The Music of the Spheres Come Down to Earth

Two or three weeks ago, stories on NPR reported on an experiment undertaken by Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten. Weingarten persuaded the extraordinary young violinist, Joshua Bell (see earlier post re: applause at his recent Charlotte appearance) to play at the entrance of a DC Metro stop for 40 minutes during rush hour. According to NPR, and to Weingarten writing in the Post, more than 1,000 people passed by Bell's location at the busy L'Enfant Plaza station, but only seven stopped even momentarily to listen, and only one recognized him. $39 was tossed into his open violin case, plus and additional $20 by the woman who recognized him (she knew a bargain when she saw one).



What does this say about our society today? Perhaps not much. Speaking with Bob Garfield on the excellent weekly program, On The Media from WNYC and NPR, Weingarten said that these people were likely not ignorant boobs, but simply in a hurry. Having spent my share of time on that very Metro system as well as on the highways and byways of the DC area, I can vouch for the truth of that statement. Everyone, it seems, has a Very Important Job; the future of the Free World depends on them getting where they are going with no delay.



You may draw your own conclusions regarding the Joshua Bell experiment. I'd like to think I would have stopped, and perhaps even leaned against a pillar to listen for the duration. But suppose I'd been running late for a meeting?



Still, imagine what life would be like if we were a little less driven, a little freer to stop and smell the roses when we come across them: in the form of a Bach Chaconne, a bluegrass tune, a mural, a living statue, a sidewalk painting, a lone saxophone player with a cool jazz riff... So a few meetings in Washington (or New York or Charlotte or Chicago) might start late -- or might not happen at all. Would that be so bad for the country?

Image: living statue, Las Ramblas, Barcelona (photo by Vincent Lowe),

How Not to Live Sanely

At the church Judy and I attend in Atlanta, St. John's Lutheran, time is always set aside during the service for prayers by members of the congregation. There is one woman who can be counted on to pray about something every Sunday. Lately she has been praying for the framers of this year's Farm Bill in Congress. The Farm Bill? In an urban setting like Atlanta, who prays for the Farm Bill? I'm sure the folks at ADM pray for it nightly, but among the usual prayers for the infirm and for the bereaved and for the least of those among us, her prayer for the Farm Bill struck me as a little... odd.

No more. Michael Pollan's recent piece in the NY Times Magazine explains why she prays, and why we should all be praying for someone to pay attention to this vast and extraordinarily arcane piece of legislation. And explains why, with respect to farm... make that food... policy, we do not live in a sane world. For more about this, see Pollan's 2006 masterpiece, The Omnivore's Dilemma, now available at a good price from Amazon.

Bon apetit.

RIP

Much has been said, and much more will be said, about Virginia Tech. But no more needs to be said than this.

Leave of Absence

Did I mention that I've given up the blog for Lent? I had to give up something; this seemed reasonable. (I also ate a lot of black beans and rice while Judy was out of town, but it's been more feast than fast since she got home from visiting the grandkids in Seattle.)

But fear not, dear non-reader. I shall be back once He is Risen (indeed!).

Multitasking

There was an intgeresting piece on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday this morning. It concerned a study that had been done to ascertain the effect of multitasking on learning (listen here). Surprise surprise, it turns out that kids who are seriously multitasking (that is, not just listening to music in the background) have significantly more trouble learning than those who are focused on the learning task. It turns out that for some reason, when a person is multitasking a whole different area of the brain is activated than when a person is focused on a learning task. The study also has implications for all who multitask, not just students. The guest suggests that while multitaskers experience the illusion of being more productive, it may well be just that -- an illusion.

None of this surprises me. I'm not one of these people with a blackberry in one hand, bluetooth attached to my ear, downloading music, IM-ing and the like while writing, say, a proposal or a direct mail letter. Nevertheless, there are so many things clamoring for a piece of my time that I find it very difficult to focus on any one thing long enough to finish it. My attention span is getting shorter and shorter. The quality of my work has suffered, my ability to complete a letter to a friend or a household task -- much less take time to meditate -- has suffered, and it takes me forever to finish a book. I'm not quite sure what this has done to personal relationships, but it can't be good.

If one is searching for a way to live sanely, this is not it.

For Now I See But Through A Glass Darkly

This photo, mentioned by Tom Friedman in his column this morning (paid content), strikes me as a perfect metaphor for our world today. The gentleman on the right is the Israeli Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, inspecting troops on the Golan Heights. The "vision gaffe" was noted by the BBC.

It leads one to wonder: What did Peretz see? Sheer blackness? His own eyeballs? Or that which he had already made up his mind to see? Worth noting, too: apparently no one in the chain of command wanted -- or dared -- to point out the Defense Minister's mistake. Of course, it could never happen here...

More Applause!

When I posted that last bit I had no idea that I was riding a wave -- or at least a wavelet -- but then I stopped by Greg Sandow's Blog today, and found him waxing enthusiastic over an article by Andrew Drukenbrod in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette a couple of weeks ago. Apparently this issue of applauding in all the wrong places is one on which reasonable musicians can disagree, though the tide seems to be turning in favor of spontaneous expressions of approval. Good. According to Drukenbrod, though, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra knows where it stands. Using one of my favorite words, he tells us that "tucked away on the penultimate page of Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra programs" is the following:

In a multi-movement work, it is customary to wait until the end of the last movement to applaud, so as not to break the concentration of the performers.

But as for the performers themselves... well, you can read the article. It comes replete with musical examples which reinforce my point about the intent of certain composers, by the way.

I swear hadn't read any of this before. I must have been touched by the zeitgeist of these changing times.

Applause!

This afternoon Judy and I made the trek into Charlotte to hear a performance by Joshua Bell, accompanied by Jeremy Denk. There are several things that might be said about this: that their performance was first rate (I only nodded once, for a split second); that they all but filled the hall, which almost never happens with the bluehairs of the Carolinas Concert Association; or that the program notes were downright bizarre in places, as for example in the following regarding the Concert Piece for Violin and Piano by Edgar Meyer: "Mr. Meyer is a frequent partner of Mr. Bell in the arcane (?!) art of bluegrass music, and perhaps this is the reason the violinist felt the need to introduce this work" (my, aren't we condescending).

But what struck me was the applause.

First on the program was Robert Schumann's Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano in a, Opus 105. A sizeable number of the audience applauded lustily after each movement. Beethoven's Sonata No. 10 for Violin and Piano in G, Opus 96, followed. The audience applauded after the first, third and fourth movements. No doubt they would have applauded after the second as well, but there is no break between the second and third movements.

After intermission, the duo played the piece by Edgar Meyer (a serious contemporary work in which one would have had to listen very hard to hear even a passing reference to bluegrass, by the way), and their was no applause between movements, but lusty applause with bravos and a standing O at the end.

I saw some of the bluehairs around me wincing at the applause in the "wrong" places. And I wondered, What's going on here? Did these two rock stars of classical music attract a group of relative youngsters who haven't been properly trained (indoctrinated?) in classical music etiquette? And yet, how to explain the lack of applause during the Meyer? At first I thought it might signal dislike, but the enthusiastic response at the end of the piece put that idea to rest.

Actually, I can't escape the suspicion that this untrained audience responded the way the composers themselves intended. The applause-provoking movements of the Schumann and the Beethoven ended with dramatic flourishes and a full stop. How could you write such an ending to a section and not expect people to react? The oddity to me is not that people would applaud at such a point, but that they wouldn't. When Beethoven didn't want applause, he made an entirely different type of transition between movements.

As for Edgar Meyer, each movement save the fourth of today's piece ended quietly, almost tentatively -- seemingly reaching out toward the next. Applause would have seemed strange, had there been any.

My conclusion is that this audience, or at least the "untrained" members, understood with their guts what's been bled out of concert goers for many decades -- that the composer and the artists are putting on a show, and they jolly well want you to enjoy it. If you are moved to demonstrations of enthusiasm, who's to say that's a bad thing? Lord knows, classical music needs all the enthusiasm anyone can muster these days.

Oh, and one other thing: Jeremy Denk has a great blog called Think Denk. Have a look.

Blights on the Landscape

The other day I ran into my friend Larry the Art Professor in front of the Visual Arts Center (VAC) at Davidson College. The radio station where I work is just up the street. A couple of days earlier I had received a phone call from the secretary in the art department asking whether we had installed a new antenna on top of the VAC. "We installed one about four years ago," I said. "It's a microwave dish for our studio-transmitter link." I had to admit that I had never actually seen it, though I had walked past hundreds of times. I said that if there was another, more visible, antenna that appeared recently, it must belong to someone else.

When I ran into Larry, I said something light hearted about antennas on the VAC. He seemed unamused. He pointed to the building. "That has no place on this building," he said, pointing toward the rearmost of three large circular objects on the roof. Straining my eyes, I finally saw it: a microwave dish perhaps one meter in diameter just peeking out over the rim of the circular structure. It was ours, I had to concede.

I pointed out, though, that the dish had been there for some four years before he himself saw it. "Beside the point," he snapped. "You should take it down." I told him that if we took it down we'd go off the air." He seemed unpersuaded, and still more annoyed. "People think that architecture isn't art," he said. "Would you put an antenna on top of our Rodin?" I said of course not, but the cases didn't seem comparable. The antenna on the VAC was barely visible, to the point that most people -- including Larry until a few days earlier -- had never seen it.

"Put it on top of your own building," Larry said. We can't do that, of course. We would have to build a 75 foot tower next to the building, a true eyesore. But this didn't cut it with Larry. The VAC, he told me, is a piece of architecture, designed by a world reknowned architect. Whereas our building is just, well, a house designed to look like the other houses on that rather historic street. The architect isn't world reknowned. Who cares what happens to, or near, such a building? (Tut tut. Are we being just a tad elitist?) I pointed out to Larry that antennas are so ubiquitous that one finds them bristling from the crowns of tall buildings everywhere, those that are considered landmarks of architecture as well as more prosaic structures. He was unconvinced. "Antennas on fine buildings are designed to complement the architectural elements of the building," he told me. Sure they are, when they can be. When that's not feasible, though, the antennas still go up. Our modern world demands them, can't live without them.

The irony of all this is that Larry and I are on the same side, philosophically. I hate what has happened to the landscape. There is no direction you can turn without seeing some kind of antenna. I remember well how communities first reacted when cell phone towers started sprouting everywhere. They were outraged. But you can't walk around with a cell phone planted in your ear without a bunch of towers around to transmit your calls. In the end, people wanted their cell phones -- and all the other wireless appurtenances of modern life -- more than they cared about their views.

But at a certain point I've got to say, "Come on, people, get a life." If you're going to get all exercised over an antenna, at least make it one that the average person can see with the naked eye. OK? A sense of humor wouldn't hurt, either. I mean, you might at least consider an antenna for the Rodin. It might improve cell phone reception, or wireless computer connections, in the building. That's what the students really care about, you know.

What Is Classical Music?

For several days I have been thinking of getting into the fray over the issue of the future of classical music. The subject is of no small interest to me, since the station I manage plays "classical" music 24/7. And dispatches from the outside world keep coming in. Just last week, we learned that the CBC's classical service, Radio 2, is making major changes because "Half our audience....is now over 65....and we're not attracting new listeners into the service." More jazz programming will be added in hopes of broadening the appeal (hold that thought).

But I think I'll stay out of the debate over classical music's demise, at least for now. The job is already in far more capable hands than mind, especially those of Greg Sandow, whose blogging on the subject is far better informed, more stylish and even witty (is this man really a music critic?) than anything I could ever hope to write. So if you want to get into this particular discussion, hop on over to Greg's place and dig in.

Besides, I realized that I need to deal with a more fundamental question first: just what is classical music, anyway? A funny question, perhaps, for someone who, though musically uncredentialed, has listened to classical music all his life and toiled in the vineyards of classical radio off and on for more than 30 years. But the question is relevant, not only as a prerequisite for debating the issue above, but because stations like ours not infrequently take hits for broadcasting music that some members of the audience consider inappropriate because it is not, well... classical. Indeed, it is just such an incident that prompts this the thoughts that follow. Last Thursday, I think it was, we broadcast a local feature on WDAV that prompted something of an outcry (3 calls and e-mails is an outcry at your average classical station) because, horror of horrors, the music on the piece was frankly acknowledged to be jazz (see first paragraph above).

I just listened again, and I will admit that some of the music strayed into harmonic realms where Mozart would seldom, if ever have traveled. And one brief segment featured a saxophone! But I suspect the bigger sin was the frank label, "jazz," which host and guest attached to his compositions and performances. I am convinced that the first solo piano piece in the feature, at the very least, would have drawn no fire at all if it had simply been referred to as a "composition," and not wrapped in the mantle of jazz.

But I digress. What is classical music? Wikipedia has a pretty good definition, I think. I won't reprint it all, but you can read it here. I like the way it begins: "Classical music is a broad, somewhat imprecise term." Somewhat! The definition would seem to involve cultural factors almost as much as musical ones. We jokingly say that classical music is music written by dead white guys of European origin, but that's not so far off -- especially if they've been dead at least 100 years.

But there's a lot more to it than that, obviously. Classical music is serious music, written with the intent of creating works of art -- the antithesis of popular music. But wait -- in its time, much of what we call classical music was the popular music of its day. How are we to deal with that? According to Wikipedia, the term "classical music" didn't even exist prior to the 19th century, while the music which we so label today goes back roughly 1,000 years.

And then there's the troubling fact that a fair amount of music we consider classical is really quite close, even perilously close, to its origins in other genres. I think of Bartok and Kodaly lugging their huge, ungainly recording apparatus into the Hungarian countryside to faithfully capture the folk music of their day, and how Bartok later transcribed some of this music virtually note for note, magically transforming it from something quaint and rustic into Classical Music. I think of Bach copying an old drinking song ("Cabbage and Beets?!") for the Quodlibet in the Goldberg Variations. I think of the suite from West Side Story, music that is filled with jazzy popular tunes but worms its way into the classical canon because... well, because Bernstein was a classical musician; because Bernstein was the conductor of the New York Philharmonic; because we say it's classical, dammit.

And what are we to make of the likes of Gershwin? How do we get away with playing "Summertime" on a classical station? Rhapsody in Blue, etc.? And how in the world do we get away with playing Scott Joplin? (Well, sometimes we don't, which raises another troubling issue.)

And here in the opening years of the 21st Century, things are becoming more confusing still. What is that stuff that Yo Yo Ma is playing? Or Edgar Meyer? What are these consummate classical musicians doing slumming around in the music of the East, in the music of the Appalachians, in the music of Brazil? Is anything that comes out of these collaborations with like-minded musicians "Classical?"

What are we to make of it when Yo Yo Ma teams up with Allison Krauss, a bluegrass musician of all lowbrow things, to perform a stunningly beautiful version of "Simple Gifts," a Shaker hymn from the mid 19th century, treated most often as if it were folk music (but not overlooked by Aaron Copeland as a recurring theme in Appalachian Spring)? What are we to make of it when Anonymous Four, a quartet of conservatory-trained women who specialized in early music suddenly break out of the classical straitjacket and perform, among other examples of Americana, a heart-melting version of "Wondrous Love" -- yet another hymn from the mid 19th century performed most often these days -- when performed at all -- as a folk or bluegrass tune?

How are we to deal with the fact that in between pieces of sublime beauty, Mozart could write some pretty schlocky stuff to help pay the bills?

So back to the question that started all this: What is classical music? Here's what I imagine to be a rudimentary checklist: It has to have been written down, not improvised (we'll save a discussion of those pesky cadenzas for later); it must have been written with Serious Artistic Intent, even if stolen from a not-so-serious source; it must be played by someone labled a "classical musician" (like Wynton Marsalis?); it must use only acoustic instruments (unless belongs to that subcategory known as "New Music," in which case no one wants to hear it anyway); and ideally it should be perceived by the modern listener as "soothing" or "relaxing," even if the composer originally intended to scare the bejezus out of his (oh, yeah, that's more or less another criterion) contemporary audience, to incite them to revolution, to rouse powerful nationalistic emotions, to suck them into his personal traumas; and all manner of other non-so-soothing endeavors.

In the end, the simple answer to this question may be that classical music may be any music that someone the listener accepts as an authority has labeled "classical." Perhaps the reason WDAV gets away with playing some of the things I mentioned, and many other not-so-classical pieces that I didn't mention, is that many listeners are willing to grant us this authority (though a few emphatically are not). As I said earlier about the music that triggered all this, the sin may not have lain in the music that we played. The sin may have lain in the label, Jazz, that we so firmly applied.

Start Blog, Leave Town

Wyoming Mts
Originally uploaded by Hodgram.

Yesterday I flew from Charlotte to Seattle. I am getting an early jump on retirement by just picking up -- on a whim, more or less -- and flying across the country to visit one of our daughters, her husband and their two children. It feels almost... irresponsible.

Fortunately, I have been adequately punished. Flying the Cincinatti to Seattle leg was physical torture (albeit a feast for the eyes). I am trying to imagine how much money and how many person-hours were spent designing a seating plan so extraordinarily uncomfortable. Granted, I am over 6 feet 3 inches tall, and granted the man next to me was a stocky soul whose left elbow spent most of the journey firmly planted in my ribs. But as far as I could tell, the only people on board not suffering some form of discomfort were children, nearly all of whom were too absorbed in their gameboys to notice much of anything else.

Oh, and as part of the seat design, Delta has created a single center aisle for the 737-800 (is that the number of seats??!!) that is just exactly wide enough for two slender people to have a rather intimate experience as they pass one another going to and from the bathrooms in the rear. I was going to say that no doubt it was designed to be exactly two inches wider than the beverage cart (do not even think about going to the bathroom while drinks and snacks are being served), but then I realized that the beverage cart was designed to be exactly two inches narrower than the aisle.

During the course of the flight I managed to drop a pouch containing my fancy new earphones (which really work, by the way) and my bluetooth headset on the floor under my seat. There was no way I could contort my own body to get a hand or even a foot to the areas where it might have gotten to; fortunately, the slender librarian from State College, PA, who had the aisle seat next to the big guy next to me, bravely dove to the floor and recovered my treasure.

I left my copy of Blue Arabesque, a marvelous memoir by the Minnesota writer Pat Hampl, in the pocket on the seat in front of me. Fortunately, I had finished it. If you are flying a Delta 737 between Seattle and Cincinatti in the next day or so and are seated in Row 23, Seat A, take a look. It is a hidden treasure for someone.

Despite their best efforts, though, Delta could not completely destroy the pleasure of flying yesterday. We flew through a cloudless sky almost all the way to Seattle (which was almost completely socked in, of course), and view like the one above were plentiful. I am alowing myself to imagine that the river toward the lower left corner of the shot is the Yellowstone. I find it oddly comforting that there are still vast stretches of this country that are all but uninhabitable by human beings. Though Lord knows, as I read every day, there is nothing on this planet we cannot alter for the worse, even without going near it.

The search for sanity made no progress yesterday, obviously.

blogging is the long tail of journalism

blogging is the long tail of journalism
Originally uploaded by lynetter.

Thanks to lynetter from Flickr and her co-conspirator. If blogging is the long tail of journalism, my blog is the last cell in the last hair on the very tip of the tail.

Online Video Wags the Long Tail?

Noted in today's business press: Netflix: Never Mind the Mailbox. The long tail is so yesterday. The long tail, you may recall, is the phenomenon first described by Wired Magazine's Chris Anderson in his book of that name. The term refers to the advantage online merchants have over the bricks and mortar guys: by having the ability to offer a rental catalog of, say, 70,000 DVDs online instead of -- at most -- a couple of thousand at your local Barnes and Noble, a merchant like Netflix earns the lion's share of its revenue on the bottom 90% of its catalog. The hot new videos still sell the largest number of copies individually, but it's the thousands and thousands of titles renting only five or six times a year that generate the most profit. But here's the deal, see: Netflix is still operating in the world of physical objects that have to be moved around. Investors, apparently, don't think that's going to cut it in the future. Everything's going virtual. Why wait for a DVD of that rare documentary when you can have it delivered to your computer screen -- and soon, no doubt, your tv -- the very moment you want it? The Netflix business model, long tail and all, seems in danger of being bypassed by the very technology (the internet) which spawned it, and investors have punished the stock. So now Netflix will offer online streaming to its members for free -- although with significant limitations -- as a first foray into that business. The competition will be brutal, and Netflix, some say, may not survive. The new becomes old so quickly these days that it makes my head swim.

Greetings, and an Apology

I apologize for the title of this blog. If you are hoping for the answer, you won't find it here. Though we could talk about it, if you like. No, this is just a personal blog, likely to blow hither and thither as my passions ebb and flow. There was a time when I thought I would make a project, or perhaps a radio series, of finding ways in which people of our time attempt to answer the question of living sanely, but as I have grown older I increasingly despair of finding such people. Or perhaps I have grown cynical toward the idea that living sanely is possible, no matter what some people may think.

The things I am most likely to post about are the issues faced by people as they, and their parents, age; public radio (my career of over 40 years); technology (I love toys); perhaps photography, or anything else that catches my eye. There probably won't be a lot of politics here, but I suspect there may be times when I can't keep my mouth shut.

If there is one person I know who comes close to understanding what it may mean to live sanely, and who manages to soldier on without obvious evidence of despair, it is the poet, essayist and novelist Wendell Berry. I hope I will not violate fair use if I conclude this first post with a passage from his superb novel, Jayber Crow. By the end of the novel, modernization has all but destroyed the glue that held together the land and the people of a small riverside farming community in Kentucky. Despite all, Jayber Crow has faith:

As a man of faith, I've thought a considerable amount about a friend of mine (imagined, but also real) I call the Man in the Well.

The now wooded, or rewooded, slopes and hollows hereabouts are strewn with abandoned homesteads, the remains of another kind of world. Most of them by now have no buildings left. Everything about them that would rot has rotted. What you find now in those places when you come upon them are the things that were built of stone: foundations, cellars, chimneys, wells. Sometimes the wells are deep, dug to the bedrock and beyond, and walled with rock laid up without mortar. Virtually every rock in a structure like that, if it built right, is a keystone; it can't move in or out. Those walls, laid underground where there is no freezing and thawing, will last, I guess, almost forever.

Sometimes the well is the only structure remaining, and there will be no visible sign of it. It will be covered with old boards in some stage of decay, green with moss or covered with leaves. It is a perfect trap, and now and then you find that rabbits and groundhogs have blundered in and drowned. A man too could blunder into one.

Imagine a hunter, somebody from a city some distance away, who has a job he doesn't like, and who has come alone out into the country to hunt on a Saturday. It is a beautiful, perfect fall day, and the Man feels free. He has left all his constraints and worries and fears behind. Nobody knows where he is. Anybody who wanted to complain or accuse or collect a debt could not find him. The morning that started frosty has grown warm. The sky seems to give its luster to everything in the world. The Man feels strong and fine. His gun lies ready in the crook of his arm, though he really doesn't care whether he finds game or not. He has a sandwich and a candy bar in his coat pocket. And then, not looking where he is going, which is easy enough on such a day, he steps onto the rotten boards that cover one of those old wells, and down he goes.

He disappears suddenly out of the lighted world. He falls so quickly that he doesn't have time even to ask what is happening. He hits water, goes under, comes up, swims, or clings to the wall, inserting his fingers between the rocks. And now, I think, you cannot help imagining the way it would be with him. He looks up and sees how far down he has come. The sky that was so large and reassuring only seconds ago is now just a small blue picture of itself, far away. His first thought is that he is alone, that nobody knows where he is; these two great pleasures that were his freedom have now become his prison, perhaps his tomb. He calls out (for might not somebody chance to be nearby, just as he chanced to fall into the well?) and he hears himself enclosed within the sound of his own voice.

How does this story end? Does he save himself? Is he athletic enough, maybe, to get his boots off and climb out, clawing with fingers and toes into the grudging holds between the rocks of the wall? Does he climb up and fall back? Does somebody, in fact, for a wonder, chance to pass nearby and hear him? Does he despair, give up, and drown? Does he, despairing, pray finally the first true prayer of his life?

Listen. There is a light that includes our darkness, a day that shines down even on the clouds. A man of faith believes that the Man in the Well is not lost. He does not believe this easily or without pain, but he believes it. His belief is a kind of knowledge beyond any way of knowing. He believes that the child in the womb is not lost, nor is the man whose work has come to nothing, nor is the old woman forsaken in a nursing home in California. He believes that those who make their bed in Hell are not lost, or those who dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, or the lame man at Bethesda Pool, or Lazarus in the grave, or those who pray, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani."

Have mercy.