Sounds & Fury

Featured Past Post #59 (Administrative Note)

A new Featured Past Post ("Architecture, Utility, and Aesthetics”) is now up on the right sidebar.

The Other Shoe (Off-Message Mini-Rant)

Before reading this off-message mini-rant it should be understood from the outset that we know nothing about economics. We are, in fact, a genuine economics ignoramus never having really understood much about money itself beyond how to spend it (we exaggerate for rhetorical effect, but not by a lot).

With that caveat in place, we’ve been reading and hearing a great deal lately concerning the subprime mortgage lending crisis and the mortgage loan defaults which have resulted therefrom causing an almost meltdown of the financial markets. It’s occurred to us, however, that as cripplingly severe as that bad business has been, it will be as nothing compared with the effects attendant the shoe that has yet to drop: the collapse of the consumer credit markets, a.k.a. credit card debt. The credit card pimps involved in that market have for the last decade or so been so phenomenally greedy, and therefore so phenomenally promiscuous in granting credit to those who don’t warrant the extension of credit, that as the economy weakens further the consumer loan defaults will begin escalating geometrically, and when that happens (and it’s a matter of when, not if) the domino-effect meltdown of financial markets worldwide will be near total and with no government bailout possible.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

And remember, you read it here first.

Setting Straight A Bit Of Confusion (Administrative Note)

There seems to be a bit of confusion concerning this post of ours ("Sign Of The Times"). Our fault entirely. In consequence, we’ve added an update to that post which, hopefully, will set things straight, and urge you to read same.

That is all.

As you were.

Sign Of The Times

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 2:58 AM Eastern on 31 Mar. See below.]

Peter Kiesewalter, founder of the East Village Opera Company, (in)famous for arranging the music from operas by such as Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, and Puccini for a rock band (yes, you read that right), recently had this to say according to Washington Post music critic and blogger Stephen Brookes of Most Of The Shebang:

“We're just playing this music the way the composers would write it if they were alive today.”

[...]

Opera really doesn't need to be handled with kid gloves, [Kiesewalter] says. It was the pop music of its day and dealt with the same issues (sex, love, sex and more sex) that rock-and-roll does. Drag it out of the culture bunker and into the nightclub, he says, and opera loses none of its vitality; in fact, it seems very much at home.

"Rock and opera go very well together: They're both overblown, massive spectacles," Kiesewalter says. "The sheer size of opera lends itself well to what I call the 'majesty' of rock. And those composers were the rock stars of their time. There was a lot of mystique about them, and their premieres were anticipated as much as a Beatles record. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to compare a composer like Mozart with someone like Prince."

He doesn’t, does he?

Why are we not surprised.

RTWT here and weep — or rage as it may take you.

---

Update (2:58 AM Eastern on 31 Mar): Judging by some readers’ responses to the above piece (quite a few, actually), there seems to be some confusion concerning that on which we were commenting. We were not commenting on the making of those rock band arrangements or on the rock band arrangements themselves. How could we? We’ve not heard any of them. We were commenting on something else entirely. We leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine what that something else might be.

Offstage, Opera Singers, Like Children, Should Be Seen, Not Heard

The following bit of, um, "expert" criticism and historical comment was forwarded to us by one of our regular readers who pulled it from an online classical music forum. It’s an excerpt from an interview with the famous husband and wife opera singers, soprano Evelyn Lear and the late baritone, Thomas Stewart (Stewart died in 2006).

Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart definitely found Levine to be among the right and Solti to be among the wrong conductors for Wagner, which of course includes the Ring. The way Solti conducts the music simply kills the singers' voices.

Lear: “There are a few conductors who are sensitive enough to have followed Wagner's markings in the score. James Levine was one great conductor who really observed those markings. Others who did not, like Georg Solti, let the orchestra go wild and mad, so he was loud, louder...”[1]

Stewart: “And it's very exciting. It is very exciting but so far as the singers are concerned, it's very hard on the singers."

Lear: “And many voice teachers, of course, are very leery of the fact that Wagner is associated with the term ‘loud and dramatic.’ So they are afraid that the young voices that they are training will be ruined by having to sing that music. But, as you probably know, Wagner was very influenced by the Italian bel canto and he wanted his singers to sing that way.[2] And, as a matter of fact...”

Stewart: “He stated often that he would have preferred Italian singers to sing his operas. But he never could get them because they refused to learn German or sing in German in his day. But he preferred the Italian singers. He wanted them to sing his operas.”[3]

Lear: “You know what his favorite opera was? Norma of Bellini.[4] He stressed the bel canto style. ‘Sing my music as if Italian folk songs.’ You know, that's what he wanted.[5] Not the blasting. So when young singers come to us and audition for us and they start off really blasting [their] voices, we stop that immediately. That's not what it's about." [all bracketed numbers mine]

Yes, well, singers “blasting [their] voices” is not what it’s about in any operatic context. Singers are supposed to sing, not blast, in any opera whatsoever, Wagner’s music-dramas included.

The above comments by Ms. Lear and Mr. Stewart are a perfect example of people understanding in their own rather than in the author’s terms what they read, and understand it as it best suits their prejudices.

Taking the above half-truths and delusional fabrications one by numbered one:

[1] Levine is most certainly a meticulous Wagner conductor, and always has been. But Solti conducts a Wagner score in accordance with Wagner’s own way of conducting — both his own scores, and the scores of other composers — as recorded in Wagner’s brilliant Wagner-length essay, Über das Dirigieren (On Conducting), and as reported by eyewitnesses from firsthand knowledge. And that way of conducting is precisely what makes Solti one of the all-time great Wagner conductors, all possessors of what I’ve metaphorically termed the "Wagner Gene". Levine has been getting better as a Wagner conductor with each passing year, but he’s not yet a member of that class of stellar Wagner conductors, and, much as I admire him as a conductor (and, generally, my admiration for Levine as a conductor is quite considerable), I suspect he never will be.

[2] This is an absolute absurdity. Wagner admired the Italian way with song — Italian song — but to say he was “influenced” by bel canto in his own work is simply rubbish. He was nothing of the sort as anyone with an informed ear for music can readily and instantly hear for himself. Even more absurd is the contention that Wagner wanted his German singers to sing like Italian bel canto singers. What Wagner wanted was German singers to sing German song the way Italian singers sang Italian song; that is, naturally and with graceful ease as if their native “throat,” to use Wagner’s term, were born to it.

[3] This is flat-out delusional thinking. Better than anyone, Wagner knew that the Italian “throat” was simply not fit to sing German song. Period. Full stop.

[4] No, Wagner’s favorite opera was not Norma. Not by a long shot. Wagner admired Norma because he saw it as a singular anomaly in Italian bel canto opera — which is to say, it, astonishingly, made musico-dramatic sense.

[5] To say that Wagner “stressed the bel canto style” is of course, again, absurd, and saying so betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what Wagner was after, which was that he wanted his German singers to sing rather than bark and grunt his German music the way Italian singers sang their Italian music; viz., naturally and with graceful ease. See my answer to #2 above.

All of this is just further proof of what I’ve always said concerning opera singers, by and large: pamper them, encourage them, work with them patiently and sympathetically to help them realize their gift to best advantage, but never, ever, give them leave to come to their own conclusions independently in matters of the operatic art.

A Must-Read

The following are the opening grafs of a spot-on essay by Brian Boyd in The American Scholar. While it concerns literature and the academic literary world in particular, it’s a damning indictment of post-sixties, postmodern thinking in general, the thinking in the post-sixties, postmodern world of music very much included.

Stories can offer so much pleasure that studying them hardly seems like work. Literary scholars have often sought to allay unease at being paid to enjoy the frissons of fiction by investigating literature as a form of history or moral education. And since the late 1960s, academic literature departments have tried especially to stress criticism as critique, as an agent of social transformation.

For the last few decades, indeed, scholars have been reluctant to deal with literature as an art — with the imaginative accomplishment of a work or the imaginative feast of responding to it — as if to do so meant privileging elite capacities and pandering to indulgent inclinations. Many critics have sought to keep literary criticism well away from the literary and instead to arraign literature as largely a product of social oppression, complicit in it or at best offering a resistance already contained.

Literary academics have also been reluctant to deal with science, except to fantasize that they have engulfed and disarmed it by reducing it to “just another narrative,” or to dismiss it with a knowing sneer as presupposing a risibly naïve epistemological realism. They have not only denied the pleasure of art and the power of science, but like others in the humanities and social sciences, they have also denied that human nature exists, insisting against the evidence that culture and convention make us infinitely malleable.

I and others want literature to return to the artfulness of literary art and to reach out to science, now that science has at last found ways to explore human nature and human minds. Since these are, respectively, the subject and the object of literature, it would be fatal for literary study to continue to cut itself off from science, from the power of discovery possible through submitting ideas to the rule of evidence.

Word!

RTWT here.

(Our thanks to the always indispensable Arts & Letters Daily for the link.)

From The We Wish We’d Said That Dept

In the 18th century the piano danced. In the 19th it sang. The 20th century liked to use the piano as an assault weapon.”

The above from Bernard Holland in his New York Times review of a four-pianist recital given at Greenwich House’s Renee Weiler Concert Hall.

RTWT here.

An Announcement Of Interest To Some

We received an eMail the other day that, among other matters, informed us that the sender had found Sounds & Fury by seeing its name on a ranked listing of classical music blogs. This piece of intelligence provoked an interesting correspondence between the sender and us as to the value of such ranked lists, our good self taking the position that such lists are largely nonsense as, if nothing else, the Technorati database on which the rankings are based is ill-constructed and subject to all sorts of statistical distortions which, all things considered, was fairly surly and curmudgeonly of us to point out as Sounds & Fury has consistently placed in either the Top 10 or Top 20 of such ranked lists, the only blog written by a “civilian” (i.e., not a professional musician, MSM journalist or critic, or academic) to do so.

My correspondent, however, had some good points to make in favor of such ranked lists the, for us, decisive one being that such lists are often the only reliable guide a newbie or “outsider” has available to him to sort out the wheat from the chaff initially without his having to slog though dozens upon dozens of blogs himself, most of which turn out to be ultimately valueless reading.

This set us to thinking as to whether there actually existed a reliable and well-constructed statistical database on which to base such rankings. After a careful search, we found one even though it was not intended to serve the purpose of creating a ranked listing of blogs: Google’s “Backward Links” (Google’s name for a site’s incoming links) function. Unlike the incoming links count that determines Technorati’s so-called “Authority” number for a blog which link count is entirely indiscriminate as to source, the list of incoming links to a blog that Google produces is in fact a “filtered” list that takes into consideration the worth and importance of the sources of those incoming links, and therefore omitted from that list are all incoming links the sources of which fall below a minimum threshold level of PageRank, Google’s intricately computed rating of a webpage’s importance within the entire universe of webpages. What was of significance to us for our purpose was that the number of incoming links qualifying for that list is expressed by Google as a single number right at the top of the list’s pages, and that single number is in fact a statistically “clean” expression of both the quantity and quality of the incoming links to whatever blog is under examination, and a perfect number to use in constructing a statistically distortionless (relatively speaking) ranked list of classical music blogs.

Consequently, subsequent to the end of this year’s first quarter (31 March), Sounds & Fury will publish its first installment of a new quarterly updated ranked listing of classical music blogs, the Sounds & Fury Top 50 Classical Music Blogs, on 2 April (we forbore to publish it on 1 April for reasons obvious).

Look for it then.

An Explanation Requested And Provided

A “lurker” on a classical music forum on which we occasionally post links to pertinent articles on Sounds & Fury — a forum on which there are almost always raised outraged cries of the you’re crazy sort directed against us whenever the subject of those articles is Glenn Gould, the piano versus the harpsichord for the performance of the Baroque keyboard rep, or the proper performance of Bach’s keyboard works — asks:

You’ve often praised to the skies the Bach performances of Landowska and Gould, yet the Bach performances of those two artists are worlds apart. It seems to me, at least, that to someone such as yourself who seems to have a rigid opinion of what constitutes correct Bach performance that if you loved the one, you would at least dislike or disapprove of the other. How do you explain cheerleading for both?

Excellent question, and we confess we never gave much thought to the apparent discrepancy because in our mind there’s none.

While it’s true that the performances of Bach’s keyboard works by these two extraordinary keyboard artists are quite different, they’re hardly “worlds apart,” as my correspondent put it, despite the fact that Landowska performed almost exclusively on the harpsichord, and Gould, the piano. Worlds apart would be the Bach performances of pianists such as, say, Sviatoslav Richter or András Schiff (to mention two names that came up in the current forum brouhaha on this subject) and the performances of either Landowska or Gould. The former two are 20th- and 21st-century pianistic readings and everything untoward that implies, while the latter two are readings that, in their own ways, are unvaryingly true to and deeply respectful of the period of the works’ creation and the instrument for which the works were originally written, and true to and deeply respectful of the architectural and musical demands of the music itself which argue forcefully against the sort of anachronistic pianistic “expressivity” that almost all pianists seem incapable of eschewing in the performance of these keyboard works; works written principally for, and fully aware and exploitative of the idiomatic qualities of, instruments incapable of such “expressivity”: the single- and double-manual harpsichord (I omit the clavichord from inclusion here as that curious instrument, which has charms peculiar to itself alone, was in the time of Bach used largely in the home and for the most part by amateur dabblers and therefore was not a principal concern of Bach’s, and exclude as well the organ as it’s a separate case altogether).

We said above that the readings of Bach’s keyboard works by Landowska and Gould are very different (but not “worlds apart”), the readings by the former being what might be (and have pejoratively been) called “Romantic” (upper case R) even “gothic,” as we put it in this article on Landowska’s reading of the Well-Tempered Clavier; and the readings by the latter, “uncannily pure,” “precise,” and “lean-and-mean” as we put it in the same article.

Considering the instrument chosen by each of these artists for their performance of these works, that sounds almost contradictory, does it not? One would have expected exactly the opposite to obtain: Gould’s piano readings being the more “Romantic,” and Landowska’s harpsichord readings, the more “uncannily pure,” “precise,” and “lean-and-mean.” A moment’s reflection, however, instantly dissolves the contradiction.

Landowska was, in a sense, “protected” by her instrument of choice, and could therefore attempt her so-called-but-not-really “Romantic” phrasings and registrations knowing that her instrument would automatically ensure she could do nothing that could not have been done by the instruments for which this music was principally written. Not so with Gould and his instrument of choice. He knew that had he attempted to follow Landowska’s approach, his instrument would have instantly betrayed him and made his readings sound truly Romantic — the fate of almost every other pianist who has attempted to eat his Baroque cake and have it too.

By the above en passant musing we do not mean to suggest that’s the reason for the approach taken by each of these two artists. Their very different readings are, of course, the result of their very different visions of this music. By the above we meant only to resolve the apparent contradiction of one’s failed expectations concerning these two artists and their chosen instruments.

So, then, what is it about these two very different readings that permits us to “prais[e] [both] to the skies” without hesitation or any sense of discrepancy?

Well, the answer has already been given above; viz., that the readings by both Landowska and Gould are “unvaryingly true to and deeply respectful of the period of the works’ creation and the instrument for which the works were originally written, and true to and deeply respectful of the architectural and musical demands of the music itself” — qualities lacking in one respect or another in the readings of these works by almost all modern-day pianists. Further, the readings by both these artists are invariably realized with stellar virtuosic artistry, technical and musical. What is there not to “prais[e] to the skies” in both readings?

We confess, however, that we sense a deeper difference between the readings of these two great artists; a difference not adequately expressed by adjectives such as “Romantic” and “lean-and-mean,” and one, we’re afraid, that can’t be expressed in objective or rational terms. And that is that while Landowska’s readings are profoundly and richly affecting, Gould’s reveal the transcendent core of the music; that which transcends even the music’s earthly profundity and considerable earthly beauty. With Gould’s Bach readings it’s as if, through the music, there existed but a one-degree-of-separation connection between Gould and the Divine source. The connection goes: Bach to the Divine source and Gould to the innermost musical mind of Bach; ergo, one degree of separation between Gould and the Divine source.

We freely admit that’s not the sort of thing a conservatory trained musician ought to be saying; is even the sort of thing such a one ought to be ashamed and embarrassed to say. But as Amadeus’s Emperor Joseph was wont to declare, “There it is.”

And so it is, and we’re not the least inclined to make apology for it.

A Heads-Up

A brief note to call your special attention to one of the blogs listed in our Culture Blogs listing on the left sidebar: Mostly Opera, a blog written by “a woman in the 30s living in Copenhagen” who seems to be everywhere in Europe sending back detailed firsthand reports on every European musical event of any interest or importance, opera events most particularly.

Do give a click over and start reading right from the top. We know you’ll find the reading well worth your while.

Landowska On Bach Performance

Wanda Landowska, the brilliant harpsichordist and Bach Scholar, had this to say about Bach performance in the early 20th century:

[I] do not wish to imply that acquaintance with [Baroque] instruments and exact knowledge of embellishments and figured bass, suffice to execute their music; far from it. There are more serious obstacles.... To begin with, it is our general ignorance of the manners and customs, the motions, the prevailing mental attitude and the atmosphere of the epoch. We very rarely hear the genuine music of the Leipzig Cantor {Bach]. We are compelled to listen to modernized Bach, arranged according to the musical fashions of today, approximated to the conditions of our time. We are within two centuries of Bach, nevertheless his epoch is ancient history vague and totally distinct from that in which we live, different in life, art, impressions and ideas. What we seek eagerly, what we like and what we admire, often did not find favor in those days.

Intensity of expression and breadth of sonority are the qualities now most sought after, most admired in every musical performance. Nevertheless these ideals of contemporary art were not in high favor two centuries ago. In prefaces to their works or in treatises on playing the harpsichord, the authors recommend above all, grace, finesse and precision. "Experience has taught me," says Francois Couperin, "that the hands which are the strongest and capable of playing the most rapid passages are not those which succeed best in expressing tender sentiment." [emphasis mine]

In his search for perfection, Bach did not imagine an instrument with increased sonority, but one with a tone as supple and flexible as possible. In his preface, dated 1723, for the "Inventions," Bach said that they were written to teach correctness in playing and to aid the pupil in acquiring a singing tone; he disdained those composers who thought only of finger-gymnastics, and called them "Clavier-Husaren" (in our slang, "Knights of the Key Board.") He insisted that the three principles which guided the Roman rhetoricians were necessary for a fine interpretation — accuracy, clearness and grace. When Bach is played today, intensity, thundering basses and exaggerated contrasts in dynamics are the most noticeable qualities. Grace, intelligence, naive faith and sublimity have become too unimportant in our coarse, commercial life to be considered in interpreting works of genius.

Music is growing too popular, too democratic. In Wagner's words, music has ceased to be the pleasure and ministering servant of a few select persons of refinement. It has become everybody's pleasure, and "everybody" prefers noisy effects, sensations which stun, and above all sonority, tremendous sonority. There must be virtual explosions, torrents of sound and electric displays in order that the fatigued listener may not fall asleep!

—From, “The Interpretation of Bach's Works”, published in, The Etude Music Magazine (September 1906): 562-3, and translated by Edward Burlingame Hill for the Polish Music Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1, Summer 2003.

Yes indeed. It all sounds spot-on to us (and, no, we never even knew of this article's existence before now).

(Our thanks to Bart Collins of The Well Tempered Blog for the link.)

Bach by Gould — On The Harpsichord

Perfection! (Musically, that is.)

(Our thanks to Bart Collins of The Well Tempered Blog for the link.)

Anniversary Note

This month marks the ninth anniversary of the death of the great filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. We had published (in print) immediately after his death in 1999 an appreciation of Kubrick a reprint of which can be read here. Today in The Guardian is an article titled, “Making 2001: A Space Odyssey”, that throws some further light on the making of that seminal film that’s also worth your time reading.

Lovely, Ain’t It

This is the sort of empty, simpleminded, vulgar crap that results ineluctably from promoting and encouraging the blockheaded and perverse notion that there’s no meaningful distinction between popular and high culture nor should there be.

Lovely, ain’t it. (Yes, we know it's catchy.)

(Link via Roger Bourland.)

It’s Getting Really Scary (Off-Message Observation)

First it was the frogs, then the bees, and now it’s the Chinook salmon.

It’s getting really scary out there.

Amadeus Revisited: A Brief Note

I’ve just finished viewing a tape of Milos Forman’s film, Amadeus, for the I’ve-lost-count number of times, and, as always, it was as engaging and moving an experience as it was on first viewing; a work of genuine cinematic art. And also as always, each time I view the film, I marvel at those who criticize it on the grounds that its portrayal of Mozart is as “a foul-mouthed idiot savant”; a portrayal that’s “a caricature” of the historical Mozart, as one prominent cultural critic put the matter.

I’m no Mozart expert, but I’ve studied enough of the literature to know that both those charges are ill-considered, not to say purblind. These critics seem to forget that this film is a work of fiction, not biography. And they seem to forget as well who it is that’s telling the story in Amadeus: crazy old Salieri, of course, not some historian or objective outside observer. But even though Amadeus is Salieri’s story about Mozart and a work of fiction, the film’s portrayal of Mozart captures and embraces in a brilliantly dramatic, theatrical, and, as is befitting of Mozart, comic way the awesome contradiction between the to all appearances ordinary man — a man, pace Maynard Solomon, as much child as man — and an astonishing body of work that in number, multifariousness, and profundity beggars the imagination as I’ve elsewhere put it on this blog. As I've also written,

Had Amadeus's Mozart come across as a "foul-mouthed idiot savant," and a mere "caricature," he would not have — could not have — captured as he did the hearts and minds of millions world-wide, most of whom knew Mozart previously only as a synonym for the precocious much in the same way Einstein has for almost a century been a synonym for genius. The Mozart of Amadeus is as warm-blooded, fully fleshed-out, and as true to the essential spirit of the historical Mozart ... as are the principal characters of Don Giovanni and Le nozze di Figaro as warm-blooded, fully fleshed-out, and true to the essential spirit of the archetypes they represent. That's the genius of Amadeus as it is of the stageworks of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, God's amanuensis.

I wrote that more than two years ago, and nothing in the intervening time, and after numerous viewings, has given me cause to alter my judgment about the film or its portrayal of the man Mozart and his astonishing gift.

Houston, We Have A Problem

Something urgently needs to be done with The New York Times’s arts section, both the daily and the Sunday Arts and Leisure editions, print and online: an entire remake of its makeup. The prole-pandering cheapening of that section has gone on for some years now; a prole-pandering cheapening that got its first real impetus in the Sunday Arts and Leisure section in the years 1998-2002 under the editorship of John Rockwell, a man who should have known better than to take the wrongheaded position that there’s no meaningful distinction between pop and high culture nor should there be. That perverse thinking has today reached reductio ad absurdum proportions in both the daily and Sunday arts sections under the overall directorship of Culture Editor Sam Sifton whose credentials for the job are that he’s

...been deputy culture editor at The Times since 2004. He joined The Times in 2001 as deputy Dining editor, and became Dining editor later that year. Previously he was a founding editor of Talk magazine where he worked until 1998. Before joining Talk he held a number of positions at the New York Press from 1990 to 1998, including managing editor, media critic, senior editor, contributing editor and restaurant critic. Before joining the New York Press he taught social studies in New York City public schools from 1990 to 1994. Before that, he was an assistant editor at American Heritage from 1988 to 1990. Mr. Sifton graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a B.A. degree in history and literature in 1988. He is author of A Field Guide to the Yettie.

Uh-huh. Perfect!

What first needs to be done here is to find a culture editor properly fitted for the job; one who understands fully just how perversely loony is the notion that there's no meaningful distinction between pop and high culture nor should there be. Next, there needs to be a total separation of coverage of pop and high culture, the latter under the banners of Arts and Sunday Arts, and the former given its own section under the banner of, say, Popular Culture or Entertainment for the daily, and Sunday Popular Culture or Sunday Entertainment for the Sunday section. In the Arts and Sunday Arts sections under their own headings should be coverage of classical music (which should always be referred to simply as “music”), opera, jazz, theater (but, N.B., not Broadway musical theater which properly belongs in the Popular Culture or Entertainment section), dance, art (i.e., painting, sculpture, and design), books, and architecture. In the Popular Culture or Entertainment and the Sunday Popular Culture or Sunday Entertainment sections under their own headings should be coverage of all music other than classical, opera, and jazz, each genre identified by its proper label, Broadway musicals, movies, and television.

Once the makeup of those two sections is set up (i.e., the Arts and the Popular Culture or Entertainment sections, both daily and Sunday), what next needs to be done is to find editors for those two sections who are fully qualified in their respective domains and really know their stuff — intimately. Next, the writers for those sections — all of whom, it should be but often isn’t needless to say, must also be fully qualified in their respective domains and really know their stuff — must be given enough column inches to do their jobs properly. And how many column inches would that be? Enough to contain up to 1000 words for each piece; 1500-2000 for stories or features of major importance.

What’s that we hear you muttering? It’s a bloody pipe dream; a pipe dream that flies recklessly in the face of broadening and grievous economic and circulation problems, and a young generation that hardly ever reads newspapers and knows little and cares less about matters of high culture than perhaps any generation in history?

Tough shit. Keep in mind, please, we’re here talking about our National Newspaper Of Record, as it’s been called, not some small-town rag or ordinary metropolitan daily. A way must be found by the Times to implement this, for it’s nothing less than its journalistic and ethical obligation to itself, its history, and to the nation for it to do so.

It’s the right thing to do.

Featured Past Post #58 (Administrative Note)

A new Featured Past Post ("Writing For The Blogosphere”) is now up on the right sidebar.

When A Guitar Is An Orchestra

When played by Ana Vidovic playing this by Isaac Albéniz:

Jeez!

Are gifted musicians God’s greatest gift to the world or what?

(The above video found on writer Mark Terry’s blog, This Writing Life, for which, our thanks.)

A Final Word About That Hunding Business

[Note: This post has been edited as of 6:31 PM Eastern on 15 Mar to add two links. See below.]

This question of the manner of Hunding’s death (set forth here and here) has provoked a truly extraordinary and baffling response from a quarter from which one would least expect such a response: a dedicated Wagner newsgroup. Members of that newsgroup are unanimous in their opinion that in suggesting what we’ve suggested concerning the manner of Hunding’s death we’re being either a purposely provocative wiseass, or else are so thoroughly dense that we can’t see the obvious; viz., that Wagner clearly and unambiguously tells us in his score (i.e., music, text, and stage directions) that Wotan, intentionally and with malice aforethought, strikes Hunding dead by a contemptuous wave of his hand.

But that’s a conclusion that would be expected of a typical operagoer, not an informed Wagnerian; a conclusion reached by the logic put forward succinctly in the following comment by one of this newsgroup's members, and agreed with unanimously by other members of the newsgroup.

Let's think for a moment about the setbacks and frustrations Wotan has had to endure in the last few hours. He had an argument with his wife, for whose intelligence he had scant respect, and she ridiculed him and exposed the fatal flaw in his position. As a consequence he had to abandon his plan to regain control of the ring, and to face the likelihood of the eventual end of his power. He had to participate in the shameful betrayal and death of a beloved son, who honored and trusted him. His favorite daughter had been disobedient in an important matter and he would have to punish her severely. Is it any wonder he was in a murderous rage? And there was Hunding, the immediate instrument of his son's death, standing before him and wiping the blood off his spear. Would he let Hunding go home and boast to his kinsmen about how he had hunted down and slain Wehwalt [the name by which Hunding knows Siegmund]? Not likely. What Wotan did was more than natural; it was almost inevitable.

While that view of the matter will play satisfactorily if one doesn't examine the matter carefully or too closely (there is, for instance, not so much as a hint in either music or text to suggest Wotan is "in a murderous rage" in the entire Wotan-Hunding encounter which in fact is notated in the score to be played piano and pianissimo up to and including Wotan's final two "Geh!"), it's a shortsighted, not to say uninformed view; a view that effectively reduces Wotan to a character straight out of an Italian melodrama (or modern-day daytime TV soap), and his actions to those expected of such a character in the circumstances. Or to not put too fine a point on it, an essentially simpleminded view that betrays a lack of understanding of Wotan’s character and of his motivations and state of mind at the moment which matters we’ve explained previously in the above linked Sounds & Fury posts — an explanation supported by and made manifest in the music itself — and further explained in a post made to this Wagner newsgroup; viz., that at this point in the drama the very last thing Wotan wants is more blood on his hands. He simply wants Hunding — his instrument in the oath-sworn (by Wotan) slaying of his son Siegmund — out of his sight so that his presence will not be a source of further rebuke to him.

Note, please, that in the score both text and music are completely silent on the manner of Hunding’s death, and the stage direction is ambiguous and not by any stretch clear on the matter. That stage direction reads: “Vor seinem verächtlichen Handwink sinkt Hunding tot zu Boden” (Before [i.e., before as in, in the face of] a contemptuous wave of Wotan's hand, Hunding sinks dead to the ground).

That stage direction is no more than an instruction to the singer-actors as to what to do and when to do it. Had Wagner intended to convey decisively that Wotan intentionally strikes Hunding dead he would have said something to that effect directly in the music, and perhaps even in the text as well. At very least he would have written a stage direction that said something along the lines of, “With a contemptuous wave of his hand, Wotan strikes Hunding dead, and he falls to the ground lifeless.”

But Wagner neither did nor wrote anything of the sort; not in the music, the text, or the stage directions, and for good reasons, too; reasons made clear in our description of Wotan’s motivations and state of mind at the moment, and with our informed understanding of Wotan’s character as Wagner has so brilliantly and psychologically perceptively drawn it.

It’s beyond us why these newsgroup members, informed Wagnerians some of them, unanimously responded as they did to our suggestion concerning the manner of Hunding’s death. Perhaps it’s our ‘tude rather than what we had to say that’s the cause of that response (the discussion turned quite heated, even nasty, when it became clear we had no intention of altering our view of this matter simply because the group, with something less than cogent argument, to put it kindly, unanimously rejected it).

Wouldn’t surprise us much, actually. Sad to report, we’ve encountered that sort of thing fairly often on other classical music and opera forums.

Added 15 March 2008: The relevant threads on the Wagner newsgroup can be read here and here.