Movie Review: Lincoln

Directed by Steven Spielberg. 2012.

Just behind my seat at the 7:10 showing of Lincoln sat a couple. The man, a tall and lanky fellow himself, laughed uproariously at the jokes director Steven Spielberg generously sprinkled throughout his picture. His lady companion, it is safe to say, enjoyed it even more, chortling, sighing, oohing, and ahhing, I kid you not, every other of Lincoln's 150 minutes. The couple exiting down the escalator were surprised how much they liked it given how much talking it contained. I myself left reasonably pleased, and it has been this favorable consensus amongst dissimilar moviegoers that has made Spielberg such a crowd favorite. The consensus among critics owes itself, I think, to that Spielberg specialty of uniting disparate, conventional, and often only moderately well-executed, elements into a palatable whole.

Take the main elements of Lincoln: the president talking politics with various appointees, particularly Secretary of State Seward, the president talking family matters with his wife, a bumbling trio of political lackeys sent by Lincoln to cajole, intimidate, buy, or otherwise persuade congressmen to vote for the 13th Amendment, and congressional debate. Not one of these elements is especially remarkable.

The scenes in congress take up the lion's share of the movie and they'll delight the largest share of Lincoln's viewers with the quick wits and funny faces of the congressmen. Yet these scenes run too long and the center of the movie becomes a 19th century C-SPAN. Spielberg offsets this with the trio of W. N. Bilbo and company running around gaining votes. Such scenes are both entertaining and practical, the now classic Spielbergian ability to move the plot with action. Yet they are overplayed in both quantity and their comic factor to balance out the Congressional scenes which will dull some of the audience. Still, the characters are a hoot and their scenes not only give more detailed looks, however fleeting, at the congressmen, but also move the plot along by showing us the increasing support for the Amendment. Rather impressive in terms of plotting, really.

The scenes between Abraham and Mary Todd, however, are likely the most honest in the film. When he scolds her for indulging her grief for her dead child while he had to forebear, we feel honest and plain pity for the man. This in contrast to the admiration Spielberg tries to coax from us on account of Lincoln's political woes, woes he twice campaigned to undertake. Yet the political scenes are not unmoving and in the most genuine of them Lincoln makes the case for his political maneuvers to his cabinet. With a troubled, weary smile from Daniel Day Lewis' brilliant performance, he refers to those measures as, "not legal but not criminal." Reactions to these scenes and ideas will likely align with reactions to the Lincoln himself.

Another scene reinforces this split. Here Lincoln pauses in his deliberation over whether to tell the Confederate delegates to proceed North to discuss peace, potentially scuttling his Amendment plans, or deliberately to stall them, prolonging the war but winning the Amendment, and he begins to talk to the two telegraph clerks who will send his message. He asks them if they think they are meant to live in their age. Lincoln is of course asking the question of himself, and the director of us. Should we be grateful to, or for, Lincoln? Those generally optimistic about the possibilities of politics, who think big in terms of plans and progress, or who more easily weigh ends and means, will find sympathy with Lincoln for his extraordinary efforts and forgive him his transgressions. Those more skeptical will see an ideologue for one cause who, despite the righteousness of that cause, violated other principles and perhaps broke a system in attempting to fix a problem when and how he saw fit.

Yet such quality, in some cases excellent, elements coalesce in Lincoln by means of cheaper ones such as jokes, quirky characters, and articulate and but incontinent speech. Such is not to say the main plot of Lincoln, the passage of the amendment, is poor. It speeds along for a while but starts to sag about halfway through because we never feel the amendment is truly in jeopardy, and we never feel the amendment is in jeopardy because despite the sour faces and relentless fretting of those around him, Lincoln himself never seems to doubt its passage himself. This certainty robs the film of tension because the opinion of Lincoln and our own hindsight outweigh all of the congressional flapping. Moreover we get the sense that the amendment is inevitable because it is naturally right, reinforcing expectations of its success and diminishing the tension.

In fact after the passage of the amendment, at which most of the tension dissipates, Lincoln starts to fall apart. Despite the fact that the passage of the Amendment in the House (January, 1865), Lee's surrender at the Appomattox courthouse (April 9, 1865), and Lincoln's death (April 15, 1865), occurred near in time, they feel stitched together in the film. We suddenly feel like the director is simply hitting requisite marks and we pause for the credits after every portentous piece of dialogue. Worse, though, are the scenes after his death in which Spielberg flashes back to yet another speech, at which point we feel like we're on a track of Lincoln's Greatest Hits. This conclusion dragged not only interminably but needlessly because Spielberg already had the perfect ending built in. The movie should have ended when Lincoln heads out to the theater, his lanky frame trudging off alone under the arcades of the White House corridors, and says, "I must go, though I wish I could stay." This would have been superior in terms of visuals, pacing, tone, and plot, to another hoary speech.

Of performances, Daniel Day Lewis' is so good it is easy to take for granted. The elements Lincoln's gait and drawl are more properly those of impression than projection, nonetheless they are part of the performance and they convince. Anyway, the acting is more than fine, with a consistent thread of frustration and exhaustion running under Lincoln. You can see the stiffness and tension behind the calm and every time he pulls out one of his many stories, we sense it is as much to quell his own nerves as to assure those around him. Lewis' fine performance is built upon the script's equally fine characterization of Lincoln. We grow to understand that he is drawing on every source he knows, from political allies to enemies, from Euclid to scripture, and turning to every tool he knows from humor to solemnity, not just to win his cause, but simply to carry on.

The supporting cast is generally only successful because they look quirky and speak more finely than we are accustomed. They're effective but not exceptional. When the movie relies on Tommy Lee Jones' grizzled visage for effect we know it's not trying hard enough. Most of what we get to know about the politicians comes from an undeveloped blurb or two about why they do or don't support the Amendment.  Had these characters brought more and better articulation of the arguments for and against Lincoln's maneuvers in conducting the war and passing the Amendment, the the film would have been the richer.

Yet there is much to enjoy in Lincoln, chiefly the dialogue with its rich expression and circumlocutory insults.  On the other hand there is much entertaining talking in Lincoln, but surprisingly little dialogue in which an idea is developed. That Lincoln presents ideas but doesn't really argue them, giving the viewer the false impression that he has been educated an edified, is probably its greatest flaw. Still, there's a good deal here, but Lincoln's not more than the sum of its parts.

The Classics Problem

Two articles I stumbled upon this morning spurred some post-breakfast thinking on academia, specifically of the Classical variety. The first via Rogue Classicism discussed the demise of a prominent classics blog and the second was a list about dissertations in The Guardian. After chewing on the articles a while I came away with a little indigestion and now that it has passed I have a few thoughts on what we might call The Classics Problem.

The Classics Problem is that Classicists think there's a problem with Classics, namely that Western Civilization isn't groveling at the feet of people who count conjunctions and propose emendations to medieval gardening treatises. This fundamental problem turns out to be a handily protean one to the Classist who readily transforms it into the perennial calamities of slackening education standards, cultural decline, social indifference, inadequate funding, social injustice, and forest fires.  Classics is the answer, of course.

Hieronymus Jackdaw,
a prominent Classicist

I would propose that in good measure Classists are the problem, having delved too greedily and too deep into their precious texts. They want to hoard as one discipline what should be gleefully diffused amongst the humanities. Instead of standing prominently alone, Classicists need to be willing, to some degree, to disappear into the foundations of other disciplines.

Classists ought to consider, perhaps, that little more may be dug up and researched about the ancient world with great profit. They ought to consider that their esoteric articles, dissertations, and academic paraphernalia may do less good for the world than would sharing the fundamentals they take for granted. Classicists might need to realize there is a much smaller space for research than is commonly thought and that that sequestering professors in offices and articles in private databases is not the best way to spread ideas.

The world needs more of its Greek and Roman heritage flowing in its veins, yes, but it needs it in plays, operas, and novels, not commentaries. We need statesmen weaned on Thucydides and Cicero, generals studied of Alexander and Julius Caesar, and philosophers who actually read Greek. We don't need, "Classics," or "culture," our "a culture of classics," rather we need our own authentic, living, culture grounded in Classics. We need creativity. That means we need more students of English, music, and history with a solid classical education, and that means we need teachers.

Of kind, we need teachers of Classical languages, yes, and history, but we also need history, music, art, and even science teachers with firm Classical foundations. Similarly Classicists need to broaden their intellectual horizons. It will simply not do to sit down to translate Plato or Thucydides and concede discussions of content to the philosophers and historians. As an aside, teachers of Latin and Greek need to read the great works in their native language and develop on their own literary expression. Studying Latin and Greek is a gift, but it can wreak havoc on your style if you don't synthesize the elements into a sensible whole. Academese is already an aesthetic catastrophe, Classical Academese is a blight on humanity.

Of quality, we need good ones, naturally, but full-time ones. We can't have our greatest minds teaching 15 hours a week and chasing sabbaticals so they can finish that paper on Cicero's underpants. A tenured university position doing mostly research cannot be the ideal.  We can't be dismayed at the idea of grading tests and papers, but we need to be excited at the thought of what Classics can do for a brilliant mind. We should not always think on getting back to "our work," but we need to imagine a Mozartian score to a Sophoclean libretto or a Bachian fugue on a line of Heraclitus and infuse the excitement over such possibilities into education.

In short: more creation, more cultivation, less curation. We need to stop standing around the spear, lecturing everyone about its beauty and importance, and we need to pick it up and give it a good throw.  That'll get everyone's attention.

Review: Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares [TV, UK]

Several weeks ago your humble blogger fell prey to some or other bacterial nastiness, so ill in fact that he couldn't read or write. Even his beloved music brought him no pleasure. In those sweaty, fevered hours I, your humble author, turned not only to television, but to reality programming.

Scoff. Guffaw if you must, but hear me. Indeed that I could, deprived of most of my critical faculties, still follow the show suggests the reality tv experience is more pacification than engagement or even diversion. Yet I count the experience as fortunate, having stumbled upon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

Famous most, perhaps, for dining entrepreneur and Master Chef Gordon Ramsay's spirited, confrontational, and profanity-laden criticism, Kitchen Nightmares follows the titular chef around Great Britain as he whips flagging restaurants into shape. The show's appeal is apparent: Ramsay is passionate, blunt, and brilliant. His precise, vivid descriptions are informative and his enthusiasm for good food and culinary excellence is inspiring. It's also easy to get hooked on his outrageous harangues against the know-it-alls who refuse to take professional advice even as their businesses fall apart around them. Surely, though, I gained something more from Kitchen Nightmares than the addition of shambolic to my vocabulary? Indeed I did.

The thread I found most noteworthy, and cautionary, ran through every episode, and it is the path which leads to failure. In all the failing businesses Gordon visited, the chefs had met that adversity which greets every endeavor, not with joy, creativity, renewed effort, or humility, but with stubbornness. They refused to admit and learn from their mistakes and as they muddled along and the business failed, they put less and less effort into it. Gradually, day-by-day, they became more and more miserable until the restaurant had become a burden they could not wait to put down. This downward spiral was surprisingly affecting to see and I think it will touch a nerve in anyone who has hit a rough patch in any endeavor. As such I  found myself rooting for the chefs, not only to rise out of their shame and despair but also to rediscover the love of their craft.

Most of the chefs passed through several phases of Ramsay-induced frustration. First, they grew indignant when he ruffled their pride with his criticism. Whose puddings are flat and whose dining room looks like a strip club. After a bit they relented and followed his recommendations. Then they began to resent the quantity of effortful work they needed to put in. Finally, most realized that, exhausted though they were, they were starting to care again. The customers began to come back and the chefs and owners began to take pride in their work and rediscover the joy they had known.

The cussing and shouting may make the commercials, but Ramsay is in fact encouraging and constructive. He doesn't try to commandeer the kitchen and in fact refuses to, but rather explains to everyone what his job is and how to do it, and then tries to inspire him to dig down and find the will to get it done. Ramsay teaches the kitchen teams that fun comes not from goofing off from the work, or goofing on it with indifference, but from taking delight in the experience with all its responsibilities and absurdities. He teaches them to trust one another and to refine their own skills and form their own characters so they can in turn be trusted. Ramsay clearly wants them to succeed because he enjoys and respects excellence and he wants everyone to be excellent. He also understands as a businessman the risks they took opening a restaurant. Overall, the show is a far cry from the foul-mouths and flying cutlery of the commercials.

What came across most, in fact, was not Gordon's ballsy style but his creativity and energy. Ramsay brings a youthful, joyful energy and a technical mastery which excite everyone around him. He enters these drab, depressed restaurants like a tempest, upturning the musty eateries with new decors, new advertising, better organization, and of course, new menus. Many of the restaurants in their downward slides had turned to unwrapping prepared foods and heating them in microwaves. Sure Ramsay was appalled at the poor quality and deceit, but he showed them how this shortcut had cut them off from the joys of cooking: experimenting with fresh ingredients, forging relationships with the local growers and sellers, and pleasing diners with something excellent you prepared yourself with care and your unique style. When the chefs realized Gordon held them as professionals to a high standard they were downright ashamed at their own carelessness and apathy. You could see in their faces the thought, "How did it, how did I get to this point?" Seeing them rise, rediscovering their passion and craft, and seeing everyone find his place in the restaurant surely is the true heart and appeal of the show.

Ramsay's intensity and passion even went so far as to make me a tad self-conscious. He didn't want the chefs to put a broccoli out of place on a single plate: maybe I need to step up the quality of my work. Are there days I just muddle through? Am I proud of the work I do? Am I giving them my best and what I've promised? Would my work hold up to the scrutiny of an expert? Do I talk myself into easy excuses, do I take shortcuts? Do I admit my mistakes and learn from them?

Reflective questions from an entertaining show.

App Review: The Orchestra, by TouchPress

by Touch Press. 2012.

Christmas comes early this year with another iOS app from Touch Press, who earlier this year brought us Shakespeare's Sonnets. Their latest offering, The Orchestra, brings Touch Press' characteristic polish to an app of musical exploration and appreciation. The Orchestra takes selections from eight orchestral works, from symphonies by Haydn and Beethoven to Stravinsky's Firebird and Salonen's Violin Concerto, and presents them supplemented by a host of tools.

The first of these tools is the video itself. At first this claim might seem an exaggeration, but we don't simply get a video of the performance, nor do we even get a superbly filmed concert performance. We get a performance during which cameras were able to float free and close to the performers, capturing close ups of all the sections, and which is expertly edited together to show sections and details at the appropriate time. Moreover, you can view up to three preselected angles at the same time, capturing, say, the conductor and two sections. Simply tap, pinch, and drag to cycle, expand, and arrange the videos as you please. You can also array the videos in miniature above the score. This is simply a blast. It's a treat to get such good camerawork but it is downright exciting to see so much going on in one view.

click to enlarge

The next of The Orchestra's features is the score, which scrolls along as the piece plays. A red line marks your current position and you can swipe back and forth to rewind or skip ahead. The scrolling is all perfectly smooth and if you have the videos playing at the same time there's nary a jitter out of them either. Even if you jump back or ahead several dozen bars the app picks up where you stop without a pause. Slick.

You can choose either a full score or one showing only the staves of currently playing instruments. This  feature, in conjunction with the auto-scrolling and the ease with which you can rewind, makes The Orchestra a tremendous aid to anyone learning to read a score. Beyond the score, though, are two visualizations of the musical selection. The first is a bar-graph style version of the score in which the parts are color coded and note values are represented not by different symbols but by lines of varying length. This increasingly popular visualization of the score helps emphasize the note lengths and shapes of the rhythms and it's gratifying to see it more formally welcomed into musical learning.

The second visualization, however, I had never seen before and makes clever use of the tablet's touch interface. Touch Press calls it a, "mesmeric synchronized BeatMap," and it consists of an overhead view of the orchestra, color-coded by section, with each instrument replaced by a dot. As the piece plays, the dots flash whenever the particular instrument hits a note. This is a splendid way to get a better sense of the orchestration of a piece, but one additional feature puts this tool over the top. If you tap the section, the app lowers the volume on the others. What a great way to study both rhythm and harmony, being able to isolate the sections and see which instruments play which rhythms and hear the timbres both by themselves and then in concert with the others. Due to space limitations this feature is only available for the Beethoven symphony, although you can enable and download it for the other apps with an in-app purchase.

Lastly, The Orchestra includes textual commentaries by Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and LA Times music critic Mark Swed. You can overlay both either as text or audio over the videos or score, which makes for a great follow up to the performance. Also, presenting these commentaries as overlays is much preferable to simply tucking them away as text files. Also included are descriptions of the instruments, accompanied with brief video descriptions from the principal players, a 3D model of the instrument, a MIDI keyboard letting you tap out notes on the instrument and see its range, and shortcuts to selections showcasing the instrument. These are nice touches, as smoothly implemented as the rest of the app, to material which could simply have been thrown in to fill out a features list.

These materials do, however, make me yearn for more scholarly information. I hope Touch Press considers following up The Orchestra with similar apps dedicated to specific pieces, with full performances, scholarly articles, and scores annotated with observations on harmony, structure, and so forth.

Still, this is a brilliant app. The Orchestra is exciting to use and takes a big and welcome step in app design. It doesn't simply put a lot of useful information at your fingertips, but it takes one topic and gives you many paths to and through it. The score and visualizations and videos aren't left as discrete bundles but are stitched together into the experience of hearing the music. The result is a dynamic app which feels less like a reference book and instead disappears into what becomes an enhanced experience of the music. Bravo and Encore.

N.B. The Orchestra weighs in at a hefty 1.8 GB, but that's to be expected with so much video.

The Impossible Task

Throughout most of the year, arguing for traditional Catholic liturgical music, chant, is a difficult task. You have to contend with indifference, ignorance, philistinism, and, most fiercely, the inertia of the status quo. Yet Advent inertia is a whole different beast from the habits of the rest of the year. Advent is not like Lent, when you might be able to slip a solemn tone in amongst the usual assortment of dour hymns, or Ordinary Time when dropping On Eagle's Wings one week won't ruffle anyone's feathers. No, during Advent people have expectations, namely that of yuletide cheer peppered with a few minor thirds. Never mind the miracle and implications of incarnatus est et homo factus est, one must serve up the usual sweet fodder. The details don't seem to matter too much, as long as you serve the following courses:

• twelve toe-tappers
• eleven pop tunes
• ten minor melodies
• nine cheery carols
• eight bobbing ballads
• seven gooey lullabies
• six wintry airs
• five golden oldies
• four rhyming refrains
• two merry rounds
• one Old Testament anthem
• and Handel's Hallelujah chorus

You'll know you've pleased everyone if you see Fezziwig come jiggering out of the sacristy.

Now I'm not usually persuaded by the claim that parishioners want the music that's played at church. I don't think people would miss the Mass of Creation were it suddenly to disappear. Many people expect some kind of music, not unreasonably, but they don't care too much about style or content. Yet during Advent and on Christmas. . . So what to do? How does one finagle a sacred mass without a yuletide revolt in the pews? I have a few suggestions.

The first is to stay calm. There's a place in the world for people who have no musical taste (Arctic penal colonies), so don't get apoplectic because they prefer The First Noel to Puer Natus Est or some bird's nest from Rutter to a Byrd Gloria. This isn't the time to give lectures about textual primacy or voice leading to such parishioners. Just tie them up and leave them somewhere for the winter.

Second, be practical. This is also not the time to push your ideas, however beautifully developed and presented, on choir directors. They tend to be busy and frazzled during December. By now you're probably out of time to persuade them, so instead just throw away all the music you don't like. They're not organized enough to have extras.

Third, if you manage to incorporate proper music into a mass but expect Occupy Schola to show up demanding Go Tell It on the Mountain, consider ending the mass with something popular. If you give them what they want at the end, they might forget about what came earlier. A compromise.

Fourth, try offloading the cheesy music to a Lessons and Carols concert. You might not want to yield this occasion to the philistines, but better it than mass.

Lastly, people slip back into old habits, so you'll probably never improve things once and for all.

Movie Review: Skyfall

Directed by Sam Mendes. 2012.

Spoilers within.

Who could envy the director of a Bond film? Imagine having to integrate fifty years worth of franchise tropes, tricks, and traditions, craft an original yet familiar plot, and follow up dozens of cinema's most famous action sequences, while trying to walk Bond's line between action and carnage, mission and escapade, Britain's champion and carefree playboy.

Recent Bond films have walked another line, between character and archetype, in asking audiences to step into Bond's shoes not for vicarious adventure but, for the first time, to learn what makes him tick. First Goldeneye, fleetingly, then Casino Royale, started to wonder just what kind of man pulled all those triggers, left all those women, always off, alone, to the next mission.

Skyfall manages to walk and weave all of these threads into a satisfying Bond adventure, with one rub: it's a little dour. There's a seriousness of tone and purpose to Skyfall from which Bond scarcely strays for his usual smirks, quips, and gambits, those spontaneous expressions of joy in his seemingly limitless luck and agency. Perhaps this was inevitable after Goldeneye and Casino Royale unzipped Bond's dossier and showed that only a deeply hurt man could live such a life. We know there's no going back too when here in Skyfall, Bond seemingly makes his grand entrance in M's flat and she turns the light on him revealing a  liquored-up, flannel-clad bum instead of the resurrected Defender of the Realm. Bond is back, but he's going to have to work on a few things.

Yet what Bond loses of joie de vivre he gains in seriousness of purpose and what Skyfall loses in humor and kicks it gains in impact and import.

The plot remains admirably within franchise bounds, pitting Bond and MI6 against a spurned former agent, but again with a twist. This time the ex-operative is not after Bond, MI6, riches, or world domination, but M herself. This puts a sharp but not jarring spin on the franchise's tradition of maniacal villains, and it's not a superficial one either, for running throughout the film is the maternal relationship between M and the two agents, Bond and Silva (Javier Bardem.) Yet there is also familial strife stemming from when M gave up not only Silva but Bond too, both for the sake of the mission. Bond naturally forgives her whereas Silva set out for revenge, and this parallelism creates a significant tension, especially in two scenes.

The first is when Silva's capture reunites the "family." Within his transparent cell he turns to M and, dropping to his knees, calls her mum. The sight of Silva's childlike posture and exposure in contrast to Bond suggests 007 hasn't called her mum in a long time, and that the pet name belongs to a more innocent, bygone era.  The second scene is the finale in which both agents chase down M, one trying to save and the other to kill her. That Silva wants M and himself to go out together shows that he doesn't just want the revenge of her death, but the satisfaction of making her suffer as mother, with both of their death's on her head.

This character-driven thread, highly unusual for a Bond movie, is not the only plot line, however, for alongside his vendetta against M, Silva has stolen a hard drive containing the names of MI6 operatives embedded in terrorist organizations. As Silva posts the names on YouTube and agents start turning up dead, Parliament starts turning up the heat on MI6. What is its mission? Is espionage effective? Should MI6 be allowed to keep secrets? Should it exist at all? In front of a panel M is forced to answer for herself, her job, her agency, and her life's work. After a fierce grilling by an MP she offers the defense that Britain's enemies now lurk in the shadows, country-less, and that MI6 is needed to find them. At that moment, in apparent counterpoint to her argument, Silva and his mercenaries burst in, an enemy she helped  create. Silva is of course responsible for his evil deeds, but there are still a few question marks hovering over MI6. The true remedy is of course not any agency, but Bond himself, who enters the courtroom to the rescue. There's a lot wrapped up in this scene which despite its significance never gets weighed down by action, preachy speeches, or plot exposition.

Skyfall also benefits from a far more sophisticated visual style than any Bond venture since Dr. No. The style is simple but effective, making use of distinct color zones and contrasts of temperature and primary colors to create a heightened sense of space and import, but without distracting from the activity or typifying the action scenes as discrete elements of the movie. We also see a lot of symmetrical blocking and keeping Bond front and center, both of which add to Skyfall's sense of breadth and gravity. The trailer is a representative sample of these features. This is some very successful and appealing cinematography, both homogeneous and complementary to the other film elements. It's a great surprise and we'll look at some screen shots after the DVD release.

Lastly, Adele's Skyfall is a great Bond song, one of the few which make any sense at all and one of the handful which relate to their particular movie. The lyrics aren't as many or meaningful as Casino Royale's, You Know My Name, but both Skyfall's few words and its music with its leaps, convey the world coming down on M.

In conclusion, Skyfall took a significant risk, trading in Bond's cavalier charm and an unflinching faith in MI6, for character development and timely questions. Enlivened by a solid cast and a vivid, virile style, Skyfall is not only a satisfying Bond 23, but a significant milestone for 50 years of 007.

–

If you enjoyed this review you may also enjoy our reviews of:

• The Bourne Legacy
• Dr. No

Black Friday: A Meme I Don't Like

The meme to the right has popped up quite a bit over the last few days across. I think it is supposed to be some clever observation about inconsistent behavior or foolish Americans or "consumerism." . . or something. There exist a few problems with this bit of alleged perspicacity.

First, one is not credible who gets holier-than-thou about "consumerism" while supporting a governmental policy of spending (and printing) money as "stimulus." I'd be willing to split the hair about "spending for the sake of prosperity" (however grossly misguided that notion is) in contrast to spending for the sake of mindless acquisition, but it's duplicitous to castigate people for spending when you really do want them to spend and "stimulate" the economy, and have even in the past given them money to spend. It is likewise duplicitous to wag your finger at shoppers when you support laws creating easy credit or protecting reckless creditors.

Second, it is not as if these people are buying products which are not available at other times, before and after, the sale. Black Friday shoppers are buying the same products everyone else buys, they simply want to pay less than the items used to cost but are willing to pay more than they will cost in the future. (They are also willing to wait in longer-than-usual lines.) Apparently making that particular judgment makes you a consumerist, but buying the same things and paying either more earlier or less later, does not.

Third, no one makes memes when lines for Apple products go around corners and down allies, perhaps because Apple markets to trendier folk who consider themselves savvy clients of the upper bourgeoisie and not icky proletarian "consumers." Apple's lines might be longer and more ebullient if more people could afford their products.

Fourth, the meme presumes people are actually grateful on Thanksgiving, a presupposition. If people aren't actually grateful then there isn't any inconsistency. This seems plausible and if so, then an ingratitude meme would be more appropriate, although less self-satisfying.

Fifth, people like events. People like them because they give purpose to a humdrum routine dominated by work, sleep, and chores. This is just a supposition, but I think some people line up because it is fun, or at least purposeful and out of the ordinary. They haven't calculated prices, places, and times, but get up and go because it's exciting, and it is exciting precisely because they don't know if they'll get what they want. In an age of abundance this uncertainty is rare and, perhaps surprisingly, sought and relished.

Sixth, spending is fun. One feels a sense of agency when one spends, that he can make things happen. So, sanctioned by the apparent scale and inertia of the occasion, some people go an spend regardless of what they need or can afford. Prudent, no. Not shocking either, though.

Lastly, the stampedes and scuffles. These ballyhooed hullabaloos, inflated by crisis-mongering reporting on the nightly news and tabloid presses, seem upon closer inspection to be more rare and less earth-shattering than the stories would indicate. Too, people queue and push and shove for all sorts of reasons, very frequently although in smaller numbers. Have you ever seen people react to the announcement of free food?

So fine, though. Those few hundred people across the nation are dumb. Shame on them. Wicked 'Mericans. Very clever of us to point that out.

The modern world with its abundance and prosperity has a few potential pitfalls, I think we can agree. Mostly we need to respond by cultivating deliberately virtues which used to be adopted out of necessity. We ought not relish scarcity, i.e. suffering, nor ought we grow high-and-mighty in pointing out a minority who behave foolishly on certain occasions and then extrapolating from that event some spurious truism from which we judges are, naturally, exempted.

Thanksgiving, 2012

While I recently promised a return to my curmudgeonly self, it is Thanksgiving once again and so time for another list of gratitude. This year, right off the heels of an extraordinary performance, I decided to consider some other definitive musical events. So many uncontrollable factors, from schedules and health to personal affairs and finances, affect a performance apart from the difficulties of making competent, let alone inspired, music, that we ought to be grateful when truly exceptional interpretations and collaborations come to life. In acknowledgement of and gratitude for this, my. . . 

Top Ten Recorded Performances

10. Colin Davis: Handel's Messiah [YouTube]

9. Pablo Casals: Bach's Cello Suites [YouTube]

8. Alfred Brendel: Beethoven's Diabelli Variations [YouTube]

7. James Levine: Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen [YouTube]

6. Victor Pablo Perez: Don Giovanni [YouTube]

5. Wilhelm Kempff: Beethoven's Piano Sonatas [YouTube]

4. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: Schubert's Lieder [YouTube] [YouTube]

3. John Eliot Gardiner: Beethoven's Missa Solemnis [YouTube]

2. Glenn Gould [1981]: Bach's Goldberg Variations [YouTube]

1. Mitsuko Uchida: Mozart's Piano Concerti [YouTube]

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Previous Thanksgiving Lists:

2011 | 2010 | 2009 (T) | 2009 (N)

Review: Gardiner Conducts Beethoven

Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. The Monteverdi Choir.
Conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner. 
Carnegie Hall. November 17, 2012.

Beethoven's Missa Solemnis holds a well-earned reputation for taxing singers with its tessitura, dynamics, and length. Period players like those of The Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique run against additional challenges, with horn players swapping bits and violinists fiddling delicately against gut strings. Tonight even Sir John Eliot sweat up a storm as he led his ensembles through Beethoven's massive missa. The humble audience, however, receives little credit for following this exhausting piece for its duration. I did commit this time, and as close to fully as ever I have. Such may sound strange, "this time," but we fallible, distractible, humans, even music lovers, scholars, and aficionados, even performers, don't live in the whole piece every time. Cares intrude, fatigue sets in, wrappers are crinkled. Last night, however, Sir John Eliot, his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and The Monteverdi Choir were in full form. They made something special, and I went right along, note-for-note, now toe-a-tapping, then water-eyed, here a goofy grin on my face, there jaw agape. It was quite a night.

The woodwinds shone throughout, first bringing the Kyrie to intimate life, a life of presence but not activity, from their tender, luminous opening and the warm halo they add to the invocations of Kyrie, to the doom they herald and to which the soloists reply in imperiled urgency, Christe. Sir John Eliot meticulously shaped the remainder of the Kyrie giving weight and height to the impeccable declamation and intonation of the soloists, in particular Tenor Michael Spyres and Bass Matthew Rose. Without explication or philosophizing we heard what it means to call someone Lord and Christ.

The soft, tapered end of the Kyrie throws the forte opening of the Gloria into relief sharp enough to raise the hairs of the most casual listener. The dynamics here are so controlled that one never dulls to the forte or gets stuck in a rut of loud alternating with soft. The dynamics are rich and unified by a firm sense of forward movement, moving from the soft, fragile pax hominibus to an adoramus te of such power and volume I winced, then to a fleeting, pious adoramus te, and ending with the brazen glorificamus te.

After the four praises the winds again set the tone, this time with the oboes hollowing out a warm and gentle space for the gratias agimus tibi within this massive, rollicking movement. What the woodwinds shape in tone Gardiner shapes in time, and with this shaping the gratias becomes a discrete, personal prayer within a larger more grandiose movement. The same applies to the sections Qui tollis.
Gardiner keeps the finale, a flourish of fanfares and entrances of in gloria Dei Patris, full but not ponderous, and always finely articulated. This dense section easily collapses into a a brassy avalanche but Gardiner kept it light yet forceful.

The brass and winds launch the Credo in exceptional form. The bassoons were particularly nimble, neatly shifting from sprightly steps and walking lines to tortuous counter-melodies and plosive fortes. They not only gave the movement, especially its opening, a full, almost brusque bottom, but also, under Sir John Eliot, brought out figures that often remain on the page.

The glories of the Credo are twofold, though. First are the vigorous rhythms which give confident, joyful expression to the faith declared. From the steady, petrine Credo figure itself to the agressive de Deo vero and non factum, these figures animate the movement and bring to vivid life the text, in this case the faith itself, reaching an apotheosis in the dauntless, even strident fanfares ending with the great fugue on et vitam venturi saeculi. The courageous playing here adds a veritable sense of risk and pride in the growth of this timid figure from its humble origins nestled up with the sopranos through its brassy, celebratory climax.

Second is the incarnatus est, one of the glories of all music. It's also another wicked shift of dynamics and mood, from the swift descending figures of descendit de coelis to the soft basson pulse. We move in the space of a few bars from literal word painting, a descending figure to represent descent, to re-creation. While we perceive much of the movement as depiction, the symbolic language of this scene, the coming-into-being in the flickering bassoon, the hovering flute trill and the glimmer at de Spiritu Sancto, and the departure to the ethereal world of the Dorian mode, not only mimics but makes. We feel as if we have borne witness, and hence the power of the epoch-ringing declaration, et Homo factus est. The solo vocalists here were so soft and tender I leaned in as if trying to hear the news as it spread from part to part.

The winds and horns again made the moment in the opening to the Sanctus, which was as peering into a cloud waiting for someone to step from the mists, a wait fulfilled in the Benedictus. Here Concertmaster Peter Hanson coaxed a pure tone and a sweet, songful prayer from his instrument over the soft footsteps of the drums and strings in the highlight of the evening.

While the prayer for peace and military music are rightly said to characterize the Agnus Dei, its opening struck me the most tonight. The steps of the Benedictus continue on, but here as the lamb and through the cries of miserere and peccata. Gardiner's balanced touch and forces kept the two elements in joint relief, never overshadowing one another.

In the pre-concert talk Sir John Eliot noted how the score is only part of the piece and that the instruments themselves hold much of the music. The score, he said, is the butterfly pinned to the board, and music is the cloud of them in the sky. Last night, they took flight.

Six Centuries of Verse

Part I | Part II | Part III