THE MUSIC SALON: classical music, popular culture, philosophy and anything else that catches my fancy...
Here is a performance I have not seen before:
What's remarkable about that is that Williams delivers a terrific, flawless performance with one of the world's great orchestras and greatest conductors in front of what must have been an audience of 10,000. Rather the concert of a lifetime...
Dark Academia is not a cult, no, really. Here, listen to this guy:
The Peter Weir film Dead Poets Society is also an influence:
I'm not sure that representative musical examples have been chosen, so let me make some suggestions. One that comes to mind is the ballet Giselle which featured in an episode of Angel, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff, which might be another contributing influence:
Personally, I think something like the Symphonie fantastique by Hector Berlioz would fit with the aesthetic as well:
That should get you started, at least. Now go get yourself a tweed jacket and a fountain pen. I recommend this one:
For the jacket, you're on your own!
A Shostakovich quartet bookended by two quartets by Weinberg
YouTube used to be much, much better than it is now, even though now it has many times as many clips. The problem now is that the advertisements are more and more ubiquitous and annoying. But even worse than that is that the majority of the clips seem to be very scam-like. The image luring you to view the clip often has little or nothing to do with the actual content; the claim of the title is often wildly exaggerated and so on. But, there are still some pretty good items. One I ran across this morning is a very brief and very clear discussion of why Ludwig Wittgenstein is an important thinker and actually, a very useful one. Here it is:
In the clip the narrator calls the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus a "beautiful" book and indeed it is, it has a kind of mystic clarity to it that is so rare that I can hardly think of another example. Here is a quote:
6.13 Logic is not a set of teachings but a mirror image of the world.
5.632 The subject does not belong to the world but is a limit of the world.
Every sentence--proposition--in the book is numbered in a logical hierarchy. But really, quotes like these remind me of Chinese philosophy.
* * *
John Cage is absolutely unique among composers in that the piece for which he is most famous is nothing but silence. Think about that! The piece is 4'33 in length and that is the title by which it is known: 4'33. Here is a famous performance by Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic.
This was made as a statement about the cancelling of performances due to the COVID closure in Germany. You might notice that as this clip is only 3'42 long, he rushes the piece! Use a stopwatch, Kirill!
* * *
Here is an example of a somewhat misleading YouTube clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNpvzGEMQmY&t=358s
Sure, interesting, but the reason you click on it has very little to do with Picasso, right?
* * *
Reading Dilla Time, this was one of the examples. I warn you, if you don't want to have a fragment of Joni Mitchell stuck in your head for all eternity, don't listen to this!
* * *
Just wandering slightly off the reservation, one of the things I have liked about the French author Michel Houellebecq is just that name. There are too many somethings in there: vowels, consonants? Reminds me of a neighborhood in Montréal: Longueuil. That definitely has too many vowels. Anyway, here is a very funny, very deadpan, review of a recent book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyZzhtM41x4
* * *
We really must end with some excellent music, so here you go. A lot of the younger singers I have enjoyed recently have been French.
MEA CULPA! I FORGOT TO POST THIS THIS MORNING!
The artist can mislead the public more easily than can a man of any other profession, for setting aside the affinity of the herd for all that is superficial, a sort of halo surrounds the painter; he profits by a number of institutions very favourable to mediocrity, which give a certain importance to the métier as such, and are readily turned to account by the adroit
--Julius Meier-Graefe (1867 - 1935) This quote is from 1904.
* * *
I've always been fascinated with Leonard Cohen, and not just because he was a fellow Montrealer: Leonard Cohen: Hippie Troubadour and Forgotten Reactionary
IN THE EARLY ’70s, Leonard Cohen was in crisis. His life felt meaningless, although, in theory, it shouldn’t have. He’d spent the past decade doing all the things people were supposed to do in the ’60s. He’d joined shadowy religious orders and dabbled in Eastern mysticism. He’d written a sexy experimental novel that thrilled the young and enraged the establishment. He’d reinvented himself as a singer-songwriter and played to crowds of ecstatic flower children. He’d taken all the drugs, smoked all the cigarettes, slept in all the iconic hotels—the King Edward, the Chelsea, the Chateau Marmont. If the ’60s counterculture were a mountain, he was the rare mountaineer who’d made it to the summit.
Read the whole thing for a thoughtful look at an artist that has a lot of relevance for us today.
* * *
A problem that refuses to go away: TENOR STOPS MID-CONCERT IN BIRMINGHAM TO STOP PHONE SNAPPERS
The tenor Ian Bostridge shocked Symphony Hall Birmingham last night by stopping after the third song in Britten’s Les Illuminations to denounce the CBSO’s new audience rules, which read:
“We are very happy for you to take photographs and short video clips at our concerts, but please refrain from recording the whole performance.”
Bostridge, a thoughtful, courteous man, stepped forward and – clearly fuming – requested that audience members turn off their phone cameras. He said taking photographs was ‘extremely distracting’ for a performer.
For the love of all that's holy...
* * *
This could well be true: An education in music makes you a better employee. Are recruiters in tune?
One of the most powerful traits instilled by a music education is a deep sense of professionalism. 85% of survey participants identified the trait as the skill that most influenced expectations of themselves and others, and the quality of their work.
A common industry saying about rehearsal reflects this attitude of consistency and punctuality – “early is on time, on time is late, and late is left behind.”
Other notable skills included autonomy and self-direction, resilience and perseverance, and creativity.
Learning an instrument fosters disciplined, focused attention, a highly valuable skill in other contexts. ArtBitz/Shutterstock
Participants attributed the development of these strengths to the disciplined and focused attention required to learn music, and the intrinsic motivation needed to practise and perfect an instrument over a long period of time.
You are not likely to learn these sorts of skills in too many other places.
* * *
You get industrialized mass production: What Happens to Songwriters When AI Can Generate Music?
If you think 100,000 songs a day going into the market is a big number, “you have no idea what’s coming next,” says Alex Mitchell, founder/CEO of Boomy, a music creation platform that can compose an instrumental at the click of an icon.
Boomy is one of many so-called “generative artificial intelligence” music companies — others include Soundful, BandLab’s SongStarter and Authentic Artists — founded to democratize songwriting and production even more than the synthesizer did in the 1970s, the drum machine in the ’80s and ’90s, digital audio workstations in the 2000s and sample and beat libraries in the 2010s.
* * *
Our first envoi really has to be Leonard Cohen:
Here is Ian Bostridge with Britten's Les Illuminations, op. 18
Here is a piece you rarely hear, the Septet in E flat major by Beethoven:
And now, if you will excuse me I have to go decolonize my bookshelf.
I taught myself how to write by writing letters to the editor of the Globe and Mail in Toronto. You had to address an issue of the day in pithy and original prose and not exceed 800 words. I got so that I could get quite a few letters published. And now, in the limited world of musical discussion on the Internet, I think I have achieved beatitude. Yesterday Rick Beato put up a particularly wacky video titled "What Is Wrong With Everyone?" Here it is:
I was quantized once, but I got over it. Then I went all Pythagorean...
For some obscure reason way back in the early days I chose the nom de plume of Speusippus, the nephew of Plato, as my YouTube identity. You can tell it is me from the photo, the same one I use here. So that is my comment. Now here is the beatitude, it is the first ranked of 11,461 comments!! So that was a very cool comment but I bemoan how huge Rick Beato's appeal is compared to mine. Maybe I should be more wacky and hysterical?
