sounds & fury

And Speaking Of New Culture Blogs

The Culture Corner of the blogosphere, it seems, is beginning 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...

...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.

It's Baaack

One of our favorite opera-queen blogs, Trrill, that is, and blogger Nick Scholl offers up a few historical tidbits on Wagner, and on Wagnerian opera in America.

Sonofagun

Well, well. Fancy that.

The Morning News, one of the most venerable and widely-read online daily magazines on the Web, just published its 2005 Editors’ Awards for Online Excellence, and guess what we found there.

This:

Favorite Treatment of the Classical Musical World as Vital Sport

Erudite, widely read and passionately listened, and argumentative until the last glass is broken -- it’s how we’d love to describe ourselves, but it’s better fit for A.C. Douglas who writes Sounds & Fury, a blog that makes the classical music world seem like a soap opera with better background music. Anthony Tommasini should take self-defense classes.

We don't know whether to proffer our thanks to editors Andrew Womack and Rosecrans Baldwin, or -- in the spirit of that famous composer (either Verdi or Berlioz; we can't quite remember which) who on being told that a number or movement of his newest work was met with such wild applause, shouts of Bravo!, and calls for an encore that it brought the performance of the entire work to a halt, declared, "How could I have gone so wrong!" -- reassess our past writings here with a careful and critical editorial eye to determine what we can do in future to prevent any further such honors.

On reflection, we choose the former rather than the latter.

Thanks, guys. Our honor.

We Surrender

We can't continue to fight the good fight any longer; the fight against the use of the grubby and singularly ugly pop terms, blog, blogging, and blogger, by using instead their original forms: weblog, weblogging, and weblogger. The use of the pop form of those terms in all media is now so pervasive that one can succeed only in appearing hopelessly antique or reactionary, and even risk being misunderstood, by an insistence on using the original form of those terms. So, from this date forward, we'll be referring to blogs, blogging, and bloggers on this webl ...., er, blog (Lord!, that hurt!). No point playing Don Quixote any longer in this matter.

Score another win for pop culture.

Idiots

I post this link absent any comment. You work out to whom the title of this post refers.

New Addition

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

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

Putting A Stop To It

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

As I said, a tiresome exercise.

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

Slick, what?, and double tiresome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wouldn't it have you?

New Addition

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

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

Requiem Aeternam Blogospherem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Culture Weblogs Addition

We thought one first-rate opera-queen weblog (Trrill) was surely sufficient -- more than sufficient -- to include in our exclusive listing of culture weblogs.

Turns out we were wrong. We've just added another, Sieglinde's Diaries, to that exclusive listing. The keeper of the diaries, Leon Dominguez, is a knowledgeable, outrageous, and, more importantly, hilarious diarist, and must be read to be believed.

Click over, and find out for yourself.

New Addition

The elegant weblog Vilaine Fille (whose proprietress appears to be anything but vilaine) has now been added to our exclusive listing of Culture Weblogs.

Stop by, and give a read.

He Does It Again

Another first-rate post by weblogger Mr. Outer Life of Outer Life. And even though his weblog is not, strictly speaking, a culture weblog, he now goes up on Sounds & Fury's exclusive Culture Weblogs listing.

Bløgösphère

Alex Ross graciously complies with my request that, even though beside the point, he give his readers the proper pronunciation of bløgösphère, his coined term to designate the cultural blogosphere.

After reading Alex's response, I fear the term is not destined to play well in Poughkeepsie.

Damn shame, too. We really do need a catchy designation to set off the cultural blogosphere from the uniformly disreputable other regions of that vast cyber universe.

I'm working on it.

Crowing Zones

Since everyone is crowing about how many different time zones readers of their weblogs inhabit (well, OK, not everyone; just two everyones), I thought I'd do so as well, which simply means I can't come up with anything else to post about today.

Terry Teachout of About Last Night, that master self-promoter, came up with readers in 13 time zones one day last week. Charles Downey of Ionarts managed to log readers in 14 time zones this morning. I've no stats by time zone but by country only, and I regularly (take that, youse guys!) weekly log readers (most daily) in 14 countries (I'm apparently very big in Sweden and England).

I've not a clue what those stats are supposed to prove, but as Amadeus's Emperor Joseph II was fond of saying (see how cleverly I just tied this to things cultural?), "There it is."

New Kid On The Block

Print music critic (formerly, American Record Guide), composer, modern music maven, and now weblogger Steve Hicken has joined the ranks of the cultural blogosphere with his new weblog, Listen. Steve's inaugural post lists his 101 essential pieces of classical music (Steve calls it "concert music") of the 20th century, each of which he proposes to discuss in detail in future posts which, among other things, will explain just why he considers each piece to be among the most essential classical music pieces of the 20th century.

Welcome to weblogger Steve Hicken.

Fair Use

(Note: This post has been extensively edited as of 5:32 AM on 10 Sep.)

The question of the protection by copyright of what has been termed "intellectual property" has always been of some moment. But with the advent of the Digital Age, and most particularly with the explosive rise of the World Wide Web, the question has assumed new prominence on all fronts. A small, very small, front (very small because monetary matters are not involved) has to do with the recent widespread emergence (also explosive) of weblogs. That copyright law automatically protects all original textual content posted on a weblog is a given (copyright is automatically secured at the instant of the first setting down of the text in fixed form). Enforcing that protection, however, is another matter altogether, and requires proper registration of the material with the U.S. Copyright Office before any enforcement action can be initiated, and the overwhelming majority of webloggers are not likely to take such a step to protect their writings within the blogosphere (protection of their writings outside the blogosphere is another matter; one not addressed here) for the very good reason that there's vanishing little reason to do so (because matters monetary aren't involved). Instead, webloggers depend not on copyright law to protect their intellectual property (i.e., their writings), but on a tacit "gentleman's agreement" of sorts with other webloggers.

One tenet of that tacit agreement decrees that a weblogger does not copy and paste another weblogger's post and publish it on his own weblog as his own. Another decrees that a weblogger does not post on his weblog another weblogger's text or portion thereof without proper attribution, usually in the form of a link to the original weblogger's post. These tenets are clear-cut and only rarely breached, and so present no problem.

And then there's the considerably more fuzzy area of the partial quote.

In the non-weblog world there's a precedent-rich legal doctrine known as Fair Use. It's a complicated area of copyright law (what area of copyright law isn't?), but essentially what it says is that for purposes of, say, a news story, critical review, comment, etc., a small portion of the copyrighted material may be used without infringing copyright. The absolute size or content of that small portion is nowhere set down, and would differ for different materials, and is therefore ultimately a matter for the courts to decide on a case-by-case basis.

Where the weblogger's tacit gentleman's agreement is concerned, however, there is, of course, no articulated doctrine of fair use, but it's implicit nevertheless, and there seems to be no general consensus on just how much of another weblogger's text may be quoted and still be deemed fair use. Clearly, quoting almost the entire text of another weblogger's post is not fair use in any circumstance, even properly credited as I just today had occasion to note on seeing with some dismay one of my own posts quoted almost in its entirety on another weblog (credited but not linked, even though my weblog itself was linked). Just as clearly, quoting the entire text of the central argument of another weblogger's post is also not fair use (as opposed to merely quoting enough to make clear the central argument itself), again, even when properly credited.

What to do, then? For what it's worth, here's my rule-of-thumb for determining fair use quote of another weblogger's post. Consistent with not misrepresenting what the original weblogger wrote in toto, I quote only enough to provide my following comments, critical or otherwise, their raison d'être or jumping-off place, and just enough to whet my readers' appetite for the reading of the original weblogger's entire post, which, except in those cases of my withholding for charitable or protective reasons the identity of the original weblogger, is always linked.

There's also a more subtle reason for my handling weblog quotes in that way: I assume that, like myself, the original weblogger wants what he's written to be read in the context of his own weblog. Form shapes and modulates substance (content) in subtle but meaningful ways, and a weblog's design, and even the layout of the text itself, can say worlds to a reader even when the reader is not himself consciously aware of exactly what's being said in that way, or even that anything is being said at all. And, no, there is no such thing as a "neutral" or non-influencing form; not even the form of an RSS feed, which is why on the RSS feed of my posts I permit only the first 100 words of each post to be published, thereby forcing readers to go to my weblog in order to read the entire post. (It's beyond my understanding why some webloggers provide the full texts of their posts for their RSS feed -- unless, that is, they're ashamed of their weblog's design, and would prefer folks not visit there at all.)

So there it is. My idea of fair use within the blogosphere. I welcome comments by other webloggers (I've enabled the TypePad Comments function for that purpose for this post alone).

Update 19 Sep: Comments are now closed.

An Antidote For A Pissy Mood

Music may have charms to soothe the savage breast, but nothing dispels a pissy mood faster or more surely than the apprehension of elegance and beauty in the service of the utilitarian.

In this case, the pissy mood was my own as confessed to in the immediately prior post, and the elegance and beauty in the service of the utilitarian, the design of the weblog, Footnotes (which weblog has just been added to this weblog's exclusive listing of culture weblogs), by Sekimori Design, a multi-service website design firm whose guiding genius, Stacy Tabb, has been responsible over the past few years for the design of dozens of weblogs, each design stunningly spot-on appropriate to the weblog's particular character.

If you're planning a weblog, and you want something more for its design than you're capable of giving it yourself, head over to Sekimori Design, and let Ms. Tabb take on the burden. Better you couldn't do, as my ol' pappy used to say.

The above promo -- the author of which has no connection with or interests in either Sekimori Design or Stacy Tabb -- has been brought to you solely in the interests of elegance and beauty in the service of even the utilitarian and quotidian.

Writing For The Blogosphere

It's been some two-and-a-half years since I first started writing for the blogosphere, and my experience during that time has confirmed my first thoughts on writing for this medium. Weblogs are, of course, different things to different people, and range from those given over to the chronicling of the merely quotidian personal to weblogs devoted to matters of universal concern and importance (and I'm here, of course, not talking about "index" weblogs which exist principally to point to articles elsewhere). As with all creative efforts, most weblogs are poorly written and not worth a second look, and only a very few, even if posted to on a daily basis, will reward daily visits.

Shortly after the beginning of my weblogging career, I wrote a short piece largely agreeing with journalism professor and then-weblogger Brendan O'Neill, who wrote in part:

The other grating thing about the Blogosphere is the lack of quality writing. [...] ...most of the Blogosphere consists of bad, bad writing - not just clumsy sentences and never-ending paragraphs, but also spelling mistakes.

The passage of time since then hasn't changed my agreement with that assessment.

And what, by far, have I found to be the most egregious fault of serious-minded writing in the blogosphere generally? Lack of discipline. Or, as Mr. O'Neill put it:

Then there are the over-long posts -- 2000 words, when 400 words would have been fine. As Voltaire once wrote: "The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out." Blogging everything that comes into your head is a recipe for revealing nothing of substance about yourself or your views.

Quite right. There's simply no excuse or justification for a lack of discipline of that sort; unless, that is, one's an academic where the rule -- nay, the imperative -- is never let 1000 words do if you can manage 10,000.

There's precious little appropriate to the weblog format, the print equivalent of which would be the daily or weekly newspaper column, that requires more than 1000 words or so to express fully and adequately if one knows what one is talking about; 1500 at the outside, but typically that many only when one's post includes a necessary quoting of others' text(s), or the inclusion of, say, cast lists and credits, or other such pertinent technical data. By and large, a post longer than that and one's either an inept writer, doesn't know what one wants to say, doesn't know how to say what one wants to say, simply loves the sound of one's own voice, or any combination of two or more of the foregoing. I can't begin to list the weblogs I no longer read due this one fault alone (well, actually I can, but will here refrain from doing so).

It's a sobering thought, or ought to be, that one of the most justifiably lauded and influential writers among American journalists, H. L. Mencken, first made his mark on American letters largely by column-length pieces that averaged some 800 words or so (no, I haven't word-counted his early pieces; I'm taking that word-count figure from other sources). If Mencken required only some 800 words per piece to get his points across and first make his mark as a writer, less gifted writers (which I can say without fear of serious contradiction would include just about all who write for the blogosphere) can be permitted 1000-1500, rarely more. Any more is little more than gross self-indulgence which one ought to feel nothing but shame for inflicting upon an innocent public.

And with that, I'll step down from my soapbox, but not before leaving my fellow webloggers with two final sobering thoughts. The 1953 seminal article by Watson and Crick in the science journal Nature describing in detail the just-discovered structure of DNA and how that structure was derived took up all of 900 words, and Lincoln's dedicatory address at Gettysburg, all of 267.

Y'all have a nice day now, y'hear.