Around the Web

For the week of Saturday, March 6th through Friday, March 12th.

1) For the WSJ, Kelly Crow (Maastricht, The Netherlands) on $4 billion worth of Gauguins, Botticellis and Roman statues.

2) At The Boston Globe, Carolyn Y. Johnson on the Bohlen-Pierce scale:

The unusual scale she played ended on a high note that was triple, not double, the frequency of the low note, and the interval was divided into 13 equal steps. This new system, called Bohlen-Pierce, was independently invented in the 1970s and 1980s by two engineers and a computer scientist as an alternative to the traditional musical system. Initially a mixture of math, music, and theory, Bohlen-Pierce has now grown into a living art, as people around the world have begun building instruments, composing pieces, and developing a music theory, all using notes that most people have never heard.

3) In the WSJ, Byron Janis on Chopin's 'Soul and Heart.'


4) Arminta Wallace interviews violinist Janine Jansen for The Irish Times.

5) In The UK Guardian, Alex Ross on applause at the concert hall.

Around the Web

For the week of Saturday, February 27th through Friday, March 5.

1) At the Mises Daily Blog, Ralph Raico on "Austrian Economics and Classical Liberalism."

2) From his blog, Victor Davis Hanson on contradictions.

3) Reason.tv's Ted Balaker interviews Eugene Volokh (professor of law at the UCLA School of Law and founder of The Volokh Conspiracy) to discuss gun rights, free expression, the Nanny State, and "erring on the side of liberty."

4) Roger Scruton on pop music and 5) a review of Scruton's book "Understanding Music: Philosophy and Interpretation" by Marc Brooks at MusicCriticism.com

6) Brendan O'Neill at Reason on "Weaponizing Mozart."

On the Sinfonia to Le Nozze di Figaro

Sinfonia to Le Nozze di Figaro

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (KV.492)

Figaro was commissioned by Emperor Joseph II and the Imperial Italian Opera Company and premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on May 1, 1786.

Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 clarin trumpets, timpani, and strings (2 violins, 2 violas, cello, bass.)

The score is available via the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe.

 Incipit. (click to enlarge)

John Eliot Gardiner conducting The English Baroque Soloists.

The piece–which is all about movement raised to its highest potential–steals in as though from a distance in its famous seven-bar opening phrase, needing two attempts to get under way. But now it stirs in every quarter, laughing, chuckling and triumphing, with new watercourses opening up as the floodtide rushes past, before the piece as a whole races toward its jubilant end in a bacchantic torrent entirely in keeping with Mozart's basic conception of his subject, an apotheosis of an untrammelled life force that could hardly be more infectious. [Abert, 935]

Indeed, what a glorious piece to set Figaro on its way. Where the overture to Die Entfuhrüng paused and took us aside for a look at a more tranquil place, the sinfonia to Figaro sweeps us up and never slows down. Mozart did, in fact, consider for Figaro an overture similar to his for Die Entfuhrüng and the folio shows an andante con moto in 6/8-time with the main melody in the oboe against pizzicato accompaniment in the strings. [1] He struck it out, though, and in its place we have this glorious sinfonia, a designation which, distinct from overture, makes this more of an opening concert piece.

In contrast to Mozart's earlier operas it is not bound to the work as Idomeno's overture is bound to the drama by a tragic pathos, or as Die Entführung's is in depicting an exotic land. It lacks the infamous chord in Don Giovanni and the threefold-chord of Die Zauberflöte that become motives throughout those works. Though it does not contain any explicit musical or dramatic connection to the opera, the mood and energy of the piece nonetheless have a great preparatory effect on the audience, sweeping us into the proper mood or at least sweeping away some of the day's cares with which we entered.

It is perhaps unavoidable to state the piece's form, which is that of a sonata without a development section. We will see in its stead significant contrast between the exposition and recapitulation, which Levarie suggests function as strophe and antistrophe, the latter "fulfilling what the exposition leaves undone." [Levarie, 3]

We open pianissimo in D with the strings offering the main theme along with the bassoon which adds a certain implacable eccentricity to the phrase. The woodwinds respond piano in a four-bar
arpeggio before the whole orchestra bursts forth at m. 12, winds and horns forte and strings fortissimo. Against the basses sputtering out quavers in D the winds, horns, and 2nd violins play crotchets, doubled on the strong beats by the timpani until the horns recede to the strong beats only and the winds subdivide the weak-beat crotchets into quavers, creating a rollicking dactylic motion with which we close the section. We then return (at m.18) to the opening material, now heightened with the oboe and flute and this time piano.

The start of the next section, m.35, beings forte but backs off quickly to piano and a thrice-repeated descending scale followed by forte chord of punctuation. At the fourth repetition, though, the punctuation and scale coincide, only the scale is ascending now and we are launched into a flurry of arpeggios and an "exuberantly powerful" [Abert, 936]  rhythm based on a simple figure of three crotchets before we slide back down again in a descending tonic scale.

Summary of Sections I-III

I. m.1-18

1. 7m. opening theme
2. 4m. arpeggio
3. 7m. descending tonic scale

II. m.19-34

1. 6m. opening theme with winds
2. 4m. arpeggio
3. 6m. descending tonic scale

III.  m.35-58

1. 10m. scalar theme
2. 4m. arpeggios and crotchet figure
3. 10m. descending tonic scale

Subsequent Sections

IV. m.59-84

This bridge passage is a particularly clear example of this overture's habit of proceeding in "fits and starts." [Abert, 936]. The 2nd violin and viola introduce a figure of eight 8th notes, the first of which is both fortepiano and staccato. In the next measure the figure is doubled on the strong beat by a whole note from the 1st violin and then two measures later the oboe joins in and the 1st violin introduces a sprightly, incipient version of the overture's main opening theme. The oboe elaborates a little, followed by the flute before the material repeats and the descending figure in the flute slides down into a forte unison. The tone suddenly waxes serious and we have a grave theme in the first violin repeated between more forte unisons and against incessant quavers in D.

 m.76-77.

The theme, though, quickly gives way to the old three-crotchet motive, increasing the tension as it ascends each measure, from G# on the last forte unison up through D until the basses come in on the dominant at m.85 and present us with a grand and lofty theme.

V. m.85-138

    m.85-106

m.85-87.

Yet this mood quickly reverses as this bass theme is taken up by the violins where it becomes, as Abert states with particular precision, "timid and even supplicatory." [Abert, 936.] The phrase is followed by a short but firm little phrase, first in the bassoon and oboe and then in the oboe and flute, as if the violin phrase is leaning on it for support, or perhaps leaning into the stronger phrase as a suppliant. In its third repetition it seemingly evaporates as it is taken up by the bassoon which chirps it out less seriously and staccato.

    m.107-138

Here the bassoon and violin glide and soar gloriously, free of the earlier turmoil. Yet after the flute joins them they slide right into a forte unison chord and the tension returns. The chord repeats several times, each time cutting off a theme in the 1st violins trying to get underway. After four thwarted attempts the theme gets cut off midway and a descending scale leads us into a recapitulation of the piece's opening, pianissimo. These structured interruptions, with dynamic markings every other measure, characterize the "fits and starts" progression of the sinfonia.

VI. m.139-235

Levarie discusses at length the complexities of the harmonics in the variations of the recapitulation. Rather than repeat his analysis I will note only the most prominent feature, the resolution at m. 203-208 of the a-sharp that derailed and delayed the successful completion of the ascending scale way back in the very 4th measure and set us on our many-coursed adventure.


VII. m.236-294 (end)

The recapitulation runs straightaway into the many-measure crescendo (a "Mannheim" crescendo) that begins the coda. The tension rises bar after bar spanning two octaves until it erupts forte into an outburst of the whole orchestra and a release into the three-crotchet motive (now with more force than ever) and then straightaway again into descending scales, first in the violins and then the woodwinds (against a trill on C# in the strings which gets fulfilled by the grace notes B-C# leading into the unison on D in the following measure.) This structurally and harmonically satisfying run is repeated twice. So precise is the structure of the piece, so measured its rhythmic phrasing and balance and so complementary its harmonic progression and structure to that rhythmic framework, that when we gradually come to a close we feel neither defrauded of more adventure nor exhausted from too much, but rather freed and vivified in perfect degree.

–

[1] This andante is presented both in Abert's W. A. Mozart (on p. 934) in the chapter on Figaro and in the NMA Critical Report on p. 330 in the section, "Striche und Änderungen von Mozarts Hand."

–

Bibliography

Abert, Hermann. W. A. Mozart. Yale University Press. New Haven and New York. 2007.

Levarie, Siegmund. Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro: A Critical Analysis. University of Chicago Press. Chicago. 1952.

Recommended

Platoff, John. Essay "Tonal Organization in the Opera Buffa of Mozart's Time" in Mozart Studies 2 ed. Cliff Eisen. Oxford University Press. NY. 1997.

Swain, Joseph P. Harmonic Rhythm: Analysis and Interpretation. Part II, Section 12, "Mozart: Overture to The Marriage of Figaro." Oxford University Press, NY. 2002.

Tovey, Donald Francis. Essays in Musical Analysis. (Six Volumes.) Volume IV: Illustrative Music: Overture to Le Nozze di Figaro, KV.492. Oxford University Press. London. 1935.

N.B. Though brief at only about one page, Tovey's essay is worth reading for its comparison to Cimarosa's Il Matrimonio Segreto and Tovey's habitual wit and concise insight.

Around the Web

For the week of Saturday, February, 20th through Friday, February, 26.

1) Via the Mises Institute Blog, "Alas, Poor Yorick! An Apology for the Human Race" by Albert Jay Nock, from "Snoring as a Fine Art."

2) In Humanities, Ammon Shea on Old English and "the brutality and elegance of our ancestral tongue."

3) Alison Flood at The Guardian on the discovery of a long-missing letter by René Descartes.

4) In City Journal, Nicole Gelinas on "Eminent Domain as Central Planning."

5) In the WSJ, William R. Snyder on Monks, Munich, and Strong Beer.

6) A review of "The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures" by Nicholas Wade, in The Economist.

7) In The Guardian, "Ten Rules for Writing Fiction" from Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy.

Music

8) Robert Greskovic at the WSJ interviews Mark Morris and discusses Mr. Morris' Dance Group at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

9) Barbara Jepson at the WSJ interviews violinist Gil Shaham, performing in "'Concertos of the 1930s,' a project with major American and European orchestras that continues over the next year or so."

1. Shaham performing Prokofiev's 2nd Violin Concerto: III. Allegro, ben marcato.

10) Ellen Gamerman in the WSJ asks violinst Christian Tetzlaff about spending so much time traveling.

1. Tetzlaff performing J. S. Bach's Sonata No. 3 in C major, BWV.1005: III. Largo.

11) [Added 2/27]  Via Classic FM, composer, teacher, conductor, and Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Michael Tilson Thomas received the National Medal of Arts.

1. Thomas conducting the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra performing Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 2 in F minor, IV. Finale: Allegro con fuoco.

12) From Warsaw, Vanessa Gera for the L. A. Times on Polish celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederic Chopin.

What I'm Reading

Charles Moores, in this January Telegraph piece, reviews the Hungarian writer Miklos Banffy's Transylvanian Trilogy. The wunderkind Andrew Cusack put me on the scent, and I've been enjoying the lengthy Banffy for several weeks now. His three-volume work, inevitably described as Tolstoyan by Moore, is a romp through Hapsburg Austro-Hungary as it neared the conflict that would dismember the ancient empire. Banffy's trilogy is an apt portrait of the vices of the aristocratic elites, Hungarian and Austrian alike, who were charged with the upkeep and well-being of the Hapsburg realms. His description of the wasted nights, playing at cards, whoring, and drinking, are mitigated by the presence of a few noble souls, who attempt to staunch the bleeding and suffering of the Empire's lesser subjects. 

Roger Scruton and the Fall

I missed these excellent Scrutonian reflections when they were published back in November, to commemorate the two-decade old fall of the Berlin Wall. His piece is shot with poignant remembrances of his persecuted colleagues behind the Iron Curtain, who struggled to keep alive the flame of Western culture in an inhospitable environment:

For ten years before 1989 I was in the habit of visiting Eastern Europe to support the fragile underground educational networks there. I would meet my contacts on street corners at prearranged times, to be taken by tram to some smoke-filled room in an outlying apartment, where a group of whispering “students” had gathered to meet me.

Every knock on the door was followed by a frozen silence and, from time to time, someone would lift a corner of the curtain and peer anxiously into the street. Books in many languages lined the walls and as often as not, a crucifix would be fastened to the wall above the shelves.  

The people I met were of many different casts of mind. Some, among the older generation, still maintained a belief in the “socialism with a human face” that had been announced by Alexander Dubcek, the Czechoslovak President, during the Prague Spring of 1968. Most of the younger people did not believe that socialism could wear a human face or that, if it tried to do so, it would look any better than one of those monsters with a human face painted by Hieronymus Bosch.

For the most part, the people I met were quiet, studious, often deeply religious, attempting to build shrines in the catacombs, around which small circles of marginalised people could gather to venerate the memory of their national culture. This was especially true of the Czechs, from whom their national culture had been officially confiscated after the Soviet invasion...

Participating in these clandestine meetings, Scruton confirmed a lesson he'd already learned when he witnessed the rioting of Parisian students in 1968, that love and honor for Western culture, coupled with a critical and discriminating attititude, were safeguards, even if only personal, against the worst depredations of collectivism, liberalism, and totalitarianism

[L]earning, culture and the European spiritual heritage were, for them, symbols of their own inner freedom, and of the national independence they sought to remember, if not to regain, they looked on those things with an unusual veneration. As a visitor from the world of fun, pop and comic strips I was amazed to discover students for whom words devoted to such things were wasted words, and who sat in those little pockets of underground air studying Greek literature, German philosophy, medieval theology and the operas of Verdi and Wagner.

But what of the dreams nurtured in the Slavic catacombs? Read Scruton's potent little editorial, and ponder.

Movie Review: 2081

Directed by Chandler Tuttle. 2009.

The year was 2081 and everyone was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law, you see, they were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else, nobody was better looking than anybody else, nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. And all this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution.

And to the unceasing vigilance of the United States Handicapper General. The strong wore weights to make them weaker, the intelligent wore earpieces that kept them from taking unfair advantage of their brains. Even the beautiful sometimes wore masks in situations where their beauty might simply be too distracting. It was the golden age of equality.

Such is the state of equality in 2081, Chandler Tuttle's directorial debut based on Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s short story Harrison Bergeron. Though clocking in at only 25 minutes the film makes quite an impact depicting a citizen defying a society in which equality is imposed by governmental force. The situation might sound preposterous but the program's inception, suggested only visually, is surprisingly plausible: we see the Handicapper General making a political speech and behind her are people holding signs for "Equality." Like today or in recent history when such a sign at a similar event might read "x for y" with the name of the interest-group (x) and issue (y) of the hour, these signs are simply for "equality." Never mind the ideas behind the issue or its morality or legality. They demand equality now.

There is a certain frightening plausibility to that situation, not that people would end up forcibly handicapped, but how many could be persuaded of the idea's soundness in the first place and that they themselves, or someone in their name, could take the authority to enforce the idea on the unwilling. There is also something unmistakably progressive about the situation. "Final (or Finally) Equality" the sign reads, with the implication that now, now we've finally progressed to such an enlightened state where everyone is. Now we have made everyone what they should be. The weight of one document that stood as a bulwark against such overreaching, the Constitution, evaporates at the phrase "213th Amendment." This mention of the Constitution fails to console but not because it is old or out of date, rather because it too seems weighted down under hundreds of emendations, exceptions, and inclusions.  Yet even in 2081 the world had not quite progressed enough for some as, "Some things about living were still not quite right, though. April, for instance, continued to drive people crazy by not quite being springtime." If only someone could fix that. That the director was able to suggest all of this with one phrase and the above shot exemplifies how the film remains full and effective despite its brevity.

The characterizations of the Bergerons are likewise effective and economical. George, clearly a man strong of mind and body since he wears both weights and noise-generating headphones, contrasts sharply, even pitifully, with his simpleton wife. When discussing the latest outburst of his head device, she idly says how if she were Hanidcapper General she would make the noises chimes on Sunday, "just chimes, kind of in honor of religion." She says it as people often do when out of idleness they wax, "You know what would be nice?. . ." She is earnest but she really has not thought about the issue. Again, though, there is a frightening plausibility to what she says: Imagine if someone who had not really though his ideas through, in terms of legality, logical consistency, and morality, were put in charge of things. Imagine if others were subject to this person's whim. In 2081, that is reality.

She says she would make a good Handicapper General, joking of course, and George replies, "You would." Yet in a way perhaps she did make the Handicapper General, since she is just the type of individual who would have supported even an immoral, illegal, illogical idea simply because at first hearing "it sounded like a good idea." Indeed it might sound like a good idea to someone knitting a fourth foot of sleeve to a sweater and to someone who thinks a stuttering newscaster should get a "big raise just for trying." To her husband who cannot move or think any longer, it probably sounded like a walking nightmare, but since he is now incapacitated, what he thought really does not matter anymore.

Their son Harrison, though, is still a nightmare for the state: a talented man who will not bend to being handicapped. A news report breaks into the ballet his parents are watching with the film's most absurd and dystopian line:

Pleased be advised that Bergeron is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and is considered to be extremely dangerous.

Of course given the world and rules of 2081, that statement is true. In a land of ordained egalitarianism Harrison Bergeron is not equal, he is great. Harrison's exceptional talents have made him an abomination and his unwillingness to be degraded has made him a fugitive. In his final scene, in which he outwits the Handicapper General, Bergeron goes out in a blaze of beauty and defiance. 

When his father sees the even on the television, he struggles against his device to remember when they came to take Harrison away and to put together that event with what he just saw on the television. Yet all he can do is feel sad. When he confesses this his wife, who missed the entire broadcast as she washed the dishes, she says, "You should forget sad things. I always do anyway." With that ending I wonder how we can expect Harrison's act to "change everything." Without getting bogged down in minutiae about the "mind device" I will simply say the ending is ambiguous. It is plausible both to infer those smart enough to rise up are too mentally incapacitated to do so or that enough people saw and understood the broadcast enough to react against it. While the ending changes what Harrison Bergeron's act might have accomplished, it certainly does not change what it stood for.

Around the Web

For the week of Saturday, February 13 through Friday, February 19.

1) In Standpoint, Nichi Hodgson on Petrarch.

2) The Laudator Temporis Acti, The Maverick Philosopher, and Aristotle. 

3) Another excellent essay from Peter Gutmann on his Classical Notes site: Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23, Op. 57.

4) Michel Gurfinkiel in the WSJ reviews "For the Soul of France" by Frederick Brown. 

5) In the WSJ, Jeffrey Collins reviews, "Hobbes and the Law of Nature" by Perez Zagorin.

6) In City Journal, Richard Brookhiser on Washington's New York.

Charles Kesler on the 'Grand Liberal Project'

Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution's Uncommon Knowledge interviews Dr. Charles Kesler, Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, a Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute, and Editor of the Claremont Review of Books:

June 2009.

In a sweeping review of American political history, Kesler outlines the grand liberal project begun a century ago. It is a project, he asserts, that has expressed itself in three distinct waves: political liberalism, economic liberalism, and cultural liberalism. Kesler further maintains that Barack Obama seeks nothing less than to complete and perfect this project. Finally, he confronts the issues of how conservatism lost its way in the face of the liberal project and how it might regain its i[n]itative.

Around the Web

For the week of Saturday, February 6 through Friday February 12.

1) Myron Magnet in City Journal on the education of John Jay.

2) Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal on "The Galbraith Revival."

3) At Reason, Damon W. Root on Citizens United and the problem with conservative judicial restraint.

4) At Mises Daily, David Osterfeld on Marxian and Austrian class perspectives.

5) Daniel Elkan in The New Scientist on when your brain gets the joke.

6) In the Hoover Institution's Policy Review, Sally Satel on the many issues of bioethics and bioethicists.

7) Sacred, Beautiful, Universal: The Corpus Christi Watershed Colloquium XIX on Sacred Music:


A refreshingly frank answer from CMAA President and Stanford Professor William Dr. Mahrt when he is asked what to say to someone who grants that Gregorian chant is important but says his parish doesn't have anyone who can do it: "You have to learn."

Also, as mentioned in the video, Sacrosanctum Concilium. (See Chapter VI, 'Sacred Music')

Book Reviews

8) In the WSJ, Robert K. Landers reviews, "Flight From Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War" by Michael Kranish.

9) Also in the WSJ, Matthew Kaminski reviews S. M. Plokhy's "Yalta: The Price of Peace."

10) Steven Levingston in the Washington Post reviews, "The Artist, The Philosopher, and The Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped" by Paul Strathern. 

11) Matt Welch of Reason reviews "Inside Obama's Brain" by Sasha Abramsky.

12) In The Art Newspaper, Lorenzo Pericolo review
s:

• Caravaggio. Sehen-Staunen-Glauben. Der Maler und sein Werk, by Sybille Ebert-Schifferer.
• Caravaggio: The Complete Works, by Sebastian Schütze

13) In Defense of Abundance: Daniel Ben-Ami of Spiked-Online reviews:

• Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World, by Barbara Ehrenreich
• Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
• Reset: How this crisis can restore our values and renew America, by Kurt Andersen