Sounds & Fury

From The Inbox

What’s the matter with you people? Why would you expect any kind of notice from us about the 5 December event? It means nothing to us as should be obvious to any regular reader of Sounds & Fury. Although we from time to time call attention to news stories or mark events of special importance here, Sounds & Fury is neither a public service blog nor a news blog but a blog recording our thoughts having to do with our personal interests and concerns. We’re delighted and gratified that others find what we have to say worth reading, but that’s not what we’re about. So, please. Knock off the eMail about our lack of notice of this event.

That is all. As you were. And we thank you in advance for your attention to the above.

(NOTE: If you’ve no idea what the above concerns, then just move on by. This post was not addressed to you.)

From The Inbox

It’s flattering, we suppose, but still cause for some serious head-shaking notwithstanding.

A reader writes laconically (and in toto):

Nothing to say about “Noise”?

Why anything we might have to say about Alex Ross’s new book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, should be of such pressing interest to anyone is simply beyond us. Be that as it may, the reason for our silence is that our months-ago Amazon prepublication order for the hardcopy edition of the book is coupled with our months-ago Amazon prepublication order for the paperback edition of Simon Callow’s, Orson Welles: Volume 2: Hello Americans, which is due for release 27 November, the orders coupled because being shipped free under Amazon’s Super Saver Shipping. That means both books will be shipped together 28 November at the earliest.

Our answer to our correspondent, therefore, is, If we can wait, so can you.

Endnote

One of the several (predictable) eMail responses to my purposefully provocative snipe at Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor in particular, and bel canto opera in general, in this post wherein I declared Lucia "[a] piece of typical bel canto trash which contains but a single scene in its entire three acts to recommend it," asked me whether I'd forgotten the famous Act II sextet. The answer is No, I hadn't forgotten it, nor is it likely I'd ever forget it. How could I? It was a notable — and unforgettable — part of my very first introduction to the genuinely tragic in drama when, as an impressionable eight-year-old, I sat riveted by the gut-wrenching Disney tale of The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met.

Oh, how I loved Willie (the name of the whale of the title), and hated the fame-and-fortune-seeking cretin: the opera impresario Tetti-Tatti who, convinced Willie has swallowed a great opera singer, sets out to harpoon Willie to rescue the unlucky singer and present him to the world. When he finally comes face to face (so to speak) with the opera-devoted Willie — who in the meantime has been alerted by his seagull buddy to Tetti-Tatti's search for him which search Willie imagines is for the purpose of Tetti-Tatti auditioning him to sing at the Met — Tetti-Tatti is in for a further shock: Willie can not only sing arias, but duets and trios as well — all by himself!

On hearing this, Tetti-Tatti is beside himself, for all Willie's prepared audition has convinced him of is that Willie has swallowed not one, but three opera singers, all of whom need rescuing to the greater glory and riches of the greedy and purblind Tetti-Tatti. Tetti-Tatti makes a mad dash for the harpoon gun, fires, and Willie sinks dead beneath the waves, his dream unfulfilled, his singing and the miracle of his gift silenced forever. (In true Disney fashion, at tragedy's close, we're assured that somewhere in whale heaven Willie continues to sing, and to sold-out houses.)

Oh, the pathos of the tale (NPI)! It haunts me still.

And just where does the Lucia sextet come in? The "duet" and "trio" sung by Willie are from the opening of that ensemble, the three male voices all sung by Nelson Eddy.

So, back to the question posed by my eMail correspondent, once again, no, I didn’t forget the Act II Lucia sextet.

Sleeping With The Enemy

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 4:42 PM Eastern on 1 May. See below.]

In response to our Displaying Sounds & Fury page (permanent link located in the left-hand sidebar) which, among other items, notes that this blog is best viewed using Internet Explorer, and our similar advisory located on our About & Contact page (permanent link also located in the left-hand sidebar), an earnest reader sends us the link to this page urging us to abjure our "allegiance to the enemy," as he put it, and take part in the Good Fight.

Why is it that activist zealots are almost always left-of-center types, and why is it that they're all so paranoid-loony (not to mention almost always in error)?

It's a rhetorical question, actually. We're convinced the answer is simply that it's the way God intended things to be.

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Update (4:42 PM Eastern on 1 May): Aha! Here's the real story behind the campaign against Internet Explorer, which (surprise!) isn't at all the story as put forward in the paranoid-zealot gibberish to be found on the page linked to above.

From The Inbox

In response to a calculatedly snarky comment I left in the comments section of this earnest and serious-minded post by blogger Alex of Wellsung, which comment read:

You're far too kind — and paying far too much serious attention — to Mr. Sandow, just another typical hanger-on to the hypocritical '60s equalitarian, anti-intellectual, do-your-own-thing mentality, trying desperately to justify his insatiable '60s-"revolutionary" appetite for and devotion to populist trash — the mother's milk of that generation — by attempting to place it on the same footing, and in the same league, with genuine art. There are but two ways to deal with this type: ignore them, or ridicule them — briefly.

reader N.R. eMails me (reprinted here with permission):

I just read your comment on Wellsung regarding Alex's [i.e., Alex of Wellsung] critical post about Greg Sandow's views on pop culture and the crisis in classical music, and it's of course in line with a number of posts on your blog which have had nothing but nasty things to say about Sandow and his ideas. What puzzles me is that your hero, music critic Alex Ross of the New Yorker, for who[m] I've seen nothing on your blog but the highest praise, often takes the same position in his writings concerning pop culture and the crisis in classical music as does Greg Sandow. How is it that you have nothing nasty to say about Alex Ross taking the position he does, but lambaste Greg Sandow for taking the same position?

An entirely fair question. And the answer is, I forgive and disregard Alex Ross's wrongheadedness concerning his occasional championship of things pop cultural in the same way and for the same reason I forgive and disregard Richard Wagner's lunatic anti-Semitism: the nonpareil excellence and importance of their best work.

I trust that answer resolves fully your perplexity in this matter.

From The Inbox

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

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

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

I thought you'd like to know that.

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

Best wishes,

Joseph Alessandroni

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

My thanks to Mr. Alessandroni.

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

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

From The Inbox

Oh dear. It seems not even the holiday weekend could save me from the beginning of what will surely be a mini-deluge of pianist-authored hate mail in response to my comments on Bach played on the piano, and on Sergey Schepkin's reading of Bach's Goldberg Variations. I won't go over all my correspondent's tedious and predictable rejoinders to those comments, but one unpredictable rejoinder vis-à-vis Schepkin's reading struck me as particularly clueless:

[A]nd you took no notice of something very special done by Schepkin. When he does the D.C. [i.e., da Capo] Aria he gives a finality to the set of variations by playing it slower than the Aria is taken in the beginning, and sets it off as special as a closing by playing the repeats an octave higher.

Yes ... well ... um ... how to answer this, er, criticism? I think I'll simply remind my correspondent that, as he correctly noted, the closing Aria is da Capo, the score at that point merely marked, "Aria da Capo e Fine", which, as my pianist correspondent ought to know, is an instruction to go back to the "head" (i.e., the beginning), and play the Aria over again as an end to the set.

Bach meant what he wrote. His instruction to the keyboardist says simply, "Play it again, Sam." It says nothing about playing it again, but differently this time. In fact, by playing it differently, the keyboardist defeats utterly the brilliant stroke accomplished by that more than merely formal da Capo Aria. If played as Bach intended it to be played — which is to say, precisely as it was played at the opening — the da Capo Aria not only formally closes the set of variations, but says quite affectingly: "Hi there. It's just little old simple but lovely me again. Some offspring I produced between our first meeting and this one, wouldn't you say? Didn't think I had it in me, did you. That'll teach you not to judge such as I by her simple but lovely face alone."

Though no Bach scholar, Mia Farrow would understand this perfectly.

We Get Letters — Oh, Do We Get Letters

What is it about politics that turns even the brightest people into raving idiots? I confess it totally escapes me. I mean, I could understand it if, say, we were living under a Nazi or equivalent regime with no hope whatsoever of affecting the outcome of anything. But in this country? Today? Sorry. I can't begin to understand it.

My post skewering one such richly deserving idiot for his unforgivably egregious charge that the 58 million Americans who voted for Mr. Bush this past election were "hateful bigots" brought more hate mail in two days than I normally receive in two months, all of it written in crayon of course, as per usual; all of it vicious, mindless raves, also as per usual; and all of it missing entirely my central point. Here's an extract from the latest, typical of the lot.

You wrote something not too long ago about Sherlock Holmes that I agreed with — that the publisher of the new edition was wrong to commission an introduction from someone who didn't like Holmes [I in fact wrote no such thing]. You should take your own advice about music that you don't like. You are spectacularly ignorant about it, and your mean mouth is an embarrassment to read.

Similarly about politics. Your ridiculous ad hominem attack against Kyle Gann displays your ignorant naivete in fortissimo. [...] Your absurdly snotty hauteur ... always struck me as kind of funny. [...] But you really should shut the fuck up about politics. The Republicans ran a campaign based on bigotry. [...] Their war in Iraq has been the most disastrous folly and enormously destructive of American interests.

[...]

So take your own advice and quit embarrassing yourself by writing about things you don't begin to understand. Stick to what you know and love. Classical music before Stravinsky (or whatever your cut-off date is).

Oh dear. This fellow does seem to have missed the point (as did every one of the others, as I've above noted) — the central point — of my "ridiculous ad hominem attack"; curious, as the writer of the above eMail is clearly a fairly regular reader of this weblog, and as such could hardly have missed another of my political posts here (because such posts are an anomaly in my writings; a total of three out of 119 posts), and therefore must surely have known just what I think of Mr. Bush, his neocon administration, and their handling of the Iraq war.

And concerning the eMail writer's charge that the Republicans "ran a campaign based on bigotry" in this election, the writer of this eMail (and hundreds of thousands — but hardly millions — like him) may view the Republican stance on the issue of homosexual marriage as being grounded in bigotry, but that would be a judgment based on emotion or ideology rather than reasoned thought or good sense, and, more importantly, hardly just cause to imagine that the 58 million who voted for Mr. Bush agreed with the Republicans on this matter and were therefore "hateful bigots" as well, or that most of the 58 million, the large turnout of hardcore fundamentalist Christians notwithstanding, even gave the matter a serious or considered thought when they cast their ballots. Had I voted this election, I would have voted reluctantly for Mr. Bush for the reason given in this post, and I can assure you that the issue of homosexual marriage would have been the very last thing on my mind when I cast my ballot. And I've no doubt the same could be said of the great majority of the 58 million who voted for Mr. Bush on Tuesday. With all due respect to those directly affected, as a country we've today too many more pressing issues confronting us to be principally concerned with such a parochial matter, even given that the matter surely has implications beyond what its parochial nature would suggest.

Like most Americans, I'm hugely uncomfortable having in the White House a man who declares he gets his orders directly from God Himself, or has His imprimatur for his every major decision. Such a man is more a candidate for a rubber-lined room than he is for the Oval Office. But given the success of our more-than-two-centuries-tested Constitutional system of checks and balances, I'm not too concerned on that count. We'll survive the next four years, and come out strong as ever. Of that I'm certain. After all, if we could survive Nixon and Watergate, and surviving it, flourish, we can survive just about anything political without so much as getting our hair mussed.

From The Inbox

Two readers objecting to my conclusion in my post on Architecture, Utility, and Aesthetics wrote to express their objections. One eMail read, in part:

Are you saying that a building built for beauty first can still be called good architecture, no matter how uncomfortable and ill-adapted it is for its tenants, even if it's almost unusable?

And one — written by the person whose name was charitably withheld in this previous post — read simply (and I quote the eMail in its entirety):

My advice is that you might want to stick to music.

Both these readers seem to imagine that architectural beauty is something applied from the outside, disconnected and separate from, and undetermined by, a building's program (the specifications for a building's intended use and purpose, it's mechanical systems, the manifold accommodations required for those using the building, etc., etc.). Architectural beauty is, of course, nothing of the sort. Architectural beauty grows from, and is intimately bound up with and determined by, a building's program. That's the singular hallmark of all great architecture from Imhotep's time to the present. Louis Sullivan may have codified in trenchant epigram the concept that "Form follows function," but great architecture has, without exception, obeyed that dictum from Day One. And it's by a building's aesthetically imaginative realization of that dictum, and by that aesthetically imaginative realization alone, that a building's architectural beauty is determined, and its architectural worth judged.

Seeing to it that roofs don't leak, that ceilings are high enough so that one doesn't bump one's head against them, that building maintenance is within reasonable bounds, etc., are engineering considerations of the most quotidian and taken-for-granted sort, the successful carrying out of which is part of an architect's fundamental professional obligations; ones that are dealt with as matters of course, and not worth special remark. Failures in that realm are failures of professional responsibility, not architectural failures, and are inadmissible as criteria for the judging of a building's architectural worth.

The revolutionary Pyrex glass roof of Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Administration Building was (is) a brilliant engineering, and aesthetically breathtaking architectural, solution to the problem of bringing light into the building's vast interior spaces. That the roof leaked because the engineering technology of the time was incapable of dealing with it adequately may be viewed by sensible-shoes bourgeois as a failure by Wright of his fundamental professional responsibility, and a mark against the architectural worth of the building. Or it may be viewed, as it was by the building's owner who paid for and commissioned Wright to design the building, as part of the price one must at times pay for the privilege of owning and working and/or living in a building of surpassing architectural beauty and worth.

From The Inbox

This new weblog receives a volume of eMail disproportionate to the size of its present readership, a fair percentage of that eMail of the indignant or outraged poison-crayon sort. Every once in a rare while, however, an eMail arrives that's a pleasure to read if for nothing other than its thoughtful reflections and deep-felt passion, whether we agree or disagree, in whole or in part, with its substance. Such a one (in response to this post) is the following eMail from reader Tim Buck, which I here quote in full, and post without comment.

Like you, I reject the notion that a continuum extends from the great to the merely popular. It is, rather, the case of one being incommensurable with the other. A chasm separates the two. You have identified the side which contains greatness as having to do with transcendence, and I think more needs to be said; further inquiry into the nature of transcendence would be helpful. You spoke of an aspiration beyond "the quotidian world of experience," as opposed to "the here-and-now entertaining."

But what lies behind this aspiring [to] transcendence?

[Weblogger] George Hunka brought up Schopenhauer's aesthetic of World-as-Will, with the work of art an instance of numinous contact. Schopenhauer spoke of this instance as a kind of timeless state, where the artist and audience penetrate into an egoless thatness of the Will (perhaps the Tao?). Hunka states that this penetration can be an act of redemption. Maybe it is a way of escaping what Heidegger called "everydayness."

But I detect in your and Hunka's approach something that I would call metaphysical neutrality. To aspire merely to supersede the quotidian or to blend the phenomenal with the numinal, both seem to leave out what Unamuno wrote about in his book, The Tragic Sense of Life. I think the fuel driving the urge to transcend is angst, a prompting of the tragic. As consciously exemplified by van Gogh (or subconsciously manifested in the raving products of Adolf Wolfli), a deep-seated spiritual, existential dislocation is at the root of the transcending impulse, and the impetus for making and responding to great art.

Granted many great works seem to belie such an ethic of pathos, but I propose that even Bach’s Goldberg Variations or Schubert’s Trout Quintet, Corot’s landscapes or Monet’s gardens, Natasha’s dance in War and Peace or Mynheer Peeperkorn’s gestural and verbal idiosyncrasies in The Magic Mountain; even in these moments that are flush with naive joy, humor, and immanence, there is an undercurrent of the bittersweet; a subtle recognition of the distance between the human and the divine. In short, an unspoken acquiescence in the tragic.

Levinas approaches reality by discussing the Other. And I think that is what great art points to and is really about — making a clearing for the Other, for Otherness to be present. It marks out the antipodes of being, and in doing so brings to mind the fact of intrinsic alienation. Popular culture, on the other hand, is all about assimilation; about negating the Other. This populist leveling and negating of the Other is, I think, a collective, self-supporting cowardice, eschewing the tragic for a mobbish and blithe spiritual amnesia.

I think the tragic-transcendent state of mind is a rare one. It blooms naturally in whom it blooms. It can’t be taught. It’s a condition of the soul. The relation of the existential to the foundational can’t be presented in didactic formulation nor impressed upon another via hierarchical manifestos. It simply grows organically through slow, spiritual accretion, or it doesn’t come at all. It is composed of a web of experience and exposure: awakening to injustice, to the holiness of melancholy, to intuitions and intimations of divinity lurking behind the prosaic feints of Nature.

You mentioned in a different post how we might influence things for the better by exposing children to and blanketing them with classical music at an early age. I really don’t think that would do much good, not unless a web of connections were also woven into the project — art, literature, philosophy, etc. — an encompassing web of greatness with its deep impressions and implications of the tragic. But, really, how does one teach angst?

In our vulgar culture, things have gone too far. There is no hope for a systematic engendering of the transcendent impulse. A rare few [who possess it] will always [manifest themselves] because a rare few have always been infected by "the sickness unto death."

On a closing note, I’ve always wondered about the relation between great art and authoritarianism. An equalitarian society seems unlikely to produce anything of excellence, whereas in more constricted environments many great artists emerged. My instinct is to discount any positive relation; that we should promote kingly or priestly rulers over the many in order that great art might appear. But maybe there is a negative relation: being under the thumb of those who are profligate in their immanent banality might inspire a transcendent reaction in the artist to become the true arbiter of reality. A kind of artistic resentment. Perhaps our present degraded culture with its increasingly semblance-only democratic institutions will light future fires of tragic, resenting reaction in one or a few angst-ridden artists, composers, or writers, with [the result that] works of great art [will] once again [begin] filtering into a questionable world.