@nous, it would be interesting to see the conductor during the actual performance. My impression of the rehearsal is that he's focusing more on individual bits, sort of "remember what I want here" to a particular section of the orchestra. During an actual concert, the conductor is performing for the audience more than directing the musicians.
@wonkie, I forget who said it but, "Wagner's music is better than it sounds." :^)
"Ride of the Valkyries" is excellent for the soundtrack of certain sorts of movie scenes, and has been used often for that purpose, probably most famously for the helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now. (Or perhaps for the Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon "What's Opera, Doc?", often referred to as "Kill the Wabbit".) But it's only five minutes out of a five-hour opera. And even in five minutes it suffers from repeated cases of "Oh, yes, there's supposed to be a melody here someplace, isn't there?"
Personally, I think Wagner could have been brilliant writing movie scores where the running time constraint was imposed on him. Think John Williams' score for the original Star Wars, very much in the Wagner mold, and often cited as the best movie score ever written.
My go-to lately for listening is Milt Jackson. Been trying to get some vibes happening, he's more or less the beginning of the modern period on that instrument.
Have also been stumbling through a lot of jazz standards on the piano. Not to perform - I will never be a competent pianist - but just to get an understanding of the harmonic language.
Don't know if I'll live long enough to get anywhere that all of that, but I like it.
Other than pedagogical listening, I continue to be drawn to early European art music. Basically the modal counterpoint from the very late middle ages to the early pre-Baroque Renaissance. Dufay, Machaut, et al. That music is sophisticated but so accessible, and has (to my ear) a very direct emotional impulse. My wife sings with a choir whose director is also a fan of that period, I sometimes get to provide percussion accompaniment, which is always a lot of fun.
I found the video interesting in pieces, but the combination of a uncertain sync between video and audio and the lower fidelity of the audio made it hard for me to stay focused. It made Solti's conducting feel less than intuitive and had me constantly wondering if what he was signaling was the moment I was hearing.
Chasing down the audio recording in full fidelity on Apple Music and losing the video completely eliminated that feeling of disorientation, as did chasing down a more recent live performance video from Dudamel where the conducting seemed better matched to the audio.
Between watching that and another performance with Gatti conducting, I started to really get a sense for the different impressions that one can get based on where one's visual attention is drawn. The gaze plays a powerful role in what the ear seems to hear in these videos.
Solti's Bayreuth Ring* (his first I think) had a making-of made as a feature of its own.
A film team officially accompanied the production and the rehearsals. Something quite uncommon at the time. In addition there was an audio feature using the recordings to explain Wagner's leitmotif technique in detail.
*that's where the clip comes from if I am not mistaken
One thing that I have found effective in teaching is that the moments when I am being critical of something are always more powerful for the class when I can find a way to tell them from the perspective of "we," rather than "I," and when that narrative incorporates how "I" learned to view the problem through a perspective that helps put "us" back in a position with more agency to address "our" problem.
That, and starting with questions and listening rather than with advice and instructions seem to be the magic mix.
Funny. It sounds triumphant to me, but maybe because I associate with the film "Excalibur." It is a triumphant scene, so whoever selected it for the soundtrack must have agreed with me. And I like it. To me, it's kind of metal. \m/
This post was about how Dem pols should talk and I firmly believe they should be VERY LOUD AND HARSH IN THEIR CRITICISMS of the R party. Use the F word. Actually, both of them.
However, I don't think they should say anything about MAGAs and should talk to them. The goal must be to defuse the polarization.
As for me, I have MAGA friends and acquaintances and no desire to hurt their feelings. However, I also think that I'm not going to be complicit. At all. So, I post stuff on FB that flat out contradicts a lot of MAGA beliefs. For example, I posted an article about Saint Charlie of Free Speech for Conservatives Only and how people who criticized him have been attacked. At least one of my FB friends loves Kirk.
We still seem to be friends.
My biggest complaint about the assessment culture that has set in across academia (and the overall rise of big quant that coincides with the monetization of big data) is that there are a lot more people with the tools to gather and measure the data than there are people who have the understanding, expertise, and rigor to tease out when the things we measure actually measure the right things.
I'm interested in reading Limits of the Numerical one of these days: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo146791774.html
It seems the sort of book that can take on the technocratic push for quantitative over qualitative data gathering and analysis. I find that the voices that most often get amplified in management meetings dealing in quantitative assessment are the voices that are on the wrong side of Einstein's admonition that everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
My natural impulses don't always tend toward kindness, but I made a rational decision at some point that I should try to be kind because it seems to be the best way to live, both for the people around me and myself. (That's not to say I don't regularly fail at it, but it's still a goal I strive for.)
That said, it can be complicated. You aren't being kind to someone when you allow someone else to be unkind that person if you're in a position to do something about it. You also can't be kind to one person when someone else will suffer for it, at least when that suffering outweighs the kindness.
How can I (or anyone) be kind to someone who is MAGA? That's generally complicated because the MAGA movement is largely unkind. What I'm talking about here is something other than, say, helping someone who is broken down on the side of the road if they have a tRump bumper sticker. I do mean how you interact where politics is involved somehow.
I don't know. Maybe it's not possible. To take it to an extreme, how could you be kind to tRump, himself? I write his name "tRump." It doesn't really affect him because he's almost certainly never going to see it, but it still isn't kind, right? Am I failing, or is he not deserving of kindness?
I don’t believe – I’m not willing to believe – that half the voters are evil. We need to talk to them respectfully and sympathetically. We’ve all been taken in at some time by liars: it’s our side’s job to point out the lies, not to judge the liars’ victims. [Emphasis added]
I think this is another piece of the puzzle when trying to break thru. Be up front about having been bamboozled ourselves. Just to avoid the suggestion that "we're smart enough to have seen thru it, but you re so dumb you got conned." It helps if you've got an example of where you got taken in initially. And if it's something that they can see thru, all the better. (Perhaps "when I was in school, socialism looked attractive. Took me a while to see that it wasn't workable in the real world." Even if you still do think it is workable, it can be a useful example.)
I'd say that whether something is usefully measurable depends enormously on the topic.
For engineering it's closer to critic -- "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it." For the physical (including biological) sciences it's important when testing out new theories. But useless for coming up with those theories. For the social sciences, it ought to be important, again for testing theories (but again not useful creating them.) But currently, so much of it is poorly done that it isn't. At least not yet.
For the humanities, I'd say it's totally useless. Doesn't keep fools from trying to do it anyway. But it doesn't work because it can't work.
I'm pretty sure my taste doesn't qualify as eclectic. But even YouTube doesn't provide video for something like Buddy Holly records.
I've seen videos for other artists' work from similarly far back, where it's obviously added on recently. But some of the "original cast" classics are audio only.
Yes, on that last paragraph! In academia, but also in business, where we get a "measurement-friendly agenda". To me it feels particularly pernicious when work and rewards are steered to things that can be most easily justified by measurement, without much work to tie those measurements to actual good outcomes.
See also Goodhart's Law, which states that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure", or McNamara on body count. Although it's pretty common to lament that since publication count became a target it's become a poor measure, I don't know that I've seen any effective action to work around it - although I never experienced the British system that limited academics to something like reporting only your five "best" papers, regardless of how many you'd published?
I wonder if a useful approach might be to ask, not why they are afraid, but why they are concerned.
An excellent suggestion, and one I will use.
To wonkie's point about MAGAs being no more forgotten or neglected than anyone else - that seems correct to me, but I'm not sure it matters if their sense of threat or concern makes sense. Or even whether it's sincere, or just a justification for less sympathetic reasons.
It's a place to start that isn't focused on fingerpointing. I'm prone to that, as well as to the "go piss up a rope" response. Those aren't that constructive, so I'm looking for other approaches.
To me MAGA just seems like an expression of stuff that's always been in our national character. Nativism, xenophobia, white (especially Anglo) hegemony. Endless arguments about who gets to be a "real" American. I don't think it will ever go away, really. The name will change but the sensibility has always been part of the mix.
I just want to return to the day when "the Paranoid Style" was not seen as something to aspire to and embrace.
We should call Trump and his collaborators what they are. I learn that he's been hosting an "anti-antifa roundtable". To support that the contention that "antifa" is an actual organization, one speaker announced that "Antifa is real. Antifa has been around in various iterations for almost a hundred years in some instances going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany."
So that's clear, they're proudly against the opponents of fascism. "Anti-antifascist" is a clumsy way of expressing what they actually are - pro-fascist.
These people are evil. But - I want to write that in big letters - half the voting population of the USA votes for them. I don't believe - I'm not willing to believe - that half the voters are evil. We need to talk to them respectfully and sympathetically. We've all been taken in at some time by liars: it's our side's job to point out the lies, not to judge the liars' victims.
To summarize (so youse don't have to sit thru it), previously, Netanyahu had a number of pressure points on the US government, such as evangelical Christians and politicians who wanted to make a splash by opposing whatever the White House wanted, but those are much less effective with Trump in office, so the rise of Trump has actually reduced Netayahu's ability to mold events. Second, both Israel and Palestine were dealing with non-state actors like Hamas and Hezbollah, but now, the process is with places like UAE and the Saudis mediating, there is also a loss of leverage there.
however, I think that his metaphor of Trump's challenge in the middle east
he's trying to put together a Rubik's cube while people are still shooting at each other and at him in metaphorically speaking and the pieces themselves are sort of crumbling.
makes me realize that he's the moustache, and nothing will change that.
"So, Democrats have three words for this: no fucking way. It's literally life or death. We will not let Republicans blow up our health care system."
THANK YOU CHUCK!!!!!!
About giving up hate and experiencing pain instead. I don't think MAGAs are in pain any more than the usual for middle class Americans. I don't think that's why they like to hate. The concept of MAGAs as these poor sad people who have been left behind, the Forgotten Americans, working class and ignored by Dems, struggling to get by etc is mostly wrong. MAGAs tend to be better off than Dems, more likely to own homes as opposed to renting and are mostly middle class, They are over represented in government. Their lack of any real grievances is what makes them so appalling. Demographics & Group Affinities – Panel Study of the MAGA Movement The only thing they would lose if they gave up hating is their goddawful snobbery about being superior to everyone else and the entertainment they get from the thrill of horror as they armchair hero their lives away in front of the TV>
Not just pain of whatever they have suffered either, GftNC. They also have to give up the narrative justification that gave that suffering purpose, and they have to take on the additional sting of shame for having embraced that hate. That's a lot to swallow.
People will do a lot of shameful things in order to avoid feeling shame.
It's a long time since I read The Fire Next Time, but I just saw somewhere this quotation from it, which resonated:
"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain"
I think contemplating that makes certain kinds of people very afraid.
On “Weekend music thread #1”
@nous, it would be interesting to see the conductor during the actual performance. My impression of the rehearsal is that he's focusing more on individual bits, sort of "remember what I want here" to a particular section of the orchestra. During an actual concert, the conductor is performing for the audience more than directing the musicians.
"
@wonkie, I forget who said it but, "Wagner's music is better than it sounds." :^)
"Ride of the Valkyries" is excellent for the soundtrack of certain sorts of movie scenes, and has been used often for that purpose, probably most famously for the helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now. (Or perhaps for the Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon "What's Opera, Doc?", often referred to as "Kill the Wabbit".) But it's only five minutes out of a five-hour opera. And even in five minutes it suffers from repeated cases of "Oh, yes, there's supposed to be a melody here someplace, isn't there?"
Personally, I think Wagner could have been brilliant writing movie scores where the running time constraint was imposed on him. Think John Williams' score for the original Star Wars, very much in the Wagner mold, and often cited as the best movie score ever written.
"
My go-to lately for listening is Milt Jackson. Been trying to get some vibes happening, he's more or less the beginning of the modern period on that instrument.
Have also been stumbling through a lot of jazz standards on the piano. Not to perform - I will never be a competent pianist - but just to get an understanding of the harmonic language.
Don't know if I'll live long enough to get anywhere that all of that, but I like it.
Other than pedagogical listening, I continue to be drawn to early European art music. Basically the modal counterpoint from the very late middle ages to the early pre-Baroque Renaissance. Dufay, Machaut, et al. That music is sophisticated but so accessible, and has (to my ear) a very direct emotional impulse. My wife sings with a choir whose director is also a fan of that period, I sometimes get to provide percussion accompaniment, which is always a lot of fun.
"
I found the video interesting in pieces, but the combination of a uncertain sync between video and audio and the lower fidelity of the audio made it hard for me to stay focused. It made Solti's conducting feel less than intuitive and had me constantly wondering if what he was signaling was the moment I was hearing.
Chasing down the audio recording in full fidelity on Apple Music and losing the video completely eliminated that feeling of disorientation, as did chasing down a more recent live performance video from Dudamel where the conducting seemed better matched to the audio.
Between watching that and another performance with Gatti conducting, I started to really get a sense for the different impressions that one can get based on where one's visual attention is drawn. The gaze plays a powerful role in what the ear seems to hear in these videos.
"
Solti's Bayreuth Ring* (his first I think) had a making-of made as a feature of its own.
A film team officially accompanied the production and the rehearsals. Something quite uncommon at the time. In addition there was an audio feature using the recordings to explain Wagner's leitmotif technique in detail.
*that's where the clip comes from if I am not mistaken
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
One thing that I have found effective in teaching is that the moments when I am being critical of something are always more powerful for the class when I can find a way to tell them from the perspective of "we," rather than "I," and when that narrative incorporates how "I" learned to view the problem through a perspective that helps put "us" back in a position with more agency to address "our" problem.
That, and starting with questions and listening rather than with advice and instructions seem to be the magic mix.
On “Weekend music thread #1”
Okay, it's not me. Doesn't like backslash.
"
That is "\m/."
"
Funny. It sounds triumphant to me, but maybe because I associate with the film "Excalibur." It is a triumphant scene, so whoever selected it for the soundtrack must have agreed with me. And I like it. To me, it's kind of metal. \m/
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
This post was about how Dem pols should talk and I firmly believe they should be VERY LOUD AND HARSH IN THEIR CRITICISMS of the R party. Use the F word. Actually, both of them.
However, I don't think they should say anything about MAGAs and should talk to them. The goal must be to defuse the polarization.
As for me, I have MAGA friends and acquaintances and no desire to hurt their feelings. However, I also think that I'm not going to be complicit. At all. So, I post stuff on FB that flat out contradicts a lot of MAGA beliefs. For example, I posted an article about Saint Charlie of Free Speech for Conservatives Only and how people who criticized him have been attacked. At least one of my FB friends loves Kirk.
We still seem to be friends.
On “Weekend music thread #1”
That's so apocalyptic, JP. Does it reflect your state of mind? I think I would tear my ears off if I had to listen to that all day.
Paul and I are the opposite; our home is nearly always silent. No radio, no TV.
On “Chinese corruption”
My biggest complaint about the assessment culture that has set in across academia (and the overall rise of big quant that coincides with the monetization of big data) is that there are a lot more people with the tools to gather and measure the data than there are people who have the understanding, expertise, and rigor to tease out when the things we measure actually measure the right things.
I'm interested in reading Limits of the Numerical one of these days: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo146791774.html
It seems the sort of book that can take on the technocratic push for quantitative over qualitative data gathering and analysis. I find that the voices that most often get amplified in management meetings dealing in quantitative assessment are the voices that are on the wrong side of Einstein's admonition that everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
My natural impulses don't always tend toward kindness, but I made a rational decision at some point that I should try to be kind because it seems to be the best way to live, both for the people around me and myself. (That's not to say I don't regularly fail at it, but it's still a goal I strive for.)
That said, it can be complicated. You aren't being kind to someone when you allow someone else to be unkind that person if you're in a position to do something about it. You also can't be kind to one person when someone else will suffer for it, at least when that suffering outweighs the kindness.
How can I (or anyone) be kind to someone who is MAGA? That's generally complicated because the MAGA movement is largely unkind. What I'm talking about here is something other than, say, helping someone who is broken down on the side of the road if they have a tRump bumper sticker. I do mean how you interact where politics is involved somehow.
I don't know. Maybe it's not possible. To take it to an extreme, how could you be kind to tRump, himself? I write his name "tRump." It doesn't really affect him because he's almost certainly never going to see it, but it still isn't kind, right? Am I failing, or is he not deserving of kindness?
"
I don’t believe – I’m not willing to believe – that half the voters are evil. We need to talk to them respectfully and sympathetically. We’ve all been taken in at some time by liars: it’s our side’s job to point out the lies, not to judge the liars’ victims. [Emphasis added]
I think this is another piece of the puzzle when trying to break thru. Be up front about having been bamboozled ourselves. Just to avoid the suggestion that "we're smart enough to have seen thru it, but you re so dumb you got conned." It helps if you've got an example of where you got taken in initially. And if it's something that they can see thru, all the better. (Perhaps "when I was in school, socialism looked attractive. Took me a while to see that it wasn't workable in the real world." Even if you still do think it is workable, it can be a useful example.)
On “Chinese corruption”
I'd say that whether something is usefully measurable depends enormously on the topic.
For engineering it's closer to critic -- "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it." For the physical (including biological) sciences it's important when testing out new theories. But useless for coming up with those theories. For the social sciences, it ought to be important, again for testing theories (but again not useful creating them.) But currently, so much of it is poorly done that it isn't. At least not yet.
For the humanities, I'd say it's totally useless. Doesn't keep fools from trying to do it anyway. But it doesn't work because it can't work.
On “Weekend music thread #1”
I'm pretty sure my taste doesn't qualify as eclectic. But even YouTube doesn't provide video for something like Buddy Holly records.
I've seen videos for other artists' work from similarly far back, where it's obviously added on recently. But some of the "original cast" classics are audio only.
"
Wagner: orchestration without melodies.
On “Chinese corruption”
Yes, on that last paragraph! In academia, but also in business, where we get a "measurement-friendly agenda". To me it feels particularly pernicious when work and rewards are steered to things that can be most easily justified by measurement, without much work to tie those measurements to actual good outcomes.
See also Goodhart's Law, which states that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure", or McNamara on body count. Although it's pretty common to lament that since publication count became a target it's become a poor measure, I don't know that I've seen any effective action to work around it - although I never experienced the British system that limited academics to something like reporting only your five "best" papers, regardless of how many you'd published?
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
I wonder if a useful approach might be to ask, not why they are afraid, but why they are concerned.
An excellent suggestion, and one I will use.
To wonkie's point about MAGAs being no more forgotten or neglected than anyone else - that seems correct to me, but I'm not sure it matters if their sense of threat or concern makes sense. Or even whether it's sincere, or just a justification for less sympathetic reasons.
It's a place to start that isn't focused on fingerpointing. I'm prone to that, as well as to the "go piss up a rope" response. Those aren't that constructive, so I'm looking for other approaches.
To me MAGA just seems like an expression of stuff that's always been in our national character. Nativism, xenophobia, white (especially Anglo) hegemony. Endless arguments about who gets to be a "real" American. I don't think it will ever go away, really. The name will change but the sensibility has always been part of the mix.
I just want to return to the day when "the Paranoid Style" was not seen as something to aspire to and embrace.
"
We should call Trump and his collaborators what they are. I learn that he's been hosting an "anti-antifa roundtable". To support that the contention that "antifa" is an actual organization, one speaker announced that "Antifa is real. Antifa has been around in various iterations for almost a hundred years in some instances going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany."
So that's clear, they're proudly against the opponents of fascism. "Anti-antifascist" is a clumsy way of expressing what they actually are - pro-fascist.
These people are evil. But - I want to write that in big letters - half the voting population of the USA votes for them. I don't believe - I'm not willing to believe - that half the voters are evil. We need to talk to them respectfully and sympathetically. We've all been taken in at some time by liars: it's our side's job to point out the lies, not to judge the liars' victims.
On “…..”
I've never been a fan of Friedman (aka "The Mustache of Understanding") but he has some good points in this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdPXAi8hMa4
To summarize (so youse don't have to sit thru it), previously, Netanyahu had a number of pressure points on the US government, such as evangelical Christians and politicians who wanted to make a splash by opposing whatever the White House wanted, but those are much less effective with Trump in office, so the rise of Trump has actually reduced Netayahu's ability to mold events. Second, both Israel and Palestine were dealing with non-state actors like Hamas and Hezbollah, but now, the process is with places like UAE and the Saudis mediating, there is also a loss of leverage there.
however, I think that his metaphor of Trump's challenge in the middle east
makes me realize that he's the moustache, and nothing will change that.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
"So, Democrats have three words for this: no fucking way. It's literally life or death. We will not let Republicans blow up our health care system."
THANK YOU CHUCK!!!!!!
About giving up hate and experiencing pain instead. I don't think MAGAs are in pain any more than the usual for middle class Americans. I don't think that's why they like to hate. The concept of MAGAs as these poor sad people who have been left behind, the Forgotten Americans, working class and ignored by Dems, struggling to get by etc is mostly wrong. MAGAs tend to be better off than Dems, more likely to own homes as opposed to renting and are mostly middle class, They are over represented in government. Their lack of any real grievances is what makes them so appalling. Demographics & Group Affinities – Panel Study of the MAGA Movement The only thing they would lose if they gave up hating is their goddawful snobbery about being superior to everyone else and the entertainment they get from the thrill of horror as they armchair hero their lives away in front of the TV>
"
Not just pain of whatever they have suffered either, GftNC. They also have to give up the narrative justification that gave that suffering purpose, and they have to take on the additional sting of shame for having embraced that hate. That's a lot to swallow.
People will do a lot of shameful things in order to avoid feeling shame.
"
It's a long time since I read The Fire Next Time, but I just saw somewhere this quotation from it, which resonated:
"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain"
I think contemplating that makes certain kinds of people very afraid.
On “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk”
Trevor Noah's set on the Riyadh Comedy Festival
https://youtu.be/U9bfuM7YR2U?si=FIZNw7x5hjszSay2
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