharmonic subsequent to the tenure of present music director Lorin Maazel who leaves at the end of the 2008-9 season. It's a fairly sober piece that argues for an adventurous rather than a "safe bet" choice to replace Mr. Maazel, and we must say we largely agree (honest!) with what Mr. Tommasini has to say. All except for much of these disturbing grafs:

In recent decades even some great conductors driven by lofty artistic principles have unwittingly contributed to the perception that orchestras are elitist. When Kurt Masur, during his tenure with the New York Philharmonic, faced criticism that the orchestra was loath to take risks, he often answered that, yes, yes, we should play new music and be more adventurous. But then he would grow misty-eyed and speak of the Philharmonic’s sacred responsibility to maintain the timeless Germanic masterpieces from Mozart through Bruckner. It was impossible not to be affected by his passion. Sadly, it was also clear that such an Old World attitude was an impediment to change.

Was it any surprise that so many young people found it hard to see the symphonic tradition as a living art form worth their interest? So why not turn things over to a new generation of music directors, young dynamos who would think outside the box, adventurous musicians with collegial connections to young composers, sympathy for pop music and unjaded enthusiasm for reaching out to new audiences?

Excuse me? What sort of rubbish is that.

First, what can Mr. Tommasini possibly mean by, "In recent decades even some great conductors driven by lofty artistic principles have unwittingly contributed to the perception that orchestras are elitist"? That's no mere perception. They are "elitist"; or more correctly, elite institutions — by their very nature. What else could they be as long as they continue to do the work they ought to be doing; work that's in fact their very raison d'être: performing the works of our great 500-year Western symphonic classical music heritage along with contemporary new works that are vying for inclusion in that great heritage. That "many young people [find] it hard to see the symphonic tradition as a living art form worth their interest" is the fault not of music directors or symphony orchestras doing their proper work, but of those who educated and raised those young people the overwhelming majority of whom are thoroughly ignorant of our great Western symphonic tradition because not assiduously exposed to it in childhood as in any civilized and cultured society they would have been.

Which brings us to another of Mr. Tommasini's curious notions.

Mr. Tommasini is in favor, as are we, of orchestras performing contemporary new works, but he seems to imagine that the idea of orchestras having a "sacred responsibility to maintain the timeless Germanic masterpieces from Mozart through Bruckner" is somehow "an Old World attitude [that's] an impediment to change."

Again: Excuse me? Yet more rubbish. That idea is "Old World" and "an impediment to change" only if the one holding the idea is closed off to all else. Those "timeless Germanic masterpieces from Mozart through Bruckner" are to large degree the very ground of our great Western symphonic heritage (although it ought to have been stated as Germanic masterpieces from Bach through Mahler rather than Mozart through Bruckner); a heritage that if not actively maintained make impossible to properly grasp and understand all that came after.

And then there's the most excuse-me bit of rubbish of all: the notion that the music director of a symphony orchestra such as the New York Philharmonic should be one who has "sympathy for pop music."

EXCUSE ME? The very notion is positively imbecile. What business does pop music have among the masterpieces of our great symphonic heritage. Answer: No business at all. To even think of such by comparison musical trash in the same context with those masterpieces is a postmodern conceit — a bit of postmodern equalitarian lunacy — that any classical music critic should be fired for even entertaining much less advertising.

We really do wish Mr. Tommasini had thought better before including as written the above quoted grafs in his piece as they do much to weaken and cast into question an otherwise cogent argument; one that the board of the Philharmonic would do well to heed, or at least take under serious advisement.

Vonnegut's Epitaph

Popular author Kurt Vonnegut, who died yesterday at age 84 from brain damage suffered in an accident a few weeks ago, last year suggested the following for his own epitaph:

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

The only proof he needed
For the existence of God
Was music.

—Blues For America, 07 January, 2006, Sunday Herald

Check The Updates (Administrative Note)

Check the updates (they now number 3 4).

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Classical music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, blogger Joshua Kosman of On a Pacific Aisle, writes in all earnestness in reference to the music referred to in this Washington Post Magazine article:

The writer [Gene Weingarten] does uncover some fascinating variations among the responses to [fiddler, Joshua] Bell the busker, and I'm not wholly out of sympathy with the exercise. But he lost me early, with this bit of transparent phoniness:

These were masterpieces that have endured for centuries on their brilliance alone, soaring music befitting the grandeur of cathedrals and concert halls.

yet has no qualms or hesitation writing with equal earnestness:

I would never claim that [John Cage's] 4' 33" repays as much repeated listening as Der Ring des Nibelungen — that's one of the things that makes the latter a greater work of art....

What's wrong with this picture? (If you don't get it the first time, read it again.)

Imus And Nappy-Headed Ho’s

[Note: This post has been updated (4) as of 9:48 PM Eastern on 12 Apr. See below.]

I had my first taste of broadcaster Don Imus some eight years ago via the simulcast of his syndicated three-and-one-half-hour WFAN-AM (New York City) early-morning radio show (5:30-9:00 AM Eastern), "Imus In The Morning", on cable's MSNBC. It took me almost a year to grasp what the show was about because it seemed to me a puzzling, incongruous, even bizarre mix of vulgar, offensive, macho locker-room chatter and humor, all of it richly larded with nondiscriminatory, equal-opportunity insults, side by side with some of the sharpest, most penetrating political and pop cultural commentary to be found anywhere on network TV which regularly included interviews and discussions with some of this country's most respected journalists, politicians, writers, TV news personalities, and other newsmakers.

When I managed finally to grasp the peculiar genius of this brilliantly choreographed show, at the center of which is the curiously charming, even endearing character and personality of the often caustic Don Imus himself, I understood why for the past 30 years the man and the show have been one of the biggest draws and most successful shows in all of radio broadcasting. And the hallmark characteristic and cornerstone of Imus's curiously charming and endearing character and personality is without question his always blunt, straightforward, and unflinching honesty and integrity in everything in his public life, which is in large measure responsible for the absolute, and I think justifiable, belief of his vast audience, myself included, that Don Imus's public persona is virtually identical to what the man is in private. In short, WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get.

The above is prelude to my asserting my certain conviction that Imus's thoughtless (literally, thought-less), vulgar, offhandedly joking locker-room remark concerning the players on the all-black Rutgers University woman's basketball team that's raised such a furor and storm of protest over the last few days was, in fact, just that: merely a thoughtless, vulgar, offhandedly joking locker-room remark, and nothing more; least of all a purposeful racist or sexist slur, or an insult meant to wound.

Below is a video clip of Imus's apology for the remark, which apology is preceded by the offensive remark itself ("nappy-headed ho’s") in its original context wherein Imus is speaking on the phone with sportscaster and erstwhile "Imus In The Morning" regular, the often mindless Sid "Sidiot" Rosenberg). In the light of my above comments, see what you think. And when you're watching and listening, note, please, that the players on both teams are all black (if there are any white girls on either team, they don't seem to be in evidence in the video clip).

---

Update (6:59 PM Eastern on 11 Apr): The appalling crucifixion this man is having inflicted upon him for his admittedly crude, vulgar, and repugnant but ultimately harmless remark is positively terrifying, and whole orders of magnitude more repugnant than the utterance itself (and if you're tempted or mindless enough to insist the remark was not ultimately harmless, then you're part of the problem — the very real and terrifying problem). I all but retched on witnessing on MSNBC that self-aggrandizing, grandstanding hypocrite, the Reverend Jessie "Hymietown" Jackson, assail Imus for his "racist" slur, and call for his firing declaring it's the only proper punishment for his "crime". Ditto that other paragon of virtue, the Reverend Al "Diamond Merchants" Sharpton, as well as dozens of others of the publicly visible leftist persuasion. The advertisers on Imus's morning show are jumping ship in droves in the wake of the vicious onslaught, and not on moral grounds either, but economic ones. That something like this could happen in this country in the 21st century after all we've learned from other countries and from previous centuries is not only egregiously shameful, but a red-light, alarm-bell warning of worse — much worse — to come.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Update 2 (2:56 AM Eastern on 12 Apr): Effective immediately, MSNBC drops from its schedule its 10-years-running simulcast of the "Imus In The Morning" show.

Craven little weasels — most particularly Chief Weasel Steve Capus, head of NBC News who made the final decision (watch the interview on the video linked in the above linked article).

Update 3 (6:07 PM Eastern on 12 Apr): CBS fires Imus. And the appalling beat goes on ... and on ... and on.

Craven little weasels.

Update 4 (9:48 PM Eastern on 12 Apr): New Jersey Governor John Corzine in critical but stable condition after being involved in a multi-car accident on the Garden State Parkway en route to a meeting with Imus and the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

More On The Thoroughly Delicious Experiment

The thoroughly delicious article concerning a thoroughly delicious (if flawed) experiment engineered and chronicled by journalist Gene Weingarten for the Washington Post Magazine, and linked to in this S&F post, seems to have had widespread fallout on the Net. Most interesting was a live online discussion with Mr. Weingarten set up by the Post the complete transcript of which can be read here. I found especially, um, charming this choice little morsel from one of participants:

This is an interesting story; Joshua Bell seems like a gentleman and a cool guy. I have to say, though, that I am very disturbed by the writers' assumption that there is something wrong with the fact that more people didn't stop, or pay attention, or otherwise recognize Bell's virtuosity. The writers' assumption implies that there is a normative "greatness" to the music that Bell was playing and that there was a normative "virtuosity" to his playing; and what is presented as normative in this article, as is usually done in musical discourse in this country, is a white European musical aesthetic. I love the Bach chaconne, as does Bell and as do the writers and some of the passers-by, but many people do not. Many people hold other culturally- and environmentally-learned aesthetic conceptions of musical beauty which, believe it or not, do not recognize Bach as beautiful. The assumption that is expressed throughout this article that something must be seriously wrong because people didn't recognize Bach's or Bell's genius - especially given the writers' obnoxious contention that Washingtonians are "sophisticated" (with the implication that residents of other communities are not) - is spurious and ethnocentric, to say the least. I like the quote from the Kant scholar who says that Kant would have made nothing of the entire experiment. Your alleged experiment is revealing only of the writers' chauvinistic preference for European art music, and of the larger, implied problem of the racialized [sic] canon of Western music. Please, please, get a grip on yourselves. The fact that most people who passed by Bell on their way to work did not register what you consider to be proper approval means absolutely nothing. There is nothing to explain given that you do not know what those people's musical preferences are; what their thoughts on musical performance in public spaces are; what their thoughts on giving money to street performers are; whether or not they grew up in cultures or sub-cultures that value other kinds of music or musical performance as being most beautiful, etc. I would have enjoyed the performance, but so what? I am not so impressed with myself as to believe that my musical tastes represent some objective and all-encompassing notion of musical taste.

To his credit, Mr. Weingarten fielded this imbecile PC gibberish — and fielded it well — with a degree of equanimity that would have been way beyond my capacity to muster.

And here's a piece for Salon written by some twit by the name of David Marchese (whomever he might be) commenting on the experiment and on Mr. Weingarten's article. Choice excerpt:

The apathy came as a surprise to Weingarten, whose article evinces the kind of elitist snobbery that's exactly what classical music doesn't need. From the description of the crowd at one of Washington's most "plebian" subway stations ("ghosts" with "ID tags slapping at their bellies") to Bell's shock at the fact "that people were actually, ah ... ignoring me" to the title's insulting swine allusion, the reader is treated to highbrow condescension of the highest order.

Postmodern populist idiot.

Idiots

The following from today's New York Times Arts Briefly column:

Imus Uproar Continues

Calls for the dismissal of the syndicated radio host Don Imus continued over the weekend despite his apology for calling the players on the Rutgers University women’s basketball team a bunch of “nappy-headed ho’s.” Yesterday the Rev. DeForest B. Soaries Jr., senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, N.J., and a former secretary of state of New Jersey, joined the chorus. At Easter services attended by C. Vivian Stringer, a parishioner who is the head coach of the Rutgers team, he called Mr. Imus’s language “vile and repulsive” and said, “At this point I see firing him as the only acceptable course of action.” He added that if Mr. Imus, above, was not dismissed immediately, African-Americans and others outraged by his remarks should boycott WFAN, the New York outlet for his program, “Imus in the Morning”; CBS Radio, which syndicates his show to more than 70 radio stations; and MSNBC, which carries a television simulcast of the show. On Saturday the Rev. Al Sharpton, who promised to picket WFAN unless Mr. Imus was fired within a week, said, “I accept his apology, just as I want his bosses to accept his resignation.” On Friday after Mr. Imus apologized on the air, WFAN, CBS and MSNBC condemned his original remarks. Mr. Sharpton, referring to the actor who used a racist epithet in a rant during a comedy routine last year, said: “This is not some unemployed actor like Michael Richards. This is an established figure, allowed to use the airwaves for sexist and racist remarks.”

Idiots, and incarnate exemplars of Nietzsche's slave morality.

And Speaking Of Wagner...

Journalist Michael Henderson has this laconic bit to say in summing up the works of the Sorcerer Of Bayreuth, and Parsifal in particular:

Once you open your heart to Wagner, life can never be the same. His music changes everything.

Sounds right to us.

RTWT here.