I just received these news stories from Warrior about prisoners in Arizona:
A man with a growth on his penis was denied medical treatment for two years. Doctors ultimately diagnosed a cancerous tumor on his penis; the organ had to be amputated, and doctors told him the cancer had spread to his stomach.
Carlos Archuleta, a Tucson inmate, said he begged repeatedly for help after being bitten in the groin by a spider last June. After four days, he was transported to a hospital for an emergency operation to remove infected fluid and tissue. Doctors had to resuscitate him after his heart stopped during the operation, and Archuleta was kept in the hospital six days.
"The doctor said if they'd left it one more day, he'd be dead. Just because they're inmates doesn't mean you should treat them this way," said his mother, Guadalupe Lopez. She added, "If he'd gotten proper medical care on day one, taxpayers wouldn't have had to pay for an emergency surgery and the hospital stay."
Corrections' spokesman Marson said "appropriate care was provided" to Archuleta.
Last week my wife and I were at a meeting of the Radnor Hunt Race Committee. During the meeting, the Director of Racing provided the attached sheets which list the date and purses for each Steeplechase race meet this Spring. The Spring season runs between April and late May. Generally, Steeplechase meets are arranged as a fund raising event and the proceeds benefit a local charity. For example, the Radnor Hunt races in May benefit the Brandywine Conservancy...an organization that preserves open space through purchase and development restriction. This group has preserved thousands and thousands of acres in Southern Chester County as open space and farmland....one of the few ways we can curb the scourge of "sprawl." I would encourage readers to check this schedule and pick a race date. You can go to the website of the National Steeplechase Association to find websites and details for specific races including ticket and subscription prices and directions. You are sure to have an enjoyable day in the country and the tailgating and wagering is always spirited. The fact that you are contributing to a good cause is simply a bonus.
You probably thought this post was going to feature guys blasting away at the shooting range. On the contrary, the "Range" in question is the hulking Viking 6 Burner range that dominates my kitchen.
Last evening I prepared game bird pot-pies with the assistance of my lovely Sous Chef/wife. They were delicious...redolent of Thyme and rich Pheasant meat,onions and a touch of Sherry. The second photo is a Wild Duck gumbo I prepared using freshly shot Mallard and store bought Andouille sausage. This smokey and spicy stew was served with grilled Jalapeno/Jack cheese cornbread. One of the truly rewarding things about hunting is transforming the prize into delicious entrees for the family and guests.
Chevy ad-men tell us in 1949 that the De Luxe Sport Coupe has an array of colors like the Autumn woods. Their car also "takes to rough going like a field trial champion" and is "smooth as a bird in flight." This promotional piece showing cars afield reminds me of my Grandfather's stories about the days when you could take a drive, pull up to a farm and politely ask the Farmer's permission to chase some cockbirds in his corn fields. Plymouth makes it clear that their 1949 Station Wagon, with real wood body panels ,easy to clean removable seats,will safely take 8 fans to the stadium and should still have room for tailgate equipment as well.If you wreck one of these rigs...do you go to a body shop first..or a carpenter. Lincoln uses a sturdy fellow in captains hat and deck shoes to convince buyers that you can drive your drop-top 1955 capri right on the dock to collect your trophy swordfish...which miraculously was taxidermied only moments after being dragged from the surf. This Lincoln was engineeered for "Americans on the move who demand the finest."
These ads from National Geographic were spied and snagged by your faithful sporting correspondent at a little antique mall in Tannersville,PA. I was killing time between Monroe County court appearances and wandered in to walk the packed isles.Whenever I see this type of pop-art depicting Madison Avenue's pandering to the sporting set, I reach for the bill fold almost immediately.
I would never seek to compete with the vaunted menswear bloggers such as ADG or Tinman or YWP...at least not on the level playing field of 3-2 roll and Flusser stuff. In fact, those guys a far more than mere "mens wear bloggers" and write some damn fine prose about a wide range of topics. That's not to say I do not have a closet full of quality suits for my professional persona as well as evening wear and full dress tailcoat, vest and related paraphenalia. It is just I don't get charged up to write about it. I enjoy reading about it immensely. What I will write about is sporting sartorial blather. To wit...today's topic: The Pennsylvania Tuxedo and what I am now calling the "duck hunter's dinner jacket." The Pennsylvania Tuxedo is a name given to a particular heavy wool red and black check suit of clothes,jacket and pants, made by Woolrich for deer hunters. The red/black contrast was an early effort to provide both visibility to other hunters for safety and form break-up to hide from the critters one is trying to blast with hot lead. Yeah...I know..Elmer Fudd and all. Yet this outfit is high utility. Warm, water resistant hunting gear from head to toe before the arrival of Goretex. Often combined with L.L. Bean knee-highs...this was the proper rig for a Keystone State deer hunter to have in the early and mid century before blaze orange became law of the land and cabela's offered 30 pages of choices. The dinner jacket moniker I am attaching to a Stearns PFD in Max-HD camo...a life jacket.Note the open left shoulder for movement...such as operating an outboard and the shooting pad on the right shoulder for gun mount and comfort. These guys thought out their design. At 5:00 A.M. when you are in your 14 ft camo aluminum boat motoring along in the frigid dark of a Winter morning toward an off shore duck blind loaded with 3 dozen decoys, guns, excited Labs, 2 or 3 hunters and related gear....things can go wrong. You can hit a log or get your prop fouled by the line from an eel or crab trap. The water is cold and the mud is hip deep sucking mud. In other words...danger and life threatening events can screw up an otherwise fun morning of waterfowling. Law requires having life jackets on board. What good will they do you if they are on the deck and not on your torso if the boat flips after hitting a submerged log when you are doing 15 mph at Cedar Creek? Some guys complain they cannot fit over the coat.Without a vest... if you go over...your waders will fill with water and your parka becomes a lead jacket and you sink and you drown....monumentally fucked for lack of a more emphatic term. However, with the Stearns vest depicted, the waterfowler can have the vest on and still be mobile and warm. This type fits easily over heavy warm duck hunting camo gear and provides excellent form and function. Easy to put on and it can literally save your life. We are not discussing peak lapel or shawl collar, pleated pants or flat, pique shirts and wing collars....I can certainly weigh in on those debates over a pint or a glass of Bourbon at the Bar. But there is no room for discussion when we are considering being seen by fellow rifle toting deer hunters or dying a spluttering death with lungs full of brackish marsh water on the Eastern Shore.
One of my hunting companions has a real thing about vintage autos. He recently sent an e-mail with some famous sports figures and their amazing old vehicles. Oh, wait, one of them is the beloved "antique" muscle car of this writer. Suffice it to say, the old adage obtains: "They don't make 'em like this anymore."
My friend Nigel Cottrellgave me this pic tonight at karate, which I started three years ago on the advice of my former personal trainer in prison,Iron Man.
Often during my rambling on this Blog I refer to the duck hunting club.On Saturday we were down at the Club doing some routine post season maintanence and cleaning. One of my guys had a new I-Phone and took some pictures that are of better quality than anything I had stored on my Blackberry or my desktop. I decided to post a few to afford readers, the few that there are, a glimpse inside our Clubhouse. The house was built in 1749 and we enjoy use of same as part of our lease of the farm...all 800 acres. As you can see, we are not roughing it either before or after hunting. We have a well appointed living room that features a big screen HD T.V. for watching sports and hunting channels. The World Series usually falls around the opening of early duck season in October and Sunday night football before Monday opening in December is also a big draw. We also have a pool table in the foyer/billiard room. Many a heated and heavily wagered game takes place on this table amongst the members. Beers and cocktails are consumed and trick shots are attempted. It is not a fancy table...rather a bar-table I scored from a friend who handles games and pool tables for bars. He got it from a closed down saloon in Philly and let us have it for a very reasonable price and had it delivered to us. We also have a trophy/bar/poker room but I could not scare up any decent photos of same....another post for that. Now that waterfowl season is over the Clubhouse will be buttoned up and sparsely used until Spring when we start training the dogs and doing some fishing and crabbing.
The Loratadine gave me no relief, so I went back to the doctor. He prescribed Cetirizine, another allergy medication. Two weeks of Cetirizine provided no relief either. My next step is nasal spray with steroids. I have to submit another HNR form to switch my medication. It takes six weeks from the time you submit a HNR to see the doctor. The next step after the nasal spray is grieving medical. I want a second opinion. I want to see an ear nose throat specialist. My right ear is throbbing as I write this.
I haven’t been outside much this last week as I’m scared to death of catching scabies, which is running rampant on the yard. The guards put yellow quarantine signs on doors. As if there is not enough going on! Prisoners are coming in affected with scabies from Maricopa County jail – just one more thing we can thank Sheriff Joe Arpaio for.
A passage of music could have a ‘semantic range’ that is essentially the same as that of any word in a language, only much broader in scope—sharing the same kind of elasticity but of a much greater degree than is typical in language... Choosing whether the French overture [Var. XVI] in Bach’s Goldberg Variations connotes ‘sublime confidence’ or ‘deep despair’ is easy because the semantic fields of those expressions are so completely separate. One seems coincident with the music—and the other, far from it!” — Joseph Swain, p. 55.
T he hypothesis that syntax mediates tension—and its corollary, that if there is no sense of tension and resolution then there is no sense of syntax—do not entail that all tension is ‘syntactic’ in origin... The tension and resolution of this passage depend more on harmonic progression and meter than on the variety of rhythmic durations and texture.” — Joseph Swain, p. 32.
K onstantin Lifschitz’s performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations BWV 988 last night was staggeringly beautiful, unified in conception and spiritually cohesive all the way through the Variations to the reprise of the Aria at the end.
T he left-hand/right-hand equality of voices that Lifschitz maintains is astounding—that it is biomechanically/anatomically very difficult goes without saying, but it is conceptually/expressively exceedingly difficult as well. (The intentions of the composer—and of the performer, and, now, of ourselves—are complex and tremendously varied through the course of this work. And they must emerge in the performance as fresh and totally genuine—a factor that learning and technically mastering and memorizing the musical text threaten to a degree, as anyone who has ever memorized and performed music in recital knows well...)
I ntentionalism [in music]... not so much a coherent philosophical position but rather a kind of ‘antidote’ to hermeneutic analytic approaches that treat musical works as ‘organic matter’—in short, like vegetables—rather than as products of thinking [,feeling] people. Ideally, this means encouraging analytic results that might please composers if they were told about them... Intentionalism is meant as a heuristic device that asks that we pose the question: What might the composer have thought about this composition and its sense? It has become common practice for musicologists to invoke the warning of the Intentional Fallacy as if it were law accepted by everyone. In fact, the entire hermeneutic tradition stands opposed to this doctrinaire apologia for New Criticism, so that merely calling the quest for intentions structuring a work of art a ‘victim’ to a fallacy does not make it so.” — Laurence Dreyfus, p. 171.
T he interplay between the rhythmic, metric, melodic, harmonic, and textural tensions in Goldberg variation—notably in the French overture (Var. XVI)—was fascinating. When harmonic tension predominates, it “frees-up” the melodic syntax and vice versa. The realism of the multi-line, multi-voice dialogue or story-telling is enabled and augmented by the parity/equality of the hands, each tension-generating modality taking its “turn” and providing scope and opportunity for other modalities to express things freely.
L ast night our imaginations were permitted to run, taking all the “rope” they could, until close to the end near the 70-minute mark, when we realized in retrospect that the “story” explored by Bach (and Lifschitz) through all of these Variations is our very own. We had not only understood the story; we had in a palpable, true sense ‘said’ [to ourselves] the things that Bach—and Lifschitz—had just said. The story and these thoughts had come a huge distance to find us, as if meant (intended) to be found by us.
W e were inscribed by them, but we found that we, too, were, in a real sense, inscribing/authoring the thoughts. The attentiveness, the transcendent wide-awakeness that Bach has impelled us to with these Variations: like a newly-discovered, implausibly effective form of prayer. An unforgettable performance and a really wonderful evening.
A poem as a persisting manifestation of language—and, therefore, essentially ‘dialogue’ [that can be indefinitely-extended, with unnamed or yet-to-be-named respondents]—can be a message in a ‘bottle’: sent out in the not-always-greatly-hopeful belief that somewhere and sometime it might wash up on land—on some heartland. Poems [and music] in this sense, too are ‘under way’: they are making toward something... Wirklichkeit ist nicht! Wirklichkeit will gesucht und gewonnen sein! [Reality is nothing apart from our individual construction of it. It must be sought and won!]” — Paul Celan.
I ’ve come to feel over the years that a musical work, however long it may be, ought to have basically—I was going to say ‘one tempo’ but that’s the wrong word—one ‘pulse rate’; one constant 'rhythmic reference point'. Now, obviously, there couldn’t be anything more deadly dull than to exploit one beat that goes on and on and on indefinitely. That’s what drives me up the wall about rock and about minimalism. Anyway, I would never argue in favor of an inflexible pulse. That just destroys any music. But you can take a basic pulse and divide or multiply it—not necessarily on a scale of two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, but often with far-less-obvious divisions—and make the result of those divisions or multiplications act as a subsidiary pulse for a particular movement or section of a movement... So in the case of the Goldbergs, there is in fact one pulse, which, with a few very minor modifications—mostly modifications that I think take their cue from ritards at the end of the preceding variation, something like that—one pulse that runs all the way throughout.” — Glenn Gould, 1982 radio interview with Tim Page.
I hated him because he was a Met. I admired him because he was a damn fine catcher.He was a force to be dealt with both behind the Plate and when he was at the Plate in the batter's box.
I made money in 1986 when a friend bet me that Carter would be National League MVP...and not Mike Schmidt. He was wrong...I was right.
Carter has passed away at 57...too young. I hated that Met's uniform...and was not fond of him as an Expo. But he was a class act by all accounts...a ballplayer, a gentleman,a talented athlete and a team leader.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Question Time
Charlie asked:any new news on the film or TV series?
Shaun: My literary agent just sent Party Time to various publishers. He's sending it directly to US publishers this time, and feels that Party Time is more likely to generate a movie deal thanHard Timebecause jail memoirs are so common these days. The TV producer I spoke to is in the process of changing companies, but he said he still definitely wants to do it. It usually takes me at least five years to get a big result in my chosen profession. I just entered my fifth year since my release from prison, and I can sense something big is near.
For some reason I am always intrigued by old printed menus. I recall visiting the Pennsylvania Railroad museum as a kid and being fascinated by the menu in the old Pullman Dining Car. The line-up of a Club Banquet from 1890 or the fare at Delmonico's in the Roaring 20's tells us things about what people were eating and how much. The multiple courses of a Gilded age White Tie dinner varies greatly from the salad,entree,dessert one may see at a contemporary wedding. Those robber barons seemed to make a science of gluttony and ate enough at one sitting to feed a whole village in Darfur. I came across this Lehigh University Sophomore Class banquet menu from 1916 while doing some on-line research and was transfixed as usual. The fact that oysters were served to such a large group is notable...that's a lot of shucking. Also of note is the presence of Peas in two forms in tow courses. Planked Shad is something of a Pennsylvania tradition in the days when the Shad ran the Delaware and were plentiful. This was followed by steak and then what they call "Lehigh Roast Chicken"...not sure what that means.These second year College men were packing away some serious chow...and if Lehigh tradition holds true, they were washing all this down with plentiful amounts of beer and spirits. It is also interesting that the tradition of cheese as a last course is maintained. Some restaurants still adhere to this convention...and I certainly enjoy a St. Andre with walnuts and Port after a Holiday meal.An old menu is a peek into the past on a different level and one I always enjoy.
Happy Valentine's Day....Advice to men for this manufactured Holiday often entails complicated schemes to profess love and create a romantic atmosphere through dinner reservations, flowers,poems,candy,lingerie and all manner of contrivances.
Advice to women is far more remedial and straight forward: Show up naked and bring beer.(Courtesy of Blue Collar Comedy) Now that is the way to a Sportsman's heart!
Evidently, hopping on a scooter and pulling on a rope lashed around the upper extremities of some poor disabled Punjabi is a sporting event in the hinterlands of the Indian Sub-Continent. Are we wagering on this or is it strictly amateur so some trinket is awarded as a prize in recognition of victory? Incidentally, how is victory measured...the longest time until your humerus bone gives up its cartilaginous hold on the radius and ulna? I will spectate and wager on almost anything...this contest...not so much.
Here is a crew that practices an esoteric form of hunting. This is a sporting hobby I find fascinating, but certainly do not have the time or resources to explore. I have my hands full right now training my new Lab so she will be ready for duck hunting next season. This sport got a bit of recognition and new participants for a brief time after "The Falcon and the Snowman" was released. However, I doubt you will see a local falconry club practicing in your neighborhood park anytime soon.
Here is an excerpt from a scholarly article on Medieval falconry:
"The second form of Medieval hunting, hawking or falconry, became the delight of the nobles. It was so much appreciated that a nobleman or his lady never appeared in public without a hawk on the wrist as a mark of dignity. It was also a mark of the rank, not everyone could afford the high cost of falcons, which were mostly imported from Sweden or Iceland. Even bishops and abbots entered the churches with their hunting birds, which they placed on the steps of the altar itself during the service."
There is a great piece in Vanity Fair this month about the making of one of my favorite movies: "Diner." In late Fall 1982,my wife(then girlfriend) and I saw it at the Sam Eric theatre on Chestnut street when it was released for a "sneak preview." The characters and dialogue really resonated with me. I was talking about the film for weeks. No one had heard of it and looked at me like I was nuts."Diner" then received a wider release and all my buddies saw it and held a similar high opinion. Since then, it has become a well known film and was a launching pad for the careers of some fine actors...Stern,Rourke,Barkin, Reiser. Kevin Bacon had already had roles such as Chip in "Animal House" and Rourke was being noticed after his role in "Body Heat." The other central cast was relatively unknown and all went on to T.V. and big-screen success. Levinson went on to direct "Avalon" and "Tin Men" and "Liberty Heights" to complete his Baltimore tour de force. The scene here is Eddie giving his fiance' a "football quiz." If Alyse does not pass....the marriage is OFF.
10.25am. Jewel popped her head up. “Renee they want you at medical right now.”
I jumped up, and darted for medical. I was third in line, but knew it would be a long wait. Amy and Tiffany were ahead of me. Sandra showed up a few moments later. Amy has a long list of medical problems. Tiffany was waiting for her results to see if she has breast cancer. Sandra was there for a post-surgery visit. I was waiting for lab results. We sat in the medical enclosure, anxiety rolling off us. I couldn’t sit still. I felt as though as I was going to crawl out of my skin.
One by one they called us in to take our vitals.
I went in, sat on a chair, had my blood pressure and temperature taken. I hopped on the weighing scale, deciding not to look.
“132 pounds.” The nurse said.
I looked at the scale in disbelief. A week and a half ago I was 122 pounds, but it was a different scale.
The nurse opened the door, and called my name.
I jumped up and walked into the doctor’s office, only slightly larger than one of our cells.
“Sit on the table,” someone said to me. There were four people: the provider, a nurse and two women I’ve never seen.
The provider read my HNR, and looked at my charts. “Oh, your lab results are back. Your thyroid is normal. White blood cell count is fine. No signs of infection. We tested you for several different types of infection, including mono.”
Why in the world would you test me for mono? was screaming through my head, but the words never fell from my lips.
“Your lab results really are beautiful.”
“Then why are my ears hurting and I have a sore throat and headaches?”
He looked dumbfounded.
“Just last week, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday my left ear hurt. Last time I was here you said I had a sinus infection. Since then I’ve taken the allergy tabs from the store, and still nothing.”
“That stuff really doesn’t work,” he said as he stood up. He grabbed a small light to look in my ears and nose. He checked my ears again.
“My right ear hurts right now.”
He examined it again.
“I do not see anything wrong. Your ear looks fine. I’m going to give you Loratadine once a day. It’s just allergies.”
I left medical again confused, and waiting for my new medication to arrive.
L ocal color’ features synthetic bell-like tones, sustained tonal clusters, and computer-triggered acoustic bells struck in complementary patterns that are sometimes random, sometimes human-triggered, and combinations of both... It is enough to reference the idea of a tactus, but not enough to be [understood as] an organizing [meaning-generating/insuring] element.” — Audio Combine, liner notes, Ed Osborn, Brown Univ, 2011.
T he music comprising John Bischoff’s new CD ‘Audio Combine’, just released on New World Records, is beautiful, fascinating, thoroughly enjoyable. Philip Perkins’s engineering and production values are superb.
T he five tracks on the disc are diverse, representing Bischoff compositions from 2004 to mid-2011. The third track ‘Local Color’ evokes traditional chinese zhong bells, but also especially calls into question the ‘who’ of music performance [in asmuch as some of the bells are computer-triggered, randomly and deterministically, while others are played by Bischoff from his score] and other limits of performance identity [insofar as the bell modes and timbres evolve after the bell is struck—on the rim; on the bosses/nipples; on the wall; etc.—in aleatoric/random ways that the musician-computer can neither predict nor control]. Of course, all music emerges in less-than-predictable/controllable ways—just less obviously so than bells.
T he pieces were all recorded in live performance with minimal editing and no over-dubs. Philip Perkins recorded direct from Bischoff’s setup and also from three pairs of microphones placed at various points in the concert hall. The mix heard here switches between these four perspectives as the pieces are played. The distance and pace incorporated into the recordings from various mic positions give a clear sense of the space of the performance, and of the object-ness of the sounds. That space and our place within it become the final part of the ‘material’: when the listener has no fixed point of perspective, then the position from which the listening/understanding is done becomes one of the elements of counterpoint.” — Audio Combine, liner notes, Ed Osborn, Brown Univ, 2011.
T here are a few excellent books that empirically measure the modal vibrations of bells... He & Fu, for example. And some books on bispectral analysis—mainly used today in aerospace engineering and vibration-management engineering of turbines and other structures. Useful to explore if you are a composer/performer wanting to know more about how to more reliably utilize distinctive bell harmonics in your work. Links to some of these at the bottom of this post. [Modal Analysis, Fu & He, 2001, p. 276]
[50-sec clip, Wang Yuanping & Hubei Chime Bells Orchestra, ‘竹枝词 (Zhu-zhi-ci) Bamboo-pole Love Poem’; (track 1), 1989, 1.5MB MP3]
T he substantial rhythmic independence of the parts in the ‘Local Color’ bell quartet is part of its distinctive Asian beauty. Because each bell projects its sound clearly, each individual bell can easily be heard over the rest of the bell ensemble, and yet the ensemble—the ‘community’ of bells—remains the primary subject. This is dissimilar from other voiced percussion like a timpani choir, performing a ‘programmatic’ role, where the effect of four or more timpani playing together is treated more as an ‘effect’ than as harmony. It is instead quartet ‘orchestration with Chinese characteristics’!
W ith computer-triggered sticking, the timing of the ring-down and the pitch-bend are the same, but the kinematic nuances of human left-hand/right-hand mallet or sticking patterns are gone. But the electromechanical linear actuators for the computer-controlled bells have their own kinematic constraints, in terms of speed of resetting for the next stroke, and so on. They have their own unique, finite kind of ‘embodiment’ just as we humans have ours, and we can hear this in these wonderful Bischoff compositions and this excellent recording of them being performed ‘live’.
A nd so the most amazing thing that we get from Bischoff’s mechatronic compositions like ‘Local Color’ is a vivid glimpse of robotic humanity and machine consciousness, revealed by the beater mechanics and linear actuators... something like an inversion of the ‘human-becoming-machine’ perspective of Ambrazevičius and Balsienė (link below): ‘machine-becoming-human’... a brilliant future of new expressive possibilities, including bionic accomodations for musicians with disabilities. Musical prosthetics? Sonnez les matines! / Din, dan, don!
J ohn Bischoff (b. 1949) is an early pioneer of live computer music. He is known for his solo constructions in real-time synthesis as well as his seminal work in computer network ensembles. Bischoff studied composition with Robert Moran, James Tenney, and Robert Ashley. He has been active in the experimental music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 25 year as a composer, performer, teacher, and grassroots activist. His performances around the US include NEW MUSIC AMERICA festivals in 1981 (SF) and 1989 (NYC), Experimental Intermedia (NYC), Roulette Intermedium (NYC), and the Beyond Music Festival (LA). He has performed in Europe at the Festival d'Automne in Paris, Akademie der Künst in Berlin, Fylkingen in Stockholm, and TUBE in Munich. He was a founding member of the League of Automatic Music Composers (1978), considered to be the world's first Computer Network Band, and he co-authored an article on the League's music that appears in "Foundations of Computer Music" (MIT Press 1985). He was also a founding member of the network band The Hub with whom he performed and recorded from 1985 to 1996.
M usical ideas are such combinations of tones, rhythms, and harmonies as to demand/inspire a thoughtful treatment like the main theses of a philosophical tract. [Any non-trivial musical idea inevitably] raises a question—sets up a problem that, in the course of the piece, has to be answered, resolved, ‘carried through’. It has to be carried through however many contradictory situations are plausible; it must be developed by deducing however many inferences there may be from what it postulates; it has to be checked—has to be proved to be true, like a mathematical theorem. And all this, if you are successful, will lead to a conclusion—a ‘pronunciamento’, a fresh new certainty—a beautiful new discovery [that speaks].” — Arnold Schoenberg, ‘Beauty and Logic in Music,’ unpublished manuscript.
T he quote above was one we saw in the Arnold Schönberg Center archives, when we visited Vienna a couple of months ago. I was reminded of this insight of Schoenberg’s during Bach’s complete two- and three-part Inventions (Sinfonias), performed by Konstantin Lifschitz last night. Interleaved Invention-Sinfonia-Invention-Sinfonia as they were, in ascending chromatic sequence (as opposed to chronologically; as opposed to rank-order by pedagogic difficulty in Wilhelm Friedemann’s Klavierbuchlein), the pieces led us in the audience to some new insights.
S ome inventions, performed by many at faster tempi, became intense meditations on color and timbre. Other ones, often performed with wider rubato variation, became motoric illustrations of individual conviction and duty. Consider the editorial suggestions of the Alfred or others’ modern editions; consider the ur-texts of Bach himself; but make up your own mind—find your own true story. Which is what Konstantin Lifschitz did for us so wonderfully and spontaneously last night.
T hese inventions began as [mere] ideas, that Bach conceived [in an improvisational, impromptu manner] and wrote as teaching tools. The complexities of the three-voice Sinfonias make the two-part Inventions seem [simple] when you play them side-by-side.” — Cynthia Siebert, founder, Friends of Chamber Music.
I t’s a joy to hear the unfiltered account of a friend’s or lover’s dream. We feel touched and, not just ‘connected’, but also more ‘human’ for the shared experience... ‘included’, ‘alive’. We are included in the ‘action’, and we feel the curiosity and the moral duty to engage with the friend who is relating this dream to us. We sense the truth that arises from the honest synapses firing without the interpolation of an ego in the process. The purity of (absence of—) motives and the transparency count for a lot.
I st das möglich? Denkt ihr, man kann sich wirklich mit einer musikalischen Idee durch einen Traum verlieben, bzw. kann man tatsächlich träumen, verliebt sich in die musikalische Idee zu sein? Habt ihr sowas schon mal geträumt?
[Is this possible? Do you think you can really fall in love with a musical idea in a dream, or dream you can actually love to be in the musical idea? Have you dreamed something like this before?]” — Milton Babbitt.
I write often about shooting and the various hunting outings which take up a goodly amount of my liesure time. One of the crucial facets of any Sporting pursuit in the field is gun safety. As my buddy Charlie used to say: "The best safety feature on any gun is a careful shooter."
To wit, I offer some photos of the pre-shoot safety meeting before our Club Tower Shoot last Saturday. These shoots involve 25 guns and some fast and challenging wing shooting. It is absolutely necessary that each gun know what is expected regarding field etiquette and safety. Since I have been pressed into service as the President of the Club, I organize a mandatory pre-shoot safety meeting before every shoot. This entails reading from a pre-printed card of regulations and a short speech about safe gunning and looking out for the dogs. For instance, "low bird is NO bird" since it could endager one of our fine retrievers.
I have told guests bluntly that if they screw up and shoot my dog, the next shot they hear will be from my gun putting a barrel of # 6 high brass pellets in their ass. This drives the point home farily well. Even the most experienced guns can benefit from taking the minutes required to go over the rules and the requirements to shoot safely in this format. I am proud to say we had a safe and enjoyable shoot.
The other shot is of some of the young Sportsmen availing themselves of the post Shoot buffet which included pulled pork, ribs, red beans and rice, collared greens, kielbasa,cole slaw and cornbread. This delicious spread was demolished in short order by a crew of hungry shooters.
For the most part, the guns are put away awaiting next season....I will try and shoot some trap and skeet thru March and April but once it gets hot that's it. Bring on Steeplechase Season!
