Thoughts on the 2009 Mostly Mozart Festival

So passes another summer and so another Mostly Mozart Festival, now in its 43rd year. Being a relatively young man this was but the second summer I attended the series, but it was also the second time I had difficulty in choosing a concert to attend since, you see, I am quite fond of Mozart. An exaggeration, perhaps, but I do believe there is a bit of a dearth of Mozart at his namesake festival. The NY Times[1] declared the festival, “not so long ago, a fresh idea gone hopelessly stale” and New York Magazine[2] assures that “Centered on the past and bound by self-imposed constraints, the festival has nevertheless found a way to grow young again.” I am not so enamored with the program and while I have not performed a tally, I suspect if one were to hold the festival to a literal interpretation of “mostly,” it would just barely be true.

Now I do not dispute Mozart’s influence on the other composers who share his stage during the festival, nor do I begrudge them their honors. One need not tear down other composers in order to elevate Mozart, but the composer does seem to be getting crowded out of his own show and the festival coordinators themselves seem at pains to emphasize Mozart's primacy and the relevance of the periphery of other composers. Take their “Six Degrees of Mozart Campaign:

Cute and well-intentioned, but rather shallow. (Although if you visit the interactive version on their website you will learn that “Flowering Tree=Magic Flute” and “Chopin was a piano whiz too!")

My observation is that the Mostly Mozart Festival has fallen victim, however obliquely, to the mistaken premise that more can be gained in from so-called “comparative studies” than from intensive and focused studies on a specific topic. If the music is as brilliant as we so readily acknowledge, if it indeed touches us, how can a festival that solely focuses on it be deficient? The music is the festival, and I suggest anyone bored by the latter is in fact bored by the former. Yet it is the context, we are told, that is the key to enjoying Mozart. Now surely a comparison of Mozart and his predecessors (J.S. Bach, D. Scarlatti), contemporaries (J. Haydn, early Beethoven), and followers (Mendelssohn, Brahms) is rewarding. We do appreciate Mozart as a composer more when we notice his uniqueness and when we understand the traditions he inherited and transformed. Yet such an insight first requires intimate knowledge of the individual composers. One must know Mozart qua Mozart and Beethoven qua Beethoven before one starts comparing them, lest one run the risk of making foolish analogies. Facile comparisons of structure and taste in the absence of understanding are apt only to do violence to the composers. The Mostly Mozart Festival is supposed to be an in-depth look at Mozart. When we hear Brahms and Mendelssohn and Wagner elsewhere throughout the rest of the year we may conduct our comparisons, if we so wish. Those composers, especially Brahms and Beethoven even more so, have the rest of the year to shine and they get far more attention from the NY Philharmonic and at Carnegie Hall than Mozart. (Although this year we are graced with eight performances of Mozart from the NY Philharmonic and performances of Die Zauberflöte and Le nozze di Figaro from the Metropolitan Opera. Still, Haydn and Beethoven figure quite prominently in Carnegie Hall’s season, which is wholly sans Mozart.)

Now I don't advocate scrubbing all other composers from the festival. I would suggest, though, that the show be "Overwhelmingly Mozart" with specific pieces of other composers added to highly specific aspects of Mozart, e.g. concertos by C.P.E. Bach and by Beethoven, choral pieces by Handel, et cetera. To highlight and discuss all of the pieces, the festival could include seminars, lectures, amateur performances, informal talks, and question and answer sessions with conductors and musicians. The festival presently offers five “keyboard masterclasses” which is a fine start toward a more scholarly and more Mozart-centric festival. At the concert I attended this summer pianist Robert Levin gave a short talk before his performance of the Piano Sonata No. 18 in D, KV.576. In addition to being a brilliant pianist he is gifted teacher and discussed the unique aspects of the 18th century piano: how it is tuned, how it is made, how it sounds in contrast to modern pianos. He said something that must be said more: that the greatest composers reward the most careful listeners. We have grown accustomed to the brief ditties of today, too used to bulleted lists on websites and snippets on blogs to focus on a long and complex piece of music. Sometimes even music lovers get too bogged down in scholarship and reading about the music, instead of listening. He isolated some of the major themes beforehand and discussed how Mozart moves material around, giving us one thing when we expect another, giving us something unexpected and unusual, and as only he can, finally giving us what we want, but better than we could have hoped.

Lecture:

Part I - Part II - Part III

Note: Jay Nordlinger has also reviewed the 2009 Mostly Mozart Festival in the September issue of The New Criterion. It is good music criticism and overall a fine review. He seems far more sanguine about the far-flung festival than I am. He does say, though, of the festival administrators’ claim to focus on Mozart’s predecessors, contemporaries, and related successors, “That would be just about everybody, no?”

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/arts/music/11mozart.html
[2] http://nymag.com/arts/classicaldance/classical/reviews/58306/

Four Summers - Lessons From Thucydides & The Founding Fathers

Today is the anniversary of the publication of George Washington’s Farewell Address to the American people before he left office. I was planning on making the address my first post on APLV. As it happens, though, another man recently has been the subject of some attention, the historian Thucydides. He was discussed both in Donald Kagan’s article [1] in this month’s edition of The New Criterion and by Victor Davis Hanson in a column on his website. [2] With those articles in mind I revisited selections of The Peloponnesian War and too saw the timeliness of Thucydides observations and his role as a "student of human behavior." (Kagan's phrase.) I also observed some noteworthy similarities among the thinking of its author and those of our Founding Fathers.

As such, I thought I would share some selections with you so the similarities of both the events described and the authors’ observations might be more discernible and useful. Amongst other qualities, these men shared an uncommon perceptiveness.

I.

Summer, 427 B.C. - Thucydides describes the Revolution at Corcyra.

From Book III of The Peloponnesian War [3]

For not long afterwards nearly the whole Hellenic world was in commotion; in every city the chiefs of the democracy and of the oligarchy were struggling, the one to bring in the Athenians, the other the Lacedaemonians. Now in time of peace, men would have had no excuse for introducing either, and no desire to do so; but, when they were at war, the introduction of a foreign alliance on one side or the other to the hurt of their enemies and the advantage of themselves was easily effected by the dissatisfied party. And revolution brought upon the cities of Hellas many terrible calamities, such as have been and always will be while human nature remains the same, but which are more or less aggravated and differ in character with every new combination of circumstances. In peace and prosperity both states and individuals are actuated by higher motives, because they do not fall under the dominion of imperious necessities; but war, which takes away the comfortable provision of daily life, is a hard master and tends to assimilate men's characters to their conditions.

When troubles had once begun in the cities, those who followed carried the revolutionary spirit further and further, and determined to outdo the report of all who had preceded them by the ingenuity of their enterprises and the atrocity of their revenges. The meaning of words had no longer the same relation to things, but was changed by them as they thought proper. Reckless daring was held to be loyal courage; prudent delay was the excuse of a coward; moderation was the disguise of unmanly weakness; to know everything was to do nothing. Frantic energy was the true quality of a man. A conspirator who wanted to be safe was a recreant in disguise. The lover of violence was always trusted, and his opponent suspected. He who succeeded in a plot was deemed knowing, but a still greater master in craft was he who detected one. On the other hand, he who plotted from the first to have nothing to do with plots was a breaker up of parties and a poltroon who was afraid of the enemy. In a word, he who could outstrip another in a bad action was applauded, and so was he who encouraged to evil one who had no idea of it. The tie of party was stronger than the tie of blood, because a partisan was more ready to dare without asking why. (For party associations are not based upon any established law, nor do they seek the public good; they are formed in defiance of the laws and from self-interest.) The seal of good faith was not divine law, but fellowship in crime. If an enemy when he was in the ascendant offered fair words, the opposite party received them not in a generous spirit, but by a jealous watchfulness of his actions. Revenge was dearer than self-preservation. Any agreements sworn to by either party, when they could do nothing else, were binding as long as both were powerless. But he who on a favourable opportunity first took courage, and struck at his enemy when he saw him off his guard, had greater pleasure in a perfidious than he would have had in an open act of revenge; he congratulated himself that he had taken the safer course, and also that he had overreached his enemy and gained the prize of superior ability. In general the dishonest more easily gain credit for cleverness than the simple for goodness; men take a pride in the one, but are ashamed of the other.

The cause of all these evils was the love of power, originating in avarice and ambition, and the party-spirit which is engendered by them when men are fairly embarked in a contest. For the leaders on either side used specious names, the one party professing to uphold the constitutional equality of the many, the other the wisdom of an aristocracy, while they made the public interests, to which in name they were devoted, in reality their prize. Striving in every way to overcome each other, they committed the most monstrous crimes; yet even these were surpassed by the magnitude of their revenges which they pursued to the very utmost, neither party observing any definite limits either of justice or public expediency, but both alike making the caprice of the moment their law. Either by the help of an unrighteous sentence, or grasping power with the strong hand, they were eager to satiate the impatience of party-spirit. Neither faction cared for religion; but any fair pretence which succeeded in effecting some odious purpose was greatly lauded. And the citizens who were of neither party fell a prey to both; either they were disliked because they held aloof, or men were jealous of their surviving.

Thus revolution gave birth to every form of wickedness in Hellas. The simplicity which is so large an element in a noble nature was laughed to scorn and disappeared. An attitude of perfidious antagonism everywhere prevailed; for there was no word binding enough, nor oath terrible enough to reconcile enemies. Each man was strong only in the conviction that nothing was secure; he must look to his own safety, and could not afford to trust others. Inferior intellects generally succeeded best. For, aware of their own deficiencies, and fearing the capacity of their opponents, for whom they were no match in powers of speech, and whose subtle wits were likely to anticipate them in contriving evil, they struck boldly and at once. But the cleverer sort, presuming in their arrogance that they would be aware in time, and disdaining to act when they could think, were taken off their guard and easily destroyed.

Now in Corcyra most of these deeds were perpetrated, and for the first time. There was every crime which men could commit in revenge who had been governed not wisely, but tyrannically, and now had the oppressor at their mercy. There were the dishonest designs of others who were longing to be relieved from their habitual poverty, and were naturally animated by a passionate desire for their neighbour's goods; and there were crimes of another class which men commit, not from covetousness, but from the enmity which equals foster towards one another until they are carried away by their blind rage into the extremes of pitiless cruelty. At such a time the life of the city was all in disorder, and human nature, which is always ready to transgress the laws, having now trampled them underfoot, delighted to show that her passions were ungovernable, that she was stronger than justice, and the enemy of everything above her. If malignity had not exercised a fatal power, how could any one have preferred revenge to piety, and gain to innocence? But, when men are retaliating upon others, they are reckless of the future, and do not hesitate to annul those common laws of humanity to which every individual trusts for his own hope of deliverance should he ever be overtaken by calamity; they forget that in their own hour of need they will look for them in vain.

II.

September, 1789 - From the Correspondences of John Adams, on the French Revolution of the Summer of 1789.

To his Dutch friend, Francis van der Kemp: [4]

“The French Revolution will, I hope, produce effects in favor of liberty, equity, and humanity as extensive as this whole globe and as lasting as all time.”

To another correspondent: [4]

In revolutions, “. . . the most fiery spirits and flighty geniuses frequently obtained more influence than men of sense and judgment; and the weakest man may carry foolish measures in opposition to wise ones proposed by the ablest.”

III.

September 19, 1796 - George Washington’s Farewell Address, [5]

. . . Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

IV.

September, 2009 - Conclusion.

I can add little to those comments without resorting to summarizing. I hasten to add, though, I am not advocating silence or complaisance by citizens. Sometimes, rather often, it is indeed necessary to speak up on behalf of one’s ideas, either to define and argue them or simply to disagree. As Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Branch Giles, a member of The House of Representatives in 1795: [6]

Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided.

Yet Jefferson was also attuned to the nuances of government and society, and years later in his own First Inaugural Address said: [7]

Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.

We must aspire to such finespun thinking, as rare amidst today’s political hullabaloo as it is necessary for all hoping to preserve their own rights and also a civil, functioning national dialogue. After the crazy Summer of 2009, historian and author Victor Davis Hanson reflects on the social and political frenzy, offering some advice: [8]

The solution, of course, is for the majority to simply say enough is enough, and declare a personal code of decency: “I will not stoop to smear and slur, won’t interrupt a speaker, won’t call anyone a Nazi, won’t do to others what they’ve done to me.” Only that sort of code will end the craziness. . .

The point is not to ostracize or point fingers at others in moralistic fashion, but just simply say, “That’s not my way.”

Otherwise, we won’t have a tennis match, an awards ceremony, a Presidential speech, a congressional debate — much of anything without some hysterical rant from the unhinged.

[1] http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-student-of-political-behavior-4181

[2, 8] http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson091709.html

[3] http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/thucydides/jthucbk3rv2.htm

[4] McCullough, David. John Adams. Simon & Schuster. NY, NY. 10020 (p. 417-418)

[5] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

[6] http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0800.htm

[7] http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres16.html

Sehnsucht and Homecoming

I once saw a simple fish pond in a Japanese village which was perhaps eternal. A farmer made it for his farm. The pond was a simple rectangle, about 6 feet wide, and 8 feet long; opening off a little irrigation stream. At one end, a bush of flowers hung over the water. At the other end, under the water, was a circle of wood, its top perhaps 12 inches below the surface of the water. In the pond there were eight great ancient carp, each maybe 18 inches long, orange, gold, purple, and black: the oldest one had been there eighty years. The eight fish swam, slowly, slowly in circles---often within the wooden circle. The whole world was in that pond. Every day the farmer sat by it for a few minutes. I was there only one day and I sat by it all afternoon. Even now, I cannot think of it without years. Those ancient fish had been swimming, slowly, in that pond for eighty years. It was so true to the nature of the fish, and flowers, and the water, and the farmers, that it had sustained itself for all that time, endlessly repeating, always different. There is no degree of wholeness or reality which can be reached beyond that simple pond.

 Christopher Alexander: The Timeless Way of Building, page 38

Once in those very early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a toy garden or a toy forest. That was the first beauty I ever knew... It made me aware of nature---not, indeed as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant. As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother's toy garden. And every day there were what we called "the Green Hills"; that is, the low line of the Castlereagh Hills which we saw from the nursery windows. They taught me longing-Sehnsucht...

C.S. Lewis: Surprised by Joy

I was deep in reading Alexander's book last night when I stumbled on the characteristically lyrical passage quoted above: Alexander employs the passage as an illustration of his "quality without a name," a qualify impossible, according to Alexander, to define with a single word, partaking as it does of several words' meanings: alive, whole, comfortable, free, exact, egoless, and eternal. In Alexander's opinion, this "quality without a name" is present in individuals, buildings, rooms, towns, art, music: "It is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named." If I were to attempt to define it, my definition would run thus: Alexander's "quality without a name" is the the dawning recognition, achieved momentarily or otherwise, that the present set of circumstances, events, characteristics, is exactly as it should be, all around me suggests harmony and above all, a feeling that man can, perhaps only fleetingly, feel at home and at rest in this world. I realize, of course, that both my definition and Alexander's definition are deeply unsatisfying as philosophical dialectic. There is no exactness, no precision in the language, and in this instance, I'm willing to concede that in argument, very likely, these statements, as they stand, would be very difficult to defend.  

Nevertheless, I believe that what Alexander is trying to get at is at the heart of human experience: how do I come to feel at home in this world, when so often I feel a stranger? C.S. Lewis, in the quote above, describes a recurring experience both in his life and in his lifework, the feeling of sehnsucht: a word he rifled from German romanticism and that essentially means an insatiable desire (not a carnal desire, I must emphatically add). Sehnsucht is that "unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of a bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves? (Preface to The Pilgrim's Regress)." Lewis also describes the experience as a longing for a far-off country, a profound sense of nostalgia for a place unvisited but also strikingly reminscient of home. And of course, for Lewis as seemingly for Alexander (for I think Alexander's experience by the fish pond is akin to the experience that Lewis describes), the experiences are only intuitions of a higher experience, incapable of being defined satisfactorily. This desire testifies to two highly charged polarities in man's experience: his sense of belonging in the present and his suspicion or intuition that some more glorious future or situation awaits him. The former could be described as the biological or cultural sense: the desire to perpetuate the species and to make something of the world, so that it is more our home than when we arrived, and the latter could be described as the religious or philosophical sense: the desire to unfold the origin and mystery of the cosmos, discover its Creator, and ultimately, find peace in the purpose and destination of the individual soul. Of course, the two senses bleed into one another: religion not only has a transcendent quality, but it also has cultural and biological aspect, it is one of the ways in which man attempts to feel at home in the cosmos. 

Good music, art, ceremony, architecture, friendship, poetry all partake of Alexander's "quality without a name," and according to Alexander, we need only awaken our knowledge (a kind of Platonic anamnesis) of this quality, to recognize what constitutes goodness and badness. Even if one rejects Alexander's epistemology, Alexander's point should not be summarily dismissed. At root, it proposes the thesis that it is possible for man to make himself at home in the world, to live in a place that is beautiful. It takes Lewis' quest for sehnsucht and says, Yes, trust those intuitions and make of yourself and your home and your inner life something resembling those intuitions. At heart, it's a call to establish order in the soul, in the home, in the city, in the cosmos. Alexander writes:

Each one of us has, somewhere in his heart, the dream to make a living world, a universe. Those of us who have been trained as architects have this desire perhas at the very center of our lives: that one day, somewhere, somehow, we shall build one building which is wonderful, beautiful, breathtaking, a place where people can walk and dream for centuries.

In some form, every person has some version of this dream: whoever you are, you may have the dream of one day building a most beautiful house for your family, a garden, a fountain, a fishpond, a big room with soft light, flowers outside and the small of new grass.  

One may distrust the lyricism, but the message is clear. The world is pliant in our hands, and we can choose two variant paths: one that induces anxiety, fearfulness, and dread, or one that suggests harmony and contentment. The latter is not an attempt to 'immanentize the eschaton,' it's not a burning rage to see the present world go up in flames only to see a newer, more hygenic order arise in its place. Such a view recognizes the limits and possibilities of human existence: its glories as well as its drudgeries, but it suggests that the drudgeries can be ennobled and raised to a higher plane. C.S. Lewis intuited this from an early age: like Alexander's Japanese pond, he saw in the little tin of leaves and twigs the piercing beauty of nature but no less the vocation to order nature, synthesisize it in our art, architecture, poetry, and music. And even if we never truly find restfulness in our present circumstances (as the Christian must believe, since true rest rests only in God, the effort will have meant the creation and perpetuation of beautiful things in our midst. Lewis writes:

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. (The Weight of Glory)

To incardinate these desires in art seems to be one of the highest vocations, and if Lewis' achievements rest secure, one can only hope that the future is as assured for Alexander. Poetry, music, friendship can find their way into any home, but how successful will Alexander be in his crusade? Will the mass of men return to or reinvigorate a form of building and designing that partakes of these simultaneously earthy and transcendent qualities? Or will it continue to build monuments to despair and disharmony?* Will the symbol of our age be 100 stories of steel and glass? Or will it be something more humane, more divine? Will it have "the quality without a name?"

*In the debate between Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman, Eisenmen defends the notion that architecture should be disharmonious (since disharmony is more representative of our "cosmology" than harmony)  and should actually mirror the despair and anxiety of modernity: "I think you should just feel this harmony is something that the majority of the people need and want. But equally there must be people out there like myself who feel the need for incongruity, disharmony, etc." "What I'm suggesting is that if we make people so comfortable in these nice little structures of yours, that we might lull them into thinking that everything's all right, Jack, which it isn't. And so the role of art or architecture might be just to remind people that everything wasn't all right. And I'm not convinced, by the way, that it is all right." And Alexander ends the debate:  

I can't, as a maker of things, I just can't understand it. I do not have a concept of things in which I can even talk about making something in the frame of mind you are describing. I mean, to take a simple example, when I make a table I say to myself: "All right, I'm going to make a table, and I'm going to try to make a good table". And of course, then from there on I go to the ultimate resources I have and what I know, how well I can make it. But for me to then introduce some kind of little edge, which starts trying to be a literary comment, and then somehow the table is supposed to be at the same time a good table, but it also is supposed to be I don't know what; a comment on nuclear warfare, making a little joke, doing various other things ... I'm practically naive; it doesn't make sense to me."

Jane Jacobs

'Constraints on materials, styles, heights, and sizes, rather than on functions; recognition of the street as the primary public space, and of pedestrians as the primary users of it; preservation of façades and street frontages, while facilitating change of use behind them: all such remedies, which are slowly emerging (for example in the renewal of Baltimore and other damaged American cities) and which have been powerfully advocated and illustrated by Leon Krier at Poundbury and by the New Urbanists in Italy and America – all owe an incalculable debt to Jane Jacobs.

But they also illustrate the way in which her own preference for "spontaneity" over "planning" cannot, in the end, be sustained. It is not planning that has destroyed the American city, but the wrong kind of planning directed towards the wrong kind of things.'

Roger Scruton
Jane Jacobs (1916-2006): cities for life

 

Why I Hate Modernism: The Tragedy of St. Stephen Walbrook

Three years ago, I vacationed in London for two weeks: I traveled solo, and so was able to indulge my own interests and eccentricities. One such interest was a desire to see as many of Christopher Wren's City Churches as possible. On my first visit to London, I had been in awe of the sublime beauty of St. Paul's Cathedral, and so returning years later, I wanted to see whether Wren had sustained that vision in less exalted circumstances, the design of several parish churches. 

I was not disappointed: Wren's English Baroque style is impressive on both small and grand scales. Of the many Wren churches I visited, my favorite was St. Lawrence Jewry, (the previous church had stood near the London Jewish Ghetto). Incidentally, the Church was playing host to a fine group of classical musicians when I visited, an encouraging sign. Many of the London Anglican churches hosted lunchtime or afternoon concerts.

When I visted St. Mary Abchurch, a very kind, elderly gentleman escorted me throughout the church, leading me up to the organ loft and allowing me to mount the exquisitely carved high pulpit. He was extremely knowledgeable, and had a great deal of historical and architectural lore to share. He told me that he 'motored' in from the suburbs every week, so that the church could be opened on weekdays for the visiting tourists. (During my own visit, a half-hour at least, not another tourist was to be seen. St. Mary Abchurch is one of the lesser lights in the Wren repertoire.) He'd gotten friendly with the parson a few years ago, and he had a key, and he thought it very important that such a significant building should be open. When I prepared to leave, I asked him if this was his parish church, did he come in on Sundays for service? 'No,' the old man said, 'I'm an atheist. I don't attend church.' 

The very same day I met my kindly atheist-guide, I visited several other Wren churches, including St. Stephen Walbrook.  I will not attempt to describe the revulsion I felt when confronted with the monstrosity depicted below. That very day, I became the implacable enemy of modernism and of all men who would, by subterfuge and in the teeth of a horrified opposition,  intrude their own inferior talents into a masterpiece.

That detestable object in the center of the Church is rumored to be an altar.

Christopher Alexander and the Timeless Way of Building

I'm currently reading Christopher Alexander's The Timeless Way  of Building and acquainting myself with the remarkable ideas of this very interesting thinker.

His magnum opus is his recently completed, four-volume Nature of Order, where he attempts to craft a synthesis of the various strains of knowledge that inform his own thinking: philosophical, scientific, religious, and of course, architectural. As soon as I finish Timeless Way, I'll write up my own thoughts, but for the present, here are some links to whet your appetite:

Christopher Alexander: A Biography

Christopher Alexander's website, A Pattern Language

The text of a debate between modernist Peter Eisenman and Christopher Alexander

James Kalb on Alexander 

Interview with Alexander's friend and collaborator Nikos Salingaros  

(Inner garden of the Julian Street Inn, Shelter for the Homeless,
San Jose, California)

The Art of Loafing

"From the Chinese point of view, the man who is wisely idle is the most cultured man. For there seems to be a philosophic contradiction between being busy and being wise. Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise. The wisest man is therefore he who loafs most gracefully."

--- Lin Yutang "The Importance of Living" 

The Beauty of Order

"To live within a just order is to live within a pattern that has beauty. The individual finds purpose within an order, and security - whether it is the order of the soul or the order of the community. Without order, indeed the life of man is poor, nasty, brutish, and short." 

--- Russell Kirk

Highlights of the Metropolitan Opera's 2009-2010 Season

The 2009-10 season at the Metropolitan Opera promises great things.

After a hiatus, the Met is again performing a German-language version of The Magic Flute, re-using Julie Taymor's production. I've only seen the production on the computer screen, but what I saw impressed me. The Magic Flute, with its improbably fantastic plot and its ethereal music, offers the gifted producer an opportunity to explore new scenic possibilities and remain faithful to the letter and spirit of Emanuel Schikaneder's libretto.

In a similarly whimsical but eminently musical vein, the Met offers again its English-language production of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel. 


Last year's production was my first time hearing and seeing Humperdinck's minor masterpiece, and I was pleasantly surprised by the real musical virtues of this fairy tale opera. I was, however, non-plussed by the production; it certainly compares unfavorably with Taymor's Magic Flute. 

Exaggeratedly grotesque, the production lacks the essential faerie quality that inspires Humperdinck's lyrical music. All in all, it seemed a missed opportunity to create a production as stunning and faithfully original as Taymor's Magic Flute. The Met also intends to reprise what I deemed a serious artistic mistake: the use of a tenor, rather than a soprano, for the role of the Witch. Philip Langridge, an otherwise talented singer, seemed uncomfortable in the role. And if the Met intended the production as child- and family-friendly, the mistake seems all the more unfortunate.

Despite these reservations, I cannot recommend the opera itself highly enough. It's too easy to assume a haughty attitude to works as whimsical as Humperdinck's fairy tale, but it would be a serious mistake to do so. 

The Met is also staging Richard Wagner's Der Fliegende Hollander, with Deborah Voigt singing the role of Senta. The first of Wagner's operas to lodge itself in the canon, Der Fliegende Hollander is famously difficult to stage, so I look forward to seeing how the Met's creative team resolves the difficulties. With Voigt at the helm, we can confidently expect a stunning musical performance.

The last production I'd like to highlight is the Met staging of Leos Janacek's From the House of the Dead. I've never heard the opera, but in preparation for hearing it at the Met, I've ordered a copy from the New York Public Library. I am cautiously pessimistic about the production itself, if only because it is the work of the iconoclast Patrice Chereau, designer of the infamous Bayreuth Ring cycle of 1976. 

Janacek is a favorite of my favorite contemporary philosopher, Roger Scruton, and so I anticipate hearing something quite marvelous.

Dvorak and the Stabat Mater

The next two weeks in the liturgical calendar contain feasts common both to East and West: the Nativity of the Virgin Mary on the 8th and the Exaltation of the Cross on the 14th, but the day following Holy Cross Day, the 15th, commemorates the Sorrows of the Virgin Mary, a feast peculiar to the Catholic Church. 

The Tridentine rite of the Catholic Church, now commonly known as the Extraordinary form of the Roman Mass, contains a variable part known as the Sequence: largely disused and abandoned in the modern rite, the Sequence was a poetic hymn inserted between the reading of the Epistle and the Gospel. Perhaps the most famous Sequence is the Dies Irae, one of the signature elements of the Requiem Mass: Mozart and Verdi, inter alia, composed justly famous versions.


The Sequence for the the feast of the Seven Sorrows (Sept. 15th) is Jacopone da Todi's Stabat Mater. Like the Dies Irae, the Stabat Mater is a fine example of medieval Latin poetry. The Sequence, as a portion of the Mass, had both a didactic and devotional purpose: its ejection (or attempted ejection) from the modern rite is one of only many flaws in the contemporary Roman liturgy. 


As a devotional hymn, the Stabat Mater is surely meant to evoke an attitude of contrition in the listener: the poetry itself pictures the distressed Mother of God witnessing the agonies of her son's death. This kind of dramatic imagery' was doubtless intended to summon similar feelings 

The Flemish Josquin des Prez and the Italian Palestrina both wrote polyphonic versions of the Stabat Mater, but my personal favorite is Antonin Dvorak's, the Czech composer of the late 19th century. Composed after the unsettling deaths of two of his children, the work is suffused with an intense feeling of fellow suffering, the subject matter by no means remote to the grief-stricken father and family man. 


The extract below, Quando Corpus Morietur, is the last stanza of the Stabat Mater:

Quando corpus morietur,
Fac, ut animæ donetur
Paradisi Gloria.
Amen

When my body dies
Grant that to my soul is given
The glory of paradise.
Amen

I'd urge the would-be listener to acquire another version, if possible, of this fine piece: the above example is insufficient to the task. And if Dvorak's Stabat Mater piques your interest, do listen to his unfortunately little known Requiem.