The Fredösphere

O joy, O rapture unforeseen!  On the other hand, O deeply conflicted mix of amusement, curiosity, contempt, and genuine hope unforeseen!

Ned Rorem is a superb craftsman of songs.  There's no question that, compared to, say, Gerald Finzi, Rorem is the superior musician.  Rorem is consistently inspired, Finzi, sporadically.  Rorem's taste is unfailing, Finzi's is not.  So why is it that, having heard any given Rorem song once, I do not particularly need to hear it again?  Why do I get these regular cravings for Finzi's "Who is Silvia?" or "Come away, come away, death"?

It is high time we had some poetry here at the Fredösphere, so in honor of Finzi, who composed a setting of it, I offer you this poem by Thomas Hardy.

The Clock of the Years

    And the Spirit said,
'I can make the clock of the years go backward.
But am Loth to stop it where you will.'
    And I cried, 'Agreed
    To that.  Proceed:
    It's better than dead!'

    He answered, 'Peace;'
And called her up -- as last before me;
Then younger, younger she grew, to the year
   I had first known
    Her woman-grown,
    And I cried, 'Cease! --

    Thus far is good --
It is enough -- let her stay thus always!'
But alas for me -- He shook his head:
    No stop was there;
    And she waned child-fair,
    And to babyhood.

    Still less in mien
To my great sorrow became she slowly,
And smalled till she was nought at all
    In his checkless griff;
    And it was as if
    She had never been born.

    'Better,' I plained,
'She were dead as before!  The memory of her
Had lived in me; but it cannot now!'
    And coldly his voice:
    'It was your choice
    To mar the ordained.'

Garry Fung is blogging classical music at A Beautiful Theme and wants us to give him a visit.  I can't help but like a guy who is even more contemptuous of Viennese Classicism than I:

Now, most music composed in the Classical Era was pure formula - put the numbers in, and you got a calculated answer. Even the most able musicians were bound by this straight-jacket.

As for me, I am content to accuse them of mere lunacy.  Meanwhile, the dead are conducting experiments in what I would describe (indefensibly) as a disembodied musique concrète -- but they really need to fix their signal-to-noise problem.  They are also playing piano.

Previously I mentioned a suspicion that composer Robert Ashley has hints of Asperger's Syndrome in his personality, a conclusion I came to based solely on listening to small excerpts of his music.  Later, I realized this one-time intuition could be generalized for the personalities of all composers.

My new system, encoded in a computer algorithm, allows me to develop an accurate and highly detailed psychological profile of anyone who has composed a substantial body of music.  You simply feed copies of the composer's scores into the machine, and it makes it's diagnosis purely based on the notes.

I predict my new system will revolutionize the practice of medicine.  If only we can get all people to compose music, the present techniques of psychiatric diagnosis will be rendered obsolete.

Some of the results of my system, as applied to the famous composers of history, are fascinating:

Hildegard of Bingen	Nymphomania
Bach	Dropsy of the Brain
Handel	Hydrophobia
Haydn	Melancholy
Mozart	Catalepsy
Beethoven	Nervous Prostration
Mendelssohn	Moral Insanity
Robert Schumann	No Mental Health Issues
Clara Schumann	Wandering Uterus
Wagner	French Pox
Ravel	Animal Magnetism
Stravinsky	Tired Blood
Webern	Scrivener's Palsy
Copland	Neurasthenia

What a collection of nutjobs!  I guess the "mad genius" stereotype has something to it after all.

For confidentiality's sake I kept living composers off this list, but I did email their results to a number of them.  Sadly, not a single one responded positively to my generous offer of free medical advice.  I guess I'll have to recalibrate my system so a diagnosis of "denial" comes up more frequently.

Today's topic is Invasion of the Body Snatchers in its original 1956 incarnation, which starred Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter.  But first, let's set the mood by heading over to The New Criterion and reading "A science fiction writer of the Fifties," a poem by Brad Leithauser.

I really regret that my youth was misspent on a too-steady diet of Isaac Asimov when it could have been misspent on more varied science fiction fare.  Yet I can testify that, in the old books, the women are indeed "keen / To fix the meals and be the secretaries."

Anyway, part of our weekend was spent staying with old friends over in Grand Rapids.  Through a long process that involved some tense negotiations, finally resolved by means of a stochastic algorithm (we drew names from a hat), we chose to watch the Body Snatchers movie.  Yes, it contains its share of plot holes and logical inconsistencies, and yes, we could argue all day whether its message is anti- or anti-anti- communist (or even anti-immigrant), but the real point is that the old flick still packs a nice horror punch.  (This in spite of the change of ending ordered ironically by pod people from studio management.)  The movie succeeds in part because it does not rely on elaborate futuristic visuals.  Nevertheless, I was stunned by one special effect:  Dana Wynter's wardrobe.

"I'm so glad to see you again, Miles.  In fact, I filled my dress with Reddi-wip just for the occasion."

Kevin McCarthy is quite old now, but still hard at work, and not too vain to have some fun appearing in a retro-future film.  His website has the story.

Labels: movie, sci-fi

To recap, it was a fine weekend, starting Thursday night with Chanticleer giving a concert.  I wore my hat with a built-in four-foot diameter parabolic dish to amplify the choir's sound.  Yes, it's bad because it spoils the concert for those sitting behind me, and yes, eventually an arms race will ensue and everyone will get one of these hats thus spoiling concerts for everyone -- but for now, I'm enjoying the benefits of the early adopter, and loving it!

As you can tell, I can't get over the crazy choir amplification scheme I blogged the other day, although I am more convinced than ever it can't work.  Specifically, the parabolic dish really works best if it is on the receiving end.  Darn.  I really want to try this.  But there's no way, right?  Right???

Sorry for the late posting.  We're in Grand Rapids today, visiting the butterfly exhibit (really) at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park.  Meijer commissioned the casting of two giant bronze horses based on drawings of the sculpture Leonardo da Vinci planned but never completed.  (The other casting was given to Italy.)  We're talking about a freakin' huge horse; the underbelly is maybe twelve feet above the ground.

Last night was wonderful; the best choir on earth came to town for a concert.  There's not much to say about the performance except, of all the concerts I've seen, it was exceeded by ... well, nothing comes to mind.

I followed this link for information about "spontaneous choir," but really, there's so much morbidly fascinating stuff there, I can't begin to describe it all.  This one definitely earns a hoo boy, so here it is:  hoo boy!

The web has yet more information on spontaneous choirs.  Tibetan throat singing is mentioned prominently.  A baritone with a 110 decibel voice seems to be an optional component.  Now they got me curious.

I spent yesterday at my day job solving an ugly, confusing problem with and inelegant solution.  After some procrastination, I proceeded with the solution because I know there are times when the only way to find the best solution is through the experience of creating any solution at all, even a bad one.

Last night, I started notating a composition that up to this point has been worked out in my head.  I knew the notes I put into the computer would be deeply flawed.  I proceeded at this point to force the project to move forward.  I need this kind of experience to expose the weaknesses and omissions in my mental image of the music.

Fortunately, I have enough experience as a software engineer and a composer to recognize these moments for what they are, and not to allow them to discourage me.

I hope someone finds this post educational, but I write it mainly to clarify my own thinking.  For those who came for the daily dose of weirdness, I give you (via Plep) the Toynbee Tiles.

Last night:  another sourdough triumph.  I chose a rye/cornmeal/wheat combination in a shape that was longer than an oval, but shorter than a baguette.  The dough's consistency worked with the properly angled slash to produce a beautiful stretched and torn wound across the top of the finished loaf.  I think I must have spent ten minutes gazing upon the finished work.

Oh, but then petty, ugly jealousy rose up to spoil my view.  "I think you love that bread more than me," quoth the wifeösphere.  Why must we have this exclusivity?  Love is not a zero sum game.  I can love this bread with all my heart even while I keep loving my wife as I always have.

Well, this is creepy.

Furthermore, hand bell ensembles are choirs, too, you know:

For those unfamiliar with the Ghost Choir: If you are walking out of a Midwinter night, and you hear an odd and semirhythmic intermittent chiming, you are probably within earshot of one of the Ghost's members. They stand on rooftops around the city. Each wears an invisible semiparabolic reflector, so that while his bell may be heard for hundreds of yards around, it is particularly audible in the approximate direction of the listening spot. Along that axis, and several degrees to either side, the bell can be heard for miles.

The sound-cones converge, of course. In a central area of about a square mile, most of the bell sounds are clearly audible. Passersby often post Net comments if they stumble into the region; so the neighborhood -- wherever it is -- quickly fills up with Ghost fans, circling and listening.

But discovering the actual focus is much more difficult. If you are standing as little as 200 feet from the listening spot, you will hear some notes a full beat early, others a full beat late. (They come, after all, from all directions.) The Choir invariably chooses harmonic works of rapid tempo and complex rhythm, so that such distortion reduces the music to a clangorous hum. The focus may be on a bridge, in a park, or -- taking advantage of secondary reflections -- hidden among tall buildings. Good luck to all.

I wonder if this trick is for real.  The linked website is a bit incoherent, and my googling turned up no confirmation, so confidence is not high.

I spent an hour composing at a Caribou Coffee shop.  I'm rather pleased that I was five minutes into my work before I noticed the music playing in the building.  I considered leaving, but decided to stick it out.  I almost believe it helped me, by forcing me to concentrate.  My mind wanders more in silent environments.  However, my need for intrusive noise is not absolute.

A young man, maybe college age, walked in with his mother.  He wore a black sport coat that could have been velour, or at least a very plush corduroy.  With it he wore black knee-length shorts of that nylonish material they make tents out of, plus a pair of black flip-flops on his feet.  Hey, black is always in good taste, right?!  People, people,  please remember the rule:  check with me before getting dressed in the morning if there is any question at all of the appropriateness of what you have picked to wear.  If you don't call me, I absolutely cannot take responsibility for any fashion disaster that eventuates.

My week of quotes here at the Fredösphere ends with a whimper.  I started without a big plan; that I chose mostly quotes about mysticism, or that it all happened during Holy Week, was just the way it turned out.  Thanks to those of you -- all three of you!  A big shout out to George in Omaha, Otis in Macon, and Wilma up there in White Cloud! -- who stuck with me through this strange detour.  As you noticed, we have resumed our usual stream of what passes around here for consciousness.

How appropriate that my attempts at sourdough bread making should achieve an apotheosis on Maundy Thursday of all days.  Just when I was about to give up.  Turns out I really need to use less water than the recipe calls for.  Oh, the agony and ecstasy of mastering a tricky skill.

Speaking of keeping to the topic of the day:  I was rummaging around in my basement, where I keep my Rubens and that Soft Loud instrument I've been tinkering with forever, when what did I discover but an old music manuscript.  It's a Passion, and judging from the handwriting, it one of J. S. Bach's long lost.  In fact, the title says it is the believed-to-be-unrecoverable Passion of Our Lord According to Saint Judas.  What a find!  Is this the best luck ever, or what?!

Okay, okay, I'll end the week with one more quote, just for consistency's sake:

I refuse to spend 150 bucks for something in a restaurant that doesn't contain alcohol.

John Fisher, co-worker

And once when we were walking on Bredon Hill, we met a bedraggled and exhausted fox. ‘Oh, poor thing,’ Jack said. ‘What shall we do when the hunt comes up? I can already hear them. Oh, I know—I have an idea.’ He cupped his hands and shouted to the first riders, “Hallo, yoicks, gone that way,” and pointed in the direction opposite to the one the fox had taken. The whole hunt followed his directions. There followed a long discussion about when lying was morally justifiable, but he boasted delightedly later to my wife that he had saved the life of a poor fox and showed no trace of guilt.

George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis

It was obvious to Aristotle that most things which move do so because some other moving object impels them. A hand, itself in motion, moves a sword; a wind, itself in motion, moves a ship. But it was also fundamental to his thought that no infinite series can be actual. We cannot therefore go on explaining one movement by another ad infinitum. There must be in the last resort something which, motionless itself, initiates the motion of all other things. Such a Prime Mover he finds in the wholly transcendent and immaterial God who ‘occupies no place and is not affected by time’. But we must not imagine Him moving things by any positive action, for that would be to attribute some kind of motion to Himself and we should then not have reached an utterly unmoving Mover. How then does He move things? Aristotle answers, ‘He moves as beloved’. He moves other things, that is, as an object of desire moves those who desire it. The Primum Mobile is moved by its love for God, and being moved, communicates motion to the rest of the universe.

C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image

Thought the Vision of Dame Kind is not specifically Christian, there is nothing in it incompatible with the Christian belief in a God who created the material universe and all its creatures out of love and found them good:  the glory in which the creatures appear to the natural mystic must be a feeble approximation to their glory as God sees them.  There is nothing to prevent him from welcoming it as a gift, however indirect, from God.  To a Gnostic for whom matter is the creation of an evil spirit, it must, of course, be a diabolic visitation and to the monist who regards the phenomenal world as an illusion, it must be doubly an illusion, harmless, maybe, but to be seen through as soon as possible.  To a philosophical materialist for whom the notion of glory has no meaning, it must be an individual delusion, probably neurotic in origin, and to be discouraged as abnormal and likely to lead the patient into the more serious and socially harmful delusion of some sort of theism.  When such a staunch atheist as Richard Jeffries can speak of praying "that I might touch the unutterable existence even higher than deity," the danger of allowing people to take solitary country walks becomes obvious.

W. H. Auden, Introduction to The Protestant Mystics

It happened to me about two years ago, on the day when my bed was first pushed out of doors to the open gallery of the hospital.  I was recovering from a surgical operation.  I had undergone a certain amount of physical pain, and had suffered for a short time the most acute mental depression which it has ever been my misfortune to encounter.  I suppose that this depression was due to physical causes, but at the time it seemed to me that somewhere down there under the anesthetic, in the black abyss of unconsciousness, I had discovered a terrible secret, and the secret was that there was no God; or if there was one, He was indifferent to all human suffering.

...[I]t was an ordinary commonplace day.  Yet here, in this everyday setting, and entirely unexpectedly (for I had never dreamed of such a thing), my eyes were opened, and for the first time in all my life I caught a glimpse of the ecstatic beauty of reality.

I cannot now recall whether the revelation came suddenly or gradually; I only remember finding myself in the very midst of those wonderful moments, beholding life for the first time in all its young intoxication of loveliness, in its unspeakable joy, beauty, and importance.  I cannot say exactly what the mysterious change was.  I saw no new thing, but I saw all the usual things in a miraculous new light -- in what I believe is their true light.  I saw for the first time how wildly beautiful and joyous, beyond any words of mine to describe, is the whole of life.  Every human being moving across that porch, every sparrow that flew, every branch tossing in the wind, was caught in and was a part of the whole mad ecstasy of loveliness, of joy, of importance., of intoxication of life.

It was not that for a few keyed-up moments I imagined all existence as beautiful, but that my inner vision was cleared to the truth so that I saw the actual loveliness which is always there, but which we so rarely perceive; and I knew that every man, woman, bird, and tree, every living thing before me, was extravagantly beautiful, and extravagantly important.  And, as I beheld, my heart melted out of me in a rapture of love and delight.  A nurse was walking past; the wind caught a strand of her hair and blew it out in a momentary gleam of sunshine, and never in my life before had I seen how beautiful beyond all belief is a woman's hair.  Nor had I ever guessed how marvelous it is for a human being to walk.  As for  the internes in their white suits, I had never realized before the whiteness of white linen; but much more than that, I had never so much as dreamed of the mad beauty of young manhood.  A little sparrow chirped and flew to a nearby branch, and I honestly believe that only "the morning start singing together, and the sons of God shouting for joy" can in the least express the ecstasy of a bird's flight.  I cannot express it, but I have seen it.

Margaret Prescott Montague, Twenty Minutes of Reality

It might be supposed that a little boy, keyed to action and charged with animal spirits, on a hard bench, with feet unsupported, would have hated this silence and would have longed for a chance to hit the boy in the next seat over the head.  But that was not the case.  Sooner or later the boy would get hit no doubt when the proper time came for it.  Bu the silence came over us as a kind of spell.  It had a life of its own.  There was something "numinous" about it, which means, in simpler non-Latin words, a sense of divine presence, which even a boy could feel.  It was almost never explained to us.  There was very little said about it.  No theories were expounded.  No arguments were promulgated.  We "found" ourselves in the midst of a unique laboratory experiment which worked.  A boy responds to reality the moment he feels it, almost quicker than an adult does.  He has not yet traveled so far inland from "the immortal sea that brought him hither," and he hasn't yet been "debauched" by commonplace words and phrases and the dull mechanics of life.  Anyway that experiment with silence in the far-off period of my youth, sitting in the hush with the moveless group, concentrated on the expectation of divine presence, did something to me and for me which has remained an unlost possession.

I had got over the sky-idea very early in life and thought of God as a Presence in the midst with whom I could commune without any ladder.  He came to our meeting with us, and we did not need to go somewhere else to find Him.  I cannot remember when I first discovered that there was a meeting place within, where Spirit met with spirit and where the Above and the below belonged together.  I knew it certainly as early as I knew that the water in our lake was buoyant and held up the young swimmer instead of drowning him.  The two things came together.  I learned to swim and to enjoy silent worship at about the same time.

Rufus Jones, The Quaker Reader

We must not trouble ourselves to procure Chian wine if it is absent, or Ariousian wine when it is not at hand.... Importations of wines from beyond the seas are for an appetite enfeebled by excess.... For why should not the wine of their own country satisfy men's desires?  Are they going to import water also?

Clement of Alexandria (c. 195)

Some years ago I myself made some observations on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print.  One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken.  It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.  We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation.  No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

Last week I linked to the Gallery of "Misused" Quotation Marks.  This week I offer you a remarkable example I found myself, found in the home of a senior female member of my extended family; more specifics I cannot give.

It's a quilted wall hanging printed with the words of the 31st chapter of the Proverbs of Solomon.  The much-beloved Virtuous Woman passage -- no, make that the "Virtuous" Woman passage.  Click on the image for a larger version.

Labels: Culture

Paul Horsley of Kansas City has lost his patience with audience noise.  I am going to adopt a new policy:  audiences will be banned from all future performances of my work.  Assuming there are any.

Here's a whole wonderful list of audience noise complaints.  Here's a bad one:

I was at a performance by the incomparable Evelyn Glennie with the Pittsburgh Symphony earlier this year. Ms. Glennie was performing a long (30+ minutes, I think), rapturous percussion piece which began and ended with her playing very quietly on a woodblock. Just as she struck the block with her final pianissimo note, the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's 9th rang out, loud and clear from a cell phone in the orchestra section (we heard it clearly in the balcony).

It reminds me of a cell phone that accompanied Jesus' death in a performance of the St. Matthew Passion I saw once.  And I once observed a monk take a call right while assisting in a Buddhist funeral.

But then there are problems with overzealous shushers, like this one:

By far the weirdest experience I've ever had along these lines was a month or so ago, when a young woman snarked at my friend and I for laughing during the "Like A Virgin" sequence in "Moulin Rouge." Apparently she was a Madonna purist? We weren't coughing up bits of projective popcorn or weeping into her mullet or anything, we were just... laughing. I'm still flabbergasted over that one.

How could Glenn Reynolds write an article about achieving transcendence by technology and not mention Teilhard de Chardin or the Noösphere?

Meanwhile, this is a novelty:  Aled Jones, whose singing career spanned puberty, recorded a duet with himself called "What Can You Tell Me" back in the 90s.  He recorded one part as a treble, the other part a year later as a baritone.  How many times in history has that trick been tried?

Finally, I offer you a link to a nice rear-view thong photo, and I refuse to feel guilt about it.  Hat tip to Jeremy.

The late romantic composer Henri Duparc's musical legacy consists of less than 20 songs.  He destroyed everything else he wrote, and stopped composing at age 36, the victim of madness. 

The songs are hugely important to singers, who perform them and assign them to their students.  This week I am listening to Sarah Walker and Thomas Allen sing their interpretation.  In particular, I think Allen should be even more famous than he is; he is present on some of my very favorite albums.

Duparc knew how to find and set a certain kind of exotic text. There's a scent of the narcotic present in every Duparc song.  Consider La vie antérieure, the perfect ambassador of Duparc's alternative world:

Former Life

I've lived beneath huge portals where marine
Suns coloured, with a myriad fires, the waves;
At eve majestic pillars made the scene
Resemble those of vast basaltic caves.

The breakers, rolling the reflected skies,
Mixed, in a solemn, enigmatic way,
The powerful symphonies they seem to play
With colours of the sunset in my eyes.

There did I live in a voluptuous calm
Where breezes, waves, and splendours roved as vagrants;
And naked slaves, impregnated with fragrance,

Would fan my forehead with their fronds of palm:
Their only charge was to increase the anguish
Of secret grief in which I loved to languish.

— Baudelaire; Translated by Roy Campbell

Somebody open a window, please!  That's just a little too heavy on the incense.  This was written in a time it was still possible for Frenchmen to view Algeria and much of the Muslim world as theirs; its close, yet separate situation made it handy for the occasional vacation for procuring doses of the exotic, or as the setting of another one of Hergé's improbable Tin Tin adventures.  As France reaps the unwholesome harvest of its colonial past, the suspension of disbelief necessary for such fantasies becomes increasingly difficult.

For some reason I cannot end without linking to Captain Euro.

UPDATE:  This post has been corrected.  See comments.

A fascinating bit of trivia came to light during a Bible study the wifeösphere and I attended.  It has to do with a story Jesus told, commonly known as the parable of the talents.  From the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25:

Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them.  To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey.  The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more.  So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master’s money.  After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them.

Jesus then tells how the master heaps praise on the first two servants, but condemns the lazy, fearful servant.

It so happens the author of a Gnostic gospel from the second century rewrote this story, stating the third servant squandered his talent.  This completely undermines the point of the story, which is about sins of omission, although that's not what interests me right now.  The author wanted to magnify (as he understood it) the guilt of the third servant.  He wondered how he could make the servant's wastefulness more shocking.  He could have written simply that the servant squandered his money on harlots, but that option apparently seemed too mild.  He searched for the extreme example of a disreputable, disgraceful, contemptible class of people with which to associate the servant.  When he found it, his version looked like this:

But the man who had received the one talent squandered his money on harlots and flute players.